Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Five months since the Hail Mary launched.

Five months since she watched the medical and security teams carry Dr. Ryland Grace’s unconscious body across the dry grass.

Five months since she sacrificed a core, foundational piece of her own humanity to save the world’s.

She regrets.

She regrets not putting measures in place to ensure that key members of the launch team were kept separated in the event of a fatal accident.

She regrets getting attached to Dr. Grace. Letting him trail her like an eager puppy she would eventually put down. Allowing him to learn so much about astrophage that he became so intricately entwined with the project—that he became indispensable when the critical decisive moment arrived.

She does not regret sending him.She does not regret sending him yet.

The United Nations judicial system is swift. The moment the Hail Mary leaves the atmosphere, the Petrova Task Force is dismantled and the arrangement of her wide-reaching legal immunity no longer matters. Saving the Earth had been a never-ending trolley problem, and Eva sometimes surprised herself with how easy it had been to ignore the biting ache in her palm from pulling the lever over and over and over again.

Though it won’t make a difference, Eva wonders what the tipping point was: Setting off nukes in Antarctica? Paving the Sahara Desert? Using coercion and blackmail to assemble her team of experts? Something as asinine as intellectual property theft?

She knows what it would have been, were it up to her.

Eva spends her days in two prisons both of her own making. Through concrete walls and reinforced steel, she is not allowed to look up into the same night sky where the man she still believes inbetrayed kidnapped killed will sleep in a coma for years.

Not that she’d want to.

The prison was kind enough not to give her a cellmate—or, perhaps, was kind enough to the other prisoners to spare them from Stratt. The guards don’t typically bother her; in fact, she occasionally appreciates their company and the small chats they share. Even though they all know who she is and what she’s done.

“Would you do it all again?” they usually wind up asking her.

She’ll sigh and lean her temple against the edge of the wall, the hard pressure of it dully painful like a second punishment. “I had to,” she’ll say simply. “I had to do it.”

After a few times, she’ll realize it was one of the last things she said to Ryland Grace. Her throat will get tight, her stomach will clench, but she won’t cry about it. What’s done is done, and whether she would or wouldn’t is irrelevant. When the world needed a hero, they found Eva Stratt—and then, in the same person, a villain to blame.

Her cell has grown colder despite the approach of summer.

you'll find a solutionyou are my solution.

There’s a crack in the wall.

There are many cracks in the walls of her cell. A few small ones near the tall barred window that merely looks out to the exterior of the next building. A couple that spiderweb across the floor. Flaking paint and plaster closest to her bed where the metal frame grinds against it.

This crack is not always there.

It comes and goes, so infrequently that Eva wonders if she’s hallucinating it. Why, of all things that might haunt her subconscious, would it make her see a crack in the wall that isn’t there?

The crack never grows, never widens or spreads. It simply is: perfectly straight, vertical against the concrete from floor to ceiling, in the corner right between the adjacent walls of her cell where a cheap little veneer desk sits innocently. It appears in the dark, long after bed checks, seeming to glow faintly as if the light has hit it just right.

Eva turns over and goes back to sleep. She closes her eyes and tries to remember Dr. Grace. His glasses hang off his ear. His messy hair flutters in the breeze. His cardigan, chunky and comfortable around his shoulders.

But his face. No, there’s nothing discernible there, hasn’t been for some time. She can recall individual features and habits—his confused squint, the pinch of his brow, a wide mischievous smile at Carl, the scruff along his chin after days without shaving, a Twizzler dangling from his mouth while he works, teeth half-closed around a joke.

But in her mind’s eye, trying to piece them all together, Ryland’s face is as blank as the cold white wall inches from her nose, painted over in layers until no details remain.

Trying to remember him, though, feels like the very least she can do.

She has a life sentence worth of time to remember.

you can't be seriousi don't want to die

you're betraying meyou're murdering me

let's talk about thisdon't send me off to die

please ̴̻̈́ ̷͚̽ ̸̢̪͠ ̸̘̳͂̿H̴̖̏̂Ė̷̗͈̒L̷͎̙̾̈́P̵͕̤͐͆ ̵̘̀͠M̵͔̟̒͂Ȇ̷̮̠ ̸͇̒̉ ̸͍̓̓ ̵̞̼̑͝ ̵͔͋

