Work Text:
Ryland Grace first became aware of the problem at 08:17 on a Tuesday morning, when Eva Stratt stole his coffee.
She did not ask for it. Stratt rarely asked for anything when taking it would be faster. She entered the lab with two phones in one hand, a tablet tucked beneath her arm, and three new lines between her eyebrows that had not been there the previous evening. She crossed directly to Grace’s desk, picked up his mug, and drank half of it while reading an email.
Grace watched her over the rims of his safety goggles.
“That was mine.”
Stratt kept her eyes on the tablet. Her thumb moved steadily down the screen as she read.
“I’m aware.”
“You have your own coffee.”
“Mine is cold.”
“So heat it.”
Stratt shifted the tablet beneath her arm and took another drink from his mug.
“That would take time.”
Grace set down the pipette he had been holding.
“There’s a microwave twenty feet away.”
“Then you are welcome to reheat my coffee.”
She took another sip. The Vat rolled gently beneath them. Somewhere beyond the walls of Grace’s temporary laboratory, the converted aircraft carrier groaned and clanged around its crew. Engines thrummed through the floor. Pipes rattled overhead. Someone shouted in Russian down the corridor, followed by a crash and Ilyukhina yelling, “is fine!”
Grace looked back at Stratt.
Her hair was pinned up, though several pieces had worked loose around her face. She had probably been awake since four. Grace knew this because he had also been awake since four, and at 04:23 she had sent him an email titled ‘Astrophage Culture Contamination???’ followed thirty seconds later by another titled ‘Ignore previous punctuation. Answer the question.’
She frowned at her tablet. The wrinkle between her eyes deepened.
Grace had the sudden, alarming urge to press his lips directly against it.
He froze, one hand still resting beside the abandoned pipette.
Stratt took a third sip of his coffee.
Grace stared at her mouth as she lowered the mug. One corner of it quirked upward, barely there, because she had noticed him staring.
His stomach performed a maneuver more appropriate for a centrifuge.
“That expression,” Stratt said, still looking at the tablet, “usually means you’ve discovered something or broken something.”
Grace blinked and dragged his gaze back toward the astrophage cultures. “I haven’t broken anything.”
“What did you discover?”
“Nothing.”
Her eyes moved from him to the lab bench, then to the astrophage culture glowing faintly in its containment unit. She stepped closer to inspect the temperature display.
“Is the temperature stable?”
“Yes.”
“The nitrogen system?”
“Also stable.”
Stratt glanced toward the centrifuge in the corner.
“The centrifuge?”
Grace followed her gaze. “Still deeply resentful of Ilyukhina, but functional.”
“Then why do you look like that?”
Grace took off his goggles and set them carefully on the bench. “Like what?”
“Like you’ve swallowed a battery.”
“I’m thinking.”
“Do it faster.”
She set the mug down. Her fingers brushed his when he reached for it.
The feeling traveled all the way up his arm.
Stratt’s gaze flicked briefly to his face. Her lips did that tiny upward thing again.
Then she turned and walked out of the lab with his coffee still in her hand.
Grace stood motionless for several seconds, his empty hands hovering where the mug had been.
At 08:21, he pulled the large mobile whiteboard away from the wall. One wheel caught against a floor seam, and he had to yank it hard enough to make the markers rattle in their tray.
At 08:23, he wrote:
OBSERVATION: PHYSIOLOGICAL AND COGNITIVE ABNORMALITIES OCCUR IN THE PRESENCE OF EVA STRATT.
He considered this, tapping the marker against his bottom lip.
Then, beneath it:
QUESTION: DO I HAVE FEELINGS FOR EVA STRATT?
He stared at the board.
“No,” he said aloud.
Grace picked up the marker again.
Grace had always found comfort in questions.
Questions had edges. They could be measured, narrowed, tested. Questions were predictable. People were not.
Eva Stratt, in particular, was not.
He spent the rest of the morning gathering preliminary data while insisting to himself that he was doing no such thing.
At 09:12, Stratt passed his open lab door while dictating an email to someone in Brussels. Grace paused midway through labeling a sample and noticed the clipped rhythm of her footsteps.
At 09:48, she returned to demand an updated estimate on astrophage production. She leaned across his desk to look at his calculations, bracing one palm beside the papers, and Grace noticed that she smelled faintly of bergamot and industrial hand soap.
At 10:03, he found her sitting on the floor outside the communications room with her back against the wall, surrounded by printed reports. She was on a call with the president of France and eating dry cereal from a paper cup.
Grace stopped beside her and looked down at the cereal. “You need actual food.”
Stratt held up one finger, finished a sentence in French, and muted the phone.
“I need the French government to approve an emergency transfer of enriched uranium.”
“You can need two things.”
“I don’t have time for two things.”
Grace bent and took the paper cup away. Stratt stared at his hand, then slowly raised her eyes to his face. He stared back.
“You just took my breakfast,” she said.
“You took my coffee.”
“That was hours ago.”
“I hold grudges.”
“I know. It’s one of your more exhausting qualities.”
Grace crouched among the scattered reports and handed her the wrapped sandwich he had been carrying. Stratt looked at it as if he presented her with a live grenade. She shifted the phone to her other hand but did not accept it.
“What is this?”
“Egg, cheese, some kind of meat Carl swears is bacon.”
“It came from the galley?”
“Unfortunately.”
“I’d rather have the cereal.”
Grace kept the sandwich extended between them. “You can have the cereal after the sandwich.”
“You do not give me orders.”
