Chapter Text
The road was longer than I remembered coming in. I’d been driving this beat-up car for ages. I still had a while before I reached Aqtobe and a lot of miles between me and Tbilisi, Istanbul, and London. And I was starting to really hate Kazakhstan.
However, the sky was starting to turn lighter around me, and as the grassy plains came more clearly into view, I wasn’t exactly opposed to them. The stars and moon had faded, and everything was now a warm shade of pink. Dawn. Six AM.
In Sydney, it would be almost eleven o’clock. I told Colt that he would hear from me before noon, so that left me an hour. Another hour of silence. Another hour to think. Another hour to hear Ryland’s heartbeat thumping in my ears, the monitor beeping, the oxygen pump whirring.
I reached for my old burner phone in the passenger seat. I punched in Colt’s number and waited for the dial tone. Any sound was better than the deafening silence—the radio had been turned off a long time ago, considering I neither spoke nor understood Kazakh. The music was okay, but the lyrics were just noise.
He picked up on the third ring, laughing. “This is Colt.”
“If it’s December 1941 in Casablanca, what time is it in New York?”
There was noise in the background—yelling, an engine revving. “Damn, my watch died,” he said. “Let me… let me see if there’s another one in the trailer.”
Over the years, Colt, Ryland, and I had gotten pretty good at speaking in codes. Admittedly, a lot of our codes also doubled as movie lines—Colt and Ry were both massive cinephiles, so most of our conversations ended up circling back to movies anyway. It was a natural progression.
On his end, there were crunching footsteps—gravel. Then the groan and click of a trailer door opening and closing.
“Did you get the letters of transit?” he asked, his voice jumping an octave. “What about Major Strasser?”
I swallowed. “No one’s leaving Casablanca, Colt. Just me.”
Colt’s end of the phone went completely quiet, and somehow that was worse than both the silence in this car and the Kazakh radio put together. I shouldn’t have called him. I should’ve just waited until I got to Istanbul and found a connecting flight to Sydney instead of London. I knew people; I had methods. Anything would be better than this—the silence was stabbing me in the gut with every second it dragged on, and then Colt managed to twist the knife.
“W-what?” His voice was dangerously low and uncertain. “You… you left him in Casablanca?”
I gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles. “I had to.”
“You had to?” he snapped. “What is that supposed to mean, Courtland?”
“It means I had to, Colt. I didn’t have a choice.”
“Bullshit! Didn’t have a choice… Courtland, what even…? Please, enlighten me as to why the legendary Sierra Six is leaving Kazakhstan without doing his damn job.”
I hated it when Colt got mad. He would start saying all the right things in all the wrong ways, and his voice got strained and gravelly. I imagined he was standing in his trailer with his hands shoved in his pockets, yelling at the phone. He had a tendency to start throwing things when he got really worked up, and since he could do physics in his sleep, he had impeccable aim.
“Because he has to go,” I said simply. It was the worst explanation I had, but it was the truth. “They need a scientist, and they need a good one. He already knows the ins and outs of the mission. He’s a natural pick.”
“Yeah, and they chased him and tranqed him like a wild animal. Which doesn’t matter at all to you, apparently.”
I sighed. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that stupid yellow raincoat. “I know. I saw the same video you did, Colt. But he has to go.”
“He doesn’t want to go!” Colt was irate. “He’s not an astronaut, Court. He teaches science! To teenagers! Surely they want someone else—anyone else. They’ve got enough people and enough money to figure something out.”
“But they don’t have time. If the Hail Mary doesn’t launch as scheduled, there’s no time for another shot. Stratt needs a scientist, and Ryland is the best scientist at her disposal. She has to send him.”
Colt sighed deeply, and the hum of the car filled the silence again. The pink sky outside was turning slowly to gold.
“So you just left him there? You’re going to let that woman send him to space?”
I ran a hand through my hair. Stratt’s blue, stained-glass eyes were burned in my mind, dimmed from the weight of responsibility and all-consuming grief. She didn’t want Ryland to go anymore than we did, but the explosion had forced her hand. The mission had to move forward. The job had to get done. It had to be Ryland. He was our best shot.
“He has to go,” I said again, more to myself than to Colt.
He waited a heartbeat to answer me. “He doesn’t want to go,” he repeated, quieter now. “He has school to get back to. He’s just on the project to help with research.”
“Colt?”
“Yeah?”
I took a breath. “We’ve got thirty years before everything goes to shit—probably less. It’s going to get cold, and we’re going to get hungry. If we don’t send that ship and figure out what’s going on, then we’re all going to die. If they don’t launch this morning, the mission will get pushed back, and if they launch any later, we’ll probably be dead before the findings get back.”