PLEASEP̷̮̻̀̇͒͊͒̃͆̈́̌́̚L̵̰̳͔̼̭̈͐̾̆̎͠E̷̩͍̳͕̗̩̫͕͒̆̎̎͂̓̈́͛͆́A̸̳̱̞̹͙̞͎̘̻̗̽̅͆̈́̃͗̈́̔̃͆Ş̴͚̠̲̜͓͙͉̼̞̜̪͂̈́̏̌̾̉͑̒͘̕͝͝E̶̲̫̤͑̇̂͑̄̂ ̶̡̧̨̨̞̀͆͛̑͗͗̋̽̌͊́ ̸͈͂̈̆͑̿͋͒͂̕ ̴͖̻̟̪͈̩̯͈̪̟̀͐̏͆͝ ̴̡̣͙͖͚̜́̍

Eva jolts awake. The memory felt so real, still feels real, was real. She grasps at it with mental fingers, clawing at the edges of her own skull to hold on to Grace at the other side of her desk, laughing wetly with disbelief as he stood and searched for the nearest exits. For a moment, his face had been so crystal clear. It wasn’t fear that he stared at her with, but hurt.

God, he’d trusted her. He’d seen her commit ecological crimes and face the court, stood beside her for every count to her sentence, and still he’d trusted her not to tie him to the tracks and pull the last lever.

She should have kept him at arm’s length. Perhaps an emotional distance would have led Grace to run away quietly that day, instead of stepping into her office to deliver the news as if he had any choice in the matter. Unlikely, but maybe, maybe he would have escaped.

But Grace had a magnetic pull, an easygoing charm so opposite her own stern urgency. She’d liked having him around; he balanced her out, softened her edges. Not even Eva could resist falling into his orbit as so many others did.

It also helped that he did everything she asked of him despite his own reservations.

(Almost.)

Eva slips out of bed and splashes her face with lukewarm water over the sink, sipping some from her cupped palm. Groans into a towel as she dries her face. Blinks through the dull promise of a headache above her brow. She glances up in the mirror at herself. It’s not real glass, but a polished polycarbonate that can’t shatter. It distorts her features ever so slightly. She looks fucking awful anyway—

back

at something on the desk.

She has so few material possessions that anything out of place stands out. Next to the notebook and pencil that she’s barely touched over the few months she’s been here, small and innocent, is a round object sitting in the dark.

Her stomach plummets when she picks it up. There’s softness, give.

It’s a little Earth beanbag.

What kind of sick joke is this?

Who would put this here?

Who would know that this would mean something to her?

Hold on, she thinks, steadying her breath, ending the spiral. This beanbag shouldn’t even be on Earth. It should be aboard the Hail Mary safely tucked away in Grace’s belongings. Which means someone remade it or bought it. Someone knew about it, found a copy, gave it to a guard, and had them place it on her desk—knowing that it would get to her.

For what? To taunt her? A petty prank?

Eva squeezes the Earth tight in her palm. The Earth that Grace will die for. The Earth that Eva went to prison to save—on a hope, a prayer. And someone threw it right back in her face.

Eva Stratt is not an emotional person. So it is not with fury, but with very sophisticated strength and delicate poise that she chucks the beanbag hard at the wall.

It takes her another few moments for her to realize she never heard the beanbag land. Never heard it make impact. No dull thud or smack of beads.

Just quiet.

Eva doubles back. The beanbag, which should’ve landed on the desk, is gone. She kneels down to the floor and doesn’t find it there, either. A beanbag wouldn’t bounce, but she still checks under the bed and even to the corridor just outside her cell just to see if it ricocheted.

Eva rakes her fingers through her hair. She is not going crazy.

Weird dream. Lucid dream. A hallucination brought on by a steadily growing migraine and lack of proper sleep. Tomorrow she’ll ask about consulting the correctional psychologist.

Eva returns to bed. She rubs her fingertips together, where the ghost of those crochet threads whispers in the dark.

you are

ǝɔᴉɹd ʎɯ

uoᴉʇɐuɯɐp ʎɯ

ʎɔɹǝɯ ʎɯ

i am trying to make you understand

what I’m about to do next

i have to do it.maybe it was always going to be you.

“You look... good.”

Eva scoffs over her little paper cup of coffee. “You’re not on my payroll anymore. There is no need to flatter me.”

“Never tried to.”

Carl quirks his mouth into something that’s close to a smile but not quite. He’s dressed like she’s never seen him—traded in the long black coat and tie for a soft gray cardigan and a shirt that reads Loyola Marymount University in red and blue across the front. Seeing him out of uniform, out of posture, feels so alien. But Eva supposes she’s no different, showing up in the same matching beige set she wears every day now.

“How’s Mila?”

“Good.” Carl nods at the air. “She’s out here with me—thought we could spend a week in Paris to celebrate before the baby comes. We’re thinking of settling out in Chicago, where her family is. We’ll need all the help we can get.”

