Chapter Text
The first thing Olesya becomes aware of is herself. Being where she was previously … un-being? She'd thought beforehand that the coma would be more or less like a long sleep. And for some time, it was.
Her consciousness took note of the passage of time, and she dreamt of shivering nights in the snow of suburban Yaroslavl. Branches of trees stretched above and tended her wordlessly and she was warm, if not a bit snug. They washed her skin and clipped her nails, and pushed food down her throat like a mother bird would to a chick. Sometimes they took the shape of her own mother, her hair made of braided coniferous needles.
Other times the tree branches were copies of herself. Her tree-bark face carved into worry that sagged deeper with each reappearance. Slowly the dreams became more abstract; shapes losing meaning, and stars blinking out of the night sky. Darker and darker until one day there were none. Nothing. And then she was nothing.
But now she was… something? She had to be awake, but everything was still as dark as the nights of those dreams. Though she tried to open her eyes, everything remained dark.
'That was to be expected', she reasoned, her muscles must not yet be cooperating with her; side-effect of the induced coma. Nothing to worry about. Her limbs feel stiff and heavy, like there's weight piled atop them. Maybe she could wiggle a finger…?
Finger wiggled! 'That's progress!' She tries to move her whole hand next but is met with resistance. 'Okay, baby steps then.' She takes a deep breath.
Or… not? She takes a deeper breath and- 'blin', she's not breathing. She's not breathing, she's can't breathe! 'Don't panic!' Olesya does not panic, thank you very much. She flails all her limbs around in a very dignified manner and yells in composed frustration. But somehow that yields an even more terrifying result.
Awareness stretches out in front of her like a procedurally generated video-game map. One instant, she isn't aware of anything outside of her thoughts and parts of her body, and the next she sees it all in third person. What she sees she barely comprehends. This shouldn't be possible.
She's buried somehow, surrounded by weirdly shaped rocks of various sizes, all buried about as deep as she is; 22 of them. The only things stuck here that aren't rocks are… two human bodies. Unmoving.
Okay, so she must be dreaming. Pain began to slowly blossom from somewhere in her core. Not a dream then. She was really was buried somehow, and suffocating slowly.
"♪Blyat♬!" She exclaims. Her vision had somehow slowly faded from her, but it reappeared as soon as she screamed, painting itself in the same colorless image before her.
The sounds that came from her could barely be constituted as human. It was as if her vocal cords, which now sat thick within her, had been replaced by pan flutes. She tested them, yelling a few times more. The same horrible image laid before her, bouncing off of her skin like the lapping waves of a bathtub disturbed by a child's splashing. It was the only sensation her skin could feel right now, besides the feeling of weight atop it. No mistaking it, she was definitely buried. Figuring out the how and why could come later, especially because the Hail Mary's 'Nanny-Bot', as Ryland had jokingly called it, clearly wasn't going to help her.
Where was Ryland? Was he already awake? … Was he one of the bodies?
She had no more time to dwell on it. A shrill, wailing shriek hit Olesya's senses. Her vision sharpened, and immediately she knew its origin. The voice called again, but this time it spoke.
"Hel♪lo! Il♫yukhin♪a? Grace?"
Somehow she understood that. It didn't sound like anyone or anything she knew. Was it the Nanny-Bot? She decided to respond.
"♩♩♪♫♪♩!"
That wasn't what she meant to say.
Another shriek answered her. It came from one of the buried stones. The stone had five spindly growths protruding from a shorter central body. At the ends of those growths were finger-like panels. They scratched at whatever surrounded them, dirt most likely, with increasing fervor. Soon they had mini-fistfuls of dirt, pushed to the side to make small spaces. The thing was digging itself out.
Olesya should try the same, before the pain at her center got even worse. She willed her limbs to move once more and was rewarded with obedience. Her arms and feet felt awkward around her, but her fingers and toes grasped regardless. Each movement brought forth new clarity through sound.
Her hands were small. Her fingers less. Her brain neglected to be aware of it until this moment, but now that her movements were precise, her goal deliberate, she became aware of just how wrong her body was. While her elbow and knee joints felt nearly correct, her wrist and ankle joints were locked. Her fingers and toes lacked the dexterity they normally possessed. 'Coma side-effect, remember! It's just the coma.'
Knowing that her vision was still wrong, she screeched as loud as she could. It brought the result she expected: a clearer sense of where she was and what was around her. The two human bodies, male and female, were not that far from her. She swung her legs out as hard as she could, ignoring the answering call from the writhing stone.
That shouldn't be how vision works. Maybe something had gone catastrophically wrong in her sleep and the wires of her nerves got crossed. Maybe the vision and hearing inputs in her mind were all jumbled up, and her brain was compensating. Olesya thought she had heard of anomalies like that, with blind people who gain a stronger sense of hearing because of their loss of sight. This had to be just like that!
