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Ryland’s leg is shaking and he can’t stop it.
He wishes he could, he wishes that for one moment he wasn’t human with human emotions. Rocky had a point; his leaky space blob body was incredibly inefficient. He could already hear the Eridian scolding him about wasting unnecessary calories before the most important step of the mission. Rocky had learned about the effects of low blood sugar, and now he was being scolded about his sleep schedule and his food intake. He felt like he was living with his mom again.
Or with Colt, who had a great many opinions about how Ryland took care of himself during the height of his PhD work, and had been very vocal about it. Colt had argued that ramen noodles were not part of the food pyramid. Ryland had given him a long-winded explanation about the various inaccuracies of that particular graphic, and proceeded to inform him that ramen noodles fell under the category of carbohydrates, and how carbohydrates were primarily glucose, and brains run on glucose. He doubted Colt had retained any of that information.
Memories of his brother had been flooding his brain, leaving him to piece together their shared lives. Colt was a stuntman, and primarily doubled for one Tom Ryder, hence why Ryland had always felt a vague sense of familiarity when he looked at the actor; his twin brother’s job had been looking like him.
Colt had also dated Jody. Past tense. They’d broken up after something had happened to him, but whatever it was, Ryland couldn’t remember. Colt had broken up with her; he did know that. Ryland had berated him for it. He remembered that he’d seen Jody as a sister, a sort of confidant he could go to whenever Colt was worrying him and vice versa. Colt’s decision to break up with her was incredibly fudging stupid, Ryland had determined.
There was one small glimmer of hope that his memory had called on. A phone call from his twin brother. It had been a short life update, all their calls had allowed for in the past few months. He’d been wrapping up his work on the project, and it seemed everyone had begun to see a light at the end of the tunnel. He even remembered Stratt, ruthlessly efficient, stone-cold Stratt, permitting herself to smile more than once a day. Colt had told him that he was going to Australia. Jody had asked for him specifically.
Ryland had grinned at that, silently wondering if there’d be a chance for him to visit his twin after the launch. He’d seen more of the world following Stratt around like her little science lapdog than he did flying off to UNESCO conferences, but he’d never made it to Australia, and it couldn’t hurt to spend some time with his brother.
But then everything had gone to shit.
And now he was here.
Rocky was resting his xenonite tunnels, pointing his, well, whatever it was, at the screens as the green, swirling atmosphere of Adrian came into view. There was still a sense of wonder as he stared at the alien planet, it reminded him of a planetarium show he’d convinced Colt to go to for their birthday without complaint. They’d shown renders of the planets on the large screen, and he’d remembered sucking in a breath at the swirling patterns of the storms on Jupiter, but nothing could compare to what he was looking at now.
He took a deep breath, reaching up to flip one of the switches (God bless Google Translate, he had no time to try to learn Russian) as the ship’s computer cheerfully relayed the message: “Manual mode activated.”
Rocky shifted forward as Ryland took another breath, fingers closing around the joystick tightly. His knuckles white as his body tensed up. He repeated the mission steps in his head. Get into orbit. Drop the predator collector into the atmosphere. Go out on the hull to retrieve it. Get the heck away from this planet. Save Earth. Save Erid. Go home. See my brother again.
He narrowed his eyes at the screen as he slowly adjusted the positioning of the ship. It proved to be a lot easier with Rocky opting to just nervously trill instead of loudly announcing their impending doom. Regardless, this was still step one. The ship starts shaking as they slowly approach the atmosphere, and Rocky lets out another nervous trill as Ryland keeps his hand tight on the steering. If he panics, well, as Rocky would say, we die we die we die.
They are not going to die. They are going to save Earth and save Erid. Rocky is going to see Adrian again. Ryland is going to see his twin brother again. Well, not so much twin, considering the time dilation. He’d only be aging eight years while Colt would be twenty-six years older than he was last time Ryland had seen him. Now Ryland really was his baby brother.
Focus. He breathed, moving the ship further into the atmosphere, watching as one of the screens showed the angle of the ship. Rocky tilted to “see” it better, and Ryland let out a sigh of relief as finally got it into place. “Not half bad,” he shrugged.
“Is full good!”