Eva keeps both hands around the paper cup. The coffee is watery and burnt, but she’s not drinking it for the taste.

“And you?”

Carl blows out a breath. “Got some leads on a security detail up there. But I’m taking some time off.”

“Yeah? To do what?”

“Um.” He lowers his head and glances around the room. “Well. After… you know. Everything. Mila urged me to seek counseling.”

“Counseling,” she parrots.

He shrugs. “Therapy.”

“Can I ask why?”

“Why the fuck do you think?”

He says it so casually, but there’s bite. His eyes dart, and he reverts to a posture that’s a little apologetic, though he doesn’t say it. So she does instead.

“I’m sorry.”

“Y’know,” Carl sighs. He pushes aside his own paper cup, empty, and leans over the visitor’s table. “I did a lot of shit for you. Shit I wasn’t exactly comfortable with. But that day. I…” He scrubs a palm over his mouth. “I wasn’t the one to stab him in the back, but it sure as hell felt like it. I had to stand there and watch a man beg for his life and say, too bad.”

“I’m sure you didn’t tell him that.”

“What difference does it make?” Sorrow twists his brow. “You sent Grace up there to die, that’s bad enough. But he was my friend, you knew that, and you made me do it anyway. You knew he didn’t want to go, you knew that Yáo didn’t want anyone going up there who didn’t want to be there, but you lied to him and you lied to Ry and—”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

He squints. “An apology, maybe?”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Not for what.”

Eva takes a breath. She consults her coffee, which gives her no luck—just her reflection, bouncing and warping in the ripples, shiny and dark and numb.

“I am sorry,” she says, meeting his eyes. “Truly. I’m sorry I made you do that.”

“But not for sending him up there.”

“No.”

Carl swallows. “So why did you? Make me do it, I mean.”

Eva’s brows scrunch up a little. Still, somehow, she finds it difficult to talk about. Difficult to put any of those feelings into words, she’d tucked them away for so long in a small, locked compartment in a heart she continued to ignore. It’s so much easier to be as cold as the future will become.

“So this is about you?” she says.

Carl frowns. “Don’t do that. You already went to trial—this is personal.”

Eva flattens her lips into a line, tucks one corner into her cheek in a half smile.

“I wanted him to see one last friendly face,” she says. “It was my one… small mercy.”

“Yeah, and now it’s killing me. Thanks for that.”

A long silence hangs between them. This visit, she knows, is much more for his benefit than hers. She’s had a slew of visitor requests, including a dozen or so journalists, and she’s rejected all of them. But seeing Carl’s name on the sheet had made her pause and finally accept just one window into the world outside.

She follows the news as best she can. World agriculture is already beginning to suffer. The United States is preemptively passing protective laws, tariffs, and sanctions to keep their goods. If there’s one thing she knows, it’s the cyclical nature of history. The past does not bode well for the future.

“I see him,” Carl continues. His voice trembles ever so slightly. “When I close my eyes. I hear him. He called out to me. He was so scared, and he called to me like I would save him, I could’ve…”

He sniffs. He can’t seem to say more.

“I’m… glad,” Eva says carefully, “that you’re getting help.”

“Yeah, well,” Carl shrugs. “Therapist said it might be good, for me to… say my piece. To you.”

Eva nods.

She does not tell him that Ryland Grace was given a drug that would induce temporary amnesia. She does not tell him that Grace may not even remember Carl or what he did or said. She does not tell him that she put Sour Skittles and Twizzlers in Ryland’s away bag, knowing they were his favorite. Menial “comforts” just seem cruel.

She does not remind him, either, that their actions—as terrible, nearly unspeakable as they were—will ensure that his unborn child has a future to grow up in.

The metal chair loudly scrapes against the floor as Carl leaves. She lets him go. They both know it’s likely the last time she’ll ever see him again.

you will be remembered

you will be remembered

you will be remembered

you will be remembered

you will be remembered

you will be remembered

youwill be remem bered

γoullᴉʍ berem emɹǝqe d

 ou ʍ ll bǝ  ǝɯǝ qǝɹǝ

y        i        r                   

       ᓬ               ᴟ           

.y̸o̶u ̸                           d

w̴il̵l̴ ̵ǝq ̸       .

                pǝɹǝqɯǝɯǝɹ

          y̶͚͋ȯ̶̢̈́u̸͇̔̆ ̴͈̙̑w̷̛̻̥i̸͈͊l̸̖͑͜͠l̶̝̅͘ ̶̬͐

 b̸͖̥̑é̸̟͒ ̸̧͊                     

,                q ̸             

y ó̷̡̱͖͓̤̣̦̝ u̵̬̎̿̅́̋̀̈ ̷̝̲̫̬̔̍͝ w̸̢̩̠̲̓̉͋̐́͌ il̴͎̝͋ͅl̷̢͕͖͓͙͋̏̈́̽  ̶̢͔̤̻̬͔̫̊̈́͜b ǝ

