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When it happens, Eva is in a meeting as a desperate mediator between the current team assigned to the design of the Hail Mary, and the contractors she is trying to bring on board to speed up the progress. Since the meeting began- several hours before- not a single agreement on just about anything had been reached, and she was beginning to calculate by how much she was going to have to delay her next meeting if they didn’t get somewhere anytime soon when the blast happened.
The sound was deafening, so deafening that the room glances around at each other as they grip whatever they can find to stay where they are as the shockwave arrives, trying to make out if the others had experienced the same, or if they had all gone spontaneously deaf.
By the time the total silence passes it is only replaced with a painful ringing that has their hands slammed over their ears as an awful wave of vertigo slams over them all. One of the engineers tries to stand, but the ground is shaking so hard that they do not make it a single step before they are on the ground.
Eva, too, attempts to stand, just in time for the alarms to start blaring around them, several of them exclaiming as the lights flicker before finally cutting out.
She stumbles, shouting out something that even she cannot understand, but manages to stay upright as she heads towards the door to find out what the hell is going on.
A part of her knows, of course- it was the whole reason they were on the ship in the first place- but she does not want to jump to any conclusions until she is sure, until she can grasp it enough to start handing out orders.
A chair hits her in the back as she reaches the door and she turns around to find that several of the chairs are slipping in the same direction. Her heart sinks, the ship should not be tipping so violently, but she goes on. It will right itself.
When she finally reaches the door, and slips out into the hallway, her hearing has returned enough to hear the shouts around her from people demanded answers. She scans the people around her, trying to pick out one, finally landing on who she knows to be the one of the commanders that is highest ranked.
“An explosion, in the lab, devastating destruction,” he says- probably repeating himself- once Eva catches his eye.
Still unsteady, Eva nods, sucking in a single breath as she prepares to face the worst. They always knew it was a possibility, and there were procedures in place, she just had to get them started. “The ship will not stay afloat?”
The commander shakes his head, a grim look on his face, “The front half is already gone,”
It takes her a moment to hear the words, to understand what the mean, to wrap her mind around the fact that it is likely half of the project had been destroyed. When it finally settles, she straightens her back, finally able to stand on her own two feet, every eye around looking at her, waiting for instruction. She has to shout to be heard over the alarms. “Begin the evacuation, many of the lifeboats have been compromised, do what you can in what time we have. I need to speak to the captain,”
Those around her begin to obey without question, she takes off in a run.
------
Ryland is late, very late, he had fallen asleep in his office for a third day in a row and by some miracle no one made a loud enough noise in the hallway just outside to wake him until several hours into the morning.
He panics the moment his eyes land on the clock in the corner- propped up on a chair, he never managed to find a nail for it- and jumps up from his desk only to double over in pain from the position his body had just spent several hours in.
He has already missed at least one meeting, and if he does not hurry, he will miss the morning debrief in the lab that he is supposed to be in charge of. It’s not a great look if he doesn’t show.
Still, he is only half awake and his notes are sitting on his bunk where he was supposed to return the night before. If he runs, he might be able to make it to his bunk and back to the other side of the ship without being more than 15 minutes late, but running is the last thing he wants to do, and if he doesn’t take care of his aching bladder soon the morning debrief is going to be interrupted once way or another.
In the end, he decides a stop at the bathroom is not optional, and he will go and get his notes, he still has to run, it is the only option he has, but at least he will be awake- if out of breath- by the time he has to talk to the team.
Even without any caffeine in his system, he manages to make it to the head and his bunk without having to stop and rest, and is on his way to the lab when it feels like the floor is blasted out from under him.
He flies backwards, spine slamming into a wall that he should have been much too far away from to reach, but he crumbles to the floor in front of it, head slamming down so hard his vision goes black around the edges and the world spins around him so violently that for several moments he has no idea where he is.
Someone steps over him, running, landing a kick at his ribs that knocks the wind out of him and sends whoever was running tumbling to the ground.
It does not take long for him to black out.
------
When Eva reaches the bridge where she knows she will find the captain, she does not knock, she does not announce her presence, she only scans the card on her hip and is let inside. The ship tilts precariously beneath her, but she adjusted to it on the run over, hip only gently brushing the doorframe as she pushed inside.
She finds the captain staring out of the window, across the ocean. The room is quiet, perhaps the quietest. Nearly from the beginning of the project- from the time that the ship was selected to house the research- it was clear that Eva carried the utmost authority over every happening that took place, but the captain remained the captain, and his ship was sinking.