“Someone has to.”
Stratt’s eyes narrowed. For a moment Grace thought she might tell him to get out.
Instead, her lips twitched.
The small wrinkles behind her eyes appeared. The deeper line between her brows softened.
Grace forgot how knees worked and nearly tipped sideways into a stack of reports. He caught himself with one hand against the floor, sending several pages sliding toward the opposite wall.
Stratt noticed. “Are you all right?”
“Floor moved.”
“We’re on a ship.”
“Exactly.”
Still watching him, she took the sandwich and began unwrapping it. Grace escaped before his face could betray him further,
At 10:17, back in the lab, he added to the board.
SUB-QUESTIONS:
1.) Why do I notice when she has not eaten?
2.) Why do I know what her shampoo smells like?
3.) Why did I nearly fall over because she smiled?
He tapped the marker against his chin.
4.) Why do I want her to smile again?
That one felt dangerous.
He drew a box around the original question.
DO I HAVE FEELINGS FOR EVA STRATT?
He disliked the phrasing. “Feelings” was broad. Grace had feelings about many things. He had feelings about bad science journalism. He had feelings about raisins. He had strong feelings about the Vat’s coffee, especially when other people took it.
He erased FEELINGS and replaced it with: ROMANTIC ATTRACTION
He stepped back. The words looked ridiculous. He erased them.
He wrote: A CRUSH
Worse. He erased that too.
After several failed variations, he returned to the original question.
Questions did not need to be elegant; they only needed to be answerable.
The door slammed open hard enough to make the whiteboard tremble.
“Grace!”
Ilyukhina stormed into the lab carrying a metal wrench nearly the length of her forearm. Her dark hair was escaping from a braid, there was grease across one cheek, and the sleeve of her jumpsuit had been ripped open at the elbow.
Grace immediately moved between her and the centrifuge. He spread both hands protectively.
“No.”
Ilyukhina stopped and planted the wrench against one shoulder. “I say nothing.”
“You have a wrench.”
“I often have wrench.”
“You are looking at the centrifuge.”
Her eyes flicked toward the machine. “I often look at centrifuge.”
“You called it a coward yesterday.”
“It knows what it did.”
Ilyukhina pointed the wrench at him. Grace leaned his upper body away from it.
“I need thermal camera.”
“You broke yours.”
“Camera became broken while near me. Different.”
“It fell into the cooling reservoir.”
Ilyukhina made an impatient gesture with the wrench. “Reservoir should not have been there.”
Grace sighed and crossed to the equipment cabinet. He unlocked it, rummaged past several sensor kits, and pulled out the camera.
“Why do you need it?”
“Yao wants test on panel in engine room. He says temperature reading is wrong. I say panel is wrong. We make wager.”
Grace turned with the camera in his hand. “What do you get if you win?”
“His dessert for week.”
“What does he get?”
Ilyukhina looked offended. She pressed a grease-streaked hand to her chest.
“He does not win.”
Grace handed her the camera. She took it, turned toward the door, and stopped so abruptly the wrench slipped from her shoulder into her hand. Her eyes landed on the whiteboard.
Grace moved too late. He stepped in front of the lower half, leaving the question plainly visible above his head.
Ilyukhina read the question. Her gaze slid slowly back to him. A grin spread across her face.
“No,” Grace said,
She lowered the wrench and took one delighted step toward the board. “Oh.”
“No.”
“Oh, Grace.”
“It is not what it looks like.”
“It looks like you are using science because you want to kiss dictator lady.”
Grace lunged for the board eraser. Ilyukhina blocked him with the wrench, holding it horizontally between his chest and the tray.
“You are in love.”
“I am exploring a hypothesis.”
Ilyukhina leaned closer to the board, studying it with exaggerated seriousness. She fidgeted with the wrench as she read, rotating it idly through her fingers.
“Question poorly defined.” She tapped the marker tray with one finger. “What are feelings? Nausea is feeling. Rage is feeling. I feel both often around you.”
Grace folded his arms. “Thank you.”
“You need operational definitions.”
“I know that.”
“You also need control.”
“I know.”
“And experiment.”
Grace let out a long sigh. “I know how the scientific method works.”
Ilyukhina’s grin widened so much Grace was mildly concerned it might split her face in half. “Good. I help.”
“No.”
“I am excellent scientist.”
Grace snorted. “You dropped a thermal camera into a reservoir.”
Ilyukhina waved a dismissive hand. “I am excellent engineer.”
“You threatened a centrifuge.”
Ilyukhina looked toward the machine and narrowed her eyes. “It was insubordinate.”
Grace pointed toward the door. “Out.”
Ilyukhina tucked the thermal camera beneath her arm but made no move to leave. Instead, she leaned one hip against the lab bench as though settling in for a long discussion.
“You need a test subject.”
“I have a test subject.”
“Stratt?”
“Me.”
“This is boring.”
“It is also private.”
Ilyukhina swung the wrench toward the whiteboard. “Then why is written in letters this big?”
Before Grace could plead his case, a second figure appeared in the doorway.
Carl looked from Ilyukhina to the wrench, to Grace, to the whiteboard.
He adjusted his glasses.
“I came to ask whether the astrophage samples are ready for transport,” he said,
“They are,” Grace replied quickly. He shifted farther in front of the board, though there was little point now,
Carl continued looking at it.
Grace felt sweat forming beneath his collar.
Carl read the question aloud. “Do I have feelings for Eva Stratt?”
Ilyukhina slapped him on the shoulder with her free hand. Carl rocked half a step sideways.