“And Ryland dies anyway,” Colt spat bitterly. “It’s a suicide mission, Court. They’re sending him to die. And you left him there.”
Okay. That was it. “You think I wanted to leave him there?” I snarled. “You think it was easy for me? To just walk out of the room while he sat there hooked up to all those machines? I don’t want him going any more than you do, but he has to go, Colt. They don’t have time to train anyone else. They don’t have time to make any more fuel. It’s him, or it’s no Project Hail Mary. And if you like being alive, then we’ve got to have a Project Hail Mary.”
That put a stop to his tantrum. The phone was heavy in my hands now as I waited to hear his response. I breathed slowly through my nose and bit my tongue, trying to calm back down. I needed Colt to understand me, but I didn’t need to make his anger any worse.
“You… you saw him?” he mumbled. “Hooked up to… machines? What machines?”
“Yeah, they, um… induced his coma early,” I said softly. “He’s got the regular machines for that. O2, heart monitor, IV.”
He sniffled. “How… h-how did he look? What were his numbers?”
“When I left, his heart rate was at fifty-four and his BP was one-oh-five over sixty. O2 was at 99%. He… he looked alright. He was just sleeping.”
“Did he look pale? Were his eyes moving?”
“No, his color was good. His eyes weren’t moving.” I could still see him there, peacefully tucked into bed. Silent. Still. Like death. “They’re… they’re going to take good care of him, Colt. He’s going to be okay.”
Colt let out a long breath on his end of the phone. “They would’ve had to give him a lot more sedative,” he murmured. “His adrenaline would’ve been through the roof. He’s never had that much anaesthesia before. I don’t know how it reacts with him. It’s… it’s not safe.”
I was suddenly reminded that once upon a time, Colt was on track for med school. He’d decided against it after the Graces were in their car accident, but he was still a student of medicine, even if he never got his doctorate like Ryland.
“Stratt told me he would be safe,” I reassured him. Her word was law. “And he’s coma resistant—you probably are, too. It’s genetic.”
He ignored me. “How long is he going to be under?”
“Four years on the ship. To us it’ll be almost twelve.”
There was a sharp intake of air, and Colt cleared his throat. “Well, he’s… he’s going to need his tubes changed multiple times. We’ve got to worry about muscle atrophy and bedsores, and… what’s he eating up there? He needs nutrients. He can’t just live on an IV for the next four years. And what if he wakes up early? What if his drug concoction wears off? What if—”
“Colt. Listen to me.”
A pause. “I’m listening.”
“Stratt has built a machine to take care of all of those things. I’ve seen it. She worked on it herself.”
“But it’s not a human doctor,” rumbled Colt. “Machines are meant to be operated by a human person. There’s not going to be anyone running it up there.”
“Stratt told me it was safe. She said all the engines would fail before one of the medical robots lost a screw—and there’s a thousand engines on the ship.”
I knew the word of one woman—especially Eva Stratt—wasn’t much reassurance to him, but I’d seen the look in her eyes and heard the tone of her voice. Stratt did many things that were probably not very trustworthy, but she was still a scientist. And she didn’t get to be the leader of Project Hail Mary by doing half-assed science.
“It hasn’t been tested for four years, though, has it?”
Colt had a point. It was proprietary tech, untested and unproven. But I had to trust Stratt. I didn’t really have another option.
“You’re right,” I conceded, “it’s new. But if it didn’t work, it wouldn’t be going on the ship. You should know that.”
Colt grumbled to himself on the other end. “Are you telling me that you trust this lady? The same one who kidnapped Ry from his job, threw him on a boat, shipped him to Kazakhstan, and proceeded to tranquilize him against his will? Just… just a reminder.”
My fingers twitched, but I fought the urge to slam on brakes and turn around. They weren’t launching until eight. I could still make it if I drove like hell—which I had plenty of experience doing.
But I remembered Eva. Her tears. The weight on her shoulders. The ache in her weak, trembling voice. The determination she held onto with white knuckles. She wanted to live, and she wanted to give the rest of us that chance, too.
Which meant Ryland had to stay.
“I have to trust her,” I said through gritted teeth. Maybe if I said it aloud, it would become true. Maybe.
“It’s like I don’t even know you,” muttered Colt. “You never trust anybody, Court. And now you’re going to trust this crazy lady. I thought you were planning on… you know…”
“I was.” I still could. I could still turn this car around. In fact, I could find Eva Stratt any time I wanted to. “But she’s going to watch. She’s going to live with her choices.”
“Yeah, and she’s choosing Ryland. Ryland, Court--our Ryland.”
