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“So,” I say to the ceiling above my bunk. “I’ve been kidnapped.”
What do people do, usually, in this sort of situation? I’ve received all sorts of training about what to do if a kid comes to me about a difficult home life, or if there’s a kidnapping threat near the school and we go into lockdown. Nothing about if I, personally, am kidnapped, brought to a boat, and told to study an alien microbe under threat of the world ending. That feels like an oversight.
I guess it could be worse. Everyone at the meeting was extremely vague about everything - I still don’t know what “Project Hail Mary” is - but they seem to like that I’ve figured out how astrophage reproduce. Despite having been shuttled like cargo from one flight to another for hours, since arriving here I’ve mostly just been treated like a scientist with important findings to share. And Stratt…
Well. Stratt seems pleased enough with my findings and my presence, even though I’m jetlagged and in an awful mood because of all the traveling. And for whatever reason, everyone in that meeting deferred to her.
That’s… weird, isn’t it? All I know about Stratt is that I work for her, Carl works for her, she’s brought me to a Chinese aircraft carrier without warning, and - like she told me right at the beginning - she’s “with the Petrova Taskforce”. That means she can’t be too high up on the chain of command, since she has enough power to snatch up middle school teachers from their normal lives but not much else. After all, if she had the power to get anyone in the world, why would she want me?
Well. I guess that means I’m unlucky enough to be living here, at least until her boss shows up and asks why the heck I’m still around. That means I’ll have to get used to collaborating with the Petrova Taskforce.
Wait, are these people with the Petrova Taskforce or Project Hail Mary? Maybe they’re one and the same? I don’t know, I’m too tired. Jetlag’s taking a toll, and I haven’t slept properly in at least twenty-four hours.
My eyes are already closed. I stop thinking and pass out.
- - -
“How can you do science,” Ilyukhina groans. “My head is pounding.”
I look up from my microscope, raising an eyebrow. I still feel sort of weird about the whole party last night. We’ve made some pretty big breakthroughs, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’re all going to die, and three of the attendees - Ilyukhina included - are going to die very soon. But if parties and free hats and karaoke help group morale, who am I to argue? “You know, you were talking a big game last night for someone who can’t even hold her liquor.”
Yáo laughs from the doorway. “Agreed.”
“Yáo’s betrayal I expected, but et tu, Grace?” she says, slumping across my lab table. “I will die for you, and this is how you repay me?”
I can’t help it. I flinch, just a little.
“Ilyukhina,” Yáo admonishes.
She straightens quickly- I think she’s pretending to be more drunk than she is. “Ah. My apologies, Dr. Grace.”
“No, no,” I say awkwardly. I fiddle with my microscope slides. Ilyukhina never calls me Dr. Grace. The sudden formality is jarring. “I mean, you’re not wrong. Sorry.”
“No, I don’t need an apology!” she declares. She sits on my table, right next to my microscope: terrible lab etiquette. I try not to look toward the disinfectant. “I want to gossip. Do you remember last night?”
“Yeah?” I’d only drank a glass or so. And yes, Ilyukhina had been drinking hard, but I was pretty sure she hadn’t been blackout drunk either. “Don’t you?”
“Yes,” she says. “I remember you sitting at the bar and working while the rest of us partied!”
“Uh,” I say. “I mean, I wasn’t working the whole time.”
“Whatever, whatever,” she says. “And Yáo! Your duet! It was so good!”
Yáo sketches out a small bow. “I have not sung in years.”
“I could not tell in the slightest,” Ilyukhina declares. “Oh! And I seem to remember a certain director taking that stick out of her ass and singing!”
Yáo’s smile ticks higher. “I would not use- that language, but yes.”
“Ah, such a pedant,” she says, laughing.
“Wait,” I interrupt. I’ve heard a lot about this mysterious director of Project Hail Mary over the past few weeks, but I’ve never even seen her. I didn’t even know she was a she until a second ago. “Did you say the director was there? She sang?”
Ilyukhina and Yáo give me an odd look. “Yes,” Yáo says. “Of course.”
“What? When?”
Ilyukhina erupts in a peal of giggles. “Grace, exactly how much did you drink last night?”
“Like, nothing!” I protest. “When did this happen?”
“Near the end of the night,” Yáo says, cocking his head like he’s trying to figure me out. “You were there.”
“I was not,” I protest. I’ve been trying to get a meeting with the director for months - at first it was to complain about being brought here, and then it was because I didn’t like that she was ignoring me - and I’ve just been redirected to Stratt’s office every time. Like, I get that she’s busy. She has to be, if she’s managing all these politicians and scientists. But dang it, I’m probably the world’s foremost astrophage scientist by now! I don’t like being shoved aside! And now I’m told she couldn’t make time for me, but she showed up for karaoke night? “Why didn’t you guys tell me?”