“We do experiment.”
Carl blinked. “I see.”
“You do not see anything,” Grace said.
Carl regarded him as if observing an animal trapped inside a container of its own making.
“Would you like me to pretend I didn’t read it?”
“Yes.”
“All right.”
“Thank you.”
Carl turned to Ilyukhina. “What’s the experiment?”
Grace put his face in his hands.
By lunch, Grace’s private scientific investigation had become a collaborative project involving Ilyukhina and Carl.
The three of them stood in front of the whiteboard,
Ilyukhina had added a title in red marker:
OPERATION: STRATTLAND
Grace had tried to erase it. She had threatened his fingers.
Carl sat on a stool beside the lab bench, eating soup from a mug. He balanced it carefully on one knee while examining the board.
“You need a falsifiable hypothesis,” he said.
Grace uncapped a black marker. “I’m aware.”
“Something more specific than ‘I have feelings’.”
“I am also aware.”
Ilyukhina grabbed the marker from his hand. “Hypothesis: Grace wants Stratt to climb him like tree.”
Grace snatched the marker away before she could write it. “Absolutely not.”
Ilyukhina let her empty hand fall to her side. “Is specific.”
“It is obscene,” Grace said.
“It is falsifiable.”
Carl sipped his soup. “Technically.”
Grace turned toward him. “Carl.”
“I’m only evaluating the methodology.”
Grace scrubbed a hand over his face. “Fine. Hypothesis: my physical responses to Stratt indicate romantic attraction.”
Ilyukhina made a dissatisfied noise and began rolling the wrench back and forth along the edge of the bench.
Grace glanced over his shoulder. “What now?”
“Very boring.”
“It is a scientific hypothesis.”
“So was mine.”
Grace wrote his sentence on the board.
HYPOTHESIS: MY PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL RESPONSES TO EVA STRATT ARE CONSISTENT WITH ROMANTIC ATTRACTION.
Carl stood and approached the board, carrying his soup with him.
“What responses have you observed?”
Grace hesitated. He recapped the marker and stared at the sentence.
Ilyukhina lifted the wrench.
“Why do you still have that?” Grace asked, attempting to divert the subject.
“Emotional support wrench. Answer question.”
Grace looked at Carl instead. His expression was neutral, though Grace suspected he was enjoying this far more than he intended to reveal.
“Elevated heart rate,” Grace said.
Carl nodded toward the board. “When?”
“When she gets close.”
Ilyukhina made a dramatic note on the whiteboard, pressing hard enough for the marker to squeak against the surface.
“Increased awareness of minor details,” Grace continued.
“Such as?” Carl asked.
Grace stared at the board.
Carl waited. Ilyukhina waited much less patiently. She clicked the wrench against the lab bench once, then again.
“Her facial expressions,” Grace said. “The way her mouth moves when she’s trying not to smile. The lines around her eyes. The wrinkle between her eyebrows when she’s concentrating.”
Ilyukhina’s grin softened into something almost fond. Grace kept his eyes on the board.
“And,” he said, “a recurring desire to kiss her.”
Carl nodded. “That seems relevant.”
“Very relevant,” Ilyukhina said.
Grace placed the marker back in its tray with unnecessary care. “Thank you both for your invaluable input.”
“Any emotional responses?” Carl asked.
Grace capped the marker.
He thought of Stratt asleep at the conference table with her cheek pressed against a briefing document, one hand still curled around a pen. He thought of how angry she made him, how alive he felt while arguing with her. He thought of the cold drop in his stomach whenever she left the Vat for meetings ashore, even when he knew she would be back in a few hours.
He thought of her eating the sandwich because he had asked her to.
“I worry about her,” he said quietly.
Ilyukhina did not make a joke. Carl set his mug down on the bench.
“She doesn’t sleep enough,” Grace said. He moved from the board and began rearranging a stack of sample trays that did not need rearranging. “She skips meals. Forgets them, more like it. She reads emails while walking down stairs, which is going to kill her long before any global catastrophe gets the change. She stays up until hours no one should be awake for because she has ‘one last email to send out’. She gets migraines and pretends she doesn’t and presses through the day until she almost passes out from exhaustion. She thinks being indispensable means she’s allowed to treat herself like machinery.”
“You notice much,” Ilyukhina said, softer than anything Grace had heard come from her mouth.
Grace adjusted the top tray until it sat perfectly square. “Everyone notices.”
“No,” Carl said. “Everyone knows. You notice.”
Grace looked at him.
Carl shrugged and picked up his soup again. “There’s a difference.”
Grace did not like that at all.
He turned back to the board and underlined the hypothesis. “Fine. We test it.”
Ilyukhina immediately raised her hand excitedly, eyes shining.
“No.”
“You do not know idea.”
“I know you.”
Carl considered the board. He traced one finger along the rim of his mug.
“You could establish a baseline heart rate in interaction with other team members and compare it with your heart rate around Stratt.”
“That’s reasonable,” Grace said.
Ilyukhina’s face twisted. “Cowardly.”
“It’s controlled.”
“It proves body response. Maybe Stratt frightens you.”
“She does frighten me.”
Ilyukhina jabbed the wrench toward him. “See?”
Grace glared at her. “I will monitor my heart rate during ordinary interactions with each member of the team.”
“And then?” Ilyukhina asked.
“And then I’ll compare the results.”
Ilyukhina crossed her arms, trapping the wrench against her chest. “You are hiding behind data.”
“I am collecting data.”