“I know, Colt.” As if I needed another reminder, another twist of the knife.
“And you’re… you’re okay with this?” He was biting back tears; I could tell. He knew I was right. He knew what was at stake. He just didn’t want to admit it. Neither did I.
I sighed and fidgeted with the scruffy hair around my chin. “I have to be. It’s the only way we stay alive.”
“But Ryland doesn’t. Ryland doesn’t get to. She’s… she’s sending him to… and he doesn’t get to…”
“I know, Col—“
“No you don’t!” he snapped. “Damn it, Court, this is Ryland we’re talking about! Ryland! Remember Ryland, my twin brother? Ryland, the teacher? Ryland, the best damn molecular biologist to ever come out of UC Berkeley? You know him? You know Ryland?”
“Colt.”
“He’s going to die,” Colt wavered. “They are sending him to die. He’s not… he’s not coming back home, Court. Oh God. Courtland, he’s… I’m… I’m never going to see him again.”
“Colt, take a breath.”
“Ryland’s going to outer space, and… and he’s not… I’m never… oh my God…” He was starting to hyperventilate, and every breath shot another dagger into my own chest. “Courtland, what… w-w-what am I gonna do?”
“Just breathe, Colt.” That was an order.
“I’m trying, I’m trying,” he said between sniffles. “I just… he’s going to be so scared when he wakes up, Court. He’s going to be so scared…”
That was an awful thought, and one that hadn’t occurred to me until now. Ryland was terrified of the elevator. What was he going to do on a spaceship? In zero gravity? He’d make himself sick just trying to stand upright. And with the mystery memory drug cocktail he’d been served, who was to say if he would even remember how he got there?
I pushed the thoughts aside—they weren’t helpful to me or to Colt. “He’s brave, Colt. He’ll be okay.”
“Ryland, brave?” Colt chuckled between the tears I knew were now streaming down his face. “Oh, come on. He won’t even ride the teacups at Disneyland. I was surprised I got him on the carousel.”
I smirked. He’d barely stayed on that carousel. Colt and I loved an amusement park, but Ryland didn’t want anything to do with them—hearing anything about the Tilt-a-Whirl tended to send him into a panic. He was much happier in a museum or aquarium—or on the Ferris wheel. Surprisingly, that was the only ride he ever got excited about.
“He’s going to be just fine, Colt.” I wasn’t great at being comforting, but I was trying my best. Keeping my voice calm was like playing an Olympic sport right now. “I hope someone videos him in zero G. I would pay money to see that.”
Colt gave a little laugh, still sniffling. “He’s going to be the worst astronaut NASA has ever—”
Before he could finish, there was a loud creak: the trailer door.
“Colt?” called another voice—feminine, distinctly English. “Are you in here? We’re getting ready to start re-shooting the battle scene.”
I gripped the phone tight. Who was that? How much had she heard?
“Jody!” exclaimed Colt. I could hear him quickly wiping the snot and tears off his face. “Hey. Sorry, I just… I had a phone call while I was looking for my watch, and—”
“A phone call? Didn’t you just get a new number?”
“Um… yeah. It’s just a—”
“Colt? Are you crying?” Concern filled her gentle voice. “What’s going on? Are you alright? Talk to me.”
“I-I’m fine, Jo.” He was a horrible liar. “I just… I just need a minute.”
A heartbeat. “Hey. I know today is a hard day. We don’t have to reshoot the gunfight—Venti can work her VFX magic, and we can edit it. I just thought… I know you like doing fight scenes, so I thought…”
“No, no, I want to do the gunfight. I just… gotta get myself together. S-sorry.”
They were both speaking softly now—they must be sitting close to one another. I’d never met Jody, but he’d told me about her. They had a pretty serious thing about a year ago, but after his accident, Colt broke up with her. He still hadn’t told me why, but Colt did a lot of stupid things without giving me a reason. When he called me a couple weeks ago to let me know about the false murder charge—and the fact that he’d successfully faked his own death—he mentioned that he and Jody were back together. He’d even called me on her phone. I was happy for him; he definitely needed someone right now. Especially now with Ryland going… Well, he really needed someone.
“Colt? Is that Ilsa?” I asked quietly.
He sniffled. “Y-yeah. This is Ilsa.”
“What? Ilsa?” wondered Jody.
“Are you Rick, or are you Laszlo?”
I could almost hear his gears turning, even from time zones away. “Laszlo, I hope. I was Rick for a while, but hopefully I’m Laszlo now. At least, I’d like to be.”
“Who on Earth are you talking to?” she pressed. “Who’s Rick? Who’s Laszlo?”