Ilyukhina and Yáo exchange glances. Ilyukhina makes a big show of shifting my microscope an inch away from me. “I think all this science is numbing your brain, Grace,” she says. “You should take a break.”
“I don’t need-”
“You didn’t eat breakfast this morning,” Yáo says, a little more gently.
That’s- true, actually, but how does he know? Even though they sometimes use my lab to have private conversations while I work, the Hail Mary crew doesn’t pay much attention to me.
“Go do that,” Yáo tells me. “The, er-” He leans to read the label beside the slide. “Coma slurry synthesis? Will be here later.”
“I need to watch for unusual reactions,” I argue. “If I get this wrong-”
“BORING,” Ilyukhina declares. She hoists me up and bodily shoves me toward the door. “Go, go eat until you remember the director’s beautiful singing!”
“Oh, come on!” I cry, bracing myself on the doorway. “What song did she even sing?”
“‘Sign of the Times,’” Yáo replies, smirking slightly as Ilyukhina kicks me out and slams the lab door behind her, cackling.
Wh- That was Stratt! “That wasn’t even the director!” I yell. I pound once on the door before a Chinese navy officer passing by gives me a weird look and I stop. With nothing else to do, I head to the mess hall.
Annoyingly, I do feel a little better with food in me. Weird how Ilyukhina and Yáo mixed up Stratt with the project director, though. They must’ve been confused.
- - -
The door to my lab flies open and I whip around.
“Hey! I’m doing science!”
“It’s when you say you’re ‘doing science’ that you’re absolutely not doing that,” Shapiro declares, DuBois in tow. Oh god, I hope they’re not here to have sex. “What were you up to?”
“Science!” I protest.
Okay, fine, I was just watching the centrifuge spin. But it’s only been on for five minutes, I haven’t slept in twenty-two hours, and I just wanted a break. Is that a crime now?
What am I saying, of course it is. If Stratt gets wind of me wasting time, she might kick me off the team. Or maybe she’ll elevate the issue to the director, who’ll do even worse. Ugh, I’m being so selfish. I rub my eyes.
“Your obvious lies aside,” Shapiro says with way too much enthusiasm for someone who’s volunteered for a suicide mission, “we have a question for you.”
My mind races through every possible question I don’t want them to ask me before I realize it’d probably be easier to put myself out of my misery and just hear it. “What?”
“Why is Ilyukhina saying you’re not Project Hail Mary’s first officer?”
I throw my hands in the air, groaning. “Why does everyone think that?”
DuBois frowns. “If not you, then who?”
I stare at him, irritated. It’s Stratt, obviously! Whoever the actual director is, she’s been keeping her distance. Stratt’s the one keeping this place together in her absence, I’m just another scientist doing all I can to help, and if these two don’t understand that, they shouldn’t be Hail Mary crew at all!
Whoa.
Okay, time out. Even in the privacy of my own thoughts, that’s way out of line. There’s barely a month left before launch and I’m extremely stressed and overworked, but that’s no excuse. I lean back in my lab chair. “I don’t know what to tell you,” I say wearily.
DuBois squints at me. “So you are not the first officer.”
“No,” I say, a little too loudly.
They keep staring.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to being in close quarters with this many people. Sometimes, a guy just wants to be alone. “So, if you’re done…”
“No, you ask him,” Shapiro tells DuBois, which raises about fifteen red flags.
I raise my eyes to the ceiling. “Can I just respond with a blanket no, or-”
“You say you are not the number two,” DuBois says. “The only plausible alternative is that you and the director are engaged in sexual congress.”
I choke. “What?”
Shapiro narrows her eyes at me. “That’s not a no.”
“It’s a no!” I cry. “It’s- No, obviously not! What the heck are you talking about? I’ve never even met her!”
Shapiro draws back. She exchanges a puzzled glance with DuBois. “That’s a… weirdly obvious lie.”
“It is not!” I half-scream before I remember the dozens of times I’ve had to tell my own students to lower their voices. I get quieter with some effort. “Honestly, nothing like that is going on!”
“Uh-huh,” Shapiro says, looking utterly disbelieving. I want to tear my hair out. “Keep your secrets, Grace.”
“Poorly,” DuBois mutters, and Shapiro snickers, hitting his shoulder. They run off with that weird look in their eyes that tells me to avoid bathrooms and closets in this wing for the next hour, and then I’m left sitting dumbfounded in my lab.
