Chapter Text
Eye movement detected.
Grace had been dosing in a chair in the lab when the robotic voice rang through the cabin, startling him into awareness.
Holy moly. It was finally happening!
Sure it had only been about twelve hours but twelve hours alone on a spaceship was agonizing. He had been stepping in and out of the dorm room at regular intervals hoping that somehow either watching or ignoring the problem would resolve the situation faster.
The problem?
His two crewmates were taking their sweet time waking up.
And yes they were his crewmates, he was sure of that much by now. Twelve hours ago when he had first woken up, he had no idea where he was or why he was here. For a bit he thought he and his companions were in quarantine for a devastating illness but he felt… fine. More than fine actually. Besides the memory issues he was in great shape. Likely better shape than he had been before entering the coma.
His companions, thankfully, were healthy as well (they actually might have been even more in shape which honestly just wasn't fair). Grace had been diligent about reminding himself of this fact when he felt himself spiraling— there had been a moment around hour six where he was so convinced the others would never wake up he almost threw up from crying.
He was then immediately thankful he was the only one awake to witness that.
Who were the others? No idea. He'd gotten some small flashes of memory, enough to get his bearings but nothing of substance.
So far he knew:
- His name was Ryland Grace
- He was in space
- The lab on this ship was AMAZING
- His crew was very rudely still asleep
Why was Grace in space? That part hadn't come back yet. Guess that would make things too easy. Currently he was putting off digging up more memories in order to focus on the two other men strapped to— surprisingly comfy— cots with tubes coming out all over the place.
Maybe it would have been smarter to figure out the mission while he waited. He could acknowledge that even if he wouldn't act on it. If he’d done that, he could fill in the others when they woke up.
Ugh that felt uncomfortably close to taking on the role of captain. That was definitely a responsibility he did not want.
Anyways. He should have done that but Grace just couldn't focus. Not until the others were awake. Not until he knew they were okay. The thought of being stuck here completely alone… it didn't bear thinking about.
Alone… something told he was used to being alone. But being used to something didn't mean it was what he wanted.
Snap out of it!
He couldn’t focus on the mission anyways. Something about the other two crew members was bothering him.
When Grace had woken up, confused and with more tubes in him than could possibly be necessary, the first thing he grasped onto was the fact that other people were here. He wasn’t alone. So naturally, he investigated.
There were two other cots in the room with him when he came to, one to his right and one to his left. There had been robotic arms above him running on tracks leading between the three beds, presumably rotating care between them.
Grace had taken a step towards the bed to his right, arm braced on his own cot, supporting him against the too-heavy atmosphere. He remembered thinking there was no way this was normal. Actually, Grace knew the pressure wasn’t normal. 1G of gravity didn’t feel like that and that was the level of gravity present on Earth.
That, ladies and gentlemen, had been when he’d gotten his first inkling that he might not be on Earth anymore. That had later been confirmed when he finally remembered his name and got into the control room.
Oh gingersnaps. That had been a realisation.
Having filed that breakdown away for later (he was still getting around to it), Grace had continued to inch his way to the other cot, bracing himself on the side of the bed when he arrived.
There was a man laying on the surface, tall, with the same electrodes doting his body as Grace had, although it seemed as if the other man had had a bit more to start with than he had. What stood out to Grace however, what gave him pause, was his face.
His face was… well that had been unsettling. Still was if he was honest with himself, although he had avoided looking at it for the past several hours.
Grace couldn’t pinpoint what exactly about the man's face felt strange but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was familiar. Too familiar. It was likely they knew each other before the comas but even so this felt different. Grace hadn’t seen his own reflection yet but he got the eerie feeling he was looking in a fun-house mirror. A really subtle fun-house mirror.
The man had dirty blonde hair that, like Graces, had grown long and unruly. He had brushed it away from his face so he could make out the man's features better.
Maybe this was just what it felt like seeing human faces again after a coma. Grace is pretty sure that is not something he’s ever heard of before but maybe it was one of those things that just didn’t get talked about unless you were in a group of former coma patients. Uncanny valley syndrome due to reduced brain activity or something.
What had been even stranger is what happened next. Having braced himself for another wave of the eerie-familiar-not-familiar feeling, he made his way to the remaining bed, grunting with the effort to bring himself around to the other side of the room.
There was no flair of recognition this time. None. Grace has no clue who this other guy is.
Something was off.
Maybe he could figure out exactly what was off now.
Eye movement detected. What's two plus two?
The voice rang out again. Right. Someone was waking up. Time to meet the neighbors.
Steadying himself against the wall again and taking the biggest steps he could, he made his way back to the dorm. They really needed to do something about the gravity.