ṛ̶̱͚͉̹̤̗̪̈́͒ȩ̴̱̞͇̥́̀̃͊̈́̅̿͜        

m̷̛̰͇͍̰̦̤̫̝̯̩͇̈̾̓̚  ę̷̧̡̫̹͖͙̑̈́̆̚m̵̞̙͇̜͇͇͙̖̓̇̇͑̊̊̕̚͘͝͝

b̶̛̥̙̔̎̽̃̿͘͝è̶̛̲̆̄̓̓́̋̂͑             

  ṛ̵͚̀̑͑͂̄͜ȩ̴͇̪̱̟̼̩͙͈̮͐̈́ͅ d̵̘̹̈͊

       ɐ sɐ

“Fuck,” Eva mutters.

She doesn’t swear often.

Sometimes, her own words play back in her mind like a skipping record. There’s no use to it, but it’s only human nature to continue wondering if she could have said it differently. If she could have made Grace feel better about going.

The truth was they’d had no time to play nice. No matter what she said, the lamb could still see the slaughterhouse.

She fell asleep reading. An old Camus paperback from the library lies open on her stomach, and the lamplight on her bedside table is still on. Eva dog-ears the page and sets it down, then turns off the light. Darkness swallows her cell.

Of course, now she won’t be able to sleep.

The notebook sits on her desk. She hasn’t used it. A visit to the prison’s psychologist was rather unhelpful; just the elementary, obvious suggestion that she begin writing down her thoughts. Ridiculous. The Dutch do not do this. Her fingers itch to hold the pencil anyway, if only to worry the graphite point into her palm just to feel something.

Eva’s gaze rises to The Corner.

In so much darkness, she can clearly see the faint seam of light, but it softly flickers in and out when she moves her head, like a lenticular. She glances about. The light must be reflecting off of something to create that line. The frame, the mirror, the bars, something.

She sighs, rolls her head on her pillow, and shuts her eyes.

No. God dammit. It’s going to bother her.

Eva rises out of bed. She tries to move the desk, but it’s bolted to the floor. She climbs onto the desktop on her knees, carefully testing her weight, before peering closer at the light. She waves her hand in front of it—if it’s a reflection, her hand will cast a shadow and tell her where the light source is. But the line remains steady.

Perhaps it’s a weird spot of paint. Perhaps the walls used to be yellow or cream.

Kneeling farther forward, Eva taps the wall.

Or, tries to. Her fingers slip right through as if through air.

Eva stares at her fingers, cut off at the first knuckle. Her heart skips a beat, then starts jackhammering. That’s not possible.

She’s still dreaming. She has to be.

She pulls her hand back, and her fingers return to full length. She wiggles them. Nothing hurts.

Eva tries again, this time pushing her whole hand in up to the wrist. The concrete swallows it without complaint. Silence, not even a warble. She withdraws again, her hand fully intact.

She glances out of her cell. No guards have passed by, no one who would hear her moving in the middle of the night or question why she’s climbed up on the desk, no one that she could ask, “Hey, are you seeing this too?”

She tries again. She uses her other hand to steady herself on the adjacent wall—but she lurches when that, too, phases through the wall, and with no counterbalance, Eva goes tumbling full-force through it and falls two feet to the floor on the other side. She lands badly on her wrist and her shoulder, rolls back a little, and groans. When she turns her head up, harsh fluorescent light floods her eyes.

Light. So much light.

Eva gingerly flips from her back to her stomach and pushes herself up. Her hands and knees touch a hard, sickly yellow carpet that matches the wallpaper. Before her, stretching meters and meters ahead, is an empty… space. Corners, walls, hallways, corridors. It looks like an office ready to be leased.

Her knee brushes a cup of pencils tipped over on the floor. A scattered pair of prison-issued slippers lies ahead. Other than that, the place feels entirely absent of signs of life. Eva glances behind herself. The wall, just like all the others, is completely smooth. No door, no seam. Nothing. She tests it, smoothing her palm across it until her fingers slip through again.

“Hello?” Eva calls out.

Her voice echoes. No one answers.

This is a dream. Or a nightmare. But it feels as real as the carpet under her feet, the stale air around her, the cup of pencils—even if it makes no sense.

Perhaps after everything she’s done, she deserves to go a little mad.

Eva marks the “doorway” with the cup of pencils on the floor, turning it back up and drawing a little X above it on the wall. Then she steps across the room.

