Archive of Our Own

Ryland Grace was 27 when his twin brother died.

Eva knew this, of course; she made a point of never associating with unknowns. She had copies of his transcripts, major publications, and CV in hand before the ArcLight probe returned to Earth. She knew about the speeding ticket he got while driving his ex-girlfriend’s car, and the two-week academic suspension from his undergraduate days. She had even seen the reviews on ratemyproffessors.com, both from before and during the “staggering waste of carbon” incident.

All that to say, Eva Stratt knew everything there was to know about Ryland Grace. Of course she knew about the brother.

It had been a much easier detail to track down than most in Ryland’s life. Colton Grace had, after all, spent a great deal more time in the public eye than his academic brother. There wasn’t much for her to investigate, in the end—a respectable number of stunt credits, a few uncredited background roles, and then the headlines: “Stuntman Colt Seavers Suffers Catastrophic Spinal Injury on Set;” “Death Dive Spells End of Stunt Career;” “Production Halted on Tom Ryder Film.”

The articles didn’t confirm his death, of course. Eva knew how far studios went to keep that kind of bad press out of the news. The fact of the matter was that Colton Grace had broken his spine, then disappeared off the face of the Earth. Only two weeks later, Ryland had torched his reputation and academic career in one of the most public outbursts ever seen in the field of molecular biology. Eva Stratt knew what the loss of a sibling did to a person. It wasn’t hard to connect the dots.

Eva found Ryland to be predictable, in many ways. This was not a flaw in Ryland’s character, of course; most people were predictable. Her ability to anticipate the actions and emotions of those around her was, in part, the reason she had been placed at the head of the Hail Mary project. It was how she had known to leave three Astrophage cells in Ryland’s lab before he ever agreed to stay on. It was how she had avoided arrest thus far, and how she would survive after the project dissolved. To Eva Stratt, the world and everyone in it was an open book.

Ryland Grace was no exception to this rule, but he was something of an enigma. He wore his heart on his sleeve. He never required those around him to guess at his mood—if Ryland was having a good day, the whole team knew about it. If he was upset, he was incapable of keeping his discouragement to himself (much to Eva’s chagrin; a moping Ryland practically guaranteed a bad day of training for the crew, even if Ryland himself was not scheduled to work with them.) If his behaviour at the UNESCO conference was anything to go by, this was even true of his more violent emotions, and Eva quietly made sure to avoid pairing him with anyone who might trigger a similar reaction. If Eva was the brains of the project, then Ryland was the heart, and everyone knew it.

This was what she could not understand. Ryland had once arrived a full hour late to a briefing, eyes red and cheeks wet after his lab partner had received word that his infant daughter had died during his absence. How could it be that this same man had never mourned his brother in her presence or, for that matter, in the presence of anyone else on the project? Surely, if at any point Ryland had broken down over (or even talked about) his brother’s death, it would have made it back to her. The discrepancy was ridiculous: Ryland would, apparently, mourn everyone’s loss except his own.

It was possible, of course, that Ryland had not been close with his brother. It would take a special kind of estrangement, Eva thought, to render Ryland so ambivalent, but the world was facing an alien apocalypse. Stranger things had happened. Yet there was also a tiny part of her that had wondered—had hoped, perhaps—that in this they might share something more than their common mission. Grief was always a bit of a difficult subject for Eva. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand it—as some of the team theorized, she knew—it was that she simply did not have time for it. What she did was not emotional suppression, exactly. Eva had learned at an early age that emotion clouded her judgement, and had discovered that by separating her self from both her emotions and her rationality, she could appreciate both without being ruled by either. She felt all the grief and guilt of her actions, but those experiences were entirely separate from her conviction that the project must proceed at all and any cost. Was it possible that this ability, too, was something that she and Ryland had in common? And yet to investigate this question would spell disaster for the careful distance she had painstakingly curated between herself and the team. There were times, when morale grew dangerously low, that the team needed her to become more human—and Ryland, her canary in her coal mine, would alert her when such a thing was necessary—but she drew a line between showing her humanity and showing weakness. The team needed a leader, not a friend. They expected her to do whatever it would take to save Earth. She could not force upon anyone else the weight of her position. She could not show weakness. For their sakes, she had become ruthless.