He tilted the stick back, feeling the rumble as the spin drives reactivated. Rocky clicked some of his claws. “Time go fishing, question?”
Ryland gave a nervous laugh, running a hand through his hair as his leg kept bouncing incessantly. “It’s now or never.” Rocky clicked a button on his tiny control panel, and both of them flinched at the groan of the Hail Mary’s aluminum hull as the chain began to descend into Adrian’s atmosphere. Step two, Ryland reminded himself. Then I go and get it. We save Earth and Erid. I go home and I see my brother again.
Rocky rattled off numbers and status updates with a steadiness in his voice that could probably be attributed to the computerized voice their translation software had given him. God, he hoped the Eridian was as nervous as him. He knew that Rocky could probably hear his heart pounding against his chest, the blood rushing through his ears, and the uncontrollable twitching of his legs. He hoped that it wasn’t distracting.
The Eridian clicks another button and Ryland waits the predetermined amount of time before sucking in another breath. “And now comes the fun part,” he muttered, trying to ignore the fact that he could hear his heart pounding in his head.
“Grace go out on hull to retrieve collector, no fun at all,” Rocky said, shaking his carapace in distress.
He unclipped himself from the restraints. “It’s a joke, Rock,” he explained as he slipped out of the cockpit.
“Oh, humor,” Rocky deadpanned. “Confusing.”
The climb down to the airlock is quick. Practiced. Efficient. If Stratt were here, she might even give him an approving glance. Getting himself into the EVA suit was similar. Rocky made him practice until he could practically do it with his hands tied behind his back. Not nearly as cool or dangerous as jumping a boat through a ring of fire, but he’d leave that to Colt and the other professionals. Besides, going to space, making first contact, and saving the world probably put all the other stuff to shame. He was by far the cooler twin.
The airlock hissed as it opened, and Ryland could hear the pounding of his heart echoing through the helmet of the suit as he stared out at the expanse of swirling green that was the planet below him. He hesitated, his basic survival instincts screaming at him to get back inside, back to safety, to be selfish. He can’t do this.
But there’s Yao’s voice in his head. Find someone to be brave for.
He had someone. He was twelve light-years away. And he was going to die if Ryland couldn’t bring back the predator. An instinctive panic that his body was all too familiar with took hold at the thought. He wasn’t going to let his twin brother die, no matter how stubborn Colt would be about it.
Ryland squeezed his eyes shut and counted to five before looking out over the airlock, tether in hand. “Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me,” he groaned.
“What problem, question?” Rocky’s voice trilled through the speakers inside his helmet.
He clipped the tether into the first hold, trying and failing to steady his shaking hands. “It’s- it’s fine, it’s just-” he swallowed, hearing Rocky nervously sing- “the uh- the sky is uh, slightly on fire.” Ryland fought the shiver that ran up his spine as he saw the orange glow at the front of the ship, sending sparks flying back towards him. He knew why this was happening; it was standard, that’s why return modules from the ISS had so much heat shielding. The critical problem though, was how much the Hail Mary had, considering he remembered it had been entirely assembled in space.
Okay, new plan. He thought, checking the tether's security. Step one: Do. Not. Die. Step two: get the predator collector. Step three: get the heck away from this planet. Step four: save Earth and Erid. Step five: Go home. Step six: see Colt again. You can do this.
“Words of encouragement,” Rocky chimed.
“You can’t just say words of encouragement, buddy.”
He paused for a moment. “Words of great encouragement!”
Ryland shook his head, clipping the tether into another hold. “Nope,” he sighed, clambering over the aluminum. Part of him wondered how the sound of his scuttling across the hull would sound to the Eridian, still tucked safely within his xenonite enclosure after a significant amount of arguing and a very heated game of rock, paper, scissors (that Ryland obviously won, choosing paper was the obvious choice).
His heart was beating so wildly he could feel it throbbing in his head as he tossed the end of the tether down the side of the hull, slowly repelling. He felt his hands shake inside the thick lining of the gloves. Colt would be so much better at this, he thought, trying to steady his breathing.
Ryland looked down at the end of the tether, steeling himself. Colt would be better at this, but he’s not here, it’s just me. He reminded himself, taking one step down. And if I do this, I get to go home and see him again. And then, quietly in the back of his mind, a voice that was unmistakably his twin brother’s added, I have someone to be brave for.
