Chapter Text
***Grace’s POV***
“What’s 2 + 2?”
The monotone, feminine voice rang out through the space. He barely registered the sound, fading back into the blissful darkness that wrapped around him.
“What’s 2 + 2?” the voice asked again.
The voice and tone was identical to the first time it said it. Its a computer. A computer was hassling him. He tried to mutter for it to leave him alone, but it came out as an incoherent mumble.
“Incorrect,” the computer responded, and asked again.
He tried talk again, but it wouldn’t come out. Heck, he couldn’t even see, his eyes were still closed. His body was numb, barely able to feel the soft bed beneath him.
What was wrong with him?
He battled to open his eyes, only to be blinded as they crack open. He groaned in response to the light, but forced his eyes to stay open as he tried to take in his surrounding. The white artificial lighting and walls gave the impression he was in a hospital of some kind. As he looked around, he took notice several cameras on the ceiling, which was concerning. He was more concerned about the robot arms hanging from the ceiling. The probe like attachments made him warry of any unwelcomed insertions.
“Eye movement detected,” the computer stated. “What’s 2 + 2?”
As the world slowly came into focus, he tested his body. So far he’d only really able to move his mouth, vague approximation’s of speech slurred from his lips, fighting to form words. Try all he might, he couldn’t move much else.
The voice asked its nagging question again.
He tried to answer, but the computer responded in the negative. After one last try, he managed to choke out “F-four...”
“Correct,” the computer said, finally satisficed.
Relief washed over him as he sighed. He could talk now, which was progress.
Slowly, he took stock of his body. A breathing mask was strapped to his face. A glance down revealed that he was naked, with a large number of tubes and electrodes connected across his body. Several of which are in some unpleasant places.
“Where... am... I?” He wheezed in confusion.
~~~
It had taken a lot for him to get control of his own body. Fatigue gripped him, body and mind, which made every movement a struggle. He faced seemingly endless harassment and even sedation by the tyrannical robotic voice from the ceiling and her grabby partner in crime. He hadn’t even been able to process that he couldn’t remember his own name. He couldn’t really remember anything, or at least nothing useful. Remembering that he seemed to default to imperial units over metric really help unlock the mysteries of his current situation.
He currently sat up right in bed, something that took more effort than it should. The robot arms hovered near by but didn’t move, waiting for something. With a new vantage point, he was finally able to take in more of his surroundings. Three other cots share the space with him. Each with their own patients nestled into their bedding.
The entire thing was strange to him. Were they in some kind of quarantine? Did they have some sort of disease? He felt horrible, but seemed to be in pretty good shape. More than pretty good, he was ripped. His body was toned and fit, with none of the usual signs of muscle degeneration you’d expect for someone who’d been under long term care. His best guess was, whatever they were sick with, the robotic arms took care of them.
The voice from the ceiling began to question him again, demanding his name more.
“John?” He guessed with what little information he could remember about himself. When that failed, he pulled the IV from his arm with a glare. “Bite me,” he refused to be put under again.
He tried to stand, but the robot arms moved toward him. He rolled off the bed, and immediately regretted that decision. The tubes. He had forgotten about the tubes. The butt tube was surprisingly painless, the still inflated catheter on the other hand. Its abrupt removal sent pain through his body as he screamed.
“Physical distress.”
He barely heard the computer, the robotic arms flying in his direction. He crawled under the cots, not willing to be caught by them again. The robot arms waited, apparently unable to reach him from his chosen hiding spot. He laid there gasping in pain for a while, his head pressed to the floor. The pain eventually subsided slightly and he wiped the tears from his eyes. He has no idea what's happening.
“Hey,” he weakly called out. “One of you... Wake up.”
“What is your name?” The computer responded with the same question as before.
“One of you HUMANS. Wake up, please!” he pleaded between gasps of pain. Man, did his crotch hurt. He raised his head and spotted the blasted catheter sitting on the floor nearby. A small streak of blood stained the floor from its rather rapid removal and left a thin red line on the ground.
A memory flashed through his head. A diner, an email, and a thin red line. The memory is frustratingly useless. He didn’t know his own name, but at least he knew he was from San Francisco. He liked breakfast, and apparently used to be into astronomy, but wasn’t anymore? His subconscious was trying to tell him something, just not what he needed to know right now.
His eyes drifted to the other cots. He hadn’t seen any of the other’s move yet, but he at least wanted to see another face. ‘Time to check out the other patients,’ he thought, as he crawled out from under the bed, sticking to the wall to avoid the robots reach. All he could think about was how grateful he was to not be alone in this situation as he approached the other beds.
.
.
.
They’re dead.