Olesya dug with each of her limbs, mimicking the stone creature, grabbing and pushing dirt away from her. Nothing caught underneath her fingernails where she expected it to. The temperature of the soil was more like a memory, the sediments and mush merely afterthoughts along her digits. Only three digits worked on each of her limbs. Eventually she felt air rush within her. Instinctually she was relieved, but she didn't know how it entered her. Her face was still under the ground- she was still buried, everything was still dark. How had she breathed? 'Crossed wires, crossed wires.'
But at least she no longer felt as if she was suffocating. That eased her panic just a bit, but there was still the unanswerable question to deal with. She dug forward, body coming loose from the soil.
"St♪rat♪♪t?! ♪Ilyuk♭hin♬a? "
Someone was calling her name. It sounds similar to the noise she's made whenever she tried to speak, but more intelligible. Could it be one of the others? Are Yáo or Grace stuck in the same situation as her?
"I'm here," she tries, sounding more like if you dropped a synthesizer face down than a person.
She didn't get a response. The living stone dug towards the male human body, in the same direction as her. The two of them move on opposite sides of it, pushing dirt aside as if in competition with each other. The stone's speed increased the closer she got to the body, it's movements efficient. Eventually the creature is on top of it, merely separated by a meter or so of soil. Olesya screams at the stone creature, hoping to scare it off of the human, but it ignores her, digging away at the soil in front of the body's face.
She kept calling it a body. It should be a person, shouldn't it? She subconsciously assumed that because this person was buried, they must be dead. But she was buried, and so was the stone creature. So who's to say this person isn't also alive, and merely sleeping?
A physical part of her, a sense that she wasn't familiar with, told her that she would have been able to sense the body's heartbeat if that was so, no matter how faint it was. That logic just didn't track. People can't just sense heartbeats, they have to check, feel, for them. And that still doesn't tell her who's calling for her. Neither buried person has moved this whole time.
That doesn't matter. Making it to the person will answer some of her questions. She can wake them up and ask. Or something.
Olesya makes it to the person at the same time that the stone creature uncovers their face. The two of them hover in front of them, not even acknowledging each other. The person is… okay it looks bad. They're either severely malnourished or…
They're dead. They are 100% dead.
"♪Blyat♬," Olesya says.
The stone creature turns one of it's faceless sides to her for a moment before turning back towards the body. It digs away at more of the soil, until it uncovers the upper left part of the chest. The stone clicks it's fingers together with one leg and taps the soil beneath it with the other. For both her, and it she assumes, the vision of this body becomes more defined.
The body is wearing a jumpsuit. The part the stone has just uncovered bears a rectangular patch. Hundreds of tiny punctures hold-fast thick string, tightly looped over and under the suit. Together the strings make up the image of a circle with a star inside of it, framed by wings on either side. And underneath, letters.
The patch reads '姚指挥官 Commander Yáo.'
Yáo is dead.
This was… what did this mean for them- for the Earth? The female body must be Grace then, somehow.
Yáo is dead.
Had Grace been transgender this entire time?
Yáo is dead.
Commander Yáo is dead, and his body is in front of her. He was hardly recognizable. His skin sunken in and wrinkled like he was 100 years older than he was when she last saw him. His hair was longer than he'd have ever let it grow, wispy and barely clinging onto his desiccated scalp and face. She had to stop looking at this.
But she couldn't stop looking at it. No matter how much she turned herself, there it was. She realized she didn't even know which part of her she was turning. Trying to move her torso or her head did the same thing. The creature had ignored her internal struggle, tapping rhythmically in front of Yáo's body this entire time. Now that she was trying not to focus on her deceased comrade, she finally became aware of the state of her own body.
The tapping illuminated every part of her, bouncing and rippling off her exterior. The image was crystal clear. She could no longer refuse to acknowledge it. She tries to open her mouth and nothing happens. She's completely unburied now, and still she can't open her eyes. All of her limbs are placed at the same height all around her. Two arms and two legs and an extra leg. A third leg. She would have laughed and made a dick joke if it weren't literally a third leg, situated at the back of her torso. Or no, that was wrong, she didn't even have a face, let alone a distinct front or back side. Each limb around her body was situated about equidistant from the other, with only slight variation. And at the end of each leg were two fingers and a thumb.
She was no different than the rock creature stood beside her. She was- what the fuck was happening to her? What the fuck is any of this? This had to be some fucked up coma nightmare, nothing about this made any sense. Was she even human anymore? She was… some creature, some monster, some thing. She was something. She was something and then she was nothing and now she was…
She is Olesya Ilyukhina.
That was still her name. That was still who she was. She's a person, because she knows she's a person.
Changed or not, five limbs or four, she had a mission to do. Billions of people were counting on her, trillions of life forms. So long as she had breath in this fucked up body of hers, she would not rest until she saved the Earth or died trying. And then died after. Only heroes got the heroin overdose.