He continued scaling down the side of the hull, carefully climbing over the various supports that were rattling a little too much for his personal taste, and tied off the tether. “You feel that?” He asked Rocky.
He chittered in response. “Yeah.”
“I’m not worried,” Ryland laughed breathily. “Are you worried?”
“Yes.”
“Great,” he huffed, that incessant tremble creeping back into his fingers as he continued to repel down. Staring out at the chain disappearing into Adrian’s atmosphere. He hesitated, waiting for the familiar crackle of Rocky’s voice to tell him what to do next.
He wasn’t waiting long as Rocky chimed. “Collector is closed. Move winch into position.”
Ryland nodded, slamming a hunk of metal against it until the chain began to retract, nearly sending him stumbling off balance as the xenonite chain shot upwards, the vibrations rattling him to his core. “How long is this supposed to take?” He asked, just before the collector slammed into the side of the ship.
“Collector should be here soon,” came the reply.
He shook his head. “Yeah, it’s here.”
“Amaze amaze amaze!”
Ryland reached out, every ounce of his self-control kicking in to steady his hands with surgical precision as he unhooked the collector.
And then it started falling.
Falling.
“I don’t know what happened,” Jody sniffled, her eyes red-rimmed from crying, her arms tight around Colt’s jacket. “One minute, he was hooked in, thumbs up, ready to go. And the next-” she swallowed- “the next he was-”
Falling.
Colt fell. Ryland wasn’t there to catch him.
He reached out, gripping the chain tightly with both hands, the tether yanking against him as he clambered to hold it tightly against his chest. Ryland heaved a few breaths, pressing his back against more of the scaffolding, letting his heart rate return to normal. Rocky could probably hear him and was stamping a leg impatiently, but in his defense, the odds of him dooming two species went down exponentially if he took a moment not to panic.
Step one: still in progress, I’m not dead yet. He reminded himself. Step two is complete. Step three: get inside and get away from this godforsaken planet. Step four: save Earth and Erid. He took a deep breath, starting to retreat back to the airlock. Step five: get back to Colt. Ryland squeezed his eyes shut. I can do this.
He heard a beeping in his ear, some sort of warning from the computer, and then Rocky’s nervous voice. “Oh, hurry, hurry,” he chittered, scuttling around his enclosure anxiously.
Ryland tugged on the tether, yanking himself back up as he watched the ship slowly descend underneath the Adrian Auroras, feeling a sense of dread pool in his stomach as the ship continued to dip into the atmosphere. He swore he felt the flames start to lick at his heels.
“Hurry, hurry,” Rocky urged.
He continued scaling the ship, starting to feel the gravity of Adrian dragging him backwards. Ryland gritted his teeth, surging forward, clinging to the tether like it was his last hope. He didn’t even feel the scaffolding come loose.
Pain exploded in his back as he slammed into the hull, the collector slipping out of his hand and flying to God knows where. With the impact of the gravity and the wind resistance, he wouldn’t be surprised if he had multiple cracked ribs, and even some damage to his spine. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe, all of the warnings blaring in his helmet were overpowered by the blood rushing to his ears.
“What?” Ryland choked out, watching as Jody kept a hand covering her mouth, a tear slipping down the side of her face.
The doctor, an impeccably calm and polished woman, nodded. “Colt Seavers has needed to be resuscitated twice so far. With the damage to his spine, ribs, not to mention the organ and nerve damage, there is a very high chance that if he does survive, he could have severe health complications for the rest of his life, or be paralyzed entirely, or any other number of complications. So, Dr. Grace, we need to know how many more times we will have to resuscitate him before you decide to let him go.”
Rocky’s voice comes through the radio. “Grace? Grace status update?”
He can’t move, he can’t breathe, he’s going to die here. His ribs are shattered, poking into his lungs. One wrong move and they puncture. One wrong move and he’s dead. He is going to cause the extinction of two species because he can’t get up. He is going to be the reason his brother dies.
“Status update! Grace!” Rocky trills again. And Ryland breathes. I’m not dead yet.
