Archive of Our Own

It’s an intern who accidentally spills the beans. Grace hadn’t even known they had interns on the Vat but sure enough, the girl who casually turned his entire world upside down is still in school and is completing a semester aboard the aircraft.

School credit in exchange for an opportunity to help save the world and the Sun. Oh, and inform Dr. Ryland Grace that his boss and sort of friend intends to murder him if she needs to and was going to keep that information from him until it became necessary.

Joy.

His first thought when he learns that he has the coma resistance gene is to storm into Stratt’s office, but the thought of seeing her face freezes all the blood in his veins. He can’t bear to see the indifferent expression on her face when he confronts her—she will have a perfectly logical explanation ready in her chamber and will not hesitate to fire at him if he complains. Instead, he hides up in the docks for as long as he can. He leaves his radio in his room and turns his phone off just so he can stare at the water as it turns darker and darker. When the sun is still setting, about 8 hours after the intern told him of his impending death, someone finally finds him.

Carl comes running around the corner and skids to a stop when he spots Grace. He’s breathing harshly and it takes him a couple of times to catch his breath before he can speak into the radio and tell everybody that their pet scientist hasn’t thrown himself overboard.

“Dude,” Carl wheezes, “where the hell have you been all day? You missed all your meetings and classes—nobody’s seen you today at all! If you needed a break, you should have told me!”

He scoffs. Yeah, right. There’s no breaks here on the aircraft that are longer than maybe fifteen minutes.

“Really? Would she have let me leave, you think?”

“Stratt?” Carl frowns and takes in Grace’s dejected figure slumped on the floor. He’s hugging his knees and he’s balancing his chin on one of them. He doesn’t even have his glasses on right, just has them hanging off one ear.

“Yeah, or would she have sent some guards with me on my ‘break’ so I couldn’t run away?” Grace looks at Carl’s face carefully, waiting for his expression to shift.

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about! I know you know!” Grace is suddenly filled with white hot rage and before he knows it, he’s on his feet, rushing towards his friend. “Don’t tell me she didn’t tell you! You’ve been keeping a close eye on me ever since she found out about the coma gene, haven’t you?”

Carl gapes at him. Grace is vibrating with anger, his hands are clenched into fists and he feels the urge to throw something, to have his fists connect with something—to feel alive.

“Grace,” Carl says slowly and carefully, as if speaking too loudly or fast will spook him. “Help me out here, man. What are you talking about?”

“Carl,” another voice suddenly speaks up. Grace’s whole body stiffens and all the anger in his body leaves him all at once at the sound of Stratt’s voice. He hates it. Hates her and how much faith he has on her. He turns away from them and walks back to the railing, leans heavily on it.

All he feels now is grief.

Carl and Stratt speak to each other in low voices but it doesn’t matter. He knows that Carl reports to Stratt and that there’s nothing he will keep from her. Besides, he already knows how this conversation will start and end.

“Dr. Grace,” Stratt’s even and calm voice reaches him. There’s a hint of reproach in it. He closes his eyes. “You’ve been neglecting your duties. In the future, a warning would be most helpful so we can avoid the fires your absence caused.”

His chin drops to his chest and a bitter laugh escapes his lips. “You’re unbelievable, Eva Stratt.”

There’s a short pause.

“Thank you.”

He shakes his head and looks out towards the water. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

“No.” Simple, succinct and to the point. She’s just the Eva Stratt he knows. She’s incapable of being any one else.

“Why not?”

“You tend to allow your fears to dictate your behavior, Dr. Grace.” He flinches hard. He feels like her words have physically shocked him. “And you are too integral to this project to risk losing you. I believed that your fear would interfere with all your responsibilities.”

“You thought I would run away.” He pauses and thinks. “You think I’m a coward.”

“I do not think you are a coward. I think that in certain situations, you allow your fears to compromise your values.” He hears her approach closer until she stands next to him. “I think that you would have run, yes. At first.”

“Why?” What was it about him that tells her he’s a coward? That his first thought was that he doesn’t want to die, that he won’t get on that ship? Is that so bad, wanting to live?

“There hasn’t been a day where you haven’t brought up your classroom or your ‘kids.’ I have lost count of how many times you have told us that you could never do what the astronauts have volunteered for.” He pictures her shrugging beside him in that irritating way she does. “You have one foot out the door, Dr. Grace and I am ashamed to say that I did not want to see it—to admit that it was obvious you could not wear the title of my first officer even though you did your job perfectly. I have made you, in every way possible, the second most important person in the world.

And yet, you continue to deny this because you are too afraid of being the responsible authority when things go wrong. I thought that if I told you that I planned on taking the blame for the consequences of the Project, then it would alleviate your fears and help you settle into your role. I was wrong again.”

“Well, yeah, I’m scared! Who wouldn’t be? You wouldn’t have given me any time or choice in the matter because you’d tell me about the gene at the last minute! What if I only had a day before launch?! I’m not brave, Stratt. I can’t do it, especially not pressured like that.” He grows agitated and runs both hands through his hair. “Just because I don’t want to give you my life does not mean I’m not committed. I don’t have one foot out the door. Why didn’t you just tell me that I’m your second in command?”

He turns to look at her for the first time. She stares straight ahead to the water, even though it was getting too dark to see anything. She looks tired. More than usual. He could tell she hadn’t showered in a couple of days and that she’s wearing the same pants as yesterday. She’s probably missing an important meeting right now. Her hair is limp but not greasy—he just knows she has a killer dry shampoo.

This was the woman who would send him to his death without hesitation. But then again, she didn’t hesitate with Antartica, did she? What did she tell Leclerc afterwards?

We’re all doing what we have to do.

Oh, she’s talking again.