“Captain,” Eva said, when he did not acknowledge her arrival.
“You need to go with the others Director Stratt, the evacuation has begun and is moving quickly,” he did not turn around to face her, she took a few steps to stand several feet behind him, gazing out at the ocean, the ocean that had been their protection in case of catastrophe. Eva supposed they were in one, though it did not truly feel like it.
“Will there be enough lifeboats to get everyone safely off board?” it had not taken her long to reach the captain, but things were happening fast, she did not know what she might have missed.
“It is not immediately clear. We do not know the- “the captain cleared his throat, “We do not have a count of the casualties from the explosion, only time will tell. There is a long of every single person on this ship, it will be checked against the survivors,”
The survivors.
That’s who remained. In her mind she had the slightest idea of the number of people on the ship at a given time, but their locations were not tracked, their timetables not so specific that they could count each and every person near the blast zone. There were living quarters above the labs for many, there was no doubt in her mind that many- if not all of those housed there- were gone before they knew what was happening.
“The astronauts,”
“All but Dubois and Shapiro accounted for, they were the first onto the boats, they were offloaded mere moments ago,”
Eva felt a wave of dizziness crash over her. Dubois and Shapiro. Somewhere in her mind recognition went off at those names, and a moment later she remembered exactly why. They were running experiments in the lab, one that had required more approval than most.
They were in the lab.
The lab that was gone alongside its entire half of the ship.
Her gut twisted, and bile rose in the back of her throat as she struggled to swallow down, forcing out the few words she could manage. “Dr. Grace?”
For the first time, the captain turned around to look at her, a look of understand, deep, grim, understanding. “He is the third?”
Eva nodded. Ryland was the third.
“No sign of him, we must wait,”
------
Though it did not take time for Ryland to come to once blacked out, it was long enough that the moment his eyes opened there was nothing around him but thick, black smoke, and for a moment it felt like he was drowning, like the water had finally seeped in to fill his lungs.
When the memory of what had taken place returned, the situation was no clearer that it had been, and he pulled himself along with his elbows fueled by nothing but the survival urge to get out of the smoke.
Along the tops of the hallways were flashing red lights, the only things that broke through the smoke so that he could orient himself, eventually feeling around the wall until he reached a doorframe that he could use to pull himself upright.
Lungs burning, he was able to stumble his way over to a stairwell that he pushed violently into, the smoke having only just penetrated through and the air clear enough that he could suck in a breath and reassure himself that he would not faint.
He climbed the stairs with as much vigor as he could muster until he finally emerged two levels above where he had started, and was able to blink the fog from his eyes and make out the chaos around him.
People ran back and forth from all directions, some in lifejackets, some with tears streaming down their face, words bouncing all around him that took several long moments to piece together, “Explosion” “Lifeboats” “Evacuation,”
And finally.
“I need Dr. Grace! I need someone to find Dr. Grace!”
It was not a shout from only one, but from several, all searching desperately for him. He didn’t move from his spot, not when it had just clicked in his mind what was happening.
The soldiers found him whether he moved or not, several of them on him at once.
“Dr Grace, you need to board a lifeboat!”
There was a lifejacket being shoved onto him as he was dragged through groups of people, several exclaiming that he shouldn’t get to skip the line. Every shout was ignored.
“What? No, no, I need- where’s Stratt? I need to see Stratt!” he shouted, trying to wrestle his way out of the soldier’s grip, but failing.
“The director has ordered your priority evacuation, now is not the time for the discussion. The sinking is only getting faster, we need to get you out of here,”
“Where she is? Is she on a boat?”
He did not get an answer, and wouldn’t, all he could do is try not to stumble as he was dragged along, and try to tune out the screams, the terror around him, and focus on what was before him.
The ship was going down.
The project was going down.
The people around him were ensuring that he wouldn’t go down with it.
------
Eva remained in the bridge, watching, waiting. Periodically an update came through one of the radios, informing them about the evacuation efforts and the state that the ship was in.
They didn’t exactly need the updates about the ship, they feel every movement, every tilt, hear every crack as the floor felt like it might snap beneath them.
When the door slams open, breaking through stillness that had settled around them, waiting in their little bubble for what news would come, they both jump. No one is supposed to be able to get through the door without clearance. The lights had flickered off a few minutes before, but the backup powers should have kept the security active.
The captain reached for a door that Eva happened to know contained a pistol, only to be used in the event the ship was compromised and there was a threat that reached the bridge.
But the man in the doorway was not a threat, despite the fact that it was the very last place that he needed to be.