Oh goodness. They weren’t on Earth.
Nope! Not thinking about it!
Grace smiled his most “don’t worry we aren't in a death vessel in space” smile. The new guy at least deserved a nicer awakening than Grace had gotten.
“Ughh,” a new voice gurgled. Fortunately, he seemed to have still been asleep when the feeding tube came out.
Incorrect.
“Ughghhgh!”
The voice was getting agitated. Grace had a suspicion that while the robot, lovingly dubbed Armando, was smart, it wasn’t the smartest.
What kind of scientist would Grace be if he didn’t test a hypothesis?
What’s two plus two?
“Four,” this time it was Grace answering and— interestingly— the robot accepted.
Correct.
He went through the rest of the spiel with the robot. Maybe he should've let it do its thing, make sure New Guy’s brain hadn’t gotten reduced to mush, but Grace was too excited. Sue him.
Stepping forward to help his companion sit up, that wave of eeriness washed over him again, this time less jarring. There was also a feeling of… was that comfort? Relief? Makes sense, he had confirmation now that at least one crewmate would wake up.
New Guy did not seem to appreciate Grace’s kind gesture to help him, looking up and scooting back across the cot to distance himself.
“What the fuck,” the words were still jumbled, like the stranger was speaking with a mouth full of marbles, but clear enough for Grace to piece together.
“Hey hey hey! Sorry! Didn’t mean to scare you,” He held his hands up placatingly.
“Not scared,” the other man retorted.
“Yeah for sure. Not scared. I’m Grace by the way. You are?”
“I’m… I’m not sure,” a moment of panic flashed across the other's face, “Why can’t I remember my name?”
“It’ll come back. It took me a while to remember too. But hey, since one of us remembers I can show you the whole ship! The control room only opened when I remembered my own name,” he took a tentative step closer and flipped one of his hands so his palm was up and offered to the stranger, “can I help you up?”
The New Guy narrowed his eyes a little and resolutely got off the cot without taking Grace’s hand. He got the feeling his new crewmate was a stubborn one, like him. Hopefully they didn’t rush into issues about it. He also seemed to be very self-reliant. Which, admittedly, that was just a hunch, he could just not like people touching him, but Grace couldn’t shake the feeling.
The New Guy swung his feet around, planted them on the ground, and stood up. He then promptly stumbled from his first step.
Grace steadied him by his shoulders, making sure to pull back after righting him.
“Woah! Careful there,” he offered what he hoped was a reassuring look and not a patronizing one.
“This is ridiculous”
“Yeah the gravity seems to be a bit off,” and that’s when it hit Grace that he had yet to explain anything to the other man.
He was messing this up. Big time.
“Uhh don’t freak out,” Grace started, his brain shooting about a million ideas, trying to determine how to relay the situation in a positive and not-terrifying way.
“Wait ugh give me a moment,” The New Guy shook his head, rolling it back and forth along his neck. He shook some feeling back into his hands, “ok hold on, roll it back. You said ship. And control room. Where the hell are we?”
“We’re in space.”
Wow. Eloquent, Ryland.
“...no.”
“Yes.”
A beat passed before Grace realised the other man wasn’t saying anymore, instead just staring at him, bewildered.
“Really we are. I can show you but you can’t freak out.”
He looked at Grace wearily, his eyes flickered at times, as if he too was having trouble looking directly at Grace. Weird.
“Ok fine. Can I at least change first?” The New Guy held out his arms and did a little turn around, his eyebrows lifted, “not exactly loving the semi-clear onesie.”
“Oh! Oh yeah,” Shoot Grace was still in his own onesie from when he woke up. That was embarrassing. He’d just had so much going through his brain, he’d almost forgotten about the storage compartment from the ship blueprints.
“Mary, open storage compartment”
“Mary?”
“The ship. She’s called the Hail Mary. I saw it in the control room.”
“Right. Did we get shot into space by some religious wackjobs?”
“Maybe they just really liked football? Anyways, storage is in here. I haven't gotten to look yet,” he added sheepishly.
“I’d be concerned if you had and decided to keep rocking the onesie.”
The two of them got to work digging though the soft square packages of supplies. Towards the front were three mismatched duffle bags that seemed to have been hastily added to the storage compartment at the last minute. Each had a sticky note stuck to the front. One said “Grace”, one “Seavers”, and the last one “Fischer”.
Grace peaked into his own duffel bag finding clothes and other personalized objects. After a cursory glance he tossed the bag into the dorm room. Gesturing to the two remaining bags he asked, “well, any of these ring a bell?”
The other man's lips twisted for a second, some frustration in his brow quickly smoothed over as he came to a decision, “Seavers. Feels right.”