“Grace, are you safe, question?” He asked as Ryland slowly pushed himself off the hull, an ache blossoming in his chest. Ribs? Cracked. Definitely. He groaned, starting to move around a bit more.
“I’m okay,” he wheezed, starting to crawl over to where he’d last seen the collector.
“Good, good, good,” Rocky sang. “Come inside with predator collector now.”
He leaned over the side of the hull, gripping the aluminum tightly as he watched the collector swing like a pendulum off the side. Ryland felt his heart drop into his stomach, wanting to slam his head against the side of the ship angrily. And if that wouldn’t immediately crack the helmet and cause him to explode, he probably would have done it.
Rocky noticed his hesitation. “Why not moving, question?”
Ryland stared at the collector, feeling the heat of the atmosphere start burning through his suit as another warning from the computer chimed in his helmet. A temperature warning, he was sure. And every moment he waited was a moment closer to him burning alive.
“Must move now! Go! Go!” The Eridian urged as Ryland stared up at the scaffolding that had slammed into him and was now pinning the tether into place. It was still trembling with the pressure of Adrian’s atmosphere, and he knew that if it moved, the collector would go with it. Rocky seemed to follow his thought process as he chimed again. “No, Grace. Bad idea. Come inside.”
What would Colt do? Ryland asked himself, clenching his fists as he murmured. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
“No. No. No. No. No. Grace will die! Can repeat mission! Can try again later!” Rocky argued, desperately trilling at him to stop.
And if there isn’t? He couldn’t help but worry, chewing on the inside of his cheek. They’d done the math. They had enough fuel to do this once and then get back to Blip A, and aborting this would mean that they would spend more time than Earth and Erid might have. Who knows if the Hail Mary would even be able to survive the trip again. He swallowed, hard. “I don’t think there is gonna be a later,” he announced.
Rocky ignored him. “Abort! Abort! Abort!” He shouted as Ryland leaned back, preparing to launch himself after the collector. “Grace will die! No, no, no, no, no, no!”
He’s falling. Free-falling. But instead of being able to see the ground quickly approach beneath him, he’s left with an obscured atmosphere. Even if Adrian has a proper surface, he’ll burn up in the atmosphere, scattered into a million tiny charred pieces of flesh like everyone inside that warehouse in Kazakhstan. And he’d doom the human race, and the Eridian race, while he was at it.
His arms wrapped around the collector, holding it tightly against him as he continued falling, but the groan of the ship rattled through him as the box was pulled down by Adrian’s gravity, pulling him and the collector back up onto the ship, but still pinning him in place. Ryland’s breath was coming out in short, quick bursts, his cracked ribs straining against the confines of his suit and the force of gravity pushing back on him.
He strained, reaching for the knife in his pocket, and clicking it open, the blade glinting with the reflection of the light on his helmet, and cut himself loose.
One hand wrapped tightly around the collector, and the other clung desperately to the edge of the ship, arm burning with the effort. Against his better judgment, he looked down, bile rising in his throat as he watched the box fall away into the unknowable distance as his legs dangled helplessly. He tried to close his eyes, tried to convince himself that he was going to be okay, that this wasn’t any different than what Colt would do.
Minus, of course, the harness, the wires, the medic on standby, the stunt crew that had checked the safety of the equipment a million times over. And the fact that he wasn’t Colt. Colt wasn’t here, and Colt was going to die if he couldn’t do this.
He took one deep, aching breath and hauled himself up to the airlock, throwing the collector inside as he clambered in. Rocky’s voice, clear and relieved, came through the radio. “Grace!”
Ryland shut the door, barely waiting the recommended time for the airlock to repressurize before he was wiggling out of the EVA suit, dropping the helmet on the floor as he ran through the ship. “I’m here,” he wheezed, the sharp ache in his chest dulling as the adrenaline began flowing through his system.
“Amaze, amaze, amaze!” Rocky trilled as he climbed back into the cockpit. “Grace okay, question?”
He groaned, his body protesting as he clipped the predator collector into one of the open seats. “Well,” he said, gritting his teeth, “I’m not dead, so yes.”
“Good, good, good, good, good!” Rocky responded, barely audible over the banging of the hull that was rattling the entire ship. Ryland continued fumbling with the buckle, nearly flinching a few times before he finally clipped himself into the pilot's seat.