'Okay, focus'. She has to answer some questions. If she was a rock creature, and Commander Yáo was dead, 'really dead', then that meant this rock creature had to be someone else. Grace? But no, when it first spoke, Grace was one of the names it called out for. So… Yáo then? How did that make any sense? They were both looking at his body. The creature, 'Person? It's so hard to keep up', must be confused. God knows she was.
She needed to communicate with them. They can speak English. She'll start by saying her name.
"♫♭♬♩♩♭♫." Not it.
She cursed just a moment ago, and was pretty sure that wasn't just in her head. The rock-person had regarded her then, albeit briefly, so they probably understood her. Since Olesya had pulled herself back together, the rock-person had slowly shambled away from Yáo's body, clicking one hand towards the ground. They're heading towards the other body, the one she thought was female. She wasn't so sure now, considering it may or may not belong to Grace.
She tries cursing again but the sound falls flat in her vocal cords, coming out like the harsh hack of a throat trying to expel phlegm. Can't this damned body just listen to her? She stomps around, spinning in a circle before regarding one of her legs. She's standing in soft soil, recently disturbed, almost like mud. She scrapes a straight line into the dirt, nearly losing her balance on standing in the process. She could write! She could write a message to the rock-person!
Olesya goes to walk away from the open grave and tumbles to the ground, head literally over heels. Right. Five legs, not two. She flails until she's no longer upside down but on her side instead. From there, she tries to push up with the three limbs underneath her. For a moment she feels like she's had cement dumped atop her, the weight of her central body crushing her into the ground. Then she focuses her mind on the parts she wants to move, imagining its two human arms and a leg. She pushes off the ground like she's doing a parkour wall run and launches herself upwards with a burst of what felt like steam running through her muscles.
She's upright for all of a second before landing in the same position on her other side with a sharp thud.
For a brief moment all around her becomes clear. They weren't just buried in a patch of dirt, but a plot of it, nestled underneath a cave with a round roof. Not exactly integral information right now, but she couldn't help but become more aware with literally every sound that was made around her.
She tries to right herself again, less wall jump and more bunny hop. She teeters upright once more, but this time she's prepared. She jolts her limbs out in a wide stance and they catch her heavy body as she lands straight, digging a millimeter into the ground.
Standing, what an adventure.
Now to write. What should she say? She decides to start with the least amount of letters. With a shaky hand, Olesya carves 'Hi' into the mud. The rock-person doesn't seem to notice her, too preoccupied with digging. She squeaks out a noise to get their attention and then points at the words by tapping on the ground, in a similar way she saw them do.
They pause for a moment, tilting their body towards her. They saw what she said! What'll they say back?
"♪No."
'Blyat do you mean, 'no'?
Olesya stomped again before shuffling herself carefully left of her original message. She needed to be more specific. Maybe add a letter.
'Yao?' The question mark may as well have been a fourth letter with the amount of effort it took her to write. She couldn't even be bothered to write the accent over the 'a' in his name. At this point, her plan was to just cycle through familiar names to see how the rock-person reacted to them.
They were silent for a bit, save for the digging. They'd just about reached the body they were digging out. Then they paused before answering her.
"Who♩♩ aski♬ng?"
The rock was starting to get on her nerves.
What would be the point of being so secretive right now? Do they know how long it'll take her to write her damn name?
She shuffles to the side again and starts writing. The rock-person stops digging finally, and comes to stand in front of her, watching her write. It's a long time before she finishes, nearly falling over twice as she forgot to focus on each of her legs that were keeping her steady. Eventually she's able to scrawl it out, in simple, plain font:
'Олеся Илюхина.'
Olesya stands tall, as proud as the day she was first able to write her own name in primary school, showing off the text to her teacher. The rock-person regards the text. They click their hand near the letters for a while before stopping and turning their body towards her.
"♪Can♬not read thi♫s."
She gives up. Earth is doomed.
This went about as well as that day in primary school. She slumps over and the creature walks away from her.
She tries vocalizing her name again. "♫♭♬♩♩♭♫."
"♪No. No♫t them."
But she was! She is Olesya Ilyukhina, and this rock had to be one of her crewmates! With how subdued they had been about this whole situation, taking as little interest in her as possible, it couldn't be Grace. This entire fucked up situation was a biologists wet dream; he'd be bouncing off the walls.
But Yáo was dead. Very dead. Either the coma had given Ryland a personality change (not farfetched at this point) or Ryland hadn't ended up on the Hail Mary after all, and the rock-person was a secret, fourth redundancy option that Stratt had neglected to let the rest of them know about. Not likely. If there was a fourth option, Stratt would've never sent up her favorite golden retriever scientist to be darling Laika's successor. And Yáo was still dead.
