Chapter Text
“What's 2 + 2?”
An eerily familiar robotic voice was the first thing Eva Stratt heard, she tried to open her eyes… nothing, she tries again… they open, she’s on an oval bed mounted to the wall, there are tubes and wires all over her body.
“What's 2 + 2?” the robot repeated
Stratt tried to answer but only let out a pathetic “fffffrrrr” that's the thing with comas regaining bodily functions you haven’t used in a while is difficult to say the least… Stratt’s dignity is damaged after that awful attempt to answer the hail mary’s medical system but she doesn't concern herself with that as she helplessly drifts back asleep.
She doesn’t know how long she’s been asleep but when Stratt finally awakes the tubes and wires have been removed and she feels a lot better.
“What's 2 + 2?”
“Fffooouuurrr” Eva groaned, she still can’t talk properly yet but her words are semi comprehensible… at least to the hail mary’s medical system who answers “correct”
Now that talking is out of the way, Stratt's next course of action is movement, Stratt tries to move her fingers… They move! And then her toes, arms and legs until she’s confident she can get off the bed without falling or hurting herself.
Stratt’s head is still a bit foggy after the coma but she knows she’s on the hail mary, so (a bit wobbly) she makes a start towards her crewmates Yao and Ilyukhina only to discover they're dead and have been for a good long while.
Stratt sits on the floor and ponders her situation… She's alone on the hail mary, nowhere near earth, no backup, her crew is dead, no pilot, no engineer, hell no scientist either… on a critical earth saving mission this is the worst outcome that Stratt hadn't even considered a possibility.
A robotic voice penetrates her train of thought.
“What’s the cube root of 8?”
She thinks about the question a while before answering.
“Two…?” Stratt answers, it wasn’t that she was bad at math it just wasn’t her strongest subject and the fact her head was foggy because of the coma didn’t help.
A white tube with ‘meal 1’ written on it with big black letters was placed beside her.
“Eat”
And Stratt did just that, the food was nothing special, it was essentially a Sunday roast but pulverised into a paste, but to Stratt it was the best food she had ever had in her life, another side effect of the coma.
After she had finished her food Stratt set about to find the storage compartment, Eva Stratt knew the hail mary back to front but it still took her much longer than she would’ve liked to find it, she asked the hail mary to open the storage compartment and the hail mary complied.
Stratt eventually found an unnamed yellow jumpsuit with all the mission patches, this one was hers, she put the yellow jumpsuit on and went digging for Yao’s and Ilyukhina’s.
Stratt needed to get rid of the bodies, they were a hazard even if they were mummified when Eva woke up, she didn’t know how close they were to tau ceti but they must be close considering she woke from her coma, Stratt needed to move fast before the hail mary reaches its destination and turns off the centrifuge.
But Stratt wanted to send them out with their jumpsuits on and with some personal belongings as a sort of funeral, it was the least she could do for them.
She got Yao and Ilyukhina dressed and in the airlock with a few of their belongings, Stratt said a prayer and sent them out into the vast, dark and infinite space, she prayed for god to find their souls despite the vastness to bring them to the kingdom of light, it's what they deserve.
Stratt got back to the sleeping quarters and something on the floor caught her attention, it was a polaroid, she picked it up to get a better look, it was of her and her second in command Dr. Ryland Grace, Eva Stratt felt a wave of guilt wash over her.
The only reason Stratt volunteered to join the hail mary mission after Dr. DuBois and Dr. Shapiro died was because she was scared, Stratt was scared to go to prison she knew people were after her and she didn’t want to die a convict in a cell and she left Dr. Ryland Grace to pick up the pieces her departure left.
Because Grace was her second in command that made him an accomplice, he would definitely be incarcerated by now, rotting in a prison cell just as Stratt would’ve done if she hadn’t boarded the hail mary.