He shut his eyes. I have the collector, we have the sample. Step three: get away from this godforsaken planet. Step four: Save Earth and Erid. Step five: Go home. He inhaled sharply. I’m coming home, Colt.
“Where is that noise coming from?” He asked, starting to flip some of the switches as he prepared to reactivate the spin drives.
“Noise is from all around! Is loudest on port side of bedroom!” Rocky answered and Ryland cursed, really cursed, under his breath.
“Gravity is tearing the ship apart,” he explained, either to himself or Rocky as he strapped himself into the pilot’s seat.
“We leave now, question?”
He grimaced. “We leave now, statement.”
They nodded at each other, and Ryland pulled back on the joystick, feeling the spin drives rumble to life underneath him as the ship pulled out of Adrian’s orbit. The computer flashed a few warnings on the screen, pressure warnings. Fudge.
“Fuel venting in big room below bedroom,” Rocky relayed.
“That’s the floor ducts,” he explained, narrowing his eyes as Rocky began to let out what he could only describe as panicked whimpers. “It’s not great.” He inhaled sharply. “Okay, okay okay. Everybody, calm down,” he said to both Rocky and himself. “Calm down!” He exhaled. “Try to keep yourself together, Mary.”
“Stop engine now?”
“Not yet. We need to get out of orbit or we’ll crash!”
“I have an idea,” Rocky began, and Ryland looked over at him. “First, no crash, then, not explode. Deal?” He asked, shooting him a thumbs down.
Ryland fought the delirious laugh that tried to escape as he returned the gesture with his own thumbs down. “Deal!” He felt a particularly large vibration race through the ship and continued pressing the joystick upwards. “Hold on.”
“Now?”
“Wait,” he scolded like Rocky was one of his students.
The Eridian ignored him. “Now? Now!”
He waited a moment longer, still unable to tell if his shaking was coming from his anxiety or the fact that the Hail Mary was concerningly close to vibrating itself apart. Ryland swallowed, “Now!” He shouted, pulling back against the joystick and flipping a few switches to cut the engine.
Ryland held his hands up, listening as the ship slowly fell silent. “Did we do it?” He breathed, looking over at Rocky with a cautiously optimistic grin as he watched Rocky float around his enclosure. The Eridian reached up, grabbing his equipment as Ryland watched one of his buckles fall flat.
What the fudge? He wondered.
He was slammed against the window.
Rocky’s ball rolled away from his enclosure, trapping him there as he nervously chittered. “Why ship moving, question?”
Ryland racked his brain, trying to run the calculations as the G-Forces kept him pinned to the side of the ship. His ribs were screaming as they began to dig into his lungs, turning each breath to agony. The realization washed over him, or rather slammed into him, like a tsunami off the coast that you barely had time to register before the tide pulled you under. He gasped. “There’s a hole in it!”
The computer confirmed his suspicions, flashing bright red warnings about hull breaches on the fuel tanks. The fuel tanks, Ryland realized. Oh fuck.
He tried pulling himself up towards the controls, prepared to jettison the tanks that the computer highlighted, only for the chair to slam him backwards once again. His body groaned with protest as black spots danced across his vision. Pushing the sense of pain out of his body, he climbed back up towards the controls as Rocky screeched. “What happening, question?”
Ryland reached over to one of the buttons, the screen clicking from data to an image of sparks flying out the side of the hull. He swallowed down the bile in his throat as he realized that it wasn’t just fire. “The fuel is-” he nearly dry heaved- “the fuel is migrating to Adrian!”
He reached up, holding tightly onto the rail overhead as he flipped a few more switches. Rocky continued trembling. “Eject bad fuel tank, question?” He asked as Ryland groaned out a response, the G-Forces tugging him even harder, making the aches that had been more dull than his ribs so much more apparent.
One of the screens flashed a red warning as the computer chimed. “Jettison fuel tank compartment twelve, confirmed!” Ryland reached out, all of the compounding injuries finally stabbing against him as he let out a pained scream, jettisoning the first one.
The force of the ejection sent him slamming back against the headrest, the centrifugal force multiplying exponentially. His ears rang with a high-pitched screech that could either have been Rocky or an onset of tinnitus. Ryland reached up, but the forces pushed against his aching arm, trying to pull it back down, make him submit to powers outside his control.