“Dr. Grace! Why are you not being evacuated?” Eva had at some point slid down the wall so that she was sitting on the floor, and started to pull herself upwards when Ryland arrived, trying to get her feet under her without stumbling as the ship rocked beneath them.
“Cut the crap Eva, what’s happening?”
Eva’s chest twisted at the use of her first name- she could not think of Grace as anything but her tertiary scientist, who could not, under any circumstances, go down with the rest of the ship. “You need to be evacuated, please radio for assistance,” once standing she turned to address the captain who reached for a radio on one of the controls to obey.
“No!” Ryland shouted, reaching out a hand like he could stop him, though he had no real authority in the situation. “What’s going on? Why aren’t you evacuating?”
“We are overseeing the evacuation, should the time come where there is still time and space in the boats to leave, that is what will be done. Right now, you need to leave and dead to your evacuation point,”
“My evacuation point is on the side of the ship that isn’t there anymore!” Ryland said, looking rapidly between the people before him, trying to work out why exactly they were so calm while they ship was going down faster than people could get out- at least it seemed that way.
“You were to be located and escorted to the priority evacuation point,”
“Yeah, they tried that, I managed to get away,” Ryland said, “Now why are you two just standing here?”
“I am the captain, this is my ship,” the captain said, running his hands along his coat, a shine behind his eyes as the reality seemed to settle down on him.
“There’s time, you can leave with the others and everyone will be fine, but we have to start moving now!” Ryland wanted to lunge forward and grab Eva’s arm to drag her away with him, and made a valiant attempt that was thwarted by a sudden tilting of the ship that had his back slamming into the wall behind him.
“I can’t Ryland,” Eva said, tone dipping so he understood the situation, this was not something that he could talk her out of.
He took a moment to catch his breath, the realization of what she was saying suddenly dawning on him. “No. No Eva, you can’t. You don’t get to go down with this ship!”
“If the rest are evacuated, I will follow, but there is no guarantee that that will take place,” she crossed her arms over her chest, a new alarm blaring through the speakers above them, an indication of the worsening situation. The water outside the window seemed a hell of a lot closer than it had a few minutes before.
“Yeah, so come now! You’re not the captain of this ship, he is!” Ryland pointed to the man standing in the corner, who nodded solemnly, but did not open his mouth to say what he thought Eva should do.
“It’s been my ship as much as it has been his since the project began. We both understand that,” Eva was beginning to grow anxious, waiting for the team that she knew was coming that would take Ryland away, that would put him on a lifeboat and ensure his safety until the time of the launch.
Ryland let out a sound of frustration, running a hand up through his hair “I don’t want to go. Not without you. This entire project disappears if you’re gone, is that what you want?”
Ryland was wrong.
The project would not disappear without Eva; there were dozens of procedures in place for if that very thing were to happen. But the project would disappear if Ryland did not survive and that was something that she was not going to allow.
“Come on, Eva! We have to go,” Rylands voice had changed, had become panicked, desperate, and when she chanced a true glance at his face all she saw was pleading.
Eva sighed, a voice came through the radio indicating that the team was nearby, but vague enough that Ryland did not guess what it was about- there would have been much protest if he had. She glanced back at the captain, and then back at Ryland, crossing the few steps to stand in front of him.
Ryland half expected her to slap him.
She didn’t.
Instead, she cupped his cheek, feeling her fingertips along his stubble. “You will go without me, but I will follow, I promise,” and she leaned forward just a hair, lips meeting his.
For her, there was nothing, no spark, no connection, no feeling traveling up her spine at the connection. The only thing there was the unfailing determination to use him to save a world that she could no longer save on her own.
To Ryland, it was the greatest thing that had ever happened to him.
It was enough of a distraction that by the time the men’s hands were on him, and the needle was being shoved into his arm, he barely had time to register what was happening, but enough time that the look of euphoria twinged betrayal passed over his face so that it was the last thing Eva Stratt ever saw of him.
------
In the end, only two thirds of the survivors of the explosion made it off the ship, and the remaining thirds bodies were never recovered, surrendered to the ocean in a sacrifice that the world prayed would bring about change, would bring about salvation,
Years later, the Eridians have discovering how to make him water, and the waves splash against his ankles as he sits on the sand.
He wonders if it was painful, if there was a moment before her lungs willed with water that she was scared.
More than that, he wondered if he was what scared her, if in her final moments she wondered if she had made the right decision, if she had put her faith in the right man.
She had made the right decision.
And the universe had saved her from having to look him in the eyes as she sent him to his death.