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Courtland Gentry has killed two people.
The second kill was clean, textbook — two bullets, one to the chest, one to the skull. Call it a safety measure.
The first kill was messy. He doesn't like to dwell on it. If he thinks about it for too long, he starts to hallucinate the feeling of water mingling with blood on his face, or the sound of Ryland's whimpering cries as he clung to the edge of the bathtub with wet hands, or Colt's hoarse, horrified screams ringing throughout their neighbourhood.
Ryland and Colt aren't here. It's just Court, and the body at his feet, still warm, still slowly leaking blood onto the concrete floor beneath the shoes he was given, the interrogation desk in front of him and the one-way mirror to his right where he knows Fitzroy is watching, just as he has been for the past week.
His own voice rings in his head. What makes you think I wanna do it again?
You seem like the type.
Court suppresses the urge to retch. He's a grown man. The fucking CIA just busted him out of jail to work in the gray, or whatever the hell that means, and he's spent the last eight years in jail because he shot his father point-blank in the back of the head. He can handle it. He can.
He spreads his arms out, just to be petty, the gun (safety clicked back on) still tightly held in his right hand. "That good enough for you?"
He's not expecting the single door at the opposite end of the room to open, and he definitely isn't expecting Fitzroy himself to walk through. Court has mostly been dealing with subordinates for the past few days — spec ops, assassins, whatever they want to be called, they're all just different names for people that are, simply put, teaching him how to kill properly. He hadn't really seen their 'leader' since they met in the jail's visitation block, until now, tailed by the men who'd been training him.
"That was beyond satisfactory, kid," Fitzroy says, his hands clasped behind his back. The image of him standing there, in a suit and tie, not five feet from the dead body on the floor, is morbidly amusing. "We want to prepare you for the next step of the Sierra Program."
"The next step?" Court parrots, his bravado only slightly fake.
Fitzroy extends a hand forward, a familiar manila folder in his grasp, which he deposits on the table and gestures for Court to open. He sets down the gun and obeys, already fairly certain what he'll find.
Courtland Gentry. Born 1980, Jacksonville, Florida. Incarcerated in 1995, charges of patricide, first-degree murder, and unlawful discharge of a firearm.
There are several legal documents piled together within the folder, but Court ignores them all in favour of pulling a Polaroid out from between the pages, holding it with the same gingerness with which he'd just clasped the loaded gun.
He has an arm around each of the twins, who are slightly blurry with hard they're laughing. Ryland's then-new glasses sit askew across his nose, and Colt is proudly flaunting a missing tooth at the camera. Some carnival day, judging by the bunting and food stalls in the background. It can't have been more than a year before he went to jail.
Whatever homesick ache of emotion briefly overcomes Court immediately dies when Fitzroy abruptly says, "Courtland Gentry has to die."
Court can only let out an incredulous laugh. "What?"
"When you agreed to come with us, you agreed to operate as a Sierra Agent." Fitzroy's now-empty hands are folded over his front. "The Sierra have no family, no connections, no past. They're blank slates. They need to be blank slates. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"I have a family," Court says numbly, gesturing to the Polaroid. "I have— they—"
And then he remembers Ryland, splattered with their father's blood, choking and coughing and staring at Court like he was him. He remembers Colt's silence on the first prison visit, the numb blankness in his eyes whilst Ryland sobbed until his entire body was shaking. He remembers every beating he had taken just to keep the twins out of harm's way, every time he had peeled off his shirt and looked at the ugly purple shape of his father's fists blossoming across his ribcage in the bathroom mirror. He remembers how, even as he'd gritted his teeth and whimpered his way through cleaning and disinfecting yet another cut or bruise, he'd sworn he would do it all again.
Fitzroy holds his hand out. The lines of his face carry a great weight to them, a gentle sympathy Court wasn't expecting. He looks down one more time, and then passes the Polaroid back. He and Fitzroy stand there for a moment longer, before the older man gathers up the folder and sighs.
"You'll be operating as Sierra Six."
Six looks him in the eye. He nods. Fitzroy nods back, turning about and leaving, flanked by two of the other spec ops men. It's just Six, and the body, and the one-way glass.
He picks the gun back up off the table, shoving it into the holster he's still not quite used to wearing. Someone comes to open the door, and Six walks out of the room.
