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A few minutes ago, I told Stratt to shove off. My last moments on Earth, I don't want them to be with someone I'll hate forever. Even so, I thought I would have more time.
I startle when the door clinks to unlock and swings open once more, and two guards and a doctor come in. I've thought about it again, but now I see that it's impossible that I slip past them and run outside, away from my obligation. That word is rank and foul in my mind. To me it's a death sentence.
I could have forgotten that I was in a jail cell until I turn around to look at the barred window, too. I literally can't escape. There's not even a place to hide, and yet I climb on the bed and huddle into the farthest corner, as if I can slip away into a crack there.
As the guards come closer to me regardless, I kick my feet at them. A few times I manage to push their hands away until they grab me at the ankles. My heart spikes into my throat.
They pull me across the mattress on my back, flip me over onto my stomach, pin me with my hands either side of my head. One of them yanks down my pants over my hip. I trash around, trying to get out.
"You have to hold still, Dr. Grace," the doctor says. I don't.
"Please!" I sob. "Isn't anybody here a human being?!" How can humanity be doing this to me? Between sobs I breathe fast, but the answer to my desperate question is a deafening silence.
The doctor plunges the needle into my hip. It hurts. My lungs wheeze out a dying sound. It's the worst pain I have ever felt not because of the needle stick or the deep dull ache or the burn and pressure, but because it's one of the last things I will feel.
The guards pull my pants back up and let go of me. I try to crawl back up to the head of the bed, but stay slumped somewhere in the middle. Despite my fear keeping my heartrate up, after 10 minutes or so the sedative works well and good. I feel groggy.
They put me back on my back, finally, and the doctor wipes an alcohol pad over the crook of my elbow. I hardly feel that poke.
I have never seen the guards' faces before, I realize, and neither the doctor's. "Stratt," I slur. I want her here, to see what she's doing to me. Killing me. And I want the last person I see to be someone I know.
I feel something cold go up my left arm and fling my right across my body to pull out the IV. My fingers don't grab anything before someone catches and keeps hold of my hand. It's fruitless anyway, because this is the anaesthetic going into my veins. The jail cell-dorm room swims away from me. I close my eyes. Something clips to my hand before I'm well and truly gone.
They bring him to the Soyuz and strap him in. Grace floats alone in the pitch darkness before Yao and Ilyukhina settle into the capsule, too. Both look behind them to see him sleeping. Peaceful, they think.
As they launch, Stratt watches her authority end. There's nothing she can do for Grace to come back.