“Because you were ignoring the very obvious signs that you were important to the Project, on purpose. If you could not see it, then it was not happening. Except it was, it was just you who willingly turned your eye from it. And you are brave.” She says this last part so suddenly and so matter of factly that it takes his brain a while to understand. “When the problem is physically presented to you, there is very little that could stop you from solving it—not even fear. It’s when the stakes are less obviously dire that you have difficulty calling upon your bravery. World hunger, food shortage, an ice age—you can’t see these dangers.”

He goes back to looking out at the dark water. That doesn’t sound like him. When has ever jumped at the chance to solve something that also terrifies him? Although, she does have a point about being her second in command. It had scared him quite badly when people kept calling him that, and the only way he could do his work from day to day was to pretend he was just helping out Stratt, like an assistant.

That sounds pretty pathetic, now.

“Alright, so I didn’t want to put a title on what I am to the Project. But fine, I'm your second in command. The First Officer, or whatever. See, I’m not running.”

“But you did. For a while.”

Darn it all, she’s right again. And the thought isn’t as scary as it was before like when Yao brought it up. He doesn’t wield the power that Stratt has, but he has people to look after and projects to oversee. He sighs and drops his elbows into the railing, leaning even more precariously on it. He pretends his elbows don’t hurt.

“What if I say no, right now, about being the tertiary science specialist? I give you my final decision and tell you I’m not coming back.”

“Then I was wrong about the kind of person you are.”

He shakes his head again, this time more vehemently. She has this image of him that he cannot comprehend—she wants him to become someone he is not and cannot be.

“What kind of person is that?” A good leader. A man who would not hesitate to give his life for humanity.

“An inherently good man.”

“Well, fuck.” That is the kind of man he wants to be, even now strives to be. He doesn’t realize he says this out loud until Stratt barks out a laugh that surprises the both of them.

“I-I’m not—.” To deny this would be callous. Like he’s fishing for compliments while Earth slowly cools down. “I’m smart. I’m intelligent—I can help, I can give you anything you want if what you need is a smart person. But I’m not good. It’s just me.”

Can’t she see that even though he tries, he is not good at all? He’s never been good.

“That you have the brains to find a solution to the astrophage problem in Tau Ceti is a given fact, Dr. Grace. I do not doubt the impressiveness of your intellect. I do not want you on that ship, but if you are the last scientist left, I will make you board that ship—not because of what you can do or give for humanity but because you know what humanity means to you.”

“What? If I weren’t a scientist—“

“Of course I want your skills and knowledge, the fancy degrees and awards.” She waves a hand dismissively. “I was always going to ask that of you and of the astronauts. Of everyone on this Project. But what I need up there is not the smartest man and or the bravest woman. I need a heart like Yao’s, Olesya’s, and DuBois’. I need people who look at Earth and see something worth saving and who will stop at nothing to achieve it. Because they are good people and it must be done. It simply must.”

He stays quiet for a while, digests the conversation.

“And you think I have a heart like that.” He doesn’t pose it as a question because he already knows that she does. He’s never had anybody believe in him as much as Eva Stratt believes in him and he’s never had anybody cut him to the quick as much as Eva Stratt has, either.

I do not want you on that ship.

That’s what she said. Okay, maybe she doesn’t want him to die. But she’d do it, if she had to. She wouldn’t care that he did not want to go, that she was murdering him.

She would kill him. Her heart is twice as big as his is and she would give up everything in her to save Earth if she could. She already is.

“…what happens if I say no?”

“What happens before launch day is entirely up to your level of cooperation. If you tried to run and launch day was close, we would most likely sedate you. Or keep you locked in a room against your will, if there’s still many weeks or months left before launch.” He hears her clear her throat, an unusual move from Stratt. “On launch day, if you did not cooperate, we would sedate you before boarding you on the Hail Mary, and then induce the coma before the other astronauts boarded.”

“Yao would never go for that.”

“Yes, he’s annoyingly ethical about these things.” Grace can’t help but laugh bitterly again. “I have a plan for that as well.”

He’s terrified at the calmness of her voice.

Have, not had. Her contingency plans have contingency plans. Of course they do.

A big part of Grace wants to prove her wrong. To show her that he’s not abandoning his values and that when time comes to shove, he will step up if the fate of the world needs to rest on his shoulders. But he can’t. A visceral fear drops heavily on his stomach and a numbness spreads all throughout his body. Him in space, in the vast, dark and never-ending unknown? He could throw up just thinking about it.

But he also remembers how he felt when he was explaining the dots to his kids the day after he finished analyzing them in Stratt’s pop-up lab. The fear that ran down his spine when he realized some of them wouldn’t make it to his age. The rush and panic of the bike ride to the lab when he realized he had to help, he had to do something, anything. He could not let his kids die.

Wouldn’t the same feeling inspire him again? Wouldn’t he have panicked and hidden and cried for a good long while before doing the right thing in the end? Well, he might not get to find out now.

Can he remain angry at her for something she hasn’t done yet? He’s always known what she’s capable of. She will pick the best option available at every step of the way. And apparently, she thinks that if it comes down to it, he could be the best option. Ugh, he wishes that didn’t make her sound so nice.

He takes a deep breath and lets it go slowly. He feels drained—he wants to hold on to the anger he had earlier but he doesn’t have the energy.

“You still should have told me.”

“And risk losing you from the Project?”

“If you believe in my heart,” the word comes out rather derisively. “Then you’d believe that I would come back.” He takes his glasses off and cleans them on his shirt. He’s very tired.

“A variable that I cannot control one-hundred percent is a variable that I cannot trust.”

“That’s…Stratt, that’s like… everything.”

“Yes.”

“So which one is it, really? You trust me to be your second in command, but you can’t tell me because I’ll run? But you don’t trust that I will eventually come to terms with being the tertiary science specialist? Am I a coward? Am I brave? What is it!”

“God, why can’t you see what I see? It is so tiresome.”

