Chapter Text
Ryland Grace knows two things to be near indisputably true: everything that is alive must bleed, and everything that bleeds must one day die.
It’s a principle that holds true regardless of your place in the known universe. Regardless of what you are or where you hail from, a viscous, metallic fluid pulses through your worldly form, a heart beats somewhere within you. You live through it. Breathe through it.
He’s always been sickened at the sight of it.
Maybe it’s the color - a striking red that pulls something instinctual out of the depths of his mind like a leash pulled taut around a wolf’s neck. Maybe it’s the smell - that sharp, stinging copper blade that finds purchase deep within his sinuses. Perhaps it’s the sound - that horrible wet squelch, the trickle down a form, the splat against the ground. He’s not sure what it is. Something about it just turns his stomach.
That’s why he would have made such a lousy doctor. Well, a medical doctor. He’s a just fine molecular biologist, but he’d probably find some of his own bodily fluids in the mix if he were confronted with something as trivial as a picked-open scab. It’s a shame, really. He likes to think he’s got a half-decent bedside manner. Better than a lot of other doctors he’s found himself in the care of before. Better than the ones that shot him up with an amnesiac drug and into an induced coma, he could tell you that much for sure. But, alas, he’s got a queasy stomach and a pitifully sensitive gag reflex. Shucks. No open-heart surgeries for him.
All of this is to say that the first thing Ryland Grace does when he spots the drops of deep red that fall steadily to the Hail Mary’s metallic floor is expel his lunch out the same way it went in.
“Nope. Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope.” Grace turns sharply on his heels and sprints toward the laboratory’s designated lavatory. He proceeds to hurl into the toilet for the next fifteen Earth minutes. Vomiting - the single most ungraceful function the human body can accomplish. One of the most unpleasant ones, too!
“Grace? Grace dying? Grace die? Grace food go wrong way statement. Grace do that why question?”
“Urghghh.” He groans pathetically, spitting once into the bowl and squeezing his eyes shut. “M’fine, Rock. Just need a sec t– oh fudge–” A second wave of nausea overtakes him, pulling his stomach out through his throat and making certain to empty every last molecule of prospective sustenance from his body. He trembles with it, an icy cold sweat beginning to bead just above his brow. His glasses (which were previously hanging precariously beneath his chin) clatter to the ground.
“Grace?” Rocky’s ball clatters audibly just outside the bathroom’s door. The melodic chitters and chimes of his voice grow louder with concern.
Grace coughs twice, wipes away a tear that pricks at the corner of his eye. He takes in a few heaving breaths, sits back on his haunches, and lets his head fall back against the wall. He closes his eyes and tries desperately to keep his breathing even. “I’m okay, Rock,” he rasps out, voice corroded by stomach acid. “I’m… okay.”
“Yes, good, glad— Grace need come outside right now statement.”
He pants. “Just a second, bud.”
“Now.”
“Gimme a—”
“Now!!” The statement was accompanied by three stomps in quick succession.
As if Rocky needed any more emphasis, the ship herself chimes in right on cue. Mary’s computerized voice blares across the entire craft, vibrations shaking even the hull of the ship. “DANGER. CONTAMINANT DETECTED. CONTAMINANT DETECTED. CONTAMINANT—.”
Grace blinks rapidly, still dazed and severely nauseated. He stumbles unsteadily to his feet and practically throws himself at the door, clumsily forcing it open with his full body weight. It gives easily, and he goes barrelling into a lab table a few feet ahead. His ribcage makes contact with steel with a sharp thud. He exclaims in pain, gritting his teeth and clutching at his side.
To his horror, in the little time he was out of the room, a slick layer of glossy red fluid has managed to trickle down from the ceiling, across the walls, and onto the floor. It covers the ground in a pool at least an inch deep and is quickly overtaking the room, claiming it for itself. It seeps through Grace’s socks and onto his feet, staining the fabric a sickening shade of burgundy. His eyes widen. His gut clenches.