She was directing a film, but she didn’t know Casablanca? Surely she had seen Casablanca before. Even I had seen Casablanca.
“Are you planning on getting letters of transit?” I asked him.
What I really wanted to ask was, “are you going to screw this up again, or are you going to buckle down and marry her, dumbass”, but I couldn’t say that in front of her. I didn’t like swearing in front of ladies. It wasn’t becoming of a gentleman.
“Letters of transit…?” He trailed off, deep in thought, but then he clicked his tongue. “Oh. Oh. You mean…?”
“Yeah. Are you going to get letters of transit?”
Colt laughed nervously. “I mean, I’ve thought about it, but… it’s pretty early for letters of transit. We just got to Rick’s, you know. Lotta miles between here and there.”
Jody snapped her fingers. “Casablanca! Are you just making Casablanca references? Who in the world are you talking to?”
“Captain Renault,” murmured Colt.
“What?”
I knew she would know Casablanca—it was a classic. “Well, are you planning on getting letters of transit?” I asked again.
“Would you sign them if I did?”
I considered that for a moment. I’d have to meet her first, of course, but I knew what Colt had said about her. He’d dated a couple girls before, but none like Jody. He talked about her in almost every conversation we had—even after his accident, even when the sound of her name brought him to tears. He’d dropped everything to fly to Sydney when he heard she was directing Metalstorm. He’d even faked his own death just so they could finish filming. Colt couldn’t fall for another girl if he tried. It had to be Jody. It had always been Jody.
“Is she really your Ilsa?” I countered.
He took a second to answer, but when he did, his voice was stronger—resolute. “Yeah. Yeah, she is.”
“Then I’ll sign ‘em. Put me on speaker.”
“Huh?”
“Put me on speaker.” She’d meet me sooner or later, so we might as well make it now. She wouldn’t rest until Colt fessed up about his phone call, and I’d rather be there to explain things.
“Um… okay. Just one scene or the whole script?”
I grinned a little to myself. This would be the second time I’d put all my chips in today. “The whole script.”
“If you say so.” The phone beeped. “Jody, this… this is my brother Courtland.”
“Wait, Courtland? I thought Ryland was your brother.”
“Ryland’s my twin. Court is our big brother.”
“Hi, Jody,” I said.
“Oh! Hello!” Her voice suddenly dropped to a whisper. “When were you planning on telling me you have another brother?”
“Court works for the government,” Colt explained, matching her volume. “He lives off the grid. We aren’t allowed to talk about him or his work.”
“What?! Are you serious?”
“He’s serious. I work with the CIA.”
I could almost hear the sound of Jody’s jaw hitting the floor. “The CIA?”
“Yep. Since 2003.”
“Colton. You mean to tell me that between you and your brothers, you have a stuntman, a molecular biologist, and a CIA secret agent?!”
Colt laughed his big, loud laugh. I hadn’t heard him laugh like that in a long time. “That’s us, Jody. Guilty as charged.”
“You’re serious? You can’t be serious.”
“I’m dead serious.”
She laughed at that—a warm, innocent little sound. “So you were using Casablanca quotes as code words? I guess you really are brothers.”
“It was Colt’s idea,” I defended. “He knows it by heart.”
“Because it’s a cinematic masterpiece! It’s probably one of the best movies ever made. It has an incredible script and incredible acting. Don’t pretend it isn’t one of your favorite movies too, Court.”
He was right; it was one of the best movies ever made, and I did have a big soft spot for it. In terms of old movies, though, Citizen Kane would always be my favorite.
“Courtland, was it?” Jody asked. “Are you… are you on a mission right now? How did you get Colt’s new number after all of his recent… excitement?”
“He called me once things cooled off.” I left out the part where he used her phone. “I’m actually leaving the mission he sent me on.”
“The mission he sent you on?” she echoed. “Colton? Is there something you want to tell me?”
The silence was thick and heavy on the other end of the phone. I stared at the dirt road ahead of me, at the grasses waving in the morning wind. The golden sky was slowly fading to a soft blue.
“He was going to get Ryland,” Colt confessed, his voice trembling and weak. “He went to Kazakhstan.”
“To get Ryland? From the project? But… aren’t they supposed to launch today?”
In my time as a Sierra agent, I’d endured a lot of injuries and torture. I’d had broken bones, pulled muscles, gunshot wounds, burns, cuts, scrapes, and bruises. But no pain I had ever experienced could compare to the sting of Colt’s next words.
“Court… Court didn’t get him. He left Ry there.”
I left Ry there.
I left him there, in the hospital bed, unconscious and unaware of my presence at all. I left him there, alone. I left him there, condemned to be sent lightyears away from home to save our world. I left him there to die. I went to bring my little brother home, and instead, I chose to leave him there. To die. For the first time in my career—in my life—I backed out of a mission. I had failed.