━━━━━━━━
"Ryland!" Colt calls.
Ryland pokes his head into their living room from the kitchen — well, "living room" is a bit of a stretch. It's student accomodation, so one bedroom, two beds, the tiniest ensuite known to man, and a small open space for their other amenities. They're really just lucky to have a place to themselves with mould-free walls and pipes that only groan once every few hours. They're lucky to still be together.
God knows it seems like sometimes the universe has tried to force them apart.
For some inexplicable reason, in their 'lucky' apartment there's an atrociously ugly load-bearing wall right in the middle of what should be an open-concept kitchen and living area. Instead, the wall acts as a partial divider that's just on the wrong side of too small to actually 'divide' anything effectively. It's the biggest interior design blunder Colt's ever seen in his entire life, and they grew up in Florida.
In any case, Ryland's head is currently poking around the faux-divider in question, eyebrow raised. "What?"
Colt just sighs and throws his head back into the sunken back of their second-hand couch. "Come over here, c'mon."
"Colt, what?" Ryland asks exasperatedly, flopping down beside him and ignoring how his glasses fall off his nose with the motion. Colt reaches over without looking and shoves them back onto his face, resulting in an annoying spluttering noise that sounds vaguely goose-like.
"Do you think I should change my name?" Colt says, all in a rush.
This has Ryland dropping his annoyed pretense in a second, his eyes going wide and shiny the way they do when he's worried about something. "Where's this coming from?"
Colt gestures to the scrunched-up slip of yellowing newspaper on the coffee table in front of them. Ryland's gaze flicks to it briefly, and both of them know he doesn't need to read it to remember the words.
Two men dead in Florida prison brawl. Long-term inmates Thomas Bradford and Courtland Gentry were both killed yesterday in a brutal fight breaking out in Florida State Prison ...
"Gentry's not exactly a common name," he says, an abrupt laugh slipping loose mid-sentence. He can't muster any humour into the flat sound. "I have to join up to an actors' guild soon and I don't know if I want to— if when agents or other people look up the name ... what dumb assumptions they'll make about Court or ..."
He trails off, but Ryland understands. He always does. Colt turns to him with a feverish pitch to his voice.
"Tell me I shouldn't, and I won't. If you don't think I should change it, if you don't want me to, I won't, Ry."
Ryland looks at him, his expression all raw and horribly sad and, at the same time, with the gentle grace and acceptance that he so desperately needs right now. "It's your choice, Colt. You know I'll support it either way."
It's the same way that Ryland looked at him when they were placed into their first foster home and Colt couldn't sleep all night, when they had to live apart for a few months during high school, when Colt gets drunk and stupid at a party. Colt's not the crybaby twin, but he can feel a wetness pricking at his eyes anyway.
"Okay." He has to swallow around a lump in his throat. The next breath comes easier. "Okay."
They end up writing lists upon lists of potential names on the back of a printed copy of Ryland's latest research paper, Colt's beat-up laptop opened to several tabs of surname websites. All of them start with just Colt — only one person called him Colton, and he was rotting in the ground, exactly where he should be. It takes them a few hours and a box of leftover pizza, but they finally have one name circled and underlined twice.
Colt Seavers. Seavers, meaning seafarers, journeymen.
It reminds him of watching their house fade away in the rear window of an ambulance, clutching a shaking, blood-covered brother in his arms whilst the other was wrestled into a police car. It reminds him of stepping into their miracle apartment for the first time, together.
The final abandoned slice of pizza has long gone cold when Colt timidly asks, "Does it feel like we're leaving him behind to you?"
Ryland stares up at the ceiling, like he can see something Colt can't, tracing invisible constellations with the darting movements of his eyes.
"No," he says, calmly. "He'll always be with us. Even though he's gone."
Colt's leg jitters, and he can't bring himself to stop, even though it's jostling the couch in a way he knows drives his twin insane.
"Hey," Ryland starts, bumping his shoulder into Colt's. "Maybe I'll change my name too."
"Ry, I can't ask you to—"
"You're not," he cuts Colt off smoothly, fixing him with an earnest look over the rims of his glasses. "I want to."
Colt lets a lazy grin curve over his face as his tone dips into teasing. "What'll you change it to? Seaver, singular? Or some biology bullshit?"
Ryland looks away again, back up at the sky that neither of them can see. "... Grace."