Rage bubbles up in him until he explodes at her words. He turns to face her completely. It startles her.

“Well, I’m sorry, Eva! Not all of us have the personality of a Dictator!” She does not turn around to face him. In fact, she doesn’t even react at the words. The seconds pass by as he stares at her, waiting for her quick remark or insult.

Still, she says nothing.

“Stratt?”

As if he pushed a button, her body comes alive and she straightens up and takes a deep breath through her nose.

“Do you think I have always been like this?” Her voice is tight, almost constrained. Grace realizes his words might’ve actually hurt her. “I will simplify it for you, Ryland Grace.”

She turns to look at him and with the dark and uninviting night sky behind her, he feels like he could reach out and pluck the star that hovers right next to her ear. Maybe he’d even let her have it.

“You have your cowardly moments where you compromise your values and run, but you are not a coward because you are fundamentally a good man who strives to do the right thing. I have seen you be brave. But I have also seen you run.

If there weren’t billions of lives at stake, if I didn’t have to utilize the ruthlessness that I was hired for, this trust would be enough.” Her face is very open now and he can see something painful lingering in her eyes. “But there are billions of lives at stake and I am Director Eva Stratt of the Petrova Taskforce, and I am not doing my job correctly if there are no contingency plans in place.”

He feels a very cold hand land on his arm. He wants to shake her off but something about the way she licks her lips nervously distracts him from doing so.

“I could not compromise the mission, Ryland.” His eyes dart to hers. They’re calm and serious but they soften the tiniest bit when he makes eye contact. “Any variable that I cannot control completely is a variable that needs a contingency plan.”

There is no guilt in her eyes, no sign of pain at the thought of possibly sending her friend to die without his consent. His heart constricts painfully in his chest.

“Is it that easy for you? Am I just a contingency plan to you—that’s what makes me ‘integral to the project’?” He’s so tired. He needs to go to bed. All he knows is that he’s starting to lose the thread of the argument.

“Nothing about being Director is easy.” Her hand tightens painfully on his arm. “I thought you understood. There are choices that are out of our hands if we want to succeed and save humanity.”

Could she have risked it? Telling him before it became necessary? He doesn’t know. And that’s the crux of the problem—she can’t afford not to know. The weight that rests on her shoulders is heavy and all consuming, he knows this.

He can’t think about this anymore. He nods his head at her and gently extricates her hand from his arm. It might not be easy for her to do the things she does, but that doesn’t mean it has to be easy for him to move past this either.

All he feels is the sense of loss. He’s losing someone or something here, but he can’t wrap his mind around who it is. Is he losing himself? Has he decided to give up his life? The faces of his eight grade class suddenly appear before him. Man, but they’re tiny.

He hates her. He hates her he hates her he hates her.

Why does she always have to be right?

He takes a deep breath. Takes a step in a new direction.

“Book me a plane to San Francisco for the weekend, Stratt. If I’m going to be third on the list for you to kill, I might as well give my kids a proper goodbye.” He sighs and rubs his hand over his face, bending his glasses awkwardly. He can’t bring himself to look at her.

“This weekend, please. Friday morning to Sunday night.” She does not respond. This is nonnegotiable for him. If he’s doing this—and every bone in his body is yelling at him that he has to, that his kids need him to—then he wants to be on land again. Get lost in the fog. Be away from Stratt.

She waits until he looks at her for her to nod tersely.

He leaves her on the docks, his footsteps heavy and slow.

Why does it hurt so much more knowing it was her who kept this information from him? Couldn’t it have been anybody else that made that decision?

*

*

*

*

*

Hours later when he’s cried himself into a stupor, the last thought he has before he falls asleep is, “No. Nobody else could have made the decision to send their friend to their death. And that’s why only Eva Stratt can save humanity—she is the only one willing to strip herself of her own humanity to save others.”

How could he hate the thing he most admires about her?

His bruised heart answers for him. Easily.

He gets an e-mail from Stratt with the details of his trip the next morning. He only has to endure two more days aboard the Vat and then he can go to his old apartment and clutch his old comforter and cry to his heart's content without worrying if anybody else can hear him. He’s contacted his old school and they’re arranging a ‘Pizza Party with Mr. Grace’ during the last class hour of the day. Most of his kids have moved on to high school, but there are two classes he taught that haven’t moved schools yet. He’s looking forward to it.

What he is not looking forward to is his daily morning meeting with Stratt. He normally brings her coffee and they sit for a couple of hours to go through all the more pressing administrative issues. They then divide responsibilities and walk together to their first Team Meeting of the day.

He wakes up late and with puffy eyes that won’t go away. He’d be more worried about it if he wasn’t having an existential crisis about whether or not to get Stratt her usual coffee. On one hand, if he stopped by for the coffee, he would be late to the meeting. On the other hand, if he didn’t stop by for the coffee, he would be changing a dynamic in their working relationship and as much as he is hurting for her cavalier stance on his life, he doesn’t like things changing very much. He’d be making a statement.

Grace does not want to make a statement. He wants things to go back to how they were before, but even as he thinks this, his heart lurches painfully. No, they can’t do that either.

In the end, the choice is taken from him when he realizes he’s already two minutes late to Stratt’s office. That’s fine. He’s going to walk in late, without coffee and with red puffy eyes.

This week cannot end fast enough.

Instead of the two hours they usually spend together every morning, they both run out of things to say after one hour. Stratt doesn’t comment on the lack of coffee or his eyes, so he decides not to bring it up.

The next day, Stratt already has her two coffees on her desk when he arrives, on time, and he thanks his lucky stars that he didn’t stop by for coffee, too. He cannot imagine the embarrassment he would have felt navigating that situation.

By the time he boards his flight—Stratt lent him her personal plane—he is exhausted from tip toeing around her and other people are starting to notice the tension between them. According to Olesya, it’s a bad kind of tension.

