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Zoya spotted him long before she was actually close enough to confirm it was indeed him.
At first, he was little more than a splash of yellow against the gray, rain-soaked landscape. The closer she got, the more certain she became.
Nikolai was sitting on the steps of her portable, his knees drawn tightly to his chest. His bright yellow raincoat billowed and snapped in the wind, the oversized fabric making him look smaller.
Rain drummed steadily against the ground and pooled around the base of the steps. The wind cut through the camp without mercy, sending icy droplets stinging across her face.
He had to be out of his mind staying outside in this weather. Most people were hiding indoors, gathered around heaters and dry clothes. Nikolai, meanwhile, seemed perfectly content to sit in the middle of a storm as though he hadn't noticed it was happening.
As she drew closer, he finally lifted his head.
A pang of guilt settled low in her stomach.
Nikolai had always been looking up. Every chance he got, his gaze drifted skyward. To the stars, the moon, the endless stretch of space beyond the atmosphere. That’s where their answer was. The Earth’s salvation was somewhere out there and it was their job to get it.
But ever since the explosion, that had changed.
Ever since he had become the replacement third astronaut—the man chosen to take someone else's place on a mission everyone knew was little more than a glorified suicide run—he hardly looked at the sky at all.
He'd be getting a much better view of it soon enough.
Two days. Forty-eight hours. Then he would be gone.
When the decision had been placed before him, Zoya had fully expected him to refuse. She had prepared for arguments, objections, outrage. She had prepared to make the choice for him.
Because the truth was that they didn't have a choice.
Nikolai was the leading expert on Astrophage. He had attended every major briefing. He understood the alien cell better than almost anyone alive. He knew the ship's systems, the mission parameters, and every risk waiting for the crew. He knew the people who would be aboard. He had even completed enough astronaut training to understand what would be required of him.
Whether he'd ever realized it or not, he had always been her backup plan.
Despite the impression he'd somehow managed to leave on her heart, despite the guilt that twisted in her chest every time she looked at him, this was a sacrifice she had been prepared to make.
Because it wasn't about either of them.
The world depended on it.
But he had spared her that sacrifice. He had chosen this before she ever had the chance to choose it for him.
The memory still unsettled her. She could recall the moment with perfect clarity. The calm certainty in his voice, the absence of hesitation, the way he had resigned himself to his fate. As much as it had surprised her, a small, selfish part of her was grateful.
Because she knew if it had come down to saving him or saving the world, there was no real choice at all. She would have done what was necessary. She would have looked him in the eye and ordered them to load him aboard that ship.
And she hated herself a little for knowing that.
At least this way, the burden wasn't entirely hers to carry. More importantly, she wouldn’t have to watch the realization settle across his face. She wouldn’t have to remember betrayal in his eyes.
If she was going to lose him, she was thankful that her last memory of him wouldn't be that.
“Go inside,” she told him after a moment.
Nikolai tipped his head back to look at her and smiled that crooked, infuriating smile of his that somehow managed to be charming no matter how hard she tried to resist it. Then he waved a dismissive hand.
“Nah, I’m fine.”
Zoya stared at him. The wind chose that moment to whip the edge of his raincoat sideways. Rain sprayed across his face.
“You're sitting outside in a storm.”
“I'm sitting under a storm,” he corrected.
“That isn't better.”
“It sounds better.”
“It doesn't.”
His smile widened.
Zoya fought the urge to roll her eyes.
“You wouldn’t be of much use to Earth and the mission with a cold, Dr. Lantsov.”
For a moment, something flickered across his face. Not fear exactly, but awareness. A reminder of what awaited him in two days. Then the expression vanished.
“By the time I wake up from that coma,” he said lightly, “the cold will be long gone.”
Zoya opened her mouth to argue and then closed it again.
Annoyingly, he had a point. The medical systems aboard the Hail Mary had been designed to keep three astronauts alive for years with no human intervention. They hadn't spent billions developing a fully automated robotic nurse only for it to be defeated by a runny nose. A cold would probably be cured before Nikolai even realized he'd had one.
To her further irritation, he looked entirely pleased with himself.
“If you agreed to this just to sabotage the mission, I could have this sorted out very quickly,” she said, only half joking.
Nikolai didn't need to know she actually had a solution in mind.
Somewhere in a secure medical storage unit sat a drug capable of inducing temporary amnesia. It had been developed for entirely different purposes, but the effect would have been the same. If she had needed to remove him from consideration without causing permanent harm, she could have done it.
She had even considered it back when she had still believed he might refuse. Briefly. Or at least that was what she told herself.
Nikolai, thankfully, remained blissfully unaware that she had once contemplated erasing his memory for the sake of the mission. He placed a hand dramatically over his chest.
“I’m insulted you'd think so low of me.”
His expression was one of exaggerated offense, as though she had accused him of some terrible crime rather than making a joke.
“A future astronaut enjoys a little fresh air and suddenly everyone assumes he's plotting against Earth.”
“A future astronaut catches pneumonia and delays launch.”
“That's a risk I'm willing to take.”
“It's not your risk to take.”
For a moment, the words hung between them. Nikolai's smile softened slightly.