A phone buzzed in the doorway.
Stratt stood there.
Every person in the room went still.
Her gaze moved across the scene: Carl’s soup, Ilyukhina’s wrench, Grace straddling a chair, and the whiteboard behind him.
Grace stumbled into a standing position, swiping to flip the whiteboard to the other side. The chair rolled backward until it bumped against the lab bench.
Stratt looked at him. Her eyes narrowed.
“What are you doing?” She asked.
“Science.”
“I assumed that much.”
Grace braced one hand against the edge of the whiteboard.
“Team-building exercise,” Carl offered.
Ilyukhina nodded and leaned casually against the bench. “Morale.”
Grace stared at both of them. Stratt did not look convinced. She shifted the phone in her hand.
“Why is Ilyukhina holding a wrench?”
“Morale,” Ilyukhina repeated.
Stratt sighed. “Grace, I need your updated astrophage burn projections by sixteen hundred.”
“You’ll have them.”
“And Carl, Shapiro is looking for you.”
Carl nodded. “Of course.”
Stratt turned to Ilyukhina, who had begun examining the workbench as though she had never seen it before.
“Yao says you stole his thermal camera.”
“I borrowed Grace’s thermal camera.”
“After yours mysteriously entered the cooling reservoir?”
“Reservoir attacked it.”
“I see.”
Stratt’s gaze returned to Grace. “What’s on the board?”
Grace tightened his grip on its metal frame. “Nothing.”
“Then move.”
“No.”
The word came out too quickly.
Stratt tilted her head. “Why?”
“Confidential research.”
“I oversee every research project on this vessel.”
“This is personal.”
For one awful second, Grace thought he saw curiosity flash across her face.
Then one corner of her mouth lifted. The wrinkles beside her eyes deepened. Grace wanted to touch them with his fingertips. He wanted to kiss the line between her brows until it disappeared.
His pulse jumped.
His watch vibrated.
Ilyukhina’s gaze dropped to it. Her grin returned.
Grace shoved his wrist behind his back.
Stratt noticed that too.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
“You’ve said ‘nothing’ two times in under a minute.”
“Three,” Carl said from the door, pausing with one shoulder against the frame.
Grace turned on him. “Go find Shapiro.”
Carl left, smiling into his soup.
Stratt studied Grace for another second. Her eyes moved briefly to his hidden wrist.
Then she stepped closer.
His watch vibrated again.
Ilyukhina coughed loudly into her fist. It sounded suspiciously like, “Data.”
Stratt’s eyes flicked toward her.
“What did you say?”
Ilyukhina examined the ceiling. “Nothing.”
Grace closed his eyes.
When he opened them, Stratt was fighting a smile.
“I expect those protections by sixteen hundred,” she said.
Then she walked away.
The moment she was gone, Ilyukhina grabbed Grace’s wrist and yanked it out from behind his back.
“One hundred and twenty-eight!”
Grace tried to pull free. “I was under stress.”
Carl leaned back through the doorway. “Your resting heart rate was seventy-two.”
“I thought you left.”
“I forgot my spoon.”
“You were drinking soup.”
Carl crossed to the bench, retrieved a spoon that had been lying beside his mug, and left again.
Ilyukhina wrote the number on the board in enormous red digits. She added two exclamation points.
“Strong preliminary result,” she said.
Grace stared at Stratt’s empty doorway.
“Shut up.”
The baseline trials went badly.
Yao produced no meaningful increase in Grace’s heart rate, even when Ilyukhina convinced him to stand uncomfortably close and compliment Grace’s eyes.
Yao stepped into the marked square on the lab floor and faced Grace with the solemnity of a military inspection.
“I have been told to say your eyes are gorgeous. They are very expressive,” Yao said.
Grace looked past his shoulder toward Ilyukhina. She was watching the monitor with both elbows planted on the bench.
“Are we done?”
She checked the reading. “Seventy-six. Very disappointing.”
Yao stepped back and straightened the front of his uniform. “I apologize.”
“You did fine,” Grace told him.
DuBois treated the experiment as a personal challenge.
He rested one hip against the lab bench and let his gaze travel deliberately down Grace’s body.
“You have beautiful hands,” he said.
Grace stared at him.
DuBois reached out and lightly turned one of Grace’s wrists, examining his fingers.
“The fingers are elegant. Very dexterous.”
Grace looked at the heart-rate display. “My heart rate is dropping.”
“That only means you are relaxed in my presence.”
“It means I’m dissociating.”
DuBois smiled. “Would you like me to remove my shirt?”
Grace pulled his hand back like he had been burned. “No.”
Ilyukhina raised her hand from beside the monitor. “For science-”
“No.”
Shapiro arrived already irritated. She stood in the doorway with a folder tucked under one arm.
“I have work to do,” she said.
“This will take one minute,” Grace promised, attaching the sensor to his wrist.
“You said that yesterday before showing me a three-hour presentation on microbial contamination.”
“It was important.”
“It had transitions.”
“They helped communicate the data.”
Ilyukhina took Shapiro by the shoulders and positioned her directly in front of him.
Shapiro folded her arms. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Be alluring,” Ilyukhina said.
Shapiro looked at Grace. Grace looked at Shapiro.
The Vat shifted beneath them, and a rack of glassware clicked softly against its restraints.
“Did you finish recalibrating the spectrometer?” He asked.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
His watch displayed seventy-four.
“Is that all?”
“Yes.”
She turned and left before Ilyukhina could object.
