Chapter Text
I see nothing
I think about how I see nothing for a minute
Oh, I should probably open my eyes
Well, I can’t open my eyes. Great.
Oh- wait- yes I can-
OWOWOWOOWWWW
It takes everything in me to open my eyes, and as soon as I do, I am met with a brutal blinding white light.
ABORT ABORT ABORT CLOSE EYES CLOSE EYES
Ah jeez, this is a problem isn’t it?
I take a second to feel around me, to hear around me, to pick up any cues as to where the hell am I.
Beeping..thats a heart monitor. Okay, I’m in a hospital. This makes sense as to why it’s so bright. I try moving my fingers and they twitch, I wiggle my toes, and- wait hold on
“EYE MOVEMENT DETECTED PLEASE REMAIN STILL”
Suddenly I hear a zipper next to my face and go to swallow and I.. can’t. I can’t swallow. Uh oh. Okay wait don’t panic don’t panic
I hear myself start to choke on whatever is obstructing my airways
Damn it i'm panicking
And suddenly it is ripped from my throat and i'm gagging up my own saliva and stomach bile (I’m guessing). The force of the tube being ripped from my throat caused me to sit up instinctually, my hands holding me up by the bed railings as I catch my breath and let my eyes adjust to the stark white walls that surround me.
This is so freaking weird. What the fuck happened, and why am In a looney bin.
“WHAT IS TWO PLUS TWO”
I turn my head to be met with a multi arm robot shuffling around my room and it looks to be trying to grab at something on me, I look down and see a plethora of wires all stuck on my naked body, oh great. I recognize all of them, including the three tubes stuck IN me. An IV tube in my arm, a feeding tube up my butt, and a catheter in my vagjayjay. OH GREAT. I let the arm grab at the smilingly millions of electrode wires attached to my arms and legs and stomach, before shimmying my way to the edge of the bed
“WHAT IS TWO PLUS TWO”
“Fowmmm” I slur out
Oh.
I guess I haven’t spoken in.. god knows how long I was asleep for
“INCORRECT. WHAT IS TWO PLUS TWO”
“Faor” I slur better this time but its not good enough
“INCORRECT. WHAT IS TWO PLUS TWO”
I huff. Jesus Christ this thing is ANNOYING.
“f..ou..r”
“INCORRECT. WHAT IS TWO PLUS TWO”
GOD DAMN IT
“FFoUR”
“CORRECT. WHAT IS THE CUBE ROOT OF EIGHT”
Uhhh shit I was never good at math, two?
“Toow..?”
“CORRECT. WHAT IS YOUR NAME?”
I think for a couple seconds before hesitantly answering
“Y..yn..?”
“CORRECT. WELCOME BACK DOCTOR YLN”
Doctor.. I’M A DOCTOR! I TOTALLY FORGOT!! I go to stand up and walk but my legs, despite them being very nicely toned, are weak, and I end up right on my butt on the floor. OW. My butt tube bends in a way it is not supposed to bend and I feel a dull ache. Am I supposed to take the tubes out??? I guess i'm a doctor.. but I feel like they should have had something else..
And as if the arm thing read my mind it lifted me off the ground by my armpits, set me on the bed, and proceeded to take out my IV. I lay back down on the bed so it can take out the other two. Fortunately, neither of them hurt or felt like anything at all really. And in two minutes time, i was completely unhooked from the thing that was my incubator it seems.
I stand up on my feet, my knees wobbly, but ill live, I look around a bit more, zipping the uncomfortable plastic-y suit back up to my throat for my own modesty, and spot three other beds nearby, stacked on top of each other but connected to the wall like a really spread out bunk bed.
Other people.
As if on instinct I make my way to the beds, and start to climb the ladder on the wall next to them to see their faces.
