Chapter Text
Upon hearing she’d been selected to lead Project Hail Mary, Eva knew immediately that, should she survive the coming apocalypse, she would spend most of her life in prison. They’d spoken as if she wouldn’t, of course. There were many, many assemblies, speeches, top secret briefings conducted in SCIFs around the world, detailing the extent of her newfound authority and everyone she did—or rather, didn’t—answer to.
“Hail Mary indeed,” she remembered overhearing her successor at ESA say, soon after she was named Director, “Because Stratt now only answers to God himself.”
Many found it unusual that of all of the world’s space programs, the ESA was the one to produce their newfound leader. Why not NASA? Why not CNSA, Roscosmos, or JAXA? The arguments over the topic spanned boardrooms, newsdesks, and internet comments sections. Eva ignored them all, because she suspected why. Of Earth’s numerous space agencies, no matter their current level of resources, history, or political power, at the launch of the Arclight program, only the ESA had been led by a woman. Who better to become humanity’s whipping boy? There was nothing about her that made her more qualified than any of her male peers; it was impossible to be qualified for a situation as unfathomable as theirs.
She suspected that at least two other agency heads had turned down the position before it was proffered to her, almost certainly because they, like her, had seen the invisible price tag attached. On the one hand, the job came with a level of power theretofore unprecedented in all of human history. On the other hand, it meant accepting the lonesome burden of all consequences, whatever they may be, that befell fragile Terra and her dying Sol.
Given the stakes, given the kinds of decisions the job would necessitate, accepting would be akin to making a deal with the devil himself. Anyone in their right mind would turn it down. Eva had been told all her life she had a level head on her shoulders, so it came as a shock to many when she looked Satan in the eye and took his hand in a crushing grip.
She’d studied history, she knew exactly what her species was capable of. She knew exactly what it’d cost Homo sapiens to claw itself out of the primordial mud. She understood their situation with existential clarity. Her soul, in exchange for life itself. It seemed a small price to pay.
After the Hail Mary launched, it’d taken mere days for the devil to come collect his dues. After many, many courtrooms, after house arrest and hearings and cross-examinations that tested the linguistic limits of her polyglot understanding, she was remanded to the custody of… someone. She’d lost track of who, two or three cells ago. It didn’t much matter anymore where she was or which taxpayers were currently subsidizing her daily meals, all that mattered was that Hail Mary had launched with three humans and all the hope humanity had left. They could parade her around the streets of the world like Lady Godiva, for all she cared.
In each cell, she’d kept a count on the wall of how many days remained until the Hail Mary’s last planned mission day. When the count reached zero, the Beatles would either be on their way, or Earth’s final hope would die with the Mary’s doomed crew. Either way, Earth wouldn’t know for another twelve years.
The day after zero, Eva sent up a prayer in the manner she’d been taught as a young girl, and began a new count: Day 1 of 4,346. If they made it to 4,346 without going extinct and the Beatles hadn’t returned home… no. They would return home. They had to. She’d sold her soul to make sure of it.
On day 29, she received notice that she had a visitor. It was a news reporter, no doubt. She hadn’t been allowed visitors in nearly eight years, a restriction enacted not as a punishment, but because the prison simply couldn’t keep up with the number of visitation requests sent in by persistent journalists. Perhaps now that the world knew the Hail Mary crew was officially past their expiry date, they wanted comments from the woman who’d sent them to their deaths.
She was surprised, therefore, when instead of being escorted to the visiting area, the guards escorted her to processing, where a familiar face stood waiting for her with the bag of personal effects they’d seized upon her arrest thirteen years ago.
It was only once she tried to speak she realized how long it’d been since she’d spoken out loud to another person.
“What is this?” She asked in Dutch, not noticing that the guards’ uniforms were marked in Japanese. Carl had never learned Dutch, but he didn’t bat an eye.
“Wheels up in two hours. NASA needs to pick your brain.”
“Needs to?” Eva frowned, switching to English without thinking.
“Lokken and Komorov are en route. They’re getting the whole gang back together.”
Eva started slightly when she felt the cuffs fall away from her wrists, followed by the shackles around her feet.
“En route to where?” She asked. She must’ve looked bewildered. Carl was balding now, a dusting of grey at the temples, but his small, contained smile was just the same.
“The Vat—or whatever the Chinese are calling it now. It’s closer than Houston.”
“Oh, shit,” she said before realizing it.
“Yeah, that’s about what Lokken said, too.”