“No!” He growled, squeezing his eyes shut as his muscles continued burning. I am not dying. I am not dying here. I am not going to cause the death of two species. Ryland managed to hit the switch, and the chime of the computer was drowned out by one final thought. I am not going to let Colt die.
He let out another groan as he flicked the plastic cover open, straining as he heard Rocky collapse against the side of his xenonite. “Eject other fuel tank,” he urged as Ryland glanced up at the confirmation, and then pressed the button, feeling the ship jerk as fuel tank eleven went flying.
He was thrown back, and then his head slammed against the console. And with the sensation of a slight pinch at the base of his neck, he was gone.
When Ryland wakes up, Armando is hovering over him, and Rocky is nowhere to be found. He tries to call out for him, tries to speak, but there’s something lodged in his throat. Soon enough, one of Armando’s hands reaches, dragging the feeding tube-feeding tube?- out of his throat. He felt the familiar burn as he swallowed a few times, his voice hoarse as Mary’s voice chimed from above him.
“Cognition assessment,” she announced. “What is two plus two?”
Ryland let out a groan. Not this again.
“Incorrect!”
“Fudge off,” he moaned, slowly rolling over to his side. He was in the dormitory, but Rocky’s tunnels were nowhere to be found around any of the four-
He blinked. Four?! Four of us?
Ryland figured he must have said something aloud because Mary chimed with an approving, “Correct!” He paused, waiting for the additional questions, but the room was silent. Ryland stared at the other three bunks. His head spun with some sort of post-coma exhaustion and utter confusion as he stood up.
His stomach churned. There were three other bodies. There were three other crew members. Yao, Ilyukhina, and someone else. His leg bounced incessantly as he glanced up. “Mary,” he called. “I need the crew manifest.”
Mary, prompt as ever, responded. “Dr. Ryland Grace. End of manifest.”
“That’s not what I-” he muttered, burying his face in his hands. He felt a sense of dread prickle over his skin as he looked back at the three other bodies. The three other corpses. Yao. Ilyukhina. And someone else. Someone else who was not supposed to be here.
He forced himself to stand up, nearly lurching forward as he made his way to Yao’s bunk. His hands trembled as he pulled back the white sheet covering him, looking away as soon as he revealed the Commander’s pale, nearly skeletal face. He had died before Ilyukhina and had been practically half decomposed when Ryland decided to lay them both to rest in the vacuum of space.
Ilyukhina’s body would probably be the same way, and despite his better judgment, he stumbled over, bracing himself against the side of the cot. He pulled back the sheet, forcing down the bile in his throat as he saw her pale face, thankfully more intact than Yao’s. Ryland shook his head, muttering something under his breath as he covered her once again and stared at the last bed.
DuBois? Shapiro? He wondered, chewing on the inside of his cheek. He nearly let out a snort at the next name his brain supplied: Stratt? Ryland tapped his foot nervously on the ground, crossing his arms over his chest, running down a list of other scientists he’d worked with both on and off Stratt’s Vat. None of them remotely made sense. Stratt had been clear. A three-man team (emphasis on the man, she’d made a comment on how her preferred team had been three, heterosexual men when Ilyukhina was selected), the fourth- the fourth was impossible.
“Mary,” he called again. “I need the names of all of the deceased crew members.”
He was given no response.
Ryland slowly sat, head in his hands, trying to rack his brain for any other possible personnel that could be in the cot. Some shockingly murderous part of him that he hadn’t known existed until that very moment really wanted it to be Stratt. He had no idea why. She hadn’t done anything to warrant dying in space, aside from nuking Antarctica, paving over the Sahara Desert, letting a man out of a high security prison, having the US Army march against the Supreme Court-
He blinked. Well, he reasoned, all she did to me was stick me on a boat and drag me around the world. No cause for murder.
Besides, as far as he was concerned, he was her number two. And if he was here, she definitely would’ve needed to stay behind to implement whatever solution they would be sending back. So it wasn’t Stratt.
It probably wasn’t DuBois or Shapiro either.