The woman, or what he thought was a woman, was in the cot closest to him. Her long hair is the only possible indicator of her identity thanks to the desecrated skin that stretched over her bones. The person in the next bed was a man, he thought based on his skeletal form. He’d been dead a long time, much longer than the woman if his crumbling skin was anything to go by. They both seemed to have died a long time ago, and didn't smell.
He stood staring that the two corpses, questioning the absence of disgust that he should be feeling. He tried to rationalize why their bodies had been left in the room with him. If this was a hospital, surely they’d remove their bodies when they died, even if they were dealing with a highly contagious disease. His gaze wandered to the last cot, expecting to see another corpse.
She was still alive!
He almost stumbled back into the robots waiting embrace when he saw her.
He made his way over, and looked over her unconscious form. Another woman, and she was just as naked as he was. After a quick assessment, he immediately averted his gaze. She appeared healthy, aside from the breathing tube in her throat and the various leads and tubes that litter her body. He muttered about the indecency of the situation and resolved to find a sheet to drape over her later. He isn’t a creep, he knew that much for sure, and he wasn’t going to be accused of being one ether.
From what he could tell she was on the younger side. Late 20’s? Early 30’s at most? He couldn’t be certain. His biggest question right now: Why wasn’t she awake too? Did he just happen to wake up first? Was she suffering from whatever had them all confined to this room? Okay, that was more than one question, but still.
“Hey!” he shouted at the ceiling. “Wake her up! I need to talk to her!”
But no response came.
Great.
Well, he’d just have to wait for her to wake up, if she wakes up. He just had to wait, fight off the persistent exhaustion, and a gropey robot. Oh along with figure out who he was, and where the heck he was.
~~~
They were in a spaceship.
A spaceship.
That explained why the gravity was weird. It had been driving him crazy since he first started to move around, but once he’d done a few tests and escaped the living area things made more sense. Well, the gravity made more sense at least.
With access to most of the rest of the ship, he had done some exploring while waiting for his roommate to wake up. It had helped him confirm a few things, but he still had no idea what was happening. He was a scientist, he knew that based on the fact he recognized and remembered how to use the various pieces of high end equipment he found in the lab area. It was an extremely well stocked lab, and all of the equipment was mounted to the wall, like the room was ready to survive an earthquake.
He had tried everything he could think of to get more information, or help. Radio contact wasn't an option, the door to the cockpit was locked, and his name was the key. He raided every storage compartment he could find, flipped through every book, manual, or screen he could get his hands on, hoping for something useful. There was a lot of stuff on this ship, but none of it was useful with his current memory issue. The storage compartment was actually one of the most useful things he’d found so far.
For starters, he found clothes, so he wasn't wandering around in just a bed sheet anymore. The clothes were in several bags with personal items inside, presumably belonging to him and the rest of the crew. Based on the contents he figured out which one was his, finding a Polaroid photo of him tucked inside. The other bags had embroidered names on each of them, his didn’t. His bag had a simple paper label that read “Grace.” He also thought it was strange that there were six bags, not four. If it was important, he’d remember it later. Hopefully.
So, his name was Grace, or at least part of it. It was probably his last name. Most organizations go by last name, it was a professional standard. It wasn’t enough to open the cockpit door, he checked, but it was more than he’d remembered to far.
With the discovery of the bags, he learned the names of the dead crew members, some memories of them coming back with their names. He knew the man was Yao, and that the woman was Ilyukhina. That left Dubois and Shapiro unaccounted for. They weren’t among the dead, and he hadn’t found them anywhere else on the ship, so that was another mystery for his list. He started a list on a whiteboard he found, it helped keep things straight, and it felt familiar.
The unconscious woman was called Volare. It was Latin, it means “to fly.”
Huh, why did he know that?
Suddenly he was struck by another memory. It was out of focus, almost like trying to recall something from when he was really little. Not that he could remember being a kid either.
He walked through the hall and into the shared workspace with an older man. He spoke with thick accent as he told him about a recent test of some kind. The man had large grin and a proud but mischievous twinkle in his eye as he spoke.
Volare wore a white lab coat, but he could see the bird themed shirt he’d gotten for her peaking out. Her face scrunched in concentration as she read her notes. “Malen'kaya ptichka! Grace is back!” the man beside him shouted, getting her attention. She looked up at the pair, and a wide smile spreads across her face.
So they knew each other, and they definitely worked together. That made sense. Why else would they both be here? But she’s still a coma, hurdling through space for god knows why.
He stood beside her bed, he couldn’t help himself. Grace would often find himself talking to her, drifting to her as he tried to figure things out. It felt familiar, maybe they used to solve problems like this before. He had covered her with a sheet, thankfully the robot arms didn’t try to remove it. She was still unconscious, and showed no signs of waking.
With a sigh he turned his attention back to the storage compartment he’d found. Maybe he’d find something else to jog his memory inside the various bags that filled the small space.