So Eva watched Ryland from afar. She never asked about Colton, never investigated his death or Ryland’s reaction to it. She spared no sympathy for him because he requested none of her, and because they both would have enough mourning to do before long. Earth needed a leader—an executioner, soon—and eventually a scapegoat. She could not afford any other considerations.

Thus it was that, on the day Annie Shapiro and Martin Dubois died, she did not hesitate.

---

“Okay, but… who?”

He already knew. Eva didn’t even have to say it. So much time spent together over the past months, and Ryland knew just from the look in her eyes. She wished she could bring herself to feel regret.

Ryland straightened. Eva read in his eyes comprehension—disbelief, suddenly, then disappointment and finally incredulity.

“I’m not an astronaut,” said Ryland, softly, only to her.

“I don’t need an astronaut,” she said. “I need an expert in Astrophage who’s mission-ready.”

“I’m—” Ryland faltered. “—Not ready.”

He was right. She had not given him enough time.

Ryland started speaking again, but Eva couldn’t hear the words. He grew more animated, bringing his open palms violently down to the table to emphasize whatever it was he was saying. She watched him, as she always had, from a distance—but this time was different. It was as if the room expanded around her, shrinking Grace until he was no larger than an image on a screen. These little sensory hallucinations had been part of her life since childhood, normally something that came and went without warning, but rarely were they accompanied by other symptoms. Not so today, it seemed. She swayed, suddenly, as if the distance between her and the floor had increased too. She sat down.

His voice was growing louder, panic evident now. She grasped for the words, fighting to escape the hallucination and return to the conversation.

“I cannot do this.” At last his voice broke through.

Even now, she spoke with absolute confidence. “You’re smart. You’ll figure it out.”

Grace stared at her. The silence, too, stretched out of proportion.

Then he spoke again, gesturing wildly with his hands. Eva ignored how they shook. “This might be very hard for you to understand, but some people are failures. Some people don’t rise to the challenge.”

Eva did not have to fight to keep her voice even. “You are not a failure. You are our only hope. You think I kept you on the project for so long because I needed a junior high schoolteacher around?”

He sat stunned for a moment. Ilyukhina’s mouth dropped open, and even Yao stared at her in shock.

She continued. “Grace, you are prepared for this. You’ve been present for every major scientific or strategic meeting we’ve had on the mission.”

“You’re missing out on an important part of the mission, which is the suicide part.” Grace held her gaze, pleading now.

Ilyukhina interjected. “Grace, you’d be in very cool company.”

Yao glared at her. “I will not have him on my crew against his will.”

Eva spoke again. “If you don’t go, you’ll die anyway.”

“Yeah, but I die in—” he cast about for the right words. “Thirty years, with—”

“With the rest of us.”

And that was the truth. Either Grace would stay, and die of starvation, exposure, or worse—or he would go, and live the rest of his life in the meagre comfort humanity could still afford to spare. It would not be a long life, but it would be a comfortable one. Eva could guarantee the Hail Mary crew one luxury that would soon be unavailable on Earth: she could guarantee that they would die on their own terms.

So she continued. “You have no immediate family. You don’t even have a dog.”

That got a reaction from him. His gaze snapped away from hers, then back, an unfamiliar expression now plastered on his face.

“So—” And from the strain in his voice Eva thought the expression might be anger. Grace continued: “just so I’m clear, you’re asking me—right now—to give up my life.”

“I am. We all are.”

“Can I think about this?” He asked.

“You have three hours.” Eva stood, but she knew already, had known from the start of the conversation, that three hours would not be enough. Yao and Ilyukhina would die to suicide, but Eva Stratt would spend the next three hours planning a murder.