Holy mackerel.
The alarm lights blare in time with Mary’s increasingly urgent warnings, periodically painting the ship in nothing but copper and adrenaline. “DANGER. CONTAMINANT DETECTED. CONTAMINANT DETECTED.”
“I know, Mary!” Grace shouts frantically, slipping on god-knows-what-that-substance-is with each hasty step. Copper and iron singe his throat with every panicked breath he takes in. He needs to find his EVA suit. He needs to find something to protect—
One miscalculated step is all it takes for Grace to find himself face-down in it, his nose cracks against the metallic floor. He yelps, whines, lies momentarily paralyzed on the ground as the substance contaminates his clothing, clings to his skin, stains it red. He flails over to the wall and uses the zero-g ladder there to brace himself - dragging himself up with every very limited ounce of energy he can muster.
“Grace!?! Grace okay?! Grace safe!? Need help!?” Rocky’s voice pierces across the room in discordant shrieks.
“I’m alright!” Grace yells back through the hot, dull pain blossoming from the center of his face. He coughs and clutches at his nose, his fingers quickly running over it for fractures. Thank God, it’s not broken, and neither are his glasses. Somehow.
Grace clutches the bars of the ladder with bloodied hands and shakily rises to his feet. The substance has saturated his clothing completely; it sticks to his body and dampens his skin with red fluid. It burns where it touches. He can’t wipe it off. So much for the EVA suit, he thinks. No use in it now. I’m sooooo contaminated.
Rocky tumbles with hasty discordination through the room to reach Grace, the normally crystal-clear exterior of his ball now ruby-red and shimmering wetly like cathedral glass in a thunderstorm. “We go upstairs now! Find leak!” He insists, his carapace trembling with each word.
Grace swipes away blood that drips from his nose onto the back of his hand before returning his grip to the steel bars beside him. “Yeah– yeah–” he agrees unthinkingly, his body already moving up the ladder before his head can keep up.
He clambers sloppily up each rung, his slick, sticky socks not making things any easier on him. He can barely find his footing as he brute-forces his way up, clawing his way to the upper level as swiftly as he can.
His body collides with the floor above with a sickeningly slick thwap. He scrambles upright, shoving his glasses further up his nose and leaving a deep red streak along the left lens.
The ground runs rabid with a current of crimson, cascading along the Hail Mary’s floor like a tidepool trying to pull him in. He’s up to his ankles in it. It bites at his heels.
The airlock has been opened recently.
Bad.
One of the sets of exterior doors installed for redundancy is malfunctioning. There’s a crack in between them like an elevator that won’t shut - thick red viscera gushes out of the seam like something straight out of The Shining.
So that’s where it’s coming from.
Okay, okay. Good. Great. This is good.
They found the source.
The blood-like liquid spills out in thick, viscous pumps, like a heartbeat working the ichor of life through its host. It will make Mary live and breathe at this rate.
…Why is the current slowing?
“It’s– slowing down…?!” Grace shouts over his shoulder to Rocky. “Why’s it slowing down?!”
“Don’t know! Why would Rocky know?!”
“I don’t know!” Grace snaps, eyes wild and full of a raw, animalistic terror that he hasn’t felt in years. “Is that good? Should it be doing that?”
“Don’t know! Don’t know!”
The doors creak and groan and strain, whining complaints slicing through the air as titanium is deformed and ripped apart. A single, bloodied hand curls around the wreckage from the wrong side of the airlock.
The fluid on the ground rises like a tidal wave to greet its visitor, going shallow around Grace's feet and rising in a wall behind his back.
The fluid on his skin is most definitely blood.
And it is most definitely not.
And it comes crashing down on him, knocking him to the Hail Mary's aching, worn-out floor and leaving him pinned there.