The first one I see is nearest to the ground, I can’t see a face, they are what seems to be wrapped up in the same zipped up suit thingy I was earlier and the little screen connected to their bed reads “status: stable”, I see there chest moving up and down in synchronous and a breath I didn’t know I was holding escapes my chest in a deep sigh. I climb up a couple more to check on th- oh and she’s dead. Well. That’s not good. I apprehensively climb more and peak over- aaanddd he’s dead too. Wow. Okay.
This is terrible actually.
I check the side of their respective beds and the top two each have the words “deceased” read in big red letters on the screen. “Well you could’ve fooled me there..” I mumbled sarcastically as I look at both of there skeletonized corpses.
So, okay. Let’s recap here.
My name is YN YLN
I am a doctor
I and one other person are alive
Two are dead
And I woke up first
I climb back down to the alive body and look at the bed plate screen thingy for a name
No name. Hm.
I need to figure out where I am. I look around and look up to see a big hatch at the top of the ladder. Okay, I go there then
I climb and open the hatch to find..more white hallways. Okay. Cool. I pull myself up with surprising ease. I guess even if I haven’t moved in a number of..months..years? My body is still fit. Which, now that I think about it..My body looks more fit than it normally is which makes zero sense, and how does my body normally look? I can’t and can remember at the same time, this is so confusing.
I walk around, tripping on things occasionally, looking at all the machines I have vague memories of but no names to put to them, and various tilted screens that have words I don’t know written on them, eventually I find a screen that reads “main console” in a big room with a big chair and a huge toggle stick with millions of tiny buttons surrounding it. I do my best not to touch any of the button as I tap the screen, making it light up and suddenly I hear a voice.
BIOMETRIC SCAN CONFIRMED. WELCOME BACK DOCTOR YLN. MEDICAL ADMINISTRATIVE BYPASS LOCK INITIATED.
And there it is.
The left half of the screen is dominated by a glowing, 3D wireframe schematic of the “Hail Mary.” It displays a vertical cross-section of the ship, showing three decks stacked like tin cans inside a sleek outer hull. Tiny, pulsing green indicators highlight the ship’s primary lifelines: the oxygen scrubbers, the water recycling loops, and the thick, lead-lined radiation shielding protecting the living quarters. A static icon at the corner shows a diagram of the ship's tether cables, currently labeled RETRACTED / THYST GRV STATUS.
The right half of the screen houses a strictly organized, four-row medical matrix. Each row belongs to a crew member, flashing color-coded statuses that clash violently in the dim room:
Row 1 (YÁO LI-JIE): The text is a harsh, static amber. The vital line is completely flat, accompanied by a small, blinking warning box that reads: DECEASED. TELEMETRY CRITICAL FAILURE. TIMEOUT: 1,142 DAYS AGO.
Row 2 (OLESYA ILYUKHINA): Identical to Yao's row. A flat, solid line of amber text reads: DECEASED. TELEMETRY CRITICAL FAILURE. TIMEOUT: 984 DAYS AGO.
Row 3 (GRACE, RYLAND): This row glows with a calm, steady green. A tiny, real-time electrocardiogram (ECG) wave pulses rhythmically across the screen, reading a slow, sedated 34 BPM. Beneath his vitals, a countdown timer ticks backward in real-time, losing a fraction of a second with every blink: AWAKENING CODE: T-MINUS 29:23:57:42.
Row 4 (YLN, FIRST NAME): My row flashes a bright, energetic blue. My vital tracker is erratic, displaying an elevated heart rate of 110 BPM and a flashing notification in the corner: ALERT: METABOLIC STRESS DETECTED / SUGGEST IMMEDIATE NUTRIENT INTAKE.
I take a second to absorb all this information.
okay so we are on something called the "Hail Mary", and it looks like a gigantic space ship, two of the passengers are dead, and.. Ryland..Grace.
The phantom scent of industrial floor cleaner and salty sea air hits me instantly, completely wiping out the sterile smell of the spaceship’s recycled plastic. My vision blurs. The bright green text of "GRACE, RYLAND" on the touchscreen melts away into a flash of harsh, fluorescent white light. My knees buckle slightly under the weight of a memory violently forcing its way to the surface.
