Chapter Text
The sound of crashing waves and the pungent smell of salt is what wakes him. Everything surrounding him rocking gently as aching muscles bring him back to full awareness.
The sun streams in softly through lace curtains that look to have fallen out of the ribbons holding them open. It bathes the room in an orange light.
Ah. Must be morning, He thinks.
Besides from the ocean outside and the soft creaking of wood, it was quiet. He wasn't sure how he knew, but the silence was wrong. Too stilted, unnatural, and far too unsettling.
Standing up on sore muscles, it's a struggle to get through a wave of vertigo when he rights himself. Groaning quietly, he grabs the water on his nightstand to fix the throbbing in his head and the scratching as of his throat and puts on the frame of glasses that rested right next to them, blinking as his vision clears.
It feels like he'd slept on the cold, hard, pointy ground rather than an actual bed- and considering he did in fact wake up in a bed, it confuses him greatly. Comes with the territory of getting older, I guess. What other explanation could be given for the cramping of his muscles and the persistent fatigue in his head?
Looking outside the small porthole at the vast blue sea stretching as far as the eye can see relaxes him. It's weirdly familiar, a view he knows he's seen hundreds of times before. One that means he's nowhere close to any land.
He's on a ship? In the middle of the ocean? How on earth did he get on a ship? How does he not remember that? It's not like he could've just been picked up and tossed aboard, at least then the coastline would've still been visible.
Which means he's supposed to be here. He just. Forgot. Somehow.
Turning his gaze to the space around him, picking up small pieces of how he must've gotten in this situation.
The room is small. Maybe just barely smaller than his own room im the tiny house he's the proud owner of. For a ship this size, he imagines that this is actually one of the bigger rooms.
There's a desk pushed into the far corner, covered in papers and books and dozens of pens and ink cartridges, ink smeared in some places on the wood just barely peaking out under the pages.
A lamp is hung on the wall above the desk, not lit but it's been used frequently. It is, however, full of oil. Lighting it helps the soft dim of the room grow into something he can actually see in.
At the foot of the cot he's on is a chest full of clothes. Overfilling to the point he doubts it would even come close to closing.
Huh. Okay. Not that much to go off of besides the fact that I'm a slob.
Narrowing in on the stacks papers, he skims through them. They seem to be somewhat scientific but he clearly doesn't have the context to understand them. The only thing they all seem to have in common is the name scrawled on the bottom in honestly insulting cursive. Ryland Grace. That must be him, right? It...sounds familiar enough.
It gives him more info on himself as expected. Point one for Ryland in figuring out his elusive life. He was pretty high in the chain of command. Second only to the captain, whoever that may be.
It also told him that the supposed ship he was on was actually a pirate ship. The Hail Mary. Bit of a dramatic name but who is he to judge.
He's a pirate, then- or at the very least an unwilling participant on a pirate ship.
Does that make him a fugitive?
Sighing, he presses his palms into his eyes and counts to five before letting out a breath and deciding to simply move on. He'll find someone else on board and they'll surely help him.
Turning and leaving the room, he tries to catalogue his route as best he can to get back. It's a series of twists and turns that he can only pray he remembers later but it's seeming like his memory isn't on his team.
Walking the halls only makes him increasingly worried as each corridor remains hauntingly empty. Not even an echo of another living person nearby.Rylands no different. Moving through the crowd with no urgency and instead examining the stalls carefully as if he might miss something amazing if he isn't thorough enough.
He's almost reached the end of the market when a hand latches onto him and tugs him into a nearby back alley, not fighting it off but instead screaming futilely as if that would solve the problem.
Another hand forces it's way over his mouth to silence him and it's only then that he realizes who exactly it is thats grabbed him, that alone is enough to shock him into silence.
"Ryland Grace, is it? Are you the one who worked under Petrova?"
The woman speaks- well- that description doesn't seem to do her justice. Eva Stratt, otherwise knows as the Dictator of the Seas, one of the most powerful pirates out there.
The hand covering Rylands mouth falls away, obviously pushing him to answer her but it takes him just a few more long seconds to register her words.
"Pe-...Petrova...? Like- Dr. Irina Petrova?"
"What other Petrova would I be talking about, Dr. Grace? Do you know her or not?"
"Y-Yes! Yes I worked for her a few years ago...?"
Ryland responds, confusion the only other think evident in his voice besides barely concealed fear.
Hes grabbed and dragged forward, sputtering as Stratts voice is the last thing he can recall.
"Good. Then you are of use to me. Come."
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The memory is vivid, flooding back in full color. It makes Ryland wonder how he ever forgot someone like Stratt in the first place.
It's not enough information, though. Sure, Ryland knows how he got on the ship but the more important question is why he was dragged aboard.
Letting go of the crumpled log that led to this whole discovery, Ryland quickly hopped up to sit on the table next to the paper.
Stratt thought he was useful. She asked about his earlier apprenticeship under Dr. Petrova which meant she was in need of someone with all of her knowledge- It leaves him wondering why Stratt didn't just take Petrova for whatever this mess is.
Stratt wanted a doctor. Someone to study and make sense of the unknown. But why? What good does a scientist do on a pirate ship?