“You got it, man,” Grace tossed the chosen duffle to him, “seems like they put our personal objects and clothes in last so we could get to them easier. That was considerate of them”
Seavers, that was what Grace was going to call him for now, huffed as he took the bag, setting it on the floor in front of him, “yeah considerate,” he unzipped the bag, “my clothes aren't even folded.”
“Weird. Mine are.”
“Ok that’s just favoritism,” he huffed and Grace felt a smile tug on his lips like muscle memory.
Grace busied himself pulling out a red flight suit and worn black t-shirt. The flight suit had various NASA patches and what he assumed was the mission patch on it. On the breast was an embroidered name tag that read “Grace”. The stitching was nice but when Grace looked closely he could see a different color thread had been used to secure his name badge than for the other patches. Huh.
The t-shirt had two big green eyes on it what was-- oh. That was the Cats: The Musical graphic.
Did he like musical theatre?
He turned towards Seavers, lifting up the flight suit to make some clever comment about the amount of onesies on the ship when he stopped himself.
Seavers had a leather jacket bunched up in the crook of his elbow, Grace couldn’t make out the details but it seemed to have lettering across the back. What really caught his attention was the way Seavers was looking at a photo. He was holding it close to his face, like he almost wasn’t sure it was real. Like if he pulled it away it would disappear. He seemed a bit spaced out for lack of a better term but there was definitely a shine to his eyes that hadn’t been there earlier.
“Hey you ok, Seavers?”
He turned to him, clutching the photo to his chest, blinking to dry his eyes, “Colt. That’s my name. Colt Seavers.”
Colt. Alarm bells were ringing in Grace’s head. Where the heck did he know that name from?
“Hey congrats on remembering! Did that photo give you a clue? Can I see?” he craned his neck as if to peak although at this angle any amount of snooping would be impossible.
Colt eyed Grace for a minute, eventually relinquishing the photo. It was a printed photo of a woman. She had long blonde hair, halfway hidden under a large sunhat. Her shirt had dirt smudges on it, likely from the desert she was standing in front of.
She was smiling but not posed. It felt like she was laughing at something whoever took the photo was saying.
“Who is she?”
Colt swallowed, “I can’t remember. I’m pretty sure I worked with her? But there was more there… ugh,” frustration boiled over and he slammed his hand on the ground, “fuck!”
“Hey! It’ll come back. This is good!” Ryland handed the photo back, “you said you worked with her? Is she with NASA?”
“No, that's the other thing. I remember taking this photo on a movie set. I’m a stunt man,” Colt looked Grace dead in the eyes, “I have no idea what I’m doing here.”
“That makes no sense. Like in Hollywood? Are you sure?”
“Yes! I’m fucking sure!”
Grace raised his hands in surrender, “my bad! You're a stunt guy on a spaceship. I’m sure there is some reasonable explanation for this. Let's just get changed and I’ll show you around.”
He bundled up the clothing he’d selected and turned his back to Colt. He could go to the lab to give him more privacy. Should he go to the lab? Was it weirder if he did or weirder if he just turned around? He was going to be living in close quarters with the rest of the crew and they had one bed room. A certain lack of privacy was going to be normal.
He turned his head over his shoulder to see Colt was already changing, back to him, and quickly turned back to face the wall.
Alright. He wasn’t being weird about it so Grace was just going to change really fast and also be really normal about his personal space.
He was pulling his t-shirt over his head when Colt spoke up.
“I’m not trying to be a dick but is it just me or are you also getting this freaky feeling when you look at faces?”
Theories! This was much easier to navigate than thinking about the circumstances that led to a Hollywood adrenaline junky being on the ship with him.
Grace was fairly certain he was a scientist, and therefore belonged here. At least in theory. He was still figuring out why he would go to space when the idea filled him with a distinct sense of nausea.
“Oh! I’m actually glad you feel that too. That supports my theory that it’s a side effect of the comas we were in. I think it’s some form of facial recognition error? Like our brains aren't used to seeing people yet? But I can’t be sure. I don’t get the same feeling when I look at Fischer.”
“Fischer?”
“The third guy. That’s what the last bag said so that’s what I’m calling him.”
Grace had taken a close look at him as well when he woke up. The final coma patient had tanner skin than either Grace or Colt. His hair, longer and more wild-looking than his companions, was black. Maybe a deep brown? He had seemed a bit shorter, although not by much, with even more muscle than the last guy.
“Huh. I didn’t get it from the photo either,” there was a moment of shuffling, “hey can I turn around yet?”
“Yeah all set,” Grace tied the arms of his flight suit around his waist, turning around to face Colt, “ta-da!”