Ilyukhina recorded the number with an irritated slash of the marker.
Carl’s trial reached eighty-one when he leaned close to adjust Grace’s sensor, though Grace attributed that to embarrassment because Carl was the only person involved who seemed aware of how absurd the experiment was. Then again, Ilyukhina pointed out, he was Grace’s baby daddy.
Ilyukhina’s trial reached ninety-six because she pulled a knife.
Grace lurched backward into his rolling chair. “It’s not valid if you threaten me!”
Ilyukhina flicked the knife closed and tucked it back into her pocket. “Why not? Stratt threatens you.”
“She threatens my funding.”
“Same fear.”
By the end of the day, Grace had established a baseline range of seventy-two to ninety-six beats per minute, with the upper extreme involving edged weapons.
The next step required Stratt.
Ilyukhina proposed several plans.
Grace rejected all of them.
“No fake emergency.”
Ilyukhina followed him across the lab as he collected the heart-rate sensor.
“Small fake emergency.”
“No.”
“Controlled explosion.”
Grace stopped and looked at her. “No explosions.”
“DuBois pretends to choke.”
“Why does DuBois have to choke?”
“He is convincing.”
“Absolutely not.”
They were standing in a maintenance corridor near the main stairwell, whispering beside a cart loaded with cable spools. Grace had a heart-rate monitor beneath his shirt and a tablet in his hand. Carl waited around the corner with the weary expression of a man questioning every decision that had brought him to an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean.
The actual experiment was simple. Stratt took the same route from the communications center to the primary conference room every evening. Grace would intercept her, engage her in ordinary conversation, and record his physiological response.
Ilyukhina had called it cowardly six times.
She crouched behind the cable cart and peered through a gap between two spools. “You planned conversation.”
Grace adjusted the tablet against his chest. “I planned a reason to speak to her.”
“What reason?”
“I’m going to ask whether she reviewed my burn projections.”
Ilyukhina lowered herself farther behind the cart and looked disgusted. “You talk about work every day.”
“Exactly. It won’t introduce any unusual variables.”
“No romance.”
“That is the point.”
“Terrible experiment.”
Footsteps sounded around the corner.
Carl raised a hand. Not that Grace needed the warning; he could pick out the clipped steps anywhere.
He straightened, smoothed the front of his shirt, then felt ridiculous for doing so.
Stratt appeared at the far end of the corridor, walking quickly with a stack of folders tucked against her chest. Her suit jacket was gone, leaving her in a white shirt-sleeve blouse with the cuffs rolled to her elbows. Her hair had finally surrendered and fallen into loose waves around her face.
Grace forgot every word he had prepared.
She approached.
His pulse climbed.
Eighty-six.
Ninety-two.
Ninety-eight.
Stratt saw him and slowed. Her shoes struck the metal floor more quietly as she came to a stop.
“Grace.”
“Hi.”
Her brows pulled together. “Hello.”
One hundred and four.
Grace shifted the tablet from one hand to the other. “Did you-”
Behind the cart, Ilyukhina made a frantic gesture, pointing first at Stratt and then at Grace.
Grace ignored her.
“Did I what?” Stratt asked.
“Did you review the burn projections?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
She waited.
Grace searched for another sentence. He could hear Carl breathing quietly around the corner and the faint scrape of Ilyukhina’s shuffling against the floor.
Nothing arrived.
Stratt’s eyes moved over his face. “Are you feeling ill?”
“No.”
“You’re flushed.”
Grace touched his cheek. “It’s warm.”
She glanced at the exposed pipes overhead. “The corridor is twenty-one degrees.”
“Is it?”
“I reviewed a temperature report ten minutes ago.”
“Of course you did.”
One hundred and twelve.
Stratt shifted the folders to one arm and took another step toward him.
The hairs on Grace’s arms rose.
“Dr. Grace.”
“Director Stratt.”
Behind the cart, Ilyukhina silently mimed kissing someone. Grace stared over Stratt’s shoulder at her. Stratt turned. Ilyukhina ducked. A roll of copper clattered to the floor. Stratt looked at the cart and back at Grace.
“Is Ilyukhina hiding behind that?”
Grace shifted in front of the cart. “No.”
“I heard something fall.”
“Ships make sounds. Maybe there is a ghost.”
“идиот,” Ilyukhina cursed from behind the cart.
Grace shut his eyes as Stratt walked past him and peered over the cart.
Ilyukhina smiled up at her from between two spools of cable.
“Hello, Director Stratt.”
Stratt adjusted her stance. “What are you doing?”
“Maintenance.”
“With Carl?”
Carl stepped out from around the corner. He raised both hands slightly.
“I was told there would be an experiment.”
Stratt slowly turned back to Grace, eyebrow raised.
His heart rate hit one hundred and twenty-five.
Her gaze fell to the tablet in his hand.
Grace held it behind his back.
“Give me that.”
“No.”
“Grace.”
“It contains private medical information.”
Stratt took one step toward him. “You are conducting medical experiments in a corridor?”
“No.”
“Then what are you measuring?”
“Nothing.”
Ilyukhina stood and pointed at his wrist. “His heart.”
Grace gaped at her.
Stratt’s expression changed.
The irritation remained, but curiosity slid beneath it.
“His heart,” she repeated.
Ilyukhina nodded. “For science.”
Grace considered jumping overboard.
Stratt held out her hand.
“The tablet.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s mine.”
“I could requisition it.”
Grace tucked it more securely behind his back. “That would be an abuse of power.”
“You say that as though it would stop me.”