---

Eva knew Grace would not return to his trailer during the three hours, because she knew everything there was to know about him. It was too flooded with work for the project, too far-removed from the world he so desperately wished to cling to. Grace would be where he always was when working through a difficult problem: outside, wandering the grounds, or perhaps haunting the roof. He would not return to pack his few personal effects, because although he would spend the next three hours desperately trying to convince himself to accept the mission, he would not succeed. She would not send anyone after him. After all, he would never get another chance to breath fresh air.

When she stood to leave the meeting room, she glanced at Grace’s security guard. He followed her without question. Grace remained, staring vacantly at the table.

Once the doors to the conference room closed, and the security guard had fallen into step beside her, she began.

“You have something to say?” She asked.

For a moment he met her gaze, and Eva thought she caught a glimpse of reproach.

“No.”

They walked, briskly, silently, down the hallway toward her office. She paused for a moment to key them through the door, then took a seat at her desk. She allowed a moment to collect herself.

Then she began. “Stevens, you have six men in your team, this is correct?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“In two and a half hours, I need four men stationed outside the north entrance. Two at the door to my office. Have a medic briefed and stationed at my door with them.”

“And where do you want me?”

“Outside,” she said. “I think he will want you near, when they collect him.”

Stevens nodded once.

“Once the operation is complete, please escort him to the holding location,” continued Eva. “I would like you to handle security up until the launch. Please alert me if you need any additional personnel or support to manage this assignment.”

Stevens stood impassive. “Permission to speak freely, ma’am?”

“No. Dismissed.”

Stevens held her gaze for a moment too long. He nodded once more, then turned and exited the room. Eva fell back in her chair and closed her eyes. Even now, against his will, Grace would force her to take the straightforward way out. He was the one who had convinced her to simplify the candidate selection process by considering both men and women. He had confirmed her instinct to induce comas. And now, instead of agreeing to the assignment or asking for more time to consider, he would force her kidnap him. All he needed, she reminded herself, was time to come to terms with it. Time was all he would have on the coming journey.

Time, and a small bag of personal belongings that he would not be able to pack.

The matter of his gear was already arranged. The equipment had been manufactured along with the rest of the rest of the team’s, although none knew what the extra suits were for. When she released the statement on the explosion and the personnel change, she would alert LMD to the new plan. With the impending apocalypse threat, she didn’t think anyone would think to question the timeline—but if they did, she would release an additional statement on Grace’s role as the tertiary science specialist. Grace certainly wouldn’t be able to challenge the claim.

Grace’s PPK was somewhat more complicated. Without close friends or family, with Grace himself unconscious for the next few days, and with the actual circumstances of his departure kept secret, there was no one to identify or pack the items that ought to be included. She could send someone, she knew, but even disregarding the security concerns she found she couldn’t bear the thought of a stranger choosing what would be, essentially, Grace’s grave goods.

She glanced at the clock on her desk. Two hours until the deadline. She stood and began the walk to Grace’s trailer.

---

The trailer was well-lit—he never remembered to close the curtains—so muted daylight illuminated the mess inside. Most of the clutter was paperwork, organized in messy stacks that only Grace knew how to navigate. The trailer had been meant only for an office, but as the months progressed, Grace had spent more and more time engrossed in his work until the ancient couch in the trailer had become more of a bed than his own bunk.

Coffee cups littered the desk, shelves, and even the floor. Laundry, both clean and dirty, was strewn about as well. She surveyed the room, looking for a likely starting point. She saw a bulletin board hanging over the couch, a little too out-of-the-way to be of much use for work, although she did see some mission documents pinned haphazardly up. She walked toward it, stepping over a box of sour skittles, and peeled back the top layer of Hail Mary briefings to see if he had put up anything personal.