“Don't worry, Commander,” he said. “I'm not planning to sabotage humanity's last hope.”
He saluted her at the end for good measure.
“Good.”
“Besides,” he added, glancing out at the rain, “if I were going to do it, I'd come up with something much more creative.”
Despite herself, Zoya felt a reluctant laugh threaten to escape. There it was again. That effortless ability of his to make impossible circumstances feel almost normal.
She sat beside him despite her reservations. The cold of the concrete steps sent a sharp shiver through her.
“What would you do?” she asked.
Nikolai tilted his head, considering the question with exaggerated seriousness.
“Well,” he said slowly, “for one, I'd wait until I'm actually on board. Less people to worry about, you know?”
Zoya gave him a flat look.
“Bold of you to assume Captain Tolya wouldn't put a bullet through your skull before he'd let that happen.”
That earned her a pause. Then, to her mild irritation, he smiled again.
“I like that you think I’d get that far before Tolya notices something is wrong.”
“I don’t think you’d get that far,” she corrected. “I think he’d already be waiting for you.”
“Reassuring.”
“It’s meant to be.”
Nikolai leaned back on his palms, gaze drifting out toward the rain-smeared horizon.
“I’d like to think I’d be a bit more subtle than that,” he said. “If I were sabotaging humanity’s last hope.”
Zoya glanced at him. “That implies you have a plan.”
“Oh, I always have a plan,” he winked.
Zoya didn’t dignify that with a response.
Silence settled between them. The rain filled it instead, steady and unhurried, as if it had all the time in the world.
She watched Nikolai carefully from the corner of her eye. He looked too comfortable. Like the wind cutting through his raincoat and the cold soaking into the steps beneath them were nothing more than background details rather than an active attempt by the universe to make him miserable. If anything, he seemed… content. Absorbed in it.
This was probably the last storm he’d ever get to experience.
The thought landed unexpectedly heavy in her chest. The last time he’d feel rain like this. The last time he’d hear wind the way it moved through trees and structures and open ground instead of filtered air systems and sealed corridors. The last time Earth’s weather would exist for him as something you endured rather than simulated on a screen.
It made a strange kind of sense, suddenly, why he was out here. Why he wasn’t rushing inside. Why he looked like he was trying to memorize something he’d never be able to come back and check again.
Zoya swallowed, her gaze dropping briefly to her hands before she forced it back to him.
“Why did you agree?” she asked suddenly, surprising even herself. The question left her mouth before she could decide whether she wanted the answer.
For a moment, Nikolai didn’t react. He kept staring out at the rain as if he hadn’t heard her at all, as if the sound of it had swallowed her words.
“What?” he said lightly. “The fate of humanity isn’t reason enough?”
“No,” she replied without hesitation. “Not really.”
That earned her a glance. Not offended. Not amused, either. Something quieter passed through his expression, there and gone so quickly she almost convinced herself she’d imagined it.
He hummed under his breath, turning the thought over as if it were something mildly inconvenient rather than the most important decision a person could make. But he said nothing further.
“I didn’t think you would,” Zoya admitted at last.
He turned his head slightly, surprise flickering across his face as he looked at her properly now.
Zoya only shrugged, refusing to make a bigger deal out of it than it already was.
“You yourself said you’re not one of those people,” she continued. “The ones who readily sacrifice themselves.”
“I’d much rather live and prove everyone wrong,” Nikolai said without missing a beat. A faint edge of humor lingered in his voice, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes this time.
“So?” she pressed.
It was his turn to shrug.
“People change.”
The words hung there between them, simple and unadorned, but for some reason they didn’t feel simple at all. Zoya studied him again, more sharply now. Waiting for him to elaborate, to turn it into a joke, to deflect the way he usually did when anything got too close to something real.
He didn’t.
He just sat there, rain tracing paths down the bright yellow of his coat, like he’d already accepted the inevitability of it all and was simply choosing how to stand in it.
Zoya exhaled slowly through her nose.
“That’s a very convenient answer,” she said at last.
“It’s also true,” he replied. “You just need a good enough reason.”
Zoya’s lips pressed into a thin line. Something in her chest tightened, sharp and unwelcome, like a breath that refused to settle properly. She stood up abruptly.
The conversation couldn’t go on like this. Not here. Not now. Not with him sitting there like that, speaking in that calm, infuriatingly certain tone. She couldn’t take it. Not in pieces. Not in implications.
“Don’t catch pneumonia, Dr. Lantsov,” she said flatly. It came out steadier than she felt.
Then she turned and walked away before he could answer.
The door hissed open as she stepped inside, shutting the rain out all at once. The sudden silence felt almost violent after the constant noise outside.
She headed straight for the small bathroom. The moment she was inside, she shut the door behind her and leaned against it for a fraction of a second too long.
Cold clung to her skin. Wet fabric weighed heavily against her shoulders. She could feel every drop of rain still trapped in her clothes, every gust of wind that had cut through the gray sky outside.
She started peeling away the layers, one by one, as if she could remove more than just fabric. Like she could strip away the heaviness sitting behind her ribs, too. She needed it gone.
All of it.
Wash it out. Rinse it off. Pretend it hadn’t settled there in the first place.