Her lips quirked upward.
Grace’s watch vibrated against his wrist.
Stratt looked down. He shoved both hands into his pockets.
Something in her eyes sharpened.
Then she stepped directly into his space.
Grace stopped breathing.
Stratt was close enough that he could see a tiny smudge of ink on the side of her thumb, close enough to count her eyelashes. Close enough to see the faint shadows beneath her eyes and the thin scar near her chin that he had noticed weeks ago and never asked about. Close enough to see the crinkle between her eyebrows deepen. Those damn crinkles, Grace thought, would be the death of him.
She looked back up at him.
“What are you measuring, Grace?”
One hundred and thirty-four.
His mouth had gone dry.
Ilyukhina leaned toward Carl and whispered, at full volume, “Very good data.”
Stratt glanced sideways.
Grace used the distraction to step back. His shoulder struck the wall.
“I have to check the astrophage cultures.”
He turned and fled.
The evidence was damning.
Grace sat alone in the lab after midnight, staring at the graph.
The Vat had grown quieter around him. Most of the team had gone to bed, or whatever passed for bed when they were all working eighteen-hour days. The engines still rumbled beneath the floor, and the astrophage pulsed faintly in its containment vessels.
The white board was crowded with numbers.
YAO: 75
DUBOIS: 73
SHAPIRO: 74
CARL: 81
ILYUKHINA: 96 (VOIDED TRIAL)
STRATT: 135
Beneath that, in Ilyukhina’s loopy handwriting:
GRACE VERY DOOMED.
Grace had added several other observations.
Frequency of intrusive thoughts regarding subject: high.
Desire for subject's attention: persistent.
Mood improvement following subject’s arrival: measurable.
Mood decline following subject’s departure: embarrassing.
He had tried to account for confounding variables.
Stratt was his boss, which explained anxiety but not the urge to touch her hair.
Stratt was terrifying, which explained his elevated pulse but not the warm rush he felt when she laughed.
Stratt was stressed, which explained the lines between her brows but not the overwhelming urge to press his lips against them.
Stratt was gorgeous. Grace had attempted to treat this as a neutral observation and failed completely.
He leaned back in his chair. The wheels rolled a few inches across the sloped floor before catching against a rubber mat.
The door opened.
Stratt entered.
Grace shot upright so quickly he knocked over a beaker while flipping the whiteboard.
She had changed out of her work clothes. The sight of Eva Stratt in dark trousers and a soft gray sweater was somehow more unsettling than the suits. She carried two mugs.
“I brought coffee,” she said.
Grace looked at the clock, then at the mugs. “It’s two-thirty in the morning.”
“You’re awake.”
“That is not a reason to make it worse.”
She crossed the lab and set one mug beside him.
Grace eyed it. “Is that my mug?”
“Yes.”
“Did you steal it?”
“Yes.”
He took a cautious sip. It was exactly how he drank it.
Stratt pulled over a stool and sat beside him. The metal legs scraped quietly against the floor.
Grace became acutely conscious of the whiteboard behind him.
She looked toward it.
He stood quickly and positioned himself between them.
Her eyes narrowed.
“Are we doing this again?”
Grace spread his hands. “Doing what?”
“The thing where you visibly conceal something and insult me by pretending you aren’t.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Stratt took a drink from her mug. She rested one elbow on the edge of his desk.
“Ilyukhina told me you were conducting an experiment.”
Grace’s grip tightened around his coffee. “Ilyukhina tells people many things.”
“She said it involved me.”
“Ilyukhina also claims the centrifuge holds a personal grudge.”
“She said you were measuring your heart rate.”
Grace stared into his mug. A thin ripple moved across the coffee as the ship rolled.
Stratt waited. He could feel her watching him.
“Was I the independent variable?” She asked.
Grace laughed once despite himself. He moved away from the board and leaned against the desk opposite her.
“You make it sound very sinister.”
Stratt took another sip of coffee before answering. “You and Ilyukhina hid in a corridor.”
“I wasn’t hiding.”
“You ran away.”
Grace rubbed the back of his neck.
“I had work,” He said.
“You left the tablet.”
Grace looked at her.
Without breaking eye contact, Stratt reached into her bag and produced the tablet. She balanced it against one palm, holding it out to him.
“You’ve had that the whole time?”
“You dropped it.”
“You read it?” He frowned.
“It was locked.”
Grace exhaled and let his shoulders fall.
Stratt studied him over the rim of her mug. “You look relieved.”
“It contains private information.”
“About me.”
“Grace set his coffee down. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Silence settled between them.
Grace looked past her at the astrophage cultures. They drifted in their tiny chambers, drawn toward the infrared source at one end. Even now, his mind supplied calculation automatically: energy output, temperature gradient, replication rate.
Anything except Stratt.
She rotated the mug slowly between her palms.
“You can tell me to leave,” she said.
Grace looked at her.
The sharpness had left her voice. She sounded tired. A strand of hair had fallen across her cheek. He wanted to tuck it behind her ear. His fingers twitched against the edge of the desk.
Stratt noticed.
Her lips curved, only slightly.
There it was again. That barely-there smile, the small lines beside her eyes, the wrinkle between her brows easing as she looked at him.
Grace wanted to kiss every sign of strain from her face. The desire landed in him with such force that he forgot how to breathe.
Stratt’s smile faded.
Her eyes dropped to his mouth.
His pulse thundered.
The lab felt suddenly too small.
A metallic bang sounded in the corridor, followed by Ilyukhina yelling, “Carl, catch!”