Now Ryland would never come home again.
Jody was the first to break the silence. “What happened?” she queried. “Did they stop you from getting to him?”
“Nope.” Colt’s shaky voice was full of venom. “Court got to see him. And Court left him there.”
I thought I was about to vomit all over the dashboard. “They don’t have a mission without him. If he doesn’t go, then we all die.”
“What does it matter?” snarled Colt. “Ryland dies either way. Are you happy? You’ve fed him to the wolves, Courtland.”
“Colton, don’t say that.”
“Say what? The truth?” The venom sank into my skin. “He’s gone, Jody. He’s dead. My brother is dead. Court’s already pulled the trigger.”
If Colt was anything, he certainly was honest. He was honest, and he was right. He was absolutely right. And I wished I was in front of the trigger instead of behind it.
I slammed on the brakes, and the poor car screeched to a halt, the dirt crunching beneath the tires. My face was hot, my vision blurry. My breath rattled on the way in.
Ryland’s wide, blue eyes bore holes into me as I stood there, holding Dad’s pistol with trembling hands. There was blood on my face. There was blood on his face. There was a whole lot more blood seeping into the rug.
“Ry, look at me,” I’d pleaded. “Just look at me. Don’t look at him. Look at me.”
He’d barely been able to whisper—he wasn’t but skin and bones back then, so his whole body was shaking. His arm hung awkwardly at his side where Dad had broken it.
“C-C-Courtland? What… w-w-what did you do?”
I fought for a breath. I was back in the car somewhere in the Kazakhstani plains. I fumbled for the AC and turned it all the way up—ice cold. My face was wet now. Tears? If Fitz could see this, he’d have my head. Maybe that would be for the best.
I let my head thump against the steering wheel in defeat. Leaving Ryland meant that I got to keep Colt. Keeping Ryland meant I got to have them both, but the rest of the world would die. Including us.
Colt didn’t see that, though. How could he? He only saw Ryland—his best friend, his other half, his twin brother. They finished each other’s sentences. They bounced ideas off of one another. When they were nine, they came up with their own secret language just to impress me. They had always been two pieces of the same puzzle, even when they were fighting. Now the puzzle would be permanently unfinished. And that was all my fault.
“Courtland?” Jody’s voice echoed up from the floorboard. “Are you there? Are you alright? What was that noise?”
I bent to pick up my burner phone from beneath the gas pedal. “I’m here, Jody. Everything’s fine. Just… stuck in traffic.”
“Oh. Okay. Well… will you tell us what happened with Ryland?”
I shoved the car in park—there wasn’t a soul out here, and there wouldn’t be for miles. I tried to collect myself and put the poker face back on, but the new, stabbing pain in my chest made that a little difficult. At least I still had a heart in there.
“I talked to Stratt,” I started. “She told me about the mission. She told me why Ryland had to go: he already knows everything about astrophage, he’s coma resistant, and he’s good friends with the crew. She begged me to let him stay. Without a scientist, she doesn’t have a mission, and we’ll all wind up dead. The launch window is very short, and they don’t have time to train anyone else. If they have to launch later, the Hail Mary’s findings won’t be back in time to save us. No Ryland, no mission; no mission, no Earth.”
Now Jody was sniffling. “So he had to stay?”
“Yes.” That same pit in my stomach—old, dark, and endless—opened back up. “He had to stay.”
“No he didn’t!” yelled Colt. “They could find someone else! Stratt’s got a ton of scientists! Stratt could get any scientist she wanted, since she clearly doesn’t have issues with kidnapping or murder!”
“Courtland is right, Colt. If Ryland had to stay, then he had to—”
“No! He’s just making excuses. He had every chance to get Ryland, and he didn’t. He left Ryland there to die, Jody. He killed him. Ryland is dead. Ryland is… he’s…”
“Colt?” Jody sounded off. “Colt, you’re shaking.”
From the other end of the phone, there was a lot of heavy breathing. Colt was saying something. Then Jody. There was mumbling and shuffling. Then a clatter. Then a sob.
“J-Jody?” Colt’s voice was too quiet, too breathy, too strained. “Jody, I can’t… I can’t breathe…”
“It’s alright, Colt. You’re alright. You’re… you’re going to be okay.” She was trying to be soothing, but she sounded just as panicked as he did.
“Colt? Jody?” I dug my nails into the steering wheel, trying and failing to ignore the nauseating sound of Colt gasping for air. “What’s going on?”
There was no answer. Just Colt. Heaving for air. Choking on his own tears.