“Nobody thinks that,” I say. I don’t even know what to be most disturbed by, the first-officer thing, the me-having-sex thing, or the me-knowing-the-director thing. I’ve never even met the woman! “Do they?”
No one responds, because I’m alone. Obviously. The centrifuge whirs.
For a second, I have a vivid picture of what it’d be like to get stuck in this lab - to be enclosed in a safe, sterile environment far away from all human craziness, an almost musical thrumming the only noise around. It’s weirdly tempting. Too bad the loneliness would probably kill me.
I rub my eyes again when the room starts to blur. Okay, I really need to sleep.
- - -
I know light is faster than sound, but I didn’t know it was this much faster.
My coffee burns my tongue. The air lights up yellow and orange and black, and my eyes widen. Stratt stops chuckling a heartstopping second before the sound of the impact blows us off our feet. Glass litters the ground. My ears ring deafeningly. Stratt rolls up onto her feet in a millisecond, black coat tangling behind her, and I scramble to follow.
Then I lose time. I don’t know how much, I don’t know if it’s shock or a blast TBI or something else, but by the time I blink back, Shapiro’s schedule chart is at her feet and her walkie-talkie is in her hand. “DuBois,” I hear her voice say, a long way away. “Shapiro. Dr. Annie Shapiro! Check in!”
“Oh, god,” I say blearily. My senses are coming back in pieces - I hear the sirens before I can smell the smoke before I can see my own shaking hands in front of my face. “They were scheduled for- They’re in the-”
“I know,” Stratt says, and the steel in her voice frightens me. She’d sounded so at ease just a second ago, just before- before the-
I can’t think, can’t help. I’m trembling all over. Stratt doesn’t deserve this. She shouldn’t need to handle this alone. Where’s-
“Where’s the director?” I ask frantically. I try to swipe the tears out of my eyes, but I still feel so blind. “Who’s going to tell her about this? Does she know?” A terrifying thought occurs to me. “Is she okay?”
“He’s hysterical,” I hear Stratt say distantly. “Carl, get him into a bunker.”
“Alright, man,” Carl’s level says, filling my vision. “Come on, let’s go inside.”
“No, no, I- I’m not- I don’t-” My legs don’t support my weight. Carl pulls me along easily and suddenly I’m somewhere away from the oppressive heat. “Where is she?”
“Calm down,” Carl says. “You were standing right next to her. She’s fine.”
“Wh- No, I wasn’t-”
“Calm down,” he repeats. His hand digs into my shoulder. He sounds upset. I’m upset. Oh, god, DuBois, Shapiro, they might be dead- “Grace, listen to me. You have to breathe. We’re all counting on you now.”
“Wha-”
“Forget I said that,” he says calmly. I already have. My mind’s so chaotic. I still see that explosion behind my eyes, yellow-orange-red-black-grey- “Grace. Breathe.”
I breathe quick and panicked into Carl’s shoulder until I’m calm again. When I draw back, he doesn’t meet my eyes. The air still smells like smoke.
- - -
I laugh. It isn’t funny, but I laugh.
Stratt’s saying something to me, something about inducing amnesia and sedation and being remembered as a hero but my whole world’s narrowed down to the man who’s standing right beside her, the soldier with the mask and the gloves and the needle.
“Come on,” I say, voice breaking. I stand up. So much adrenaline is pumping through my veins it leaves me shaking. “This is crazy.”
“This may seem like me betraying you,” she says, and her voice shakes and I hate her for it, “but it’s actually me believing in you.”
It feels like she’s betraying me. It feels like I’m about to die. Oh, god, I’m about to die! “That’s easy for you to say when you’re not the one being murdered,” I say, and I want to scream it but I’m already out of breath. I can’t get my voice loud enough. My chest is heaving. Tears roll down my face. “You’re murdering me. I don’t want to die, don’t send me off to die!”
“Grace-”
“Please!”
“Sit down and we’ll do it differently!” Stratt pleads.
I can’t look her in the eye. I can’t look anyone in the eye. I’m on top of the desk. My breathing is so fast I’m worried I’ll pass out, and that’s when I figure something out. “No, you can’t do this!” I yell, and oh, there’s the volume, and stinging relief. “You- You might have kidnapped me, and- made me live on a boat, and forced me to work for you, but you cannot send me to space without the director’s permission!”
Stratt hesitates. I see her do it. I see her stare at me, blurry through all my tears, and I see her pained expression change to something almost confused, and I see her blink, and I have a moment of blinding, desperate hope-
She makes a hand motion and the soldier lunges at me.
I scream. I run.
I’m caught.