There has to be something Rylands missing. Proof of why he was borderline kidnapped, a reason for them to need him. Ryland just had to search the entire ship and then things will start looking up for him. Maybe this isn't as bad as he's making it out to be.
Oh my god. He has to search the entire ship.
Nevermind. This is awful and he hates everything.
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The rooms he searches through yield nothing. No exciting discoveries, no living people, not even corpses. It's a grim thought, but it would be an explanation. Something to prove everyone didn't just disappear.
Some of the names that rest next to the door are achingly familiar. Like pressing down on a bruise you don't remember getting.
These people were real. They had to of been. Each life has a room it left behind, clothes not yet folded, half-finished letters, windows left open.
Ryland knew these people. He saw them everyday for as long as he was on this ship. Yet he can't for the life of him put a face to any of their names.
The last bedroom he had left to explore was empty. Empty beyond the normal level. A spare. Clean and barren or the small hints of personality the rest of the ship carried. In a way, it hurts to see an empty room than another abandoned one.
Someone couldve made this room their own. Maybe they would've survived. Maybe they would've forgives this out. Maybe he should've been the one to disappear. It's not like he's being particularly helpful.
Leaving the room, he roams the halls blankly. Wandering wherever his feet take him. Hoping naively that they'll lead him to another person.
This is bigger than him. He has to solve this for his crew mates, for their families and friends, for anyone else that might get sick.
Coming across a door he hadn't yet entered, Stratt office, concludes the small plaque on the wall next to it, he stops in front of it. Ryland has an idea that Stratt wouldn't be too happy with him snooping through her things, but it's the best chance he has at finding something helpful.
The office was mundane looking on the outside. A simple doorway with a heavy knocker in the middle. Gold, probably.
Should he still knock? Nobodies in there, but it still feels a little rude to just barge in.
It had to have something. It just had to. So, giving a small knock to keep his morals in check, he enters. Pushing open the weighty door. It's immediately more put together than just about every other room. It's busy, yes, but papers are organized by date rather than lumped together at random.
A small oil lamp sits on the edge of the desk in the center or the room. Clearly well used. It's got just enough left in it for Ryland to light and he does so quickly.
Ryland gently sits down in the seat behind the large mahogany desk and takes in the room. There isn't much in the way of decoration, which feels so distinctly Stratt to him. A bare cot is pushed into the corner of the room with a dresser chest on the floor at its feet. There are a few books stacked next to it, each one marked and dogeared.
Stratts desk is no less organized than everything else, drawers neatly ordered by date, people, and even location.Looking through them, he finds everything hed expect to. Weather reports, dates that they docked the ship, pages of crew deaths, supplies-
Huh. Crew deaths? Not exactly out of place. Surely pirates can't be all that cautious on the open sea. The only problem is, there are dozens.
The names and death dates start out few and far between and marked for years ago. Accidents with cannons, falling overboard, alcohol poisoning. Relatively normal things for pirates, he supposes.
Flipping to the back of the packet, the dates are much more recent. The last ten all within a week or so go each other. The only thing written for cause of death is 'sickness'.
Looking back on older pages, ninety percent of the deaths all have the same reason. Sickness. No note for what kind of sickness or how severe it was, just that it killed them.
That must be why Stratt brought him onboard. Being a doctor of any kind is held in high regards, if this ship needed to find a cure for such a devastating sickness they'd go for the best they could get their hands on.
Dr. Petrova would've been the best of the best, but even Ryland knows that shes halfway across the world right now.
He was probably the closest of Petrova's students to the pirates and was thus taken aboard to help with their problem. Taking off his glasses and tossing them on the desk, he rubs his palms into his eyes and tries to force away the headache looming over him.
Okay. That makes sense. What went wrong?
Don't get him wrong, Ryland knows he's not some super genius but he's not an idiot either. Surely he should've been able to figure out something about the disease?
The ship didn't have a lab. At least not in his search through it, and he is not about to do another pass through, so what research was he doing?
This is all so frustrating! Huffing, Ryland sorts through the pages for some other clue. If he was brought aboard to fix the sickness, then surely there was writing. Tests he'd already gone through, ideas he must've disproved-
Plink.
Looking over at the noise, nothing seems amiss. Must've been a bird. Anyway.
Ryland had to of done tests, he's a scientist after all, but he doesn't remember a lab of sorts. Not even a spare room that had any semblance or research in it.
Maybe somewhere in his mess of a room? Ryland hasn't been all that thorough in searching through it earlier and it made sense that he would-
Plink. Plink.
Groaning as he turns to the window behind him once more, the quiet sound now clearly purposeful. This time he stands and opens the window to peer outside.
Looking out the window only confused him. There was no boat or animal to attribute the sound to. Squinting, he notices a figure waving...something around frantically in the water. They're on a rock just big enough to hold them up, remnants of a small boat broken to pieces next to them and floating in the water.
Is it an animal? No, why would they be throwing things at his window? Better yet, why would it have a boat? Squinting, he grabs his glasses and winces as the world comes back into focus.
Oh.
Oh god, it's a person! A real living, breathing person!
On a rock.
In the middle of the ocean.
Alone.
How are they alive?