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Sometimes Carl really hated his job.
It was never supposed to end up like this. The silly scientist that he picked up one day at a middle school in San Francisco was never supposed to be more than just a blip in an otherwise grand story. He was never supposed to...
Carl shook his head, and tried to refocus, Grace was saying something about moonwalking, always trying to combat serious situations with jokes. Typical. So typical that it hurt. He knew how this would end. They all knew.
And yet, they continued the farce.
“Can I think about it?” Grace’s voice was small, strangled, much like how he was before he really found his stride as a part of Stratt’s Vat.
“You have three hours.”
Carl forced himself not to turn away as Ryland Grace’s world came crumbling down around him. Forced himself to watch as the reality of what was happening settled. He had three hours to decide to give up his life for the good of the human race, or save himself. A lump in his throat formed as he watched Grace remove his hat, remove his glasses and just stare at nothing for a good long while.
Go. He wanted to urge. Make your decision. Don’t you realize you’re running out of time? But that wasn’t his call to make. And it wasn’t like he blamed him any. If roles were reversed, and he was sitting in the chair, he’d be paralyzed too.
The room slowly emptied out until it was only Carl and Grace who remained. He stood back, still watching. Grace hadn’t moved. In fact, nothing had changed, but the tears sliding down his cheeks. An eternity stretched between them before he cleared his throat. “Carl...?”
It was quiet, if he hadn’t been paying close attention, he might have missed it. “Yeah? I can hear you.”
“What would...” His words trailed off as he shook his head. “Nevermind.” He leaned heavily on the table as he stood, gathering up his things. The last thing Carl heard as Grace left was an anguished “Three hours...”
Three hours.
He wasn’t going to intrude as Grace deliberated, that wasn’t his place. He didn’t want to take up his time, or sway his thinking in any way. He assumed that the words Grace had left unsaid had been him trying to ask Carl what he would do in this situation.
And he didn’t know. He wasn’t a scientist, so it wasn’t like he’d be of any use on the mission, but that wasn’t really the point. Say he could do everything that Grace could, would he sacrifice himself to save the world? Yes. That was the immediate response. Of course, who wouldn’t? But there was more to it than that. Carl had a family. He had a husband, he had kids. He didn’t get to see them much. Agency work required a lot of sacrifice, a lot of secrecy. But he made sure to check in when he could. But to give up his life? To choose to die, even for a noble cause...
He understood Grace’s reluctance.
Not everyone had the desire to be heroic. Not everyone felt the pull to help people. Carl truly believed that there was a part of Grace that did though, he had to, otherwise he wouldn’t be a teacher.
Carl sighed, watching the clouds move across the sky. It looked like rain soon. Maybe there’d be a rainbow. He always liked rainbows. They reminded him of hope. Of new beginnings.
Three hours.
The reality that, in three hours, he might have to say goodbye to a friend. Someone he’d grown close to over the years that they’d worked together on this insane project.
He didn’t want Grace to go. Grace wasn’t supposed to even be an option. They had a backup, and that backup wasn’t him. It felt like a bit of a cosmic joke that this was where they were at. Three hours.
Carl took out his phone and dialed home. There was a massive time difference, it was probably the middle of the night. He didn’t check before dialing. He should have checked, but he only had three hours. He just needed to hear that familiar voice.
Three hours...
“Hey,” the voice on the other end of the line, thick with sleep, instantly calmed the hammering in his heart. “Is everything okay?”
Carl suddenly didn’t know how to answer. He opened his mouth, then closed it. There wasn’t anything that he could even explain. He inhaled sharply. Say something, anything. Reassure him. You’re fine, everything is fine. You’re thousands of miles away from home. Tell him that everything is fine.“Carl.” His voice gentle, coaxing. A tone he hadn’t heard in far too long. “Something’s wrong, but you can’t tell me because it’s classified, right?”
“M...mhm. I should get back to work. I just...wanted...” he trailed off. He had just wanted an out. Someone to tell him that everything would be okay. But he knew that wasn’t true. “I have to go, I love you.” He hung up, gripping the phone tightly in his hands.
And what right did he have, getting so upset, anyway? He wasn’t the one potentially being sent into space on a suicide mission. He wasn’t the one risking his life. He didn’t have to risk anything. The launch would occur and Carl would go back to his regular job as an agent. Not that it was a regular job, per se, but he’d go back to...whatever it was that he’d been doing before they found out the sun was dying.
Ryland Grace, on the other hand...
Two hours. They only had two hours.
There wasn’t anything he could do. Grace needed time alone to deliberate. He paced the conference room. It started raining, just like he thought it was going to.
One hour.
Stratt called him. “Go to his room, pack his bag. He’s going.”
A sinking feeling deep in the pit of his stomach. So he’d decided then...That was good, that made things easier. Carl walked to Grace’s room and packed up all the silly science shirts, a few packs of sour Skittles, the fox mask and cards made by his students, a polaroid that one of the other scientists had taken while they were working. Everything carefully folded and placed into the white storage bag. There was no embroidered patch, like the ones for Yao and Ilyukhina. There just wasn’t time. Another reminder that Grace wasn’t supposed to be going to space. Carl wrote Grace’s name on a notecard and slipped it in.
Time was up, but that was okay. Grace had already decided. He carried the bag to the command center, there would be time for him to take Grace out for a drink. A last hurrah, of sorts.Or would that be weird? Then he heard the radio call. “Yes, he’s running.”
No. No that wasn’t...that couldn’t. He had said yes. Carl had packed his things up, because he said yes. Carl took off running as well. What was he even going to do? Lose his job? Endanger the world to let Grace escape? And how long would that even last? They’d catch him eventually. No. No he couldn’t...he couldn’t...
There they were, Grace never stood a chance. He watched his friend get tackled, screaming and crying that he was being murdered. Carl caught up to them, staring down at his friend. It had stopped raining. There was a rainbow in the sky. A symbol of hope, he wanted to tell him. You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. They injected him with something.
“You know who you are.”
Grace was calling out for him. Begging him to help. Only the rigorous training he had endured for the last twenty years kept him from pushing the men off of him and dragging him away to safety. As it was, his breath caught in his throat. “You’re going to do great.” I promise. Be brave.
He knows that he will hear those anguished screams, those cries for help, his name for the rest of his life. They will haunt him in his darkest moments. They will be a constant reminder that he allowed this to happen. He allowed someone who trusted him to be tackled, drugged and sent away to die.
Grace stopped moving, stopped struggling as the drug took hold of him, knocking him out. Carl took a step forward, “Allow me, please.” There were still three days until the launch. They were inducing his coma early. “To maximize his safety.”
These were Grace’s last moments conscious on Earth. And even if he never knew it, at least Carl could make sure his last physical moments on Earth were full of compassion, care, love. He carefully picked up his friend, holding him close, as he walked back to the compound.
Grace was brought up to the medical wing so that doctors could do whatever they needed to do. But whatever they needed to do was going to happen with Carl there. He had set up station to keep an eye on things. Nothing else would happen to Ryland Grace, not while Carl was around.
“Don’t worry,” he said, pulling his chair up next to the hospital bed. “I’ll watch over you, until it’s time for you to go.”
It was the least he could do.
Sometimes, Carl really hated his job.