- - -
“I’m not teaching you more swears, Rocky!” It’s bad enough that he’s figured out fudge isn’t actually a bad word. I know that if I give him an inch, he’ll take a mile. “Why are you even asking?”
Rocky lets out a hum that I’ve learned means mock-annoyance, loud enough that it echoes through the biodome. “It’s basic cultural exchange! Just tell me one!”
“Absolutely not!”
“Did you swear more on Earth? Are you censoring yourself because you’re trying to make a good impression? It’s too late, I’ve already seen you eat thousands of times!”
“It’s not about that!” I say, flicking his ball. “It’s just not something you do in polite company!”
“I’m not polite company, Grace!”
“And I didn’t cuss on Earth, either! I was never in the habit before I left- I mean, before Stratt forced- uh-”
My words stumble to a halt. My hands curl into the sand.
It’s been three years since we arrived at Erid, and almost seven since I first met Rocky. My hurts have had a lot of time to simmer down. I’m not sure I’ve “made peace” with my last moments on Earth or that I ever will, but it helps that I have so much to look forward to now: teaching my new kids, spending time with Rocky, and resolving every silly misunderstanding I have with the Eridian thrums and welcoming committee. Despite my physical isolation, I’ve never felt less lonely than I do here. Stratt betrayed my trust, but I can’t deny that in the end, she did me a favor.
Rocky notices that I’ve gone quiet. “Apology,” he quickly offers in the makeshift pidgin we used on the Hail Mary. He used it a lot when I was sicker and weaker with malnourishment, since it still takes effort - though less and less every day - for me to understand Eridians’ complex grammar. If he’s using it now, he must think I’m really out of it. “Rocky no ask about Earth if Grace no want, statement.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” I say, searching for a smile. It comes to my lips easier than I expected. It helps that I confessed that I hadn’t volunteered for the mission years ago and Rocky had been angry, hurt, comforting, and supportive at all the right times. “It’s- hard to remember. But I don’t want to forget it, either.”
Rocky inches closer until I can rest my head against his xenonite ball. “Okay,” he agrees. “Do you want to talk about it? Your crew, maybe?”
I hum. “Can I tell you about Stratt instead?”
Rocky twitches. He tries to keep it quiet for my sake, but I can tell he absolutely hates her. I spent a few months ping-ponging between schadenfreude and guilt about his obvious fury before I settled on tentative appreciation. He's just being a good friend. After all, I know that if I heard Rocky had been sent on a suicide mission against his will, I’d be just as furious.
“If you want to,” he agrees.
See? Good friend.
So I tell him everything I remember about Stratt- about how I’d met her, about how she’d never faltered in her leadership, about how she spoke and swore and sang with equal parts control and abandon. “She always meant well,” I say, and for maybe the first time I truly believe it. “I’ll never see her again,” I say, and I’m just as relieved as disappointed by the fact. “I liked Earth,” I say, “but Stratt loved it. Maybe more than anyone’s loved anything. I didn’t understand that kind of love until I met you.” Rocky hums comfortingly the whole time. By the time I finish, I’m crying.
“Is that happy face-leaking?” Rocky asks quietly.
“Yeah,” I say. I stare up into the artificial sunrise. I’m smiling. “Yeah, it is.”
“Good,” Rocky says.
“I wonder if the director ever found out how I left,” I murmur.
There’s a pause, an uncharacteristically long one. Then Rocky says, “What?”
“Uh, you know.” I wipe the tears from my eyes. “That Stratt- drugged me. As distant as the director was from her own project, she would have heard about how Stratt induced my coma early. I wonder if she was suspicious.”
“Grace. Are you being stupid on purpose?”
I frown. “What?”
“Didn’t you say Stratt led every major meeting of the project? That she recruited you, the other crew, and the other scientists? That every time you wanted to meet with the director, you were given a meeting with her?” Rocky thwacks me with his ball. “She was the director, idiot.”
I’m already shaking my head. “No, she couldn’t be. She-”
I suddenly remember that ironic slant to her lips when she said she was “with” the Petrova Taskforce. How everyone she met, legislators and scientists and military officers alike, deferred to her in everything. How she sat at the head of every table with the straight-backed confidence of a woman who no one but the god she believed in could overrule.
Oh.
Oh.
Nearly a decade later - well over a decade, by some estimates - and over a dozen light-years away, I finally figure it out.
“Holy fucking shit.”
“New swears!” Rocky cheers.
I laugh breathlessly, putting my head in my hands. “I’m so stupid.”
“We already knew that, Grace,” Rocky says gleefully. “Come on, come on, you can’t escape now!”
No, I can’t. But luckily, I’m exactly where I most want to be.