Three different pathways lie in front of her. As she examines them, the architecture gives her pause. There’s no logical floor plan here. Some walls abort quickly; others seem to stretch on into a distant darkness. Short counters. High and low ceilings. She chooses the middle path. One room leads to another room leads to a hallway. It’s eerily quiet, the kind of vacuous silence that could drive one to insanity after too much time, that gives you the ability to hear your own organs squeaking and slip-sliding inside were it not for the continuous hum of fluorescents overhead. Solitary confinement with far too much room to spread out and go limp.

Eva swears she can hear the pulse of her own heart rate. It thumps hard against her rib cage, echoes up to her ears.

“Hello?” she calls out again. She slips into a couple of other tongues, just to be sure. “Allô? Il y a quelqu'un? Kan iemand me horen? Wèi? Nǐ zài ma?”

She keeps walking. The sound of her own bare feet against the low-pile carpet floor resonates loud enough to grate at her senses. The hallway ahead of her stretches into darkness, so she takes a left. She swerves her body quickly to avoid—

a bicycle.

Eva blinks. It’s the first thing she’s seen in here that’s not a pencil cup or yellow walls. There’s nothing particularly extraordinary about the bike at first glance. Black frame, wrapped handles, a brown seat, it leans against the wall. Except the front wheel has turned and clipped into the wall halfway. No broken wheel, no damaged plaster, just—as if the other half simply doesn’t exist. She even grabs it to move it or pull it out, but the bike sticks to the wall as if glued by the spokes.

As bizarre as the discovery is, Eva wonders if finding this bike is any indication that she’s going the “right” way. If there is a “right” way at all. If there is an end to

don’t

Eva pivots.

Freezes.

Her heart batters the walls of her chest.

Her stomach's in a lurch.

She swallows the air in her lungs.

There’s nothing. Not out there, not in here. But she would swear on her life that she’d heard something just now. A soft, faint word carried by the thin yellow air, like the mere outline of a sound. A suggestion.

She retreats from the hallway and backs away from the bicycle. Eva Stratt does not believe in ghosts or the supernatural or things she cannot perceive with her senses, but she is not dealing with a reality that she knows right now. So she feels slightly better for her choice—like she’s heeding some invisible, cosmic warning.

She glances down the unending yellow corridor again, far into the shadows.

Something moves.

A trick of the light. Her own movement, her own shadow, surely.

No. Something is there. It’s tall, still. It's too rigid and preternatural and oddly shaped to be human—the way a pile of clothes on a chair can look just like a person in the dark. Its form nudges back into the depths, hiding. Watching.

Fear sits like a cold stone in her gut, dragging the rest of her body down with it.

“I-I see you,” she says. She doesn’t sound as confident as she wants to seem.

From the far reaches of the hallway, a sound creeps into the air.

A low, broken moan.

The unnatural noise wraps itself around the muscle of Eva’s heart and clamps down, fingertips worming into her ventricles. Her blood flow stops. She can’t breathe.

The shuffle of footsteps.

Another moan.

Louder, growing

terrible, higher

it moves again.

Eva runs.

Barefoot and mad and sweating cold, her feet pound against the floor. In her panic, she hardly remembers how to retrace her steps. Relief washes over her upon seeing the X she drew on the wall near the tipped-over cup—quickly replaced with terror as the moans grow, warbling and wailing and traveling the halls and getting closer, closer,

Eva bolts for the X. She tests the wall with her fingers, just to make sure she can still move through it. She lunges through.

She yelps when, instead, her abdomen slams into the solid edge of the desk on the other side. Right, there’s a desk. She passes her hands through, feels for the veneer surface, and blindly climbs up.

Back in the halls, the something howls—

Like a tape ending, it’s quiet all at once.

Eva crawls onto the desk and nearly falls headlong, just catching herself on the chair. She climbs off and retreats to the bars of her cell as far as she can get. If it follows her, she’s fucked. She has nowhere to run. Sweat breaks out across the back of her neck. Her lungs burn with the rush of hyperventilated oxygen.

Nothing comes through.

Her adrenaline crashes and leeches from her skin. Eva slides down the bars and sinks to the floor. She draws up her knees and clutches the ice-cold concrete beneath her, fingers shaking.

That wasn’t real, she decides. None of that was real. A delusion from her isolation. Any minute now she’ll wake up in bed and laugh to herself that her mind would conjure such a bizarre, terrifying nightmare. Any minute. Any minute and she’ll open her eyes to the dim, dying light of morning pouring through her window.

Exhausted, rattled, her eyes land on the floor between her feet.