All tension is bad in Grace’s book, but what does he know. He hadn’t figured out he was Stratt’s Deputy Director until two days ago and he’s still trying to figure out how he did that on purpose, according to her.

However, now that he is on the plane on his way to San Francisco and away from mean redheads, he can think a little more clearly. He’s not going to think about Stratt this weekend. He is going to use these three days to forget about what she’s done and just focus on his city and the short reprieve he has from work.

Come Monday morning, he will be refreshed and feel so much better that he’ll know what to do about the whole thing.

The Pizza Party gets cancelled.

Half of the kids get sick and call out for the rest of the week and the other half are being advised not to congregate in small areas. Turns out there is an outbreak at the school and by Friday’s last period, most of the school is deserted.

Grace tries not to take it personally. It’s not like the kids or the teachers know that this is probably his only day off until launch day in two years, and even then it’s not guaranteed that he’ll stay on Earth!

He kicks at the ground. These are the kids he’s agreeing to die for?

He instantly feels awful for the thought and kicks at the ground harder. He just wants something familiar that comforts him and he’s not even supposed to be thinking about this until Monday morning.

Try as he might, though, he cannot stop thinking about Stratt’s plans. What did she mean when she said that she had a plan for Yao never finding out that he wasn’t willingly volunteering?

Why is he her Deputy Director if he’s a scientist and not an administrator? Sure, he can harangue the scientists into shape most of the time and they listen to his opinion, but that’s because he’s friendly. Is that really something that earns him the title? And then all he does in the administrative side has to do with the scientists anyway—all the paperwork on the equipment, research, requests, lab reports, maintenance, clean-up, safety and whatever petty fight the engineers have going on with whatever scientist that week.

Well, that’s quite a lot of paperwork that she actually used to do. And then there’s the paperwork and presentations he’s taken over for her from the administrative side. She doesn’t even communicate with the American leaders or organizations anymore—they all call him Dr. Rye and it freaks him out a little, to be honest. He’s even doing the requisitions forms for some of the shipment that comes in every month. He checks in on every team every morning and reports back to her with any problems that he can’t find a solution to.

He’s been slowly taking over some of her responsibilities. He’s even hired and fired people! And the worst part is, some of these responsibilities are ones that he asked for and were given to him because he asked her if she needed help with anything.

He kicks at the ground again.

Maybe he would have ran at the first chance. And then where would that leave the project? Without the lead scientist aboard the Hail Mary and without the leading expert in astrophage and without its Deputy Director.

And isn’t that what he’s doing now? Running back to San Francisco because he’s mad at his boss for having a secret contingency plan that she hid because she knew he would not take it well, but had to create anyway because she’s just that fudging good at her job and is always prepared?

He considers kicking at the ground again.

No, he’s not running away. He’s committing even more now. He’s always had this hang up about not saying goodbye to his city or his school or his friends. He did get to see some of his old teacher friends, and they even had some letters and drawings from the kids.

He’s seeing Marissa that night and then he’s eating at some of his favorite restaurants on Sunday. And then after he’s said his piece, he’s going back to the Vat without San Francisco hanging over him like a ghost and he can focus on his job—saving the world by being Deputy Director, first officer and second in command.

No more running. He’s refuted it enough times in the past to the others in the Vat. He is her second in command. And really, the only one he has to blame is himself. He became the expert in astrophage because he wanted to. He took things off her plate and attended meetings for her because he wanted her to rest and to maintain that small semblance of being a human that she still had when she was giving up everything else. She told him once that she expects to go to jail after all this, didn’t she? She told him she was the scapegoat so that he wouldn’t worry that he might be prosecuted, too.

And what did he do? He freaked out for one night and then put it out of his mind. Yup, it was time to stop running from his problems and just address them head on. Being an adult in charge of the world sucks.

Marissa cancels their plans. He doesn’t kick at the ground when he finds out because her mother is really sick and Marissa feels bad enough about it already. Instead, he goes to his favorite parks and drinks his favorite coffee. The barista that usually served him was not behind the counter and when he asked about him, he was told he hadn’t worked there in a while.

Grace hopes that he ended up going back to school like he wanted to. He thinks about that for a while, how there was this kind of stranger that he liked to talk to every week and how he knew things about him, like that he had a cat named Gas and that his mother travels to Japan every summer to stay with family.

The next day, when he notices that the gas station store he usually walked to has closed permanently, he wonders what the kind and old lady behind the counter is doing now. She had talked about retirement every time Grace was there to buy a Gatorade and a Twizzler packet. He had a feeling that the job was physically taxing on her.

He thinks about going to the movies but then sees that the price of tickets has doubled since he’s last been and decides he doesn’t need to see another Star Wars movie. He decides to end the day by going to his favorite museum and then stopping by to eat at his favorite noodle place.

When he gets to the museum, it says it’s closed for remodeling, even though their website says it’s open.

No biggie, that just means he has more time to chat with the owner of the restaurant and she can tell him all about how her daughters haven’t married yet and that it’s all her husband’s fault for spoiling them too much. But when he turns the corner, the normal sign of the restaurant does not greet him. Instead, a new bar has opened in its place and its packed.

Right. That’s fine. He still has a lovely time walking the streets. The night has taken a blue and grayish tint, and he can see the fog forming over the water when he’s high up on a street. He considers finding some other place to go to, but he’s done for the day. He makes the long walk back to his old apartment (where he did indeed cry a lot) and decides that he’s going to pack his Legos to decorate his fairly depressing room at the Vat.

When he turns the corner and walks towards the door of his apartment building, he notices a woman standing next to the door. She has a tablet in her hands and her head is covered by a black scarf. It’s not even that cold!