Commander Yáo… he would have been dead eventually, they all would have been, but not like this. Not before he even got the chance to do what he threw his life away for. To help lead Olesya and Ryland. To help them save the world. He didn't die a hero's death. Maybe it was better that he went to sleep thinking he would.
Olesya's thoughts drifted back to the last moment of peace she had spent with the man. Olesya was drunk off her ass and Yáo was drinking. She realizes now he was probably hamming up how drunk he was to make her feel better. She was singing Wind of Change and had dragged him up to sing with her. Her parents had always had conflicted feelings about that song, and as a teen that made her love it even more. She'd never expected Yáo to know it too; it didn't seem like his type of music. But he sang it with her. Terribly, but he did. She held him under her arm and they swayed together. She was sure she'd fall over every time she tipped, but Yáo kept a strong grip on her, while still maintaining his drunken façade.
Olesya hadn't noticed, but she had begun whistling the song to herself, swaying her body slightly, just like that night.
"♩♬♭… ♩♫♩♩...♩♬♭… ♩♫♩♩..."
And just like that night, a voice joined her.
"The ♫♫♪♩ in the air
I can feel it ♭♬♩♩♪
Blowing with ♪the wind of change."
Olesya's heart sang. They vocalized together and jumped, unthinking, into the chorus:
"♬Take me to the magic of the moment♩
♪On a glory night♫
♫Where the children♬ of tomorrow dream away♬
♩In the ♪wind of change♪"
It was him. Somehow, so many somehows, it was Commander Yáo. She couldn't even begin to wrap her mind around it but the rock-person was him, without a doubt. She wasn't alone. Oh thank God, she wasn't alone. She didn't think she could do it alone, she wouldn't even know where to start. Not like this, in this situation, in this body. But someone else is in this with her.
Yáo had moved closer to her at some point during their duet. "♪Ilyukhin♬a." He points to where she had where she had written her name in the mud. She mentally facepalmed. Of course he couldn't read her name, it was written in Russian. After pointing, he raised his arm up, as if expecting a high five. Olesya nodded with her entire torso and pointed to where she had written Yáo's own name.
"Yes♪," he nodded in return. He pointed to the crudely written 'a' in his name. With a single finger, he delicately scratched a mark above it. It now read 'á'.
Definitely him then.
Olesya raised her hand up and they connected. The contact made a soft clack sound. She felt it jolt up her arm and straight into her center. For a few moments she became aware of all of the inner workings of Yáo's rocky body. There were actually organs in there. She was honestly assuming that they were magically animated rocks this whole time, but living beings made more sense. Living beings… aliens? Damn it, where was Grace's nerdy ass when you needed him?
Oh right, probably dead in that open grave.
Olesya cut their moment short, and pointed in the direction of the hole Yáo had dug up. He clicked his hands, getting a clearer view of her. His central body seemed to sag down beneath his legs when he realized where she was pointing.
"You♪ should♬not see."
Well, why not? She's already seen one corpse today, why not another one? At the very least, she wouldn't be seeing it color. She stomped on the ground, hoping this conveyed her feelings. Yáo conceded with an almost shrugging motion.
The two of them dragged themselves over to the open hole. Yáo began clicking and Olesya remembered that she could do that too. The two of them clicked their fingers in near unison, like they were in a Michael Jackson music video. Olesya was able to let out exactly one synth-like pulse of laughter before she realized who she was looking at.
The patch read 'Инженер Илюхина Engineer Ilyukhina'.
Oh.
That is. Her.
She and Yáo kept snapping their fingers. It felt inappropriate now to be so funky when she was staring at her own corpse. It was so quiet in this cave that it was the only way to gain a consistent image. No matter how many times they reinforced the image, it was still her.
Well, no. It wasn't her. Because if that was Olesya Ilyukhina… then who was she? They couldn't both be Olesya Ilyukhina. Could they?
The corpse's skin was gaunt, but nowhere near as sunken as Yáo's was. The hair was much longer than she'd ever worn it. Nothing moved beneath the skin, and Olesya was oddly grateful. If body-snatching zombies proved to be real, she didn't know if her fragile sanity would be able to take it.
"Okay♪y♪y♬"
Olesya jumped as Yáo spoke suddenly. 'Okay♪?' What did he mean by that? He dragged the last vowel out, stuttering in pitch. She made as confused of a sound as she possibly could.
"You♬ okay, question♪?"
Oh, it was a question. Truthfully, she had no idea if she'd ever be okay again. But she'd deal with those feelings later. Probably some time between saving all life on Earth and figuring out how to stick a needle into her rocky arm and overdose on heroin.
But that could come later. All manner of freaking out and heroics could come later. One question had pushed itself to the forefront of her mind, and it had clearly come to the forefront of Yáo's mind as well.
"♫Where Grace, question♪?