He had. Underneath the paperwork was a world of colour and crayon. These were children’s drawings, clearly. She remembered the stir they had caused; she had been hesitant to allow Grace to receive mail, but he had insisted. “My kids will literally kill me when I get back,” he had said, “if they are not allowed to send me letters. I promised.” So Eva had made it happen. She had not released the mailing address of the carrier, or of the launch facility, obviously, but there were ways around such things. She had drawn the line at return mail, however. Grace had not been allowed to respond.

She had not realized that so many letters had come in. Probably Grace’s students had passed the word along to their friends, since some of the drawings were clearly penned by children too young to have been in Grace’s class. She should have expected that Grace would keep all of them. Ridiculous as it was to send so much paper, she knew it was her only option. She was taking his life; it would be cruel to take these as well.

So she took them down, stacking them neatly on the couch. At least they would not exceed the weight limit. Once she removed the drawings and notes, she glimpsed a smear of colour under the top layer of briefings. These she finally tore down—the mission would launch in three days, so she doubted they were much use anymore, except as evidence at her trial—to expose the last thing on the board. It was a polaroid, wedged into the frame of the board rather than pinned up. It had been entirely covered, possibly not a dear possession, so she considered leaving it behind for a moment—but she pulled it from the frame for a closer look.

The picture showed Grace, staring groggily at the viewer. It looked like he was standing in a warehouse, not unlike the one in which they had set up the labs—but this seemed artificial somehow, too empty or too clean. In the background she made out what might be a camera, and some sort of sound equipment. Her forehead creased. When had Grace had time to visit a film set? She brought the polaroid closer to her face, searching for an indication of when it had been taken. Grace’s facial hair was longer here. His glasses were hung neatly from the neck of his sweater, not dangling at an odd angle from his chin, or perched on his—what? Here was a mystery. The man in the photo was identical to Grace in every respect, save one: his nose was crooked, like it had been broken and healed badly.

Eva was very familiar with Grace’s face. She saw it every day. She particularly saw his nose every day, unobscured by the glasses he daily failed to wear correctly. Eva knew for an absolute fact that Grace’s nose was not, and had never been, broken.

What?

The realization caught her in the stomach. This must be Colton. The mysterious dead twin brother, the stunt man, about whom Grace never spoke, who was apparently loved enough to be placed among Grace’s students. The photo had been buried under other papers, certainly, but the placement struck her even so. It meant that Grace had put the photo up first. It meant that, judging from how long it had taken her to get his mail sorted out, the photo would have been the only thing on the board for some time. Grace, who felt emotion more strongly than anyone else on the project, who had never mourned his brother’s death, had put a photo of Colton above his bed.

“So did he love you or no?’

The photo did not answer.

Eva included the photo in the PPK. She also included the drawings, and the little knitted beanbag that she had examined at their first meeting. A token of the world he was saving. Grace could not stay on Earth, but he deserved to keep it with him. She also gathered up the graphic T-shirts scattered over the floor—in lieu of actually allowing Grace to pick his wardrobe, she figured his most recent laundry would do. She left them piled on the couch next to the papers. When she called for pickup in a few hours, she would ask them to do his laundry. No one would bat an eye—skiving off laundry duty to save the world was the most on-brand thing Grace could do.

She made it back with an hour to spare.

---

When Grace entered her office, his eyes were red.

“I can’t do it.” He spoke in a broken voice, shaking his head. His expression was painful when he dropped her gaze. When he looked back at her, his eyes were pleading, brow furrowed as he cast about for something else to say. The silence stretched. Finally, he spoke again. “I can’t do it.”

This time Eva looked away.

“You’ll find a solution.” He chuckled wetly.

“You are my solution,” she said, but he knew that already. She didn’t think he believed it, but surely he knew.

“My place is in the classroom—”

“Dr. Grace, you are a coward and you are full of shit. Stop pretending this is about your students. It’s so insulting.” This was the final play, the last opportunity to avoid the next sequence of events. “Grace, we will lose—” she could barely get the words out. “A quarter of the world’s population. In the next thirty years. And that assumes that the nations of the world work together to ration food. Which they won’t.”

He flinched.