Colt had gone for a similar look, flight suit tied at his hips, but instead of a nerdy theater t-shirt the other astronaut was sporting a white wife-beater.
He crossed his arms over his chest.
“Alright, take me to the cockpit or whatever.”
There was a scar on his left arm. Grace couldn’t tear his eyes from it.
It was a fresher scar, an angry jagged red line. A red line.
Red line… oh.
---
“Grace! Hey Grace! Wake up!”
He was startled out of his memories and back to the present by insistent clapping in front of his face.
Oh right. Colt. He was on a spaceship in the middle of freaking space with a stunt man and he finally remembers what the mission is.
“Huh?”
“Dude you were completely spaced out,” Colt looked him up and down before muttering under his breath with a smirk, “Heh. spaced out.”
“Yeah I uh. I think I remember what we are doing out here. I had a memory.”
His stomach was clenching. Ohhh this was bad. Like so much worse than just being shot up into space.
“For real? Well don’t keep me waiting.”
Grace told him everything he could remember about the Petrova Line. How small organisms called astrophage were eating the sun and fleeing to Venus. There was no other logical conclusion than that they were here to solve the astrophage problem.
“Well fuck. How are we going to do that?” Colt threw his hands in the air, falling into a frustrated pace.
“I’m not sure yet. But uh. There’s one other problem,” Grace gulped, “In my memory I was teaching my middle schoolers about the Petrova line. I’m— I’m a teacher.”
Grace looked up at Colt from where he had sunken to the floor.
“I’m not sure what I’m doing here either.”
---
Both Colt and Grace had needed to sit with the information for a while.
A stuntman and a teacher, stuck in space, tasked with saving the world.
This had to be some kind of bad joke.
Some confused ranting and rambling later, Colt had come to the conclusion that they could sort this all out when Fischer had woken up and demanded Grace show him the control room so he could see where the “actual fuck” they were.
It had taken a minute to get them both up the ladder in the heavy atmosphere and into the small blinking room but here they were.
“See! Space,” Grace pointed to the large reinforced window by the airlock before motioing to the various screens and buttons, “Here on this screen you can see the sun. I started this experiment before you woke up, to see if it was a camera or a still image. We could check that now and find out?”
“Yeah sure whatever. It doesn’t really matter. If we’re near the sun we cant be that far. Maybe they’ll see they sent up the wrong guys and bring us back.”
“Well it would still take a while to get back. The sun is 93 million miles from Earth. But we could send a message easily enough.”
He turned to the main screen to pull up whatever communication software they had onboard when he noticed the location of the sunspots he had been tracking.
Oh.
Oh no.
“Oh no.”
Shoot that one was out loud.
“What? What’s wrong,” Colt shoulder checked Grace, pushing him out of the way enough to get a good look at the monitor.
“That uh… that’s not our sun,” Grace felt hollow. He probably sounded hollow too.
“What do you mean that’s not our sun?” Colt turned to look at him, blue eyes bewildered and vaguely accusatory.
“I mean that’s not our sun! I was tracking sunspots to see if they moved, so I’d know what kind of equipment we’re working with and they moved! Not only that, they moved way way too fast!”
Everything was… slightly blurred? His hands were shaking. Oh boy. He was too hot and too cold and a sweat was creeping its way down his neck as his guts rebelled.
“Ok and? English please.” The indignant tone from his crewmate was not helping.
“It’s physically impossible for them to have moved that fast over our sun! This one is a different size… I think I’m gonna be sick.”
Colt pulled back, “well fuck! Don’t do that!”
Grace was already up and hurrying towards the dorm room, hand clenched over his mouth. Oh god oh god oh god oh god…
With a frantic energy comparable only to when Grace had thought the others were dead, he wiggled his free hand towards an indent in the wall, eyes wide as he tried to get Colt to forcibly read his mind. Fortunately, he seemed to get the idea, “Mary! Bathroom!”
A panel on the far side of the wall slid open and a compact bathroom popped out complete with a modified zero-G toilet and a mirror over the small sink. Grace fell to his knees, curling over the toilet and clutching it desperately as he lost the contents of his mostly-liquid Armando-assigned meal.
A hand patted his back.
“Come on Grace. You’re gonna be fine.”
He stayed hovered over the toilet a moment longer before pushing himself to his feet to wash his hands in the tiny sink. His head felt heavier to lift than even the altered gravity could justify. Slowly, he pulled himself up, catching sight of himself in the mirror. And staying there.
Colt was behind him still, his face also captured by the reflective surface.
The exact same fact Ryland had.
Something clicked with an almost audible certainty.
“Holy fudge!”
“Holy fuck!”