He dragged a hand down his face, feeling dread pool in his stomach. “Mary?” He asked one last time, but to no avail. The room seemed to go cold, like this dormitory had just become a morgue. Which, he supposed, it sort of was.
Ryland stood up, legs shaking uncontrollably as he walked over to see the name displayed on the screen. Seavers, C.
“No,” he whispered, stumbling backwards. “No. No.”
He stared at the nameplate. Seavers. Colt. Ryland’s eyes began to sting as he looked down at the red, angry lettering beneath his twin brother’s name. Deceased.
“Nononononono. No!” He yelped, ripping off the sheet covering his brother, seeing Colt’s pale, lifeless body lying there like a corpse. “Colt,” Ryland whispered, tears burning as they began to trickle down his cheeks. He shook his brother’s shoulders. “Colt! Colt, come on! Wake up!”
He fell back limply as Ryland’s breath came out in short bursts. “Colt! Colt, wake up!” He shouted, wiping at his eyes. “Wake up, come on! You’re not-” he sobbed- “Colt, wake up, please! You’ve- you’ve gotta wake up, come on!”
Through a vision blurred with tears, he interlaced his fingers, and a cold realization settled into his bones. He’s done something like this before. The memory is hazy, clouded, but he can place it as he rests his hands over Colt’s sternum, trying to use his remaining brain cells to call up a song with a tempo of one hundred beats per minute, like he was taught.
It was after the accident. He’d driven down to Colt’s apartment after Jody had texted him a simple “I’m done.” and let all of his subsequent calls go to voicemail. Something had happened, they’d- they’d broken up. Colt had broken up with her. He’d basically driven all the way there with his gas pedal pressed firmly to the floor.
He’d nearly broken down the door when Colt didn’t answer, and by the time he got inside, his twin brother was unconscious on the floor. A small orange pill bottle was mere inches away from his fingers, and Ryland had screamed, just like he was doing now.
“COLT!” He wailed desperately, hands punching against his ribs with each compression. “Come on, Colt, please! Wake up, wake up, wake up, WAKE UP!” He buried his face against his twin brother’s chest, hands clinging to the worn, familiar leather of his jacket. “Don’t-” he sniffled- “Don’t leave me, Colt. You- you said you wouldn’t leave. You- you promised.”
Ryland let out a few more broken sobs and whimpers, wishing that by some miracle he could feel his brother’s hand ruffling his hair like he always did when they were kids. He tries to force himself to look up at Colt’s peaceful, sleeping, lifeless face, but his eyes are so filled with tears that the world is hardly more than blurred shapes and desaturated colors. He swallowed, burying his face back in his big brother’s chest.
“I’m- I’m coming home, Colt,” he whispered hoarsely. “I’m coming home, and you need- you need to be there when I get back.” He wiped his tears on Colt’s shirt. “You’ve gotta wake up, Colt, please. I’m- I’m coming back and I need- I need you to be there when I get back so you’ve gotta wake up.” Ryland sobbed. “Please.”
“Eye movement detected,” Mary chimes from above him. His eyes fluttered open, and he was back in the med bay. “Good morning, Dr. Grace.”
Armando whirred above him, removing the oxygen mask from his face and gently pulling the IV tubes out of skin. Ryland kicked his legs over the side of the platform, sitting up as his muscles protested. He stared out at the xenonite enclosure, raising a confused eyebrow as he rubbed the back of his neck, trying to piece together what had happened.
Adrian’s gravity had ripped a hole in the ship. The fuel had started to migrate to Adrian, sending the ship spinning out of control. Rocky had urged him to eject fuel tanks eleven and twelve and then-
Rocky.
Ryland stood up with a groan, his throat running dry as he saw the trail of some metallic substance. Xenonite. He sucked in a breath, wrapping his quilt over his shoulders as he walked through the halls of the ship, his footsteps echoing like gunshots inside his head. He reached out, using the rungs of the ladder to steady himself as he made his way down the hall, ignoring the cold sweat running down his spine.
He’s fine. He’s fine. He’s going to be fine, he repeated inside his head, feeling a pang of nausea rumble through his stomach as he remembered what had happened to Colt the last time he’d thought that. Another shudder ran down his spine as his brain unhelpfully replayed the events of the nightmare.