He can’t believe what he’s seeing. Should he pretend he doesn’t see her? Walk away and look for the back entrance? Too late, she spots him right away when he stops in his tracks. She closes her tablet and waits until he’s closer to her to greet him. What is she doing here?! She’s a bigger pain than his students’ parents.

“Dr. Grace,” she even gives him a tiny smile. Well, he doesn’t want her fake smiles. “How has your trip be—“

“What are you doing here?”

“Alright.” She nods as if she was expecting him to interrupt her. Well, she doesn’t know everything about him! He can be a gentleman. “Could we head inside? It’s cold.”

“It’s 70 degrees Fahrenheit, Stratt.” Rolling his eyes, he opens the door for her and allows her to enter first. Which ends up being a mistake because now he has to lead since he knows where they’re going. He shuffles past her in the narrow entryway.

He tries not to feel self-conscious as she enters his kind of clean apartment. She’s the one being rude by showing up unexpectedly.

“What are you doing here? This was my break from you.”

And okay, that may have come out a lot more rudely than he was going for because she frowns at him and squirms a little as she settles into his armchair. She clears her throat. She never used to do that before and he doesn’t like it. He figures he should offer her something to drink but he’s only been here for three days. All he has is water.

“I heard your middle-school cancelled their plans with you.”

He nods, but doesn’t say anything.

“And that your friend Marissa could not meet with you because she was taking care of her mother who fell ill.”

Grace narrows his eyes. Did she plan all this so he would be miserable in San Francisco? Did she also close down the museum?!

“How do you know all that? Did you tell Marissa to cancel?!”

“What?” She frowns at him and shakes her head. “No, no. The two of us have…communicated.”

“What?!”

“I spoke with her. And Principal Garcia.”

He squints at her.

“Stratt, are you stalking me?”

“What? No, of course not.” She frowns deeper and begins to unwind the scarf around her head. She smoothes down her flyaways and reveals an intricate bun. It looks pretty. Not that he cares.

“I already told you I would let you kill me! Do you need to know where I am every second of every day so you know that I’m not running away?”

“No, no. It’s not like that.”

He stares at her.

She stares at him.

He stares right back at her.

“It’s not!” She rubs her forehead with her index finger. “I simply arranged some meetings ahead of time so you could optimize your time appropriately.” She casually crosses her right leg over her left.

“So, let me get this straight.” He rolls his eyes at her. “You called my friends and my school to…arrange a playdate for me?”

“I called to make sure they were available.” Her lips twitch and she waves a hand dismissively. “For your playdate.”

“Did you threaten my friends? Are you doing this because you feel guilty?” She also lent him her plane and she’s very stingy with that, so it looks like she’s being nice because she feels bad.

She sighs and all signs of mirth disappear from her eyes.

“No, I do not feel guilty for making you my tertiary science specialist, Dr. Grace.”

“Oh.” He doesn’t know why he feels disappointed. It’s not like he believes she felt remorse.

“I am here because you were right—“

“Huh?!”

“Don’t interrupt me. Close your mouth, I know you’re not as stupid as you look right now.”

His jaw clicked shut. Rude. She sighs again. She’s been doing that a lot since she entered his apartment. It kind of makes him want to giggle.

“I found out about your coma gene early enough in the project that I could have either convinced you to accept the tertiary science specialist position with plenty of time or train the next available scientist with the gene. Well, I would not allow you to leave the aircraft, so you would stay on the Project anyway.” She shrugs. “Also, if you ran I would have tracked you down, drugged you and put you on the Hail Mary.”

“Oh.” His responses need some work. But she’s coming at him from the left field! None of this makes sense. Stratt said he was right?

The more she says it, the more normal she makes it sound. Who makes drugging someone sound like an everyday occurrence? Only Stratt could. None of this surprises him, though. Of course she would track him down if he left the aircraft and bring him right back. How many times was he with her when they kidnapped someone?

None of what she just said is brand new information to him. Except the part where he’s right. And maybe the part where she’d hunt him down like a stray dog.

“In the interest of remaining honest, I want you to know that I have been in contact with French scientists who are developing a drug that, when administered, would temporarily take a person’s memories.”

“Okay.” He drags the word out as long as he can. He knows it annoys her. “For what purpose? Who would you use it on?”

“You.” Stratt gives him a look as if he should have known the answer to that and that asking was a stupid move. Well, she’s not wrong.

“What? But why?”

“Your temper.”

“What?!”

“If there were signs that you might sabotage the mission as retaliation for sending you to your death, the drug would make you forget about the circumstances surrounding your presence on the ship.”

He would wake up on the Hail Mary with no memories and in space. Jimmy Cricket. He wants to say that he would never think of doing that—but honestly he’s said worse things when he’s been livid. Once, he threatened to break into his student’s house and feed him if his parents’ kept forgetting his breakfast.

“That’s terrifying. You really have a plan for everything, huh?”

She delicately lifts one shoulder. It shouldn’t charm him the way it does. He stays quiet while he turns over what she said in his brain.

An amnesia-inducing drug. That’s… that’s really effed up.

“Okay, so you’re not gonna do that anymore, right? Cause you wouldn’t send someone to space unless you were certain of their dedication.”

“I can’t rely on 99% certainty that it wouldn’t happen.”

“I think you can, Stratt. The drug—that’s actually insane. What if the drug erased vital information about astrophage?”

“It wouldn’t. That’s not how the drug works.”

“Are you sure?” She hesitates a little. “Aha! You can’t guarantee everything, Stratt. That’s insane. You’re insane. Drug me and force me on the Hail Mary—I’m afraid of heights anyway and don’t want to be awake—but don’t take away my memories.”

What is he even saying? He doesn’t want to be drugged or forced onto the ship! He drags a hand over his face tiredly. Why do conversations always derail so badly with Stratt? Cause she’s kind of a psychopath, that’s why. That should scare him, shouldn’t it?