And Ryland Grace is not a man of God, but he knows now what Hell is and that is not an inferno, but an ocean of man's own making. And Ryland Grace is not a man of God, and the prayer that strains against his throat is unseen, unheard, unanswered; Hail Mary, full of grace… pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
And Ryland Grace is swallowed whole by it, and he kicks and screams and fights against it, and he claws at waters that singe at his skin like poison, It's poisoning me, it’s murdering me, Mary, Mary, Rocky, where's Rocky, God, God, please—
—And Ryland Grace shoots up in bed, and he's gasping for breath, and he hasn't been aboard the Hail Mary in five years, and this is the fourth time this week he's had this nightmare, and there's something hot and red and sticky dripping from his nose.
“Grace look tired.”
“Yep.”
Grace sits at his desk with his arms propped atop it, running a hand through his hair and trying not to collapse from sheer exhaustion alone. He knows that roughly 84 hours of uninterrupted wakefulness is his personal limit before he becomes completely and utterly useless. He's at about 70 right now. Pushing it, he knows.
He should be grading papers. (Er, textured xenonite slabs, he supposes?) He's been going through a heck of a lot of trouble to teach these kids about cell structure, and he should be, well, finishing what he started. There are only so many episodes of Bill Nye the Science Guy from the mission database he can cycle through before parents get suspicious. Eridian parents take education pretty seriously, he’s learned the hard way.
He blinks and rolls his shoulders, cracks his neck, straightens his back. Come on. Only… 24 more until he gets through the whole stack.
He spins his (admittedly rudimentary) 3D pen in his fingers and scans the paper in front of his eyes. There are Eridian numerical symbols layered atop the tablet, alphabetical characters sequenced in familiar words and phrases and sentences, but through his blurred, fatigued vision, the sheet seems to melt together like it's been put through a furnace.
His glasses slip off his nose and clatter against the tabletop.
“Need assistance, question?” Rocky’s harmonic voice trills from the seat he's adopted beside the classroom whiteboard. His claw taps twice against the sandy ground beneath his xenonite-protected carapace.
Grace snaps to attention. “Huh?” How long has he been zoning out for? When did he even start to zone out? “Uh– no, no, it's fine. I got it.” He picks up a paper and squints at it, using all of his remaining brainpower to look like he's comprehending the things scribed there. He feels every neuron in his brain fizzle out without fanfare, like a firecracker in a vacuum.
“Very clearly not fine. Do not ‘got it’ at all.” Rocky’s carapace tilts up at Grace expectantly. “How long since last sleep?”
“Pass,” Grace waves a hand dismissively, languid and a little too fatigued. He moves to stand, opting to pace back and forth around the classroom.
“No. Answer.” The Eridian shifts in place. “You tired, stupid. How long?”
“Not long enough,” Grace sighs. He crosses an arm over his chest tightly, the other hand comes up to rake across the back of his neck.
Some kind of understanding seems to change Rocky's posture. It outwardly relaxes, but Grace can see the way each hydraulic joint tightens just the slightest bit too much. “Bad dream again, question?”
“Yes,” Grace sighs, equal parts exhausted and exasperated. “Literally every time I shut my eyes, I'm there.”
Rocky makes a soft noise. “Understand. Causes you distress.”
“Yeah. Yeah, a lot.” His shoulders tense up. His pacing slows and becomes more deliberate. “You know, I've been thinking. Maybe it's something I just gotta solve. Like a weird puzzle, right? But the same crap happens every freaking time, I can't change a thing.”
Grace thinks back on all the nights he'd yelled at the dream manifestation of himself, told himself to march up that ladder at the first drop of blood – but to no avail. Dream Grace was determined to puke his guts out first. Real productive.
It was like he was an inaudible spectator, nothing he could say would change the outcome, nothing would be heard.
Grace shakes his head. “I swear, someone's haunting me.”
“Grace not haunted.”
“Hey, you don't know, Mary might be. Two people died there.”
“If Hail Mary haunted, Blip-A much much much haunted. Nothing haunted.”