So she twisted the knife. “So I double the estimate. And if you would truly care about the children or anyone else for that matter, you’d get on that ship.”

“I understand the stakes. I do—but I don’t have it in me. I can’t leave, not before I—” a shudder cut him off. He began again. “My mind is made up. I’m sorry. But—you just can’t talk me into it.” Through his ragged breathing, Eva made out one more word: “Sorry.”

And he was right. She had counted on it, had spent months planning for it. She had three men at her door and five more outside to ensure it. Talking him into it had never been the plan. A fleeting hope, perhaps, that just this once she could be wrong, but never the plan.

“I’m not trying to talk you into anything. I am—trying—to make you understand—” please. This is the only option left— “what I am about to do next. Please, stay calm.” She turned to the door. “Come in.”

His expression would haunt her until the day she died.

He spoke again, but she couldn’t make it out through the ringing in her ears, so she interrupted. “Mission plan will say that we induced your coma early to maximize your safety. You will be remembered as a hero.”

He was in shock. Perhaps if he just stayed still, they could avoid a scene.

“Come on—this is crazy—”

She could not let him speak. “I have to do it.”

“You’re not—come on!” He stood, coiled like a wild animal about to flee. “What are you doing?!”

“This may seem like me betraying you, but it’s actually—” She found it difficult to summon the words— “me believing in you.”

He let out what might have been a sob. “Sure feels like you betraying me.”

“Don’t make this harder. Please.”

“You’re murdering me!”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“I won’t do it!” He choked out the words. “I’ll sabotage the mission!”

And this was the worst possibility. That even now, in her final bid to save Earth, she had destroyed it by destroying its last line of defence—by breaking the last good man they had left.

He ran. Security stood between him and the door, but Grace was nothing if not innovative.

When Eva was young, her father had taken her on a foxhunt. It had seemed so exciting, at first—she had been enraptured by the concept, even through the hours of preparation as they readied equipment and prepared the dogs. Her father had warned her that they would leave early, before the sun even rose, but despite her early bedtime she had been unable to sleep. The excitement of the event, horses and men and dogs, was too much to bear. So when her father came to wake her, he found her already up and dressed. The next few hours were better than she could have imagined: the horns and shouting and baying of dogs fulfilled every elated fantasy, every heightened expectation. She could barely remember the moment the dogs caught the scent, she was so overcome with excitement—but she would never forget the moment she saw the fox. Eva had known that the fox would be killed, of course. It was a fox hunt; death was the objective. Yet she had not been prepared for its high-pitched keening, the way its ears laid back on its skull, the teeth bared or the jaw open and hissing. She was not prepared when it screamed. It all moved too quickly, then. Dogs and teeth and screaming. One untrained hound got loose from its handler and sunk its teeth into the fox’s neck—her father would be angry about this later, would promise to take her on a better hunt, though she would decline—and the blood sent the rest of the pack into a frenzy. Howls, as the fox snapped and clawed to free itself. Screams, as it failed. Blood in the grass.

Now, as she stood in her office and Grace threw himself at the security detail, all she heard was the fox. For the very first, and the very last time, Eva Stratt lost her nerve. Words clawed from her throat unbidden. “Sit down and we do it differently—” Let me try again.

And then Grace was gone.

No choice now. She walked to the window, Stevens already on the phone. “Yeah, he’s running.” She left the office, heading for the exit.

Grace did not make it far. She had prepared too well for that. Stevens’ men were after him even as he exited the building. She watched him go down near the edge of the compound, tackled from the side. They pinned him to the ground by his neck.

She was still many metres away when Stevens made it to Grace’s body, but she heard Grace’s screams just as well—a garbled mix of "No! Don’t do it!" And what might have been "Carl!" but the exact words were difficult to make out. He was clutching something in his hand, knuckles white, but she was still too far away to tell what it was.

Stevens stood over him, said something unintelligible. She came up to the group just as the medic knelt over him, just as he brought needle to flesh. Grace thrashed and his skin tore as the medic brought the plunger down. Blood in the grass.