Carl shouted something unintelligible.
An alarm beeped twice and stopped.
Grace and Stratt both turned toward the door. Neither moved.
Grace tilted his head toward the corridor. “Should we check?”
“No,” Stratt said.
“That could be serious.”
“If it were serious, the alarm would still be sounding.”
“I’m not sure that’s reassuring.”
“It means Carl caught it.”
Grace laughed and rubbed one hand over his mouth.
Stratt looked at him. Something warm but sad shifted across her expression.
“You laugh more around her,” Stratt said.
Grace lowered his hand. “Around Ilyukhina?”
“Yes.”
“That’s mostly fear.”
Stratt’s face shifted; her lips ticked downwards ever so slightly. “She’s fond of you.”
“She threatened me with a wrench.”
“That is how she expresses fondness.”
Grace looked at her. “I think she’s a lesbian.”
Stratt tried not to smile. “Hm.”
Her fingers circled her mug.
“You laugh around me too,” she said quietly.
Grace looked down at the floor between them.
“Sometimes,” he admitted.
“Usually when I’m angry.”
“You’re funny when you’re angry.”
“I am never trying to be.”
“That makes it funnier.”
Her lips pressed together again.
Grace saw the moment she lost the fight. Her mouth quirked. The lines at the corners of her eyes appeared.
He smiled back.
For several seconds, they sat without speaking. The hum of the containment system filled the room.
Stratt looked toward the whiteboard.
Grace did not move to block it this time.
She set down her coffee and stood.
“May I?”
He should have said no.
Instead, Grace flipped the board.
Stratt approached and folded her arms as she read.
Her face remained unreadable through OBSERVATION, QUESTION, and HYPOTHESIS. Her eyebrows rose at the baseline data. Her mouth tightened when she reached Ilyukhina’s note.
Grace stared at the floor and nudged the leg of his chair with one shoe.
“This is remarkably thorough,” she said.
“I had time.”
Stratt looked over her shoulder at him. “You did not.”
“I made time.”
He was still staring at the floor, avoiding Stratt’s gaze.
“I assigned you six reports,” she said.
“They’re done.”
She glanced at him. “Of course they are.”
Grace rubbed the back of his neck.
Stratt continued reading.
Her eyes paused on the list of emotional responses.
Grace could have erased them. He should have erased them
She read every word. When she reached ‘mood decline following subject’s departure’, her fingers tightened around the marker tray.
“Dr. Grace,” she said.
He finally looked at her.
There were several ways to handle the situation. He could make a joke. He could explain the experiment as an exercise in metacognition. He could discuss the unreliability of self-reported emotional data. He could run out of the room and lock himself in his corridors until they broke the door down. He was always good at running away.
He had spent an entire day hiding behind data, yet the results did not require further analysis.
“I think I’m in love with you,” he blurted out.
Stratt went completely still.
Grace winced and shoved both hands into his pockets. “That was way more direct than I planned.”
She turned fully toward him. “You had a plan?”
“I had seven plans.”
“What happened to them?”
“You looked at me.”
“That is generally how conversations work.”
Grace shifted his weight against the edge of the desk. “None of the plans accounted for the way you looked at me,” he mumbled.
The smallest crease appeared between her brows.
Grace wanted to kiss it.
He curled his fingers inside his pockets.
Stratt glanced at the board again. “You conducted a controlled trial to determine whether you were attracted to me.”
“It was mostly controlled.”
“You charted your heart rate.”
“Yes.”
“You recorded your mood.”
“Yes.”
Stratt pointed toward the lower section of the board. “You wrote ‘recurring desire to kiss subject’ in permanent marker.”
Grace looked at the board.
He had, in fact, used permanent marker.
“I’ll deal with that later.”
Stratt covered her mouth with one hand.
Grace stared.
Her shoulders shook.
“Are you laughing?”
She dropped her hand and straightened. “No.”
“You are.”
“I’m not.”
“You absolutely are.”
“I am attempting to process the fact that the most intelligent man on this ship required a graph to determine whether he wanted to kiss me.”
Grace stepped away from the desk. “I knew I wanted to kiss you. The question was what it meant.”
“What did you think it meant?”
“I don’t know.” He threw his hands up. “Sleep deprivation. Proximity. A neurological event.”
Stratt’s eyebrows rose. “A neurological event.”
“You have a strong personality.”
“That is a coward’s way of saying I’m difficult.”
“You are difficult.”
Stratt looked at him for a long moment.
Then she stepped forward.
Grace’s entire nervous system lit up.
“You reached a conclusion,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Based on your evidence.”
“Yes.”
“You’re confident in the result?”
Grace swallowed. “Very.”
Stratt stopped inches away.
“What happens after the conclusion?”
Grace’s brain emptied. All he could hear was the hammering of his heart in his ears. His gaze flicked helplessly toward the board.
“Publication?” He offered.
She stared at him.
“That was a joke.”
“It was a terrible one.”
“I’m under pressure.”
“I can tell.”
Her eyes dropped to his mouth again.
Grace’s voice came out quieter. “Usually you replicate the experiment.”
Stratt’s lips curved.
“Then perhaps we should.”
She kissed him.
Grace had imagined kissing Eva Stratt several times.
More than several.
Enough that, had he been recording the frequency honestly, the whiteboard would have required additional space.
None of those imagined kisses had accounted for Stratt grabbing the front of his shirt.
Her mouth met his with the same directness she applied to international negotiations. Grace made a startled sound against her lips, then forgot how sound worked altogether.
