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Ryland Grace blamed the lecture he’d been on the receiving end of entirely on Colt and would not accept any responsibility or anyone proclaiming otherwise.
Yes, he’d needed a break. Carl had to borderline carry him from the lab a few nights ago and Dr. Lamai was threatening to strap him to a hospital bed with a tube to his stomach if he didn’t start eating at least once a day.
A break had sounded amazing.
Unfortunately, for everyone involved, Grace was not allowed to leave the Vat without official approval from Eva Stratt, and even then had to be under guard.
And she wouldn’t approve him consulting on the movie his brother and sister-in-law were producing, even if he begged her to.
It was “Too dangerous for him to be so far away”, “wasteful of everyone’s time”, and “potentially put him in harm's way.”
(And, listen, Ryland knew better than anyone that she had an entire Lab procedure worth of accurate reasons why him leaving the relative safety of the Gansu to be publicly seen with his brother for a week was a catastrophic idea, almost guaranteed to get him kidnapped, and would put his brother in danger, but Ryland didn’t want to be realistic right now. He wanted to pout at not getting to see his brother more, now he had the funds to travel.)
So, when Colt had suggested that they swap places for 2 days to allow Ryland a bit of rest away from everything, the scientist had taken it. Set up his laptop to restrict Colt’s access to anything that could potentially compromise project security, set his latest experiments to be on a 5 day testing cycle that the lab assistants were taking care of and blocked in fake meetings with what appeared to be leadership but were just reminders to eat, sleep, and catch up on the book Colt had been reading.
He’d missed one important thing when working to set the whole thing up.
Engineer Simon Anguilla-Fiesher.
Simon Anguilla-Fiesher (seriously, just call me Simon….) had a meeting on Grace’s calendar to begin approval for several of the main Greenhouse parts. Right in the middle of Colt and Ryland’s planned swap.
And Ryland had been so in his head about the engineer that he hadn’t canceled the meeting. ( And after the save on the flightdeck and the calm, even under pressure, no one would blame Ryland for wanting to get to know the engineer better. Especially when he had picked the Greenhouse to work on!!
So Ryland had put off canceling the meeting he’d begged Dimitri to allow him to oversee and continued to do so until he was standing on Jody’s set with Carl, watching his friend’s face turn sour.
”Dr. Grace….” Ut oh, yeah, Ryland was in deep shit. “What is this about Mr. Seavers needing to be returned to set?”
Jody had even snickered at him before telling him he was on his own.)
That Simon had reached out about him potentially being missing and even called Colt out for not being Ryland (he could tell them apart?!), the scientist would take the forgiveness for suddenly having a, for lack of better term, ‘competency kink’.
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Ryland was relieved that the engineer had still wanted to hang out with him after the whole performance of the twins imitating ‘The Parent Trap’ on the Vat’s inhabitants.
When Ryland had finally gotten to sit down with the engineer about the crucial inner workings of the Greenhouse’s astrophage energy conversion center and overall greenhouse matrices, he found himself relaxing into conversations with the Korean American extremely easily.
It was after their third meeting that he’d invited the other to take a walk and they’d ended up discussing the first of Ryland’s kidnappings. That conversation had turned into them talking every day and eventually led them to now.
The highest deck they could safely get to, sitting side by side, watching the waves.
They didn’t always speak. Sometimes, Simon just needed the quiet. Sometimes, Grace did too.
And sometimes, like tonight, they would stare at the waves, bored out of their minds after being kicked out of almost every lab on the ship. (Well, as much as the Task Force’s First Officer could be kicked out of anywhere without Stratt’s orders. Though they couldn’t obstruct Grace for using the lab, Simon could be. And on nights like this, Ryland refused to work anywhere Simon couldn’t. (That Ryland didn’t simply order for Simon to be allowed to follow him was a credit to his humility and respect for the other Task Force Scientists…..and not, you know, his lack of understanding of his actual role on the project.))
So they were here, sitting in silence that was buzzing around them.