“Hm. Well, my other pet theory was gonna be psychic visions, but I got a feeling you're not gonna love that one either.”
“Grace.”
He sighs. “Hm?”
“Human brain is strange and irrational. Make up stories. Scare on purpose. No meaning. Not always.”
“Not always,” Grace points out.
“This not exception.”
“You don't know that for sure, though.”
Rocky chitters with mild annoyance. “If dream is meaning, meaning is Grace is stressed. Scary sleep picture say that only.”
“Rock, I'm really not that stressed, though.” His fingertips drum rapidly against his left bicep.
“Sure.”
“I mean it! Like, I have my students, a sick beach house, awesome terrarium-thing, you, Adrian. We even got the meburgers figured out, and that was stressing me out, sure, but we did it! So. Not anymore, no. Not stressed.”
“You are stressed, Grace.”
He throws his hands up. “From the dreams!”
“Yes! Dreams from stress make more dreams from stress. Is cycle.”
Grace makes a face, his mouth twisting into an unpleasant shape. “I guess.” He could leave it there, but something nagging in the back of his mind isn't satisfied. “But– what triggered that first one, then?”
Rocky shrugs three of his limbs. “Random.”
“No. Too specific to be random. My nightmares are normally, like, different. Not like this.”
“What is normal nightmare?” Rocky asks, his voice taking on a cautiously curious vibrato. He seems to know he's treading dangerous waters here.
Grace rubs at the back of his neck again, slouching against the side of the whiteboard. “I dunno. Like, all my teeth falling out, showing up to a meeting naked, being unprepared for an exam, falling through the sky.” Running for a fence on the horizon, face colliding with dying grass, a needle in the side of the neck. “Silly stuff like that.”
Rocky shifts his limbs beneath himself, xenonite scraping against xenonite as he readjusts. “Strange.”
“Yeah. Strange.” Grace agrees, nodding his head slowly.
“Grace sleep. I watch. Statement,” Rocky asserts, standing up and shaking sand out from between the joints of his suit.
“Wait– now?”
“Yes, yes now. When else?” Rocky huffs, a plume of hot air erupts from the vents atop his carapace and momentarily fogs the glassy surface above.
“I can't sleep now, I'm not tired!” He protests.
If Eridians had eyes they could roll, Grace is certain Rocky would be doing so at this very moment. “Bullshit.”
Grace holds up a finger. “Ah ah! What did I say about cussing in my classroom?”
“No pebbles here, is fine. Grace is deflecting.” Rocky whips around and begins marching toward Grace's house, the small cottage perched on a synthetic hilltop. “I build you bed, you use it. Come come come.”
Grace stares after his friend in raw, exhausted defeat. He… really can't argue with that. Or with how nice a deep, carefully observed night's sleep sounds right about now. He's never been more simultaneously pleased and peeved to be bested in a debate.
He tips his head back dramatically and sighs. “Alright, alright. I'm coming.”
Grace was right. Sleep was a bad idea.
He wakes up with a start, drenched in a cold sweat that seeps deep into his bones, further, into his very being. God, is he tired.
His mouth tastes like copper and stale adrenaline. He runs his tongue along his teeth.
Ew.
His nose is running. He swipes the back of his hand across it. It comes back red. Just like it has every night.
Fabulous.
“Grace?”
He mumbles something incoherent instead of actual English words. “Mmnpghgn.”
“Grace?”
“Mmmnyeah?” He manages.
“You face is leaking.”
“I'm… mmm, so aware,” he says groggily, the frantic fog in his mind slowly giving way to muddled clarity. “This happens.”
“What? What happens?”
“Nosebleed,” he answers simply. He reaches for the box of tissues he's opted to keep on his nightstand lately. It's more convenient than pinching the bridge of his nose and stumbling around the house in the dark for them.
Rocky doesn’t move for a moment. “What.”
“Nothebleed,” he repeats nasally, jamming a soft, white cloth up one nostril to absorb the worst of it. “Idd’ll path.”