Stratt’s raises her eyebrows. Then nods slowly.

“So you came all this way just to tell me all your secrets? You couldn’t have waited until tomorrow?”

She breaks eye contact and looks to her right. Her foot bounces once, then twice.

“We had a few meetings scheduled, in two months time, with three different investors here in San Francisco.” Her lips purse. “I moved them up to tomorrow. It was not hard.”

“You cancelled your meetings for tomorrow to be in San Francisco?” He questions incredulously.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Dr. Grace. I rearranged our schedule so that we could add the three meetings, not replace.”

“What? Why—can you just tell me what you’re doing here, please?” He’s very tired and his legs are starting to cramp. He hasn’t walked these hills in two years, he tries to remind himself.

“Principal Garcia has agreed to a do-over, as you say, on Monday for your ‘Pizza Party.’ And Marissa will reschedule for tomorrow as well, but that’s between the two of you. I simply rearranged some meetings and their location so that you may stay here for another day.”

Silence. Awkward silence. Her foot bounces a couple of times again.

“You are stalking me.”

“Yes, well,” she stands up abruptly. “Call it what you will, but you’re expected at the Marriot for our first meeting at six a.m.—be ready for a car to pick you up. A schedule will be—“

“What would you call it?”

“Stop interrupting me.” She starts to wrap her scarf around her head again and looks very frustrated. Ha. “I would call it a—an acknowledgment. An explanation.”

Grace tries to catch her eye but Stratt is pretending to fuss over her scarf and coat.

“So,” he drags the word out even more exaggeratedly and enjoys it immensely. “You’re apologizing. Because I was right and you should have told me about being the tertiary science specialist and now you feel really bad about it and wanna make it up to—“

“Well, that was a productive conversation, Dr. Grace.” She doesn’t wait until he stands up to walk her to his door, instead she just opens the door and walks out without so much as a by-your-leave.

Before the door closes behind her, he hears her say, “Contact Marissa! Our flight leaves at 1900.”

He shakes his head as he stands up to lock his door. What a weird lady. Can’t even apologize right.

As he begins to pack up his Legos, he can’t quite believe that she came all the way here as an excuse to give him another day at San Francisco. Can’t believe she contacted his school—and Marissa! She must have yelled at Stratt for quite a while before Stratt could get a word in. Grace has not been very good at keeping contact with Marissa after things got busy on the aircraft, and he had shamelessly blamed it on Stratt and her strict rules.

He’ll have to ask her about it tomorrow. He takes out his phone and finds a message from her with a new place and time to meet. He grins down at his phone and sends her a confirmation without checking in with Stratt. She probably already shared their schedule with Marissa anyway.

That is so…strange. It’s weird behavior from an employer, right?

Normal bosses don’t send their employees to space against their will. And they don’t prepare an amnesia-inducing drug to take his memory. They also don’t send the FBI to kidnap their employee from their own apartment, or stick them in a room full of argon just to be her guinea pig.

So, working for Stratt: not normal. But even for Stratt’s standards, waiting outside of his apartment until he got there was stranger than strange. It tipped over to creepy. Does she actually regret keeping this information from him, or is she trying to stay close to him so she knows where he is at all times?

He piles his boxes by the door and looks around his apartment again. With great sadness, he realizes that he doesn’t really feel like this is his home anymore. Should he pack up his stuff? But what if he needs a place to stay after launch? His apartment is pretty cheap, he doesn’t want to lose that.

Well, that’s a question for tomorrow. Stratt can figure that out for him if she feels that bad.

His coffee break with Marissa reveals a lot more than Stratt probably wanted him to know. For one, Marissa quite likes her. Oh, she thinks Stratt is a b-word with a capital b, but she has a lot of respect for her. And then when he tells Marissa about the gene for the coma and how Stratt secretly made him the tertiary science specialist, Marissa berates him for spilling government secrets in public!

Once she’s done yelling about that, she doesn’t seem all that concerned. “So, your boss has a bit of a homicidal streak in her. It’s not like you have to like her. You expect your bosses to fuck you over. I mean that’s why we have HR, ‘cause no one like their boss.”

“I like my boss,” he mumbles. “I just don’t like it when she hides things from me that are about me and has plans to send me off to space with no memory and no consent. You can’t tell me that’s not a huge violation of…of…autonomy! Trust!”

“Yeah, but she’s trying to gain your trust back, isn’t she? She told you about the amnesia-inducing drug. Which is wild, by the way, but effective. You would essentially wake up with no memory and only have the mission to worry about and nothing else.”

“That’s—! That’s not a good thing, Marissa! Whose side are you on?”

“I didn’t say it was a good thing! And I’m on your side, Ryland, of course. But if you came to me right now and told me that you ran away from your boss because she wanted to unwillingly send you into space to save humanity, I know that you’d regret it before the day was done.”

He drops his head onto the table they’re sitting at. It makes a satisfying sound.

“I know that.”

“She should have told you, though. For sure. I’m so glad I don’t have her job.”

“She said the same thing,” he mumbles.

“What? I can’t hear you.” She pokes him on his shoulder. He reluctantly lifts his head just long enough to speak.

“She said that I was right, that she should have told me about the gene and the tertiary science specialist position from the beginning.”

“See? Your boss is already better than mine.” He glares at her as much as he can with his forehead still on the table. “No, seriously, Ryland. What are you going to do? Can you trust her?”

No, he wants to say. Not with his life or his autonomy. He’s still expected back on the aircraft that very night. If he changes his mind, she won’t change hers.

“I’m the tertiary science specialist. I’ve accepted that, even though I’m terrified out of my mind.” He sits up and leans back on his chair. “I trust that she will do the right thing with the variables presented to her in order to save humanity.”