Colt freezes.
"Mom hoped at least one of you might be a girl. She was going to call you Grace. It's what her name was, before she became a Gentry."
"What would Colt's name be, then?"
"Hey! Why does he get to be Grace? Court!"
"Okay, okay, cut it out—"
The memory is over as quickly as it became. Colt's recollection of Court's laughing face is smudged and blurry. They ended up calling their cat Grace as a compromise. He'd almost forgotten. He blinks, slowly, forcing away the stinging in his eyes, and carefully reaches his arm out over Ryland's shoulders. Ryland falls easily into him like a practiced routine, his cheek pressing into the firm shape of Colt's collarbone.
"Ryland Grace," Colt murmurs. "It's nice."
"Thanks, Seavers."
They stay on the couch for a while that night, until the stars begin to fade away.
━━━━━━━━
Grace has settled into life on Erid with remarkable ease, considering the circumstances that brought him to the planet in the first place. He’s living in a terrarium-esque biodome that Adrian and the other Eridian biologists have worked tirelessly to complete over the last few months whilst he endured a slow and painful death of starvation.
It’s not really a time of his life he enjoys dwelling on. He had starved. He had experienced dozens of symptoms of malnutrition and endured no fewer than four life-threatening conditions at any given time. He had survived.
And now he lives in a quaint little house far nicer than anything he’d ever owned on Earth, with an entire stretch of beach to himself and a classroom full of eager students and—
Bang! Bang! Bang!
And the most impatient quasi-roommate in the universe.
He should be more specific — he and Rocky don't really live together, but Rocky visits him every day and watches him fall asleep more often than not. Adrian is also a frequent guest of the biodome, their compassionate nature ensuring that they duck in to fret about water temperatures and sunrise cycles and air humidity at least once every few days.
However, when Grace opens the door, it's just Rocky standing there, tapping two of his limbs impatiently.
Grace always late, Rocky grumbles, a distinctly flat tone to the notes of his voice.
The four-year trip to Erid had given Grace plenty of time to learn enough Eridian to slowly phase out their makeshift translator — a process that would've been necessary anyway when they arrived, unless Grace wanted to suddenly hear Rocky's distinctive voice coming from everyone he spoke to. He shudders just thinking about it. One Rocky is perfect, and quite enough.
"I'm sorry," Grace says, clasping his hands together in what is hopefully a placating enough gesture to cease Rocky's complaints. "You choose our spot this time?"
This seems to satisfy Rocky, as he speeds back off the way he came, leaving Grace awkwardly jogging across the sand to catch up. The tiny tesselating xenonite panels of Rocky's form-fitting suit glisten brightly in the artificial sunlight — it's an unusually bright day, in stark difference to the typical haze of fog hanging in the air. It's not bad.
Rocky slows his pace approximately halfway down the beach, lowering his scarred carapace to the ground and neatly tucking his legs beneath him. When he catches up, Grace crouches and mimics Rocky's position, criss-crossing his legs like his students would on the playground. The thought sends a familiar pang through his chest.
His students. Earth. Home.
The waves crash against each other, a little more turbulent than normal.
Rocky hums. Grace okay, question? Is quiet today.
Grace looks out at the machine-generated waves, his hands cupped in his lap. "Just thinking, Rock."
Think about what?
"Earth," he mumbles. "Other people, I guess."
As soon as the words leave his lips, Grace can feel guilt settling heavy in his stomach. Rocky has moved mountains — heck, all of Erid has bent over backwards — to create a safe and comfortable environment for him, and here he is, whining about his old life like a child who can't handle the times changing.
Rocky huddles a little closer to Grace's thigh, his comforting warmth seeping through the xenonite.
Rocky understand, he says. Rocky miss Erid long time when in space. What Grace miss most about Earth, question?
Grace looks out over the water, to where he can just faintly make out the transparent walls of the biodome.
"Little things, I guess," he responds, quietly. "Just talking to people."
There's one other thing he misses, so much it almost hurts.
"My ... my brothers, even if I don't ... uh ..." His voice catches in his throat. "Remember much of them."
The coma drug left an unexpectedly significant mark on Grace's long-term memory, and whilst he can still recall every nerdy science pun under the sun, the recollection of his childhood is muddy at best. He has a few vague memories of Colt, his twin, his identical twin brother, mostly flashes from college or shortly thereafter.