And suddenly, I’m back on Earth.
I am standing near the back of a windowless, metallic tactical briefing room deep inside the bowels of the Glomar Explorer, the massive, top-secret research ship stationed out in the Pacific Ocean. The room vibrates with a deep, low rumble from the ship’s heavy engines struggling against the ocean waves. Giant whiteboards line the steel walls, covered in frantic, hand-drawn physics equations, chemical diagrams, and satellite maps of the sun.
Then the heavy steel door flies open, and Stratt marches in, her heels clicking like a countdown.
Right behind her is Ryland. He looks like an absolute lunatic. The bags under his eyes making it apparent he hasn’t slept in at least three days, his hair is sticking up in every direction, and his clothes look like he rolled through a thrift store backwards. He is clutching a stack of clear Petri dishes to his chest like they’re made of solid gold, and his eyes are wide, wild, and totally bloodshot.
Stratt doesn't even say hello. She just steps aside and gives him a cold, commanding nod. "Everyone, this is Dr. Ryland Grace from the United States. Please go here. Thank you. And he figured out how to breed Astrophage."
A researcher in the front row immediately pipes up, demanding technical details and soon multiple scientists from around the room are asking questions: “How did you do it? How long does the process take? Does it reproduce by mitosis or meiosis? What is the incubation?"
Ryland rushes up to the whiteboard, almost tripping over his own feet, and waves his hands frantically.
"Um, Carl and I made a mini Venus out of a plywood box!" he says blinking rapidly, he’s looking around the room like he’s gonna pee himself out of fear.
“whose carl..?” someone whispers next to me.
He taps a dry-erase marker against his hand, and he and I make brief eye contact before I look away instinctively,"And- a- as soon as the samples recognized the spectral signature of CO₂... they were... they were like, 'Whoop, there it is!'"
An eruption of voices are heard from all around the room as Stratt ushers grace to sit down immediately, I can't help it. A massive smile breaks across my face, and I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing out loud, because.. what a dork..this guy is saving the world right now seriously?
But then I catch the look on Eva Stratt’s face. She isn’t laughing. She is staring at Ryland with a cold, predatory glare.
And as the memory begins to fade and blur back into the blue light of the spaceship, that familiar, heavy dread sinks into my gut all over again.
The flashback shatters.
I gasp, my hands slipping off the wall handles of the cockpit console as my knees buckle. The warm, salty smell of the ocean ship vanishes instantly, replaced by the freezing, sterile taste of recycled oxygen. My chest heaves, my heart pounding violently against my ribs as the high-contrast screens of the flight deck blur back into focus.
The weight of the memory hits me like a physical blow, leaving behind a million frantic questions. Who is Ryland Grace? What was Astrophage? Why is this Astrophage stuff breeding on Venus and why does it need CO2??? WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR ME??
The screen in front of me calls this place the Hail Mary. It lists me as a doctor, it tells me two of my crew mates are dead down in the dormitory, and it tells me Grace is asleep for another month.
But it doesn’t give me context. It doesn’t tell me why we are locked in this tin can, or what the mission actually is.
My nervous system completely misfires from the sheer chemical exhaustion of waking up. My legs give out entirely, and I fall back into the pilot chair out of sheer, bone-deep exhaustion.
The plastic feeling fabric groans under my weight as I sink into the cushions, my head rolling back against the heavy headrest. I stare up at the windowless, riveted metal ceiling of what I assume is the cockpit, my hands shaking against the armrests. I haven’t seen a single viewport or window on this entire structure. For all I know, we are buried in a deep-sea trench, locked inside an underground military bunker, or trapped in a highly advanced training simulator.
I close my eyes, letting the steady, mechanical hum of the Hail Mary vibrate through the seat. I am completely alone in the cockpit, my breath fogging slightly in the cool air, completely blind to the reality of where this container is actually taking us.