“Is blood. Grace hurt,” Rocky insists, stomping a foot repeatedly before spinning around in a tight circle. “Bad bad bad. We train Eridian doctor but not for this. We try best but if Grace die–”
“–Whoa, whoa, cool it, bud. It's just a little blood! Doesn't even hurt.” He shrugs, swiping at his nose. In the dim lighting of the room, the dark spots on the tissue stand out the most – black holes in a sky of infinite white. He frowns.
“Grace not understanding.” Rocky whines insistently. “When nosebleeds happen, question?”
“Uh, I don’t know. If it's dry out, I guess? Wintertime mostly. But it can happen sometimes if y–”
Rocky's intonation is firm. “No. You nosebleed now. You say it happens. When.”
“Oh.” Grace feels absolutely idiotic. He stares at the bloodied tissue in his hands and grits his teeth in anticipation of the lecture that is sure to come. “Um… every time I have this nightmare,” he admits sheepishly.
“What!? Why not tell me?!” Rocky all-but shrieks.
“You didn't ask!” He throws his hands up defensively.
“Oh, hello beloved friend Grace. When have bad Hail Mary blood dream, does you face leak blood fluid?! Just asking. Normal question to ask of friend Grace.” He stamps a foot. “No! Of course I not ask! Stupid!”
“Yeah, okay, I get it. Stupid.”
“Stupid stupid stupid.” He crosses two of his arms in front of his carapace - a very human gesture for an Eridian.
“Yeah, loud and clear, man,” Grace scowls.
Rocky huffs. “You scaring me! Blood dream making blood fluid seem much abnormal.” He stands from his crouched position next to Grace's bed and trots around the room, thinking. “Why happen? Is common?”
Grace frowns. ‘Common’ for him and ‘common’ for the average person sit on two polar opposite ends of the spectrum. “Uh. I don’t think so,” he replies carefully. “And I don't know. Humidity seems fine in here. And I don’t think I'm sick.”
“Disagree. Grace is not well.”
“Well, duh. I'm tired. Sleep deprivation and all that, but… sick is different.”
“Sick like Erid return trip, question?”
“Uh. Not exactly. That was malnutrition sick.”
“Yes I know. Rocky not fucking stupid.” He clicks a few times in irritation. “Meaning… severe sick. Sick Rocky not able to fix.”
Oh boy.
How would he even know if he was sick? Like… really sick? If he had developed some kind of brand-new space cancer that had metastasized to his brain or something, how would the Eridians even begin to go about treating that? How would they even catch it?
Well… they wouldn’t.
And he’d be none the wiser. And it’d kill him all the same.
He doesn’t want to think about that. He shoves the thought out of his mind.
Grace gnaws on the inside of his cheek and ignores the way it tastes like iron. “I… I don't know, buddy. If it’s anything, it’s probably just, like, a cold or something. No big deal.”
Rocky sits with that for a few moments. He’s clearly not buying it. He’s wayyyy too smart for that. But he seems to be done prying– for tonight, anyway. “Common cold,” he says eventually. The chords are soft and distant from reality, like the windchimes on a neighbor’s back porch.
“Yeah. Common cold,” Grace repeats, voice just as low and faraway.
They leave it there for a few long, agonizing moments.
Rocky doesn’t move.
Grace pulls the quilt tighter against his waist. His nose has finally stopped bleeding. There’s a droplet of red staining the lucky cat square. He stares at it. Watches it seep into the fabric. His eyes feel heavier.
“Grace go back to sleep now.”
A soft rush of air escapes his lungs. “I don’t think I could even if I tried, Rock.”
Rocky jumps up onto the bed, and the frame groans once under his weight. He steps over Grace’s legs to reach his left side, spins in place, and settles between his abdomen and his arm. “Try.”
Grace looks at his best friend for a few moments. Something warm and fond and aching pulls at the corners of his lips. “…Okay. Okay, I will.”