A nightmare, he reasoned. That’s all it is. I’m stressed. I had something traumatic happen to me, and I had a nightmare. But the feeling didn’t go away. It stayed at the back of his mind, gnawing at the bars of some locked-away memory that Ryland isn’t sure he wants to remember.
The end of the hall is dark, and it sends a jolt of panic through his chest as he watches the trail continue into the darkness. With a sharp inhale, he flicks the light on, watching as Rocky’s xenonite enclosure, warped and mangled, comes into view, with the Eridian curled up by the corner.
He’s dead. His brain announced, and he nearly collapsed under the weight of the thought.
Even worse, he couldn’t tell if the “he” his brain was referring to was Rocky, curled up in his enclosure. Or Colt.
When he sees a small twitch in one of Rocky’s legs, he finally collapses, pressing his forehead to the cool metal of the flooring. His body trembled with each breath as he tried to stop his brain from spinning out about the second option. The realization settles cold in his chest as he hears a familiar voice echo through his skull.
“You do not have a twin brother.”
“Yes, I do!” Ryland protested. “His name is Colt Seavers and he’s-”
“Colt Seavers is dead.”
A broken noise, somewhere between a wail, a scream, and a name, escaped Ryland’s throat. He clenched his fists, nails digging sharply into his palms as he slammed them against the floor, sending a shudder throughout the ship. He heard a rumbling, looking up to see Rocky’s legs scratching against the floor. Ryland nearly lunged forward, pressing his face against the xenonite as a tear ran down the side of it.
Rocky made a small whine, shifting his carapace to look up at him as he grimaced. Relief crashed against him, blocked by the dam of grief building inside his heart. He rested his forehead against the xenonite, letting out another sob. “I’ll- I’ll watch you sleep, pal,” he murmured, keeping his hand pressed against the enclosure. “But you-” he squeezed his eyes shut, tears pricking at the edges- “you gotta wake up, okay?” He tapped the glass three times.
On still trembling legs, he stood up, walking a few paces towards the half-destroyed laptop, and read the message left on the translation software’s window. His heart dropped into his stomach as he once again fell to his knees, the room spinning around him.
Save Earth. Save Erid.
Ryland buried his face in his hands. And then I go home. He let out another broken sob.
Eventually, he gathered himself enough to hobble back to the dormitory, staring at the two empty beds as he wrapped himself tightly in his quilt. It had a twin back on earth, both of them made by a doting grandmother for her two new grandsons. She was gone. His parents were gone. His twin brother-
“Colt,” he whispered at the ceiling, the salt from his tears stinging in his open cuts. “I- I don’t know if you can hear me or if you can do anything but I-” he sniffled- “I’m sorry I- I forgot. I feel- I feel like such an asshole.” He tucked his head in between his knees. “I- I keep thinking about what Yao said. About having someone to be brave for. And I- I kept thinking of you because of- because of how much you did for me when we were kids and I- I wanted to pay you back for it.”
His hands threaded through his hair. “And obviously, I mean like- this is bigger than me. It’s humanity and Eridians, but I- I keep thinking about how I’m gonna come home, and I’m- I’m gonna have nothing left. I almost want to tell Rocky to keep his astrophage. Get back to Adrian on time. The beetles will be fine. I wasn’t- I wasn’t meant to come home anyway.”
Ryland let out a shaky exhale as he looked back up at the ceiling, wiping at his eyes. “Did-” his voice was hoarse and weak- “did we at least get to say goodbye?”
He shut his eyes, head tilting back to rest against one of the walls as the electronics and life support systems continued humming, filling the silence. His hands tightened around the quilt, his mind wandering to where Colt’s was. If it had been sold off in some estate sale, or if someone Colt had been friends with, like Dan, maybe, had it. Or if Jody had it.
He doubted it, but something in him wanted to hope that they’d patched it up in the short time that they would’ve been together before- before he was sent to space with no twin waiting for him to come home.
Ryland squeezed his eyes shut, pushing the thought out of his mind as he stood up. He took a breath, recentering. Save Earth. Save Erid.
He didn’t let himself finish the rest of the steps.
“Well,” he sighed, clapping his hands together as one final tear slipped down the side of his face. “Let’s get to work.”