Stevens knelt, pried the object—a phone?—from Grace’s hand. She looked over his shoulder. The phone was open to a call screen, not an active call but a voicemail. Whomever Grace had called had not picked up, but the voicemail was still recording.

She held out her hand for the phone. “Stevens.” She saw the contact information, just one name, on the screen: Colt.

“Ms. Stratt.”

But he did not surrender it. Instead he pressed a button and ended the call.

She was so caught up on the name still displayed on the screen that the insubordination hardly registered. She couldn’t imagine what this meant. She knew Grace was sentimental—perhaps even now he had his brother’s old number saved? “Stevens. We do not know who may receive that message. You could put the entire mission in jeopardy.”

“Respectfully, ma’am, nothing could stop the launch now.” Stevens handed her the phone.

---

She did not watch them carry Grace’s body to the holding cell.

---

Eva worked all evening, all night, and into the morning. She had LMD collect Grace’s belongings and pack them for launch. She scheduled a 9:00 AM briefing for Yao and Ilyukhina, where she explained that Grace had agreed to join the mission after a period of deliberation. She explained his request to be sedated during launch. Yao remarked on Grace’s wisdom—after all, the launch would doubtless be difficult for someone without training. She dismissed them to their next appointment, an impromptu session to ensure they would know how to launch the coma sequence while Grace was unconscious.

Eva had a half hour before the news would be released to the press, and she took that time to oversee the loading of the team’s personal effects. A tech brought her to see them, three orange duffel bags sitting alone on a steel table. Two were adorned with embroidered patches, Yao and Ilyukhina’s names in both English and their native languages. The third—the third had only one word on its tag: DuBois.

She turned to the tech. “This contains Dr. Grace’s belongings, yes?”

He nodded.

She pointed to the tag. “Then who is responsible for this, please?”

He flinched, startled by the venom in her tone. “I’m sorry, we did not have a name tag prepared for Dr. Grace. It has not been top pri—”

“Pen and paper. Now.”

The tech scrabbled at his pocket, pulling out a sharpie. He glanced around: “I’m sorry, I don’t have a piece of—”

She seized at a shrink-wrapped component on another table. She didn’t recognize it, but it didn’t look irreplaceable. She tore at the plastic and pulled out the cardstock backing of the package.

“Director—!” The tech stared at her in shock.

“Replace it. Pen?”

He handed it to her, baffled, and she brought it to the paper. Hail Mary, full of—

When she was done, she slipped the name tag into the plastic sleeve atop the duffel. She handed the tech DuBois’ name tag. “See that his family receives this. Now where is the life support equipment?”

Wordlessly, the tech took the tag and gestured behind him to another table. Two others were loading orange fabric into a crate. Two identical sealed crates stood beside. She walked over. “This is for Grace’s bunk, yes?”

The woman nodded. “Yes, Director.”

She touched the fabric. It looked like a canvas sleeping bag. She hesitated for a moment, then pressed a corner of the fabric to the table and wrote: Good luck!

He was going to need it.

---

The day before the launch was a strange one. It was the first full day in what felt like lifetimes that she did not see Grace, conscious or otherwise. The Hail Mary was assembled, and now waited only for her crew and their personal belongings to begin her long interstellar journey. The project was nearly over.

The announcement of Grace’s addition to the crew had been taken well. It was met with excitement, sorrow, anger—all typical reactions—but not suspicion, as part of her had feared. A handful of NDAs had gone out to those who had seen Grace running, although none had actually witnessed him tackled or drugged. This was a relief; it would be cleaner this way. She had received confirmation that the on-board medical system was programmed to inject the memory drug into Grace’s system when the ship neared Tau Ceti (and no one else’s, they assured her.)

The day dragged on, a never-ending carousel of last-minute meetings and signatures and unfounded concerns. Eva was not left alone until well into the night, until she had passed through exhaustion and into the strange half-life that lay beyond. She would not be able to sleep now even if she tried. She might not be able to sleep for a long time yet.