There's another figure in his dreams — a shadowy outline of a larger body, a soft-spoken voice with a comforting touch. He's faceless in almost all of Grace's dreams, and whenever he's not, he forgets the finer details as soon as he wakes.
Rocky makes a sad trilling sound. Grace ...
His name is so short in Eridian. He's grown to love the simplicity of it, but he misses hearing his English name, sometimes, even dropped casually in the midst of a quick conversation.
Dr. Grace, could you proofread this section, please?
Come on, Mr. Grace, can we please play one more round?
We good for next Tuesday, Grace?
Grace Rocky save stars.
Ryland Grace. It's nice.
Rocky must read something into his extended silence, because he stands suddenly, shaking off large granules of pebble-sand as he scuttles back in the direction of the house and singing out Grace come with!
Grace follows obediently, although his knees protest at standing too quickly. The adjustment curve for Erid's heavy gravity is steep. As it is, Rocky beats him to his own front door by a long shot, and is already banging around somewhere in Grace's (admittedly messy) bedroom by the time he enters. He must find what he's looking for, because he chirps joyfully, and moments later, an all-too-familiar robotic voice is cheerfully saying, "Friend Grace! Rocky fix!"
Grace lets out an actual laugh despite himself. "Wow. Takes you back, huh?"
"Portable Earth thinking machine not take Rocky anywhere. Is machine, statement."
"'S a human expression, bud." Grace winces at the onset of twinging muscles in his lower back, and moves to lie down, resigning himself to staying in bed for the rest of the afternoon. Rocky scampers up as soon as he's settled, the mattress dipping significantly beneath his weight, but holding steady. "It's reminding me of our time on the Hail Mary together."
One of Rocky's claws twitches. "Good time, question?"
Grace inclines his head softly. "Yeah. Good times."
They sit in silence for a few moments, Rocky tapping his limbs in a way that means he's echolocating for specific details. Tap. Tap. Tap. It's exactly in sync with Grace's heartbeat.
"Tell me about what you've been up to?" Grace asks, then playfully tacks on, "Question?"
Rocky complies happily. He talks and talks about Adrian and the new biology experiment they're hoping to consult Grace on, the annoying bureaucracy he's had to deal with as "Saviour Rocky", the latest updates from the astronomy team monitoring Sol's luminosity. He rambles about coding a robot for a classroom, a prototype xenonite suit he wants to try with a woven consistency, all interspersed with "What think, Grace?" and "Will show Grace later" and "this make Rocky think of Grace". The effort is far from subtle, but it's so earnest and sweet and effective that it's bringing tears to Grace's eyes. He scrubs at his face with an open palm, trying desperately not to set himself off with the pure rush of love he's feeling for Rocky. This weird, incredible, unbelievably compassionate alien, who understands him in a way that seems like their souls were created from the same stardust.
"Leaky space blob," Rocky teases, the dictation soft with affection. "Ryland always leak, leak, leak."
Grace can't see himself, but he envisions that he's probably sporting the goofiest smile in the universe. "I forgot we programmed that into your translator."
"Rocky can't forget. Grace want Rocky to say 'Ryland' more, question?"
He considers it, grazing the back of his knuckles repeatedly across the top of Rocky's carapace, who emits purring sounds of content. "Maybe. I'm not sure yet. It kinda reminds me of home."
Rocky's voice is low, sorrowful. "Grace still miss home, question?"
Grace thinks about these flashes of people he can't quite remember, fragments of memory he reaches for with clumsy fingers, that slip away like the morning fog with the arrival of the sun. He thinks of Colt, and the mysterious other figure, whose face he can never make out, but whose gentle voice imperceptibly whispers to him like a lullaby in his nicer dreams. He can remember the soft comfort of feeling safe, and loved, and how he must have saved this person and Colt through Project Hail Mary.
He thinks about how he saved Rocky, too.
Grace leans closer into his friend, curling his whole body around him and relishing in the cosiness of a warm embrace.
"This is my home too, Rock," he says.
Rocky hums, settling one of his arms over Grace's ribcage, his claw poised directly over his heart.
"Rest now. I watch."
Ryland dozes into a peaceful sleep, as the artificial sun paints the sky of the dome a thousand shades of gold.