”I wonder if there is a pattern….” Grace muttered, starting to count on his fingers and starting over. He shook his wrist, fingers splaying outward, before trying again.
”Hmm?” Simon tracked his hand, still half caught in his own thoughts, hands fiddling with a pen. “…if what has a pattern?”
Grace looked over at his companion, an idea forming. He pulled himself up and reached a hand towards his friend.
”The abductions.” He pulled the dark haired man to his feet and started making his way back towards the walkway back down. “I wonder if we could find a pattern.”
Simon’s left hand caught his upper arm when he almost slipped down half of one of the flights, keeping him from toppling over.
”Careful, it’s slippery.” Simon made sure his friend was steady before releasing Grace. They continued on, Grace leading the two back into the Vat’s hallways and to his lab.
”Ok.” Simon started pacing, looking around for something to write on. “Let’s start with some easy stuff.”
Ryland shoved a stack of sticky notes towards the engineer, still searching for a dry-erase marker.
Simon scribbled something on one and stuck it to the wall with tape from his toolbelt. (Ryland was convinced the guy even had a snack stored in one of the containers, though he’d never been able to narrow down if that was true.)
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”What else would we want to track these by?” Simon looked back at Grace, pen at the ready.
“Maybe by the date it took place?” Simon scribbled that down on the next note and stuck it to the right of the first. “I would say ‘Who’ next, but we don’t always know who it was. If we don’t receive any demands, or I don’t talk to the abductor, we aren’t told who is making the attempt. Like with Faux-curity dude. He didn’t give us the name of the person he was working for. So trying to figure out why doesn’t help us.”
The pair stared at the sticky notes for a moment before Ryland felt an evil idea settle onto his face. Simon matched his smirk and raised an eyebrow.
”Ok, what did you think of in your evil genius brain, Angel?” Ryland flushed but grinned back anyway.
”How would you feel about getting some payback on the uptight scientists with me?”
Simon nodded, huffing out a laugh before setting the sticky notes and tape on the lab bench between them.
”I’m always down to bring assholes down a peg or two with you, Ry. What have they done this time?”
“Oh, no, this is revenge for locking me out of the lab, telling me to “let things go” and “don’t hold grudges” as if I’m a misbehaving child, and killing whatever brain cells they may have had to get assigned here by kissing Dr. SWoC’s butt.” Simon mouthed the letters over a couple times, raising an eyebrow at Ryland.
“…SW…oC?” Ryland flushed slightly.
”Yeah, remind me to show you the video from the Denmark UNESCO conference sometime.” He waved away Simon’s curiosity, “anyway. SWoC, or Stagging Waste of Carbon…”
The startled laughter that burst from Simon’s chest made Ryland smile over at him.
”…was hired here. For some, unknowable reason, someone decided this was not the worst idea in the history of Mankind, and I’m only marginally more busy with correcting the idiot’s work.”
He sent a smirk over to Simon.
”Stratt has his termination paperwork on her desk. With any luck, he’ll be gone by tomorrow morning. She wasn’t happy when I told her I had to rework an entire portion of his work because he had calculated the astrophage projection wrong by almost 16 times. Said something about ‘if she wanted me to have less time to work on side projects, she’d invite Colt here every other day.’”
The two shared a grin before Ryland turned back to their two, lonely sticky notes.
”What are you proposing, Dr. Grace?” The teasing notes in Simon’s voice sent pleasant shivers down Ryland’s spine.
Ryland grabbed the note pad, quickly scribbled something down, and tape two more beside the first two.
”Let’s keep them guessing.”
The two high fived before beginning to outline their plan to spread the informaiton through the ship wide gossip network.
If they played this right, the idiots would tank their own carriers in their efforts to leave. And if not, well, Eva Stratt preferred her head scientist to be happy and working, so it would all work out anyway.
By the time they left an hour later, plan at the ready, 4 sticky notes were taped in a row across the periodic table, with several more in neat columns immediately below them.
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