She opened her laptop, searching through notifications for a manageable task. Nothing was terribly high priority—every major communication was already taken care of for tomorrow’s launch. She found herself glancing through news articles instead. Eons ago, she had set up alerts so that if ever one of the candidates’ names was mentioned in the news, the article would be sent to her. It had been instrumental in the crew selection process, given her immediate notice if any new information came available to recommend or discredit one of her candidates. Once the crew had been selected, she had suspended the alert systems, since once the crew and backups were announced her inbox had been flooded with articles about the mission.

Apparently she had missed a few. There wasn’t much to see—apparently one of the early candidates for science specialist had been arrested for drug possession. Another had synthesized a new enzyme. None of this was really relevant anymore. She sighed, and moved to exit the tab. A moment before closing the window, however, a different headline caught her eye: “Explosion in Sydney Harbour.”

Curiosity got the better of her. The article had been published only that afternoon, but she didn’t see how it could be connected to one of the specialists. She didn’t recall any standout Australian candidates, although she supposed there must have been some, so she clicked the link to investigate.

She was greeted by a photo of a smouldering dock over dark water. In the background, the Sydney Opera House glowed serenely, but the foreground told a more violent tale. Burning wreckage scattered the water around the dock, and the remaining infrastructure indicated that it had once held fuel storage tanks. Police lights glinted on the surface of the water. Clearly, this was the site of some awful collision. She scrolled to the body of the article.

“Police are investigating an explosion on Sydney Harbour outside of the opera house, where it appears a boat has collided with the harbour’s fuel storage facility. Police have received reports that this event is no accident, but rather the alleged suicide of Colton Grace, known professionally by his stage name, “Colt Seavers.” Seavers' status has been unknown for nearly three years, following his accident on the set of ActionPact III. Although some presumed him dead following the accident, …”

This couldn’t be.

She had assumed that the brother had died. Not investigated, not researched, assumed. Based on nothing more than a few headlines and misplaced psychology. Eva Stratt did not make mistakes, they had said. She did not make stupid assumptions. That was why they had selected her to lead the mission.

They had been wrong.

You don’t even have a dog, she had said.

She remembered his anger—not loud, but deep. Resentful. She had reminded him not, as she had thought, that he did not have immediate family any more, but rather that his only family had cut him off. She had thrown that closed door in his face.

But no, it was worse than that, wasn’t it? She thought back over the past two days, reframing the events in light of this new development. Grace’s silent anger when she told him he didn’t have a family. The polaroid over his bed. And then later, in her office, "I can’t leave, not before I—." Not before what?

And now a much uglier picture was emerging. She forced herself to return to the article.

“Gail Meyer, friend and associate of Seavers, had this to say: ‘well, something’s been wrong ever since the accident. We thought he was dead for over a year. I mean, who does that? And then to sabotage the new film…’”

Clearly there had been a massive communication breakdown after the accident. He had been presumed dead, perhaps not officially but at least by his friends. But Grace had known he was alive, apparently. Alive but noncommunicative. Estranged. And it had broken Grace; his fall from academia told the story better than any article could have.

But—and this was the missing piece, the reason for his strange absence of grief—the estrangement wasn’t settled, as she had first thought. Grace hadn’t accepted it. "Not before I see him again," maybe? Perhaps he had already re-established communication.

But then she had taken him, conscripted him to the project without warning, without even a chance to change his clothes. She had monitored his calls, kept him working day and night. Not allowed him to send mail.

He would have died in thirty years, with plenty of time to repair his relationship with his brother.

But now Colton was dead.

Oh, God, Ryland had tried to call him. He had re-established communication. It wasn’t a dead number, saved out of sentimentality. It was Colton’s number. And the name he had called out, “C—!” There in the grass he had screamed out not for Stevens, as she had thought; he had called for his brother.