Marissa nods along. She raises her eyebrows when he stops talking. He sighs and gives in.

“I don’t trust her with,” he gestures vaguely at his own body. “Cause all that matters to her is humanity. So, I trust that she’ll do what is necessary to save Earth and the sun and humanity. It just means that I don’t fit into any of those categories.”

“Well, not anymore. Ryland, you’re like, her right hand. If you’re really going to do this, it won’t work if you don’t commit in the same way she has. Otherwise, you’re just another scientist she has to manage. I think you’re crazy for doing it in the first place, but you’re already there, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” he says morosely. He knows he’s in as deep as it gets. He can’t leave the project. He can’t abandon the people that are under his guidance, he can’t stop teaching the astronauts what there is to know about astrophage. He can’t abandon Stratt to carry all that weight by herself again, even if she’s a pain in the butt. He can’t go back to teaching and look at his students in the eye and tell them that he could have helped to save the world but chose not to.

“I still hate her,” he says petulantly. “It’s wrong, what she did.”

“No, you don’t.” Marissa fixes his collar with an affectionate air. “And it sure was. I’ll break you out if she tries to send you to space and you changed your mind.”

“You will?” He looks at her with such a desperate look of hope in his face that she can’t lie to him.

“Yeah, I will.” She takes his hand and rubs her thumb over his knuckles. “If you can promise me that you won’t kill yourself afterwards because you feel too guilty. And if you promise me that you can live with the fact that Stratt will be disappointed in you and will probably lose her trust in you.”

“Ugh,” he drops his head back onto the table. Why do the women in his life know him so well? “I’m gonna make this harder for her, aren’t I? I’m gonna make her hunt me and sedate me and secretly place me aboard Mary against my will.”

“Or, I’ll break you out before she can catch you.” Marissa squeezes his hand. “Or, most likely, you will surprise yourself and no one else by willingly boarding the ship.”

His eyes water but he refuses to let the tears drop onto the table. Well, that’s enough of that, then. He straightens up in his seat and smiles wobbly at his friend.

“It might not even happen,” he tries to say cheerfully. “It might not even come to that. There’s two people ahead of me! They’re never even allowed in the same car when we travel.”

Marissa nods. “But if it does happen, please tell me that you will do what you want to do. I can’t even think about losing you.”

“But you just said—!”

“I know, I know! But that was me being supportive and saying what you needed to hear.” She laughs a little and Grace realizes she’s tearing up, too. “But I get to be selfish, okay? I didn’t force myself into a project to save humanity and accidentally became the second most important person in the world. I can hope that you don’t have to get on that ship because I’m your friend and I love you.”

They’ve never really told each other that before and Grace can’t think of why. They’ve been friends forever. She used to be the first person he contacted when something went right. So he smiles and stands up so he can hug her into his stomach. They stay that way for a while until he feels her squirming.

“Okay, okay. Stratt said you have another meeting in an hour. Let’s not waste it by crying all over each other, we’re way too cool for that.”

“Speak for yourself,” Grace says, grabbing a napkin and wiping the many, many tears that are running down his cheeks.

He needed to see her again, he realizes. Even if he never needs to step up as tertiary science specialist, Grace needed to see her before disappearing to an aircraft for another two years.

“Hey, Marissa? I love you, too.”

“Nerd.”

“Dr. Grace, how was your coffee date?”

“Fine, thanks.”

….

“Listen, Marissa is my friend, okay? You can’t convert her to your dark side, Stratt.”

“I am a little too busy to have friends at the moment.”

“We’re friends.”

“…are we still?”

…

He’d forgotten how loud children could be. But he’d lose his eardrums a hundred times over just to hear them rambling and telling him about the years he’s missed and what they’ve learned. Samantha started Art Camp after he suggested it to her mother. Henry stayed back a year instead of advancing like his mother wanted him to, because he wanted to stay with his age group.

He even meets old teachers that don’t work there anymore but made the trip to say hello anyway. His heart is so full when he looks out and sees tiny hands waving in the air and spilling all their water or stealing each other’s pencils.

It’s the happiest he’s felt in a long time.

“Bye, Mr. Grace!”

“Have you found a wife, Mr. Grace? My mom said to ask, sorry.”

“Would you eat an alien if you find one or do you think the alien will eat you first?”

“Class is soooo boring without you, Mr. G. Will you ask them to fire our new teacher?”

By the time he’s received what feels like one hundred high-fives and hugs, his cheeks hurt so much he has to massage them.

He loves his kids. He can do this for them. There are things on this Earth that are worth saving. And he wouldn’t stop trying until he exhausted every avenue and found a solution, even if he has to tear it out of Tau Ceti himself.

His conviction startles him. He knows Stratt would not be surprised, the cruel woman.

He falls asleep for the first three hours of the flight. He doesn’t even care if his snoring bothers the only other person on the plane. Before he fell asleep, she had been busy typing away at her tablet. The light of the screen had been the only light on inside the plane and it threw the bags under her eyes into sharp relief. Just looking at her made him tired. He wants to say something about how she should use this time to rest, but he can’t bring himself to talk to her again after she asked if they were still friends.

He doesn’t know why he even mentioned that he thought they were friends, not when he hasn’t even sorted out his feelings towards her after she threw this huge curve ball at him. He wants someone to blame, and the redhead is the only one that would shoulder that hatred.

Grace knows she probably expects him to hate her. And that she would be fine with it as long as he stayed on the Project willingly. She has no problem shouldering his pain, he knows. What he doesn’t know is if he wants to give it to her in the first place.

Why couldn’t he dislike her as much as he wants to?

“Dr. Grace, welcome back to the world of the living.”

“Not for very long.”

…

“That was way too morbid, I’m so—oh, you’re laughing.”

“That is what people typically do when something is funny, yeah?”

“But you never laugh at my jokes.”

