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No. No no no. No. God, if there even was a god now, Stratt wasn't sure she believed anymore after this moment. Why would God have let this happen? Let both of her science experts die in a freak accident, force her hand to send the person closest to her away in what she knew would be against his will?
Hell had come faster than Stratt had expected. She expected a few more days, at least until the ship had launched, but then again, when had she ever been so lucky?
No matter how she tried to rationalize sending the only other option - a woman who was nowhere near as brilliant as Grace was, but then again who could be? - it wouldn't work. She couldn't do the job, she didn't even speak the only shared language among the crew fluently, and Stratt couldn't allow anything less than the best possible odds. Humanity needed the best odds possible and that meant Grace, willing or unwilling.
She couldn't, in her mind, accept sending someone who she knew wouldn't be able to complete the mission when someone who knew the mission as well as she did, who coined the word astrophage, who first interacted with it, discovered it was a cell, bred it and was the best possible option - who had always been the best possible option - for the mission. It was always going to end this way, no matter how she tried to fight it, to try and save someone who she cared about.
From the moment DuBois and Shapiro had stepped into that building, history had changed, it's course diverted and unchangeable now, and with it all of Stratt's hopes for the future, all of her hopes of getting Grace, a kind teacher who did what he thought was right, out unscathed.
He would have never gotten out completely unscathed, but she hoped to at least get him out of it alive before. That wasn't an option now.
Breathing deeply, Stratt smacked Grace across the face, stopping his sobbing and ramblings for the dead in their tracks.
"This is no time to sob, Dr. Grace," she commanded. "Get me a list of all of the possible replacements. Immediately."
Please, she prayed like she did when she was a child, like she hadn't in years. Please, let him find someone, anyone else, who can do just as well as him. Please, let me spare us both from this.
Of course, she had not been so lucky. The list Grace had procured, notably leaving himself off of it, was filled with people who were never going to be a part of the crew, even under the most dire of circumstances. None of them were qualified, even if they were willing.
Willing wasn't something she needed. She needed someone who could get the job done. She needed Grace no matter how much that hurt to accept, to decide and plan for. He had been the tertiary science expert all along, but Stratt hoped to never have to make that unofficial position known. She didn't have a choice now.
"Leave my office. Now," she said, voice low and flat as the other officers exited, leaving her alone in the quiet office.
5 minutes. That was all she could allow herself to grieve for now. 5 minutes - one for each person she knew she was killing. One for DuBois. One for Shapiro. One for Yao. One for Ilyukhina. One for Grace.
5 people for the fate of the whole world had never felt so heavy. It never felt heavy before Grace, the unwilling lamb that the butcher would lead to the slaughter, had been added to the list. An unwilling sacrifice was always so much heavier than a willingly one, at least she could convince herself she wasn't killing them in the same way she now had to murder Grace.
The weight of every decision up to now hung heavily on her mind - nuking the arctic, paving the desert, so many deaths and more to come. What was a little more weight? What was one more hard decision that only she could make?
She had been chosen for a reason, chosen to be the one to make the hard decisions that nobody else had the courage to. It couldn't even really be called a decision. This was imperative to the survival of humanity and it was the only play to make. Too much had been given already to not go down this path, even if it meant dragging Grace behind her kicking and screaming to the gallows.
A single tear ran down her cheek and she wiped it away. Now was no time to cry, work needed to be done and it would be done well. Stratt would see it through and she could face hell with her tearful eyes after, once the world was given its best possible chance for survival.
Only once Earth had been given its best odds would she finally let herself bow under the weight of the past 4 years of decisions and regrets - no, not regrets. Eva did not regret what she had done, she just hated that there were no other options but this. She would have to wait for a few days more before she let the weight fully rest on her shoulders.
"Call a meeting of my officers. We meet in 10."
~~~
The 3 hours had been a courtesy to Grace, the most time she could allow him to come to accept his fate and to understand her decision.
He had to understand that this was the best option, the only option. She hoped he understood and would agree, but deep down, Stratt knew she was being too hopeful.
Grace was not a brave man. He was a coward through and through, but once, just once, she hoped he could be brave for Earth and for the future of humanity, even at the cost of himself. She hoped he could do the math and understand that this was the only chance Earth had, the only way the cards could be played.