Eva shut the laptop with a snap. She stood sharply, sending the office chair careening violently into the wall. It was not too late; Grace’s coma had not yet been induced. He was only sedated now, kept in a holding cell on the other side of the launch site. Only one officer would be stationed there, either Stevens or one of his team. She still held absolute power over the program. She would send the guard away for a few hours, tell him that Grace needed to be examined by medical professionals before launch. They still had more than twelve hours before Grace would be moved into the command module. That would be more than enough time to stop the sedative drip, allow him to wake up, and tell him the awful news. She could give him some time to mourn, at least, before the end.

But that was not how it would go, was it. He would wake up dazed, disoriented by the unfamiliar location. The welt in his neck had hardly scabbed over. Would he even listen to her? And then, to tell him that his brother was dead—worse, dead to suicide—

The next thought was a stone in her stomach. News of Grace’s volunteering had been publicized only two days ago.

She couldn’t breathe.

What would Colton have thought when he saw that that his twin brother, whom he had perhaps only just begun to reconnect with, had volunteered to depart on a suicide mission to deep space? Worse, had volunteered without telling him—no, had called him and Colton had not picked up. Eva’s mind returned unbidden to a voicemail and a cool summer evening nearly twenty years prior. There had been a rainbow in the sky then, too. Eva had had a brother, once.

A strange sound broke through her racing thoughts, a sort of dull sob. She stared down at the desk, hands braced to keep herself upright, and found that her cheeks were wet. With an effort, she straightened. No, that was not how it would go. She could not lay the weight of that grief on him so soon before the launch. It would break him, and—selfishly—she did not want to see the expression on his face as she sedated him again.

And what would the grief do to him once he remembered, light years away, mid-mission? Grief wouldn’t just kill him; it might kill them all.

No, once his memories returned, it would be best for him to believe that he was fighting to save his brother’s life.

Eva retrieved the chair, and sat. The office around her was still, but for the clock tick and the even beating of her heart. From the window on her left, sunrise crept across the floor.

---

The launch went well.

Of course it did. The launch was the least risky part of the mission, somehow. If the project failed, few on Earth would live to realize it.

Every news network in the world broadcasted the launch. This would surely break records for number of spectators watching a single broadcast, she thought. It was hard to imagine that Earth had ever been more united, harder still to imagine that the camaraderie would end. But it would, she knew. Humanity had never been able to keep peace under threat of starvation.

Launch day was a new experience for Eva. For the first time in years, she had nothing to do. People still treated her with deference, but she had no further orders to give. Today, all authority had been given to the launch crew.

Today marked the start of a new era. They would come for her today, she knew, and she would go willingly. Not because of the crimes they would accuse her of; these she had received express permission to commit, although doubtless juries across the world would forget this in the coming months. No, she would go because for these two murders she deserved the worst punishment the world could give. She doubted that God would grant her the mercy of meeting that end soon, however. Although the world would not bear to let her walk free during the fallout from the mission, they would likely keep her in storage until they needed her again. If they needed her again. God have mercy on them all if they did not.

So during the countdown, when all eyes turned from her to the rocket, Eva closed her own and prayed. Not for the launch, so comparatively easy to pull off, but for the years afterward. For the Earth, all the people who would live and die in suspense of the mission’s outcome. For the crew aboard the ship, and for one man in particular, whom she had known from the beginning would be essential to its success. For herself, that she could bear the guilt until the end of the world.

“…ten, nine, eight, seven, six, ignition sequence start…”

Ave Maria | Hail Mary

“…five, four, three, two, one, ignition…”

Gratia plena, | Full of Grace,

“…and liftoff!…”  

Dominus tecum. | The Lord is with you.

“…fuel is go.…”

Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. | Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.

“…we have cleared the tower… Roll program…”

Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, | Holy Mary, mother of God,

“…yaw complete. We are pitching… Trajectory is good. Thrust is good… Go at three minutes…”

ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. | pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death.

“…shutdown.”

Amen.