His hands hovered uselessly for half a second.
Stratt pulled back just far enough to say, “You may touch me, Grace.”
“Right. Yes. Good.”
He placed one hand at her waist and the other against her cheek.
Her skin was warm.
He kissed her again, slower this time.
The tension in her shoulders eased beneath his hand. Her fingers loosened in his shirt and slid upward, brushing the side of his neck. Grace traced his thumb beside her eye, over one of the faint lines he had spent all day cataloging like an idiot.
Stratt stilled before melting against Grace’s chest.
The door burst open.
Ilyukhina charged into the lab, followed by Carl, Yao, Shapiro, and DuBois.
Grace and Stratt jumped apart.
Ilyukhina looked between them.
Stratt’s hair was mussed. Grace’s shirt was still clenched in one of her hands.
Ilyukhina raised both arms in triumph.
“Yes!”
Carl closed his eyes and leaned briefly against the doorframe. “You said you were only checking whether they were still here.”
“I lied.”
Shapiro looked past Grace at the whiteboard. “So the heart-rate experiment was about Stratt.”
Yao stepped closer to read over her shoulder. “Ah.”
DuBois smiled broadly and folded his arms. “Congratulations.”
Stratt drew herself upright. “No one is congratulating anyone.”
She was still holding Grace’s shirt.
Everyone looked at her hand.
She released it and smoothed the wrinkled fabric once before stepping back.
Ilyukhina strode to the board and seized the red marker. She wrote beneath the data:
CONCLUSION: GRACE IS IN LOVE. STRATT ALSO WANTS TO CLIMB HIM LIKE A TREE.
Stratt stared at the sentence.
Grace covered his face.
Carl turned away, shoulders shaking.
“Erase that,” Stratt said.
Ilyukhina recapped the marker. “No.”
“Olesya Ilyukhina.”
“For scientific integrity, results must remain.”
“Erase it.”
“Never.”
Stratt took one step toward her.
Ilyukhina grabbed the whiteboard and began pushing it out of the lab. One wheel squealed as she forced it over the threshold.
“You’ll have to catch me!”
She vanished into the corridor at a run, the board rattling wildly in front of her.
Yao sighed and ran after her. “I’ll get her.”
A moment later, Ilyukhina’s voice echoed somewhere down the corridor.
“The data belongs to the people!”
Shapiro looked at Grace. She pointed at the graph with one finger.
“You made a graph.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“It has a legend.”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
DuBois clapped him on the shoulder. “You should be proud. Love is among the finest subjects of human inquiry.”
Grace looked toward Carl for help.
Carl picked up his abandoned coffee. “Goodnight, love birds.”
“Please leave.”
Carl nodded. “Good night, Grace.”
The others filed out.
“So,” Grace said.
Stratt folded her arms, though the gesture lacked its usual severity. “So.”
“Where does this leave us?”
Stratt looked at the astrophage cultures, the scattered reports, and the empty space where the whiteboard had been.
“I have eighty-three unread emails.”
“That is a horrifying number for someone who likes to have 0 emails in her inbox.”
“Four governments are refusing to cooperate with one another. The UN wants a revised briefing. Your astrophage culture requires constant supervision, and Ilyukhina has apparently seized control of an engine room.”
“That sounds right.”
“I don’t have time for a relationship.”
Grace’s chest tightened. He looked down at the narrow strip of floor between them.
Stratt touched his wrist.
“I also don’t have time to spend another week watching you build increasingly elaborate experiments because you’re afraid to ask me to dinner.”
Relief flushed through him so quickly he laughed. He turned his hands beneath hers until their fingers touched.
“Dinner?”
“In the galley.”
“That’s barely food.”
“It’s what we have.”
“Tonight?”
“It is already tonight.”
“Tomorrow, then.”
Stratt nodded. “Tomorrow.”
Grace glanced down at their hands. “And this?”
He gestured between them with his free hand.
“This can happen again.”
“For replication purposes.”
“Of course.”
“Scientific rigor is important.”
“Essential.”
Grace leaned closer. Stratt placed one hand against his chest.
His heart beat hard beneath her palm.
“You could have saved yourself considerable effort,” she said.
Grace covered her hand with his. “How?”
“By asking me.”
“I didn’t know what to ask.”
“You could have started with whether I wanted you to kiss me.”
Grace studied her face. “Would you have said yes?”
“No.”
He blinked.
Stratt’s lips curved. She caught the edge of his collar between two fingers.
“I would have told you to stop wasting time and do it.”
Grace laughed.
She pulled him down.
This kiss was gentler.
Stratt’s lips softened beneath his.
The thought arrived with perfect, scientific clarity:
Oh.
Oh.
He was so, very doomed.
The Vat rolled beneath them, steady and enormous, carrying its collection of scientists, soldiers, engineers, disasters, and one newly established relationship across the dark ocean. The astrophage glowed behind glass. Machinery hummed through walls. Ilyukhina’s screams echoed across the corridor, followed by Yao’s.
Grace wrapped his arms around her. Stratt rested against him, exhaustion finally visible in the weight of her body. He could see it now that they weren’t talking around it. The faint shadows beneath her eyes. Her eyes fluttering shut against his chest. The familiar crease beginning to form between her brows again.
Grace kissed the top of her head. Stratt made a soft, irritated noise but did not move away.
He moved down to kiss the corner of her mouth.
Then beside her eye.
Then finally, he pressed his lips against the wrinkle between her brows.