Hope. What a fickle thing, always there even when, realistically, Stratt knew how this would play out. She had the French amnesia drug for a reason, she knew what was going to happen. No matter how much she tried to stop herself from hoping, she couldn't. This whole project was nothing but hope, but she didn't have any here. She couldn't, not when she was murdering her friend - someone who she didn't respect, but someone that she had known understood her better than anyone else.
The lamb and the butcher. Always opposites, but never too different from one another. Where one was soft, one was hard and where one was cold, the other was warm. Both were alone. Neither would be missed. A lamb dressed as a butcher, leading its own to the slaughter as it screamed for mercy that wouldn't - couldn't - come.
"I can't do it," Grace shook his head, tears spilling from his eyes as he spoke, sniffling softly. "I can't. I know you think I'm the person for this, but I'm not. I, uh, I know you'll find a solution though. You always do."
"You are my solution," Stratt said, no hint of emotion in her voice as she tried to remove herself from this, to distance herself from her actions. "Grace, if we delay launch, casualties increase dramatically. Millions will die."
"I can't," he repeated. "I'm sorry."
"I know. I hope that at the very least, you can at least understand what I am going to do next," Stratt admitted, swallowing roughly, preparing herself for what was to come - the final and unwilling sacrifice. "Come in," she called, gesturing for a doctor to enter the room.
"No. No no no," Grace repeated, standing up from his seat. "You can't do this to me. You're going to murder me!"
"I do not respect you, Dr. Grace, but I do believe that you are a fundamentally good man. You are the only man for this job."
"Please," he begged. "Please. I just want to live."
"As does the rest of the world."
A noose around the neck of a small, white lamb that was stained in blood and tied around the neck of the butcher as well. Opposites and the same. Intertwined so deeply that nobody knew where one ended and the other began. Killing one would kill the other, but that was the price for survival of the rest of the flock.
"He's running," Stratt called over the comms, watching as Grace sprinted towards the exit, the noose tightening around both of their necks, ready to snap at a moments notice.
A brief moment of silence fell through the office, the bars of her cell closing in as the blinds stood solid in front of her face.
"We got him."
And just like that, the noose had pulled as tight as it could go, choking both the lamb and butcher slowly. It would be three days before either were dead for certain, but only the butcher would feel them and for that, she was thankful. The lamb need not suffer for sins that were not its own. It was the only mercy she could provide and it would have to do.
~~~
Watching the ship take off was the hardest thing Eva Stratt had ever done - more difficult than even losing both her mother and father in one fell swoop, more difficult than having to bear the weight of the world with a job that she had been dictated to do. Sending off an unwilling soul, one that she knew well and that she had lead to the slaughter herself with the knife hidden behind her back, carried a weight she didn't know it was possible to hold and not be crushed under.
She knew her fate was coming, that her sins were chasing her down and would arrive as soon as the Hail Mary left the ISS, but she was prepared to accept that outcome. Her own sacrifice was imperative to the whole project.
History always needed a villain and it was never going to be a bunch of space dots. It would be the woman who did the job asked of her and succeeded because there always needed to be heroes to be remembered and a villain to fall into obscurity or be hated for the rest of time.
Stratt had played her role well, knowing what was to come as she welcomed her future with open arms, tightening her own noose with each decision she made for the sake of the world. The only solace she had now was that Grace couldn't be tried along with her, that his cell would have a much prettier view than he own and that he wouldn't needlessly suffer with the rest of the world.
Other than the volunteer astronauts and herself, he had been the only willing participant on the project, forcing his way in and refusing to leave. If he had not gone, he would have been facing the same fate she did now and it would have broken him, too weak and kind for the future hellfire that awaited her.
This was the only mercy she could provide him - hiding his cowardice and letting history remember him as a hero, someone who did what was right. Someone who was everything Eva was not.
Lamb and butcher. Butcher and lamb. Both would die, but one would be praised as the son of God, a savior for humanity, while the other was forgotten and hated, a demon for parents to warn their children about.
Who was the butcher if not a lamb in disguise, doing what was needed at the cost of themselves?