“Well, there you have it.”

“Ha ha ha.”

“And how was your Pizza Party?”

“Fun. Very fun. One of the kids asked me if I would eat an alien.”

“I hope you discouraged this.”

“Of course not, a true scientist relies on all his senses.”

…

“I’m not going—“

“Please do not eat any of the—“

“I’m not going to!”

…

“Thanks for paying for the pizza, by the way.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Only someone who is not a local and also not a teacher would buy the most expensive pizza.”

“It had nothing to do with the cost.”

“Aha! So it was you! Ah, don’t roll your eyes at me. They’re gonna get stuck like that, you know.”

“They haven’t yet.”

…

…

“That was expensive pizza, Stratt.”

“Did you not like it?”

“Of course I liked it, it’s my favorite.”

“Yes, I know, Dr. Grace.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just say thank you like a good boy and let it go. It was nothing.”

…

“Thank you. You should have seen how big some of their eyes got when they saw the boxes. Some of the kids hadn’t had pizza in years.”

…

…

…

“I know.”

He wakes up when the cabin lights turn on.

“Dr. Grace.”

Or when a mean redhead pokes him on the forehead with her sharp little nails.

“Ow, Eva.” He doesn’t whine. It just comes really, really close to it. In his defense, he was asleep ten seconds ago.

“Oh, sorry,” she says. Her voice is low and tired. “Wake up, I’d like to speak with you.”

“Uuuugghhhh.” That’s definitely a whine. But he wasn’t supposed to do any work before Monday as part of his “Tertiary Science Specialist Orientation.” Did he feel badly about sleeping while Stratt sat across from him, working hard? Yes. But he fell asleep before he could do anything about it!

“Come,” she tugs on the sleeve of his sweater. “There’s food.”

Well, that’s him awake. He rubs the grit out of his eyes and makes his way to the seat next to Stratt. There’s a platter of crackers and cheeses on the arm rest between them and water for both of them on the table. Yes, her personal plane has tables and armrests big enough to fit a platter.

“What’s up?” He flops down onto the seat and instinctively begins to prepare a plate of her favorite cheeses and olives. He even serves her the weird mustard even though he hates how it smells.

When he hands her the small plastic plate, he finds her looking at him with a strange look on her face. Her face is tilted to the side and he has to nudge her with the plate before she seems to come back to herself.

“Thank you,” she murmurs, accepting the plate.

“Sure thing,” he says distractedly.

They eat in silence for a while until she puts her empty plate away while he keeps eating straight out of the platter.

“We must come to an agreement regarding your responsibilities.” She turns her whole attention to him. Her eyes, though exhausted, are sharp and intent. It’s always a little unnerving having Eva Stratt’s full attention on him, but in the low light of the cabin it feels even more intimate.

“Sure, okay,” he shrugs, squirming a little in his seat. “Shoot.”

“You will formally accept the title of Deputy Director,” she doesn’t pose this as as a question, but there’s a hint of uncertainty in her voice.

“What does “formally” mean?” He narrows his eyes at her suspiciously.

“I will send an internal memo with a short summary of your qualifications. Then, a press release—“

“No, no way! That’s too much!”

“What do you think happened when I was appointed? I took out an ad on the paper?”

“That was a unanimous secret vote—that’s different!”

“Well, you have my vote. Is that enough? Good, let’s define your responsibilities within each department. To begin with, you will have to assign someone as your assistant and hire some aides.”

Grace suddenly feels very awake. “Wait, wait, wait. Should I be writing this down? Why do I need an aide?”

She levels him with a venomous glare.

“Never mind. I will hire those for you.” She ignores his spluttering and moves right along. “Are you dissatisfied with your current assignments?”

“No, I can do it! Just—”

“Dr. Grace, do you know what you want in an assistant?”

“Well, sure. I want them to be organized and…” He starts off strong but then peters off when he realizes he doesn’t even know what an assistant does. “Okay, yeah, you do it.”

It embarrasses him a little that he doesn’t know what he needs exactly, but he shakes it off. That’s why he’s the second in command. Still, it forces him to listen a little more intently.

“Do I get better lodgings?”

“Of course not. I have the same lodgings as everybody else.”

“Can I have a coffee machine?”

“That depends. Where would you put it?”

“My room.”

“Absolutely not.”

“I bet you have one in yours!”

“Do you often work in your lodgings?”

“Well, not really…”

“Then, no. You don’t need your own.”

…

“You know, you really shouldn’t keep working if you’ve already retired to your room. There needs to be a clear divide between a work space and sleeping place.”

“Now that you’ve taken Sutton’s team, I won’t have to anymore.”

.

.

.

“Can we stop by a watch store the next time we’re on land?”

“Why?”

“I bought myself a watch as a good luck gift when I got into my Ph.D. program. And well, I got the degree, didn’t I?”

“These are the types of things you should delegate to your aides.”

“Aw, but I want to pick it!”

“Absolutely not. I can barely stand the red monstrosity you have on right now.”

“Hey, it’s my gift to myself! I think I should be able—“

“No. I will take care of it, Dr. Grace. It must match your suits.”

…

“Well, alright. But only because I trust your style choices.”

“Hmm.”

.

.

.

“Wait, I don’t have any suits.”

“You will. For the press conferences you will attend.”

“I haven’t signed a contract or anything yet, right? I can still get out of this?”

“Don’t even joke about that, Dr. Grace. We can revisit the matter of the coffee machine at the next budget meeting.”

“Score!”

When he’s in her presence, he forgets about the amnesia-inducing drug and the tertiary science specialist position. It’s easy to, when they’re working together like they’ve always done.

It’s when he’s sitting in bed later that his uneasiness returns and he resents everything about her, including her well-tailored suits and the French combs he knows she uses in her hair.

How is he going to continue to work with someone that he resents?