Class has been called off for the next two weeks, and nobody is telling Grace why.
“Wait, what?” he protests with the Eridian on the other side of the xenonite wall – a stranger, one he’s never interacted with before. They are smaller than Rocky, maybe made of amethyst, with a light blue mating stone on their right-most arm. They hold a tablet in one claw - presumably one with notes.
“Condolence. Not understand human speak. Messenger,” the small, purple creature squeaks a little discordantly. Their notes come out clumsy and unmetered.“Students assigned toooooo— tooo turrs. Tutors. Tutors in stead of Teacher Grace. Still learn, not worry.”
“Why?” he insists fruitlessly. “What’s going on?” He knows they don’t understand him, he knows he’s (quite literally) talking to a wall here– but he needs his displeasure to be heard, dang it!
“Not understand. Condolence, condolence.”
“Ugh!” He tips his head back and groans, pacing back and forth in front of the barrier that separates the oxygenated half of his classroom from the superheated ammonia portion. “Rocky, Rocky. Get me Rocky,” he begs, eyes wide and pleading.
“Not under–”
“Roooooocky. ♬–♫♪♪-♫♩♬,” he desperately, clumsily tries to hum the sequence of notes that make up his friend’s proper Eridian name. He clasps his hands together. “Please. Please please please.”
“Oh! Understand! Grace want speak Rocky!” The stranger spins in an excited circle, proud of themself.
“Yes! Yes, I need to talk to Rocky,” he nods enthusiastically.
“Rocky busy now.”
Grace turns around and throws his hands up. “Fudge!”
“We return big information soon. Big big big busy, much do. Gooooooodbye Grace,” they chirp as they skitter out of the room. They pause just once in the doorway to make nice farewell noises with their arm before quickly hurrying off.
Grace is left puzzling in their wake, standing in a classroom relegated to disuse for a fortnight without the slightest indication as to why.
It’s two days before Grace gets a knock at his door.
He swings it open perhaps a little too eagerly, barely bothering to look at who’s behind it. Who even cares? God, he’s been lonely! He hasn’t talked to anyone (other than himself, ceaselessly) since that Eridian that shut down his classroom, and it’s been driving him more than a little insane. He’s very susceptible to cabin fever, but now he will suffer no more! He grins widely before he even begins to speak, “Rock, you better have a dang good explanation for all this, or I swear–” he stops dead in his tracks.
Rocky is there, of course he is. But he’s not alone. Far from it. There’s a small army of Eridians behind him, all clad in their own xenonite suits and what Grace has come to understand is professional attire. Even that purple one is here, tapping its claws together anxiously at the back of the group. It’s the most Eridians he’s ever seen on this side of the barrier before, but something in the pit of his stomach tells him this isn’t exactly a gathering to be celebrated. All of them are tense, all of them are on edge, and all of their carapaces are angled up at Grace expectantly.
“Uh. Hi.” He waves weakly at the crowd, blinking once in surprise and confusion.
“Hello dearest friend Grace,” Rocky chirps. He’s the most rigid of all of them– poorly suppressed anxiety spills from every crack or crevasse in his carapace. “How are you?”
“Um… fine?” He raises a cautious brow. An uncomfortable chill tightens around his spine. Something about this is reading as familiar. He stifles it. “What’s all this about?”
“We need you come with us. Big big science happening now.”
“Wait, wait, Rock, what big science?” His brows shoot up. “What’s going on?”
Rocky doesn’t say anything. He turns around to face his group of… friends? No, not friends. Advisors? Experts? Researchers? He’s not sure.
He’s getting impatient. “Well? Is anyone gonna tell me?”
“Is… too difficult explain.” Rocky shifts his weight from foot to foot.
Grace crosses his arms. “Try.”
A moment passes. Too long.
“We find human,” Rocky blurts, too loud and excited and terrified and hopeful and afraid afraid afraid. “We find human we need you help.”