Chapter Text
The grass wasn’t as soft as Grace had hoped.
He had anticipated falling to the ground. Obviously, even if he didn’t want to admit it, somewhere in his brain he knew that the fast heavy footsteps that chased after him were much faster than he was. He could only go so far before Stratt’s men inevitably caught up to him.
He had just hoped that maybe they weren’t total dinkwads, and would consider being a little gentle on him when they football tackled him to the ground. They weren’t. And also he had hoped that the grass wasn’t the dead itchy kind that felt like it was poking tiny holes in his skin.
But of course it was. It was one of the few things he could focus on as the men pinned his writhing body to the ground, grabbing his hair and shoving his face into this stupid, dead, itchy grass. Grace blindly extended his hand out and pulled at the blades of grass he could reach, trying to pull himself free of the men. It did nothing. All he could manage was pulling up a couple of measly weeds.
He was crying. He hadn’t realized it, but he was. He didn’t want to die yet. He didn’t even really want to go to space. There was so much to do, and even more to teach. He let out a broken sound as he felt a sharp pang in his heart at that thought. His kids. His dozens of kids that he loved more than he loved himself. Who would teach them? Would he get to say goodbye? Would Stratt bother telling them where he was going?
Grace could hear himself shouting and pleading, but even he didn’t know what ramblings he was wailing. It was all just sounds, the same words any desperate man would cry out when faced something like this.
Grace squinted his eyes shut and opened them quickly, suddenly aware his glasses were broken, more than certainly from the impact of his fall. He could hardly focus his gaze on the figure that stood just out of reach, looking down at him. Grace narrowed his eyes as Carl opened his mouth to speak.
“Why is Grace sleeping, question?”
Grace blinked.
What? That wasn’t what he said..
Grace cried out and then winced as the man straddling him brought the needle he held down onto Grace’s back, his eyes squeezing shut. He felt himself grow dizzy, but managed to blink his eyes open once again.
Of course. He wasn’t in the field. He was at his desk, slumped over it and shaking slightly. Rocky was perched on the desk, right in front of Grace’s face. Rocky was wearing his xenonite suit, with his carapace curiously tilted towards Grace as he poked and prodded at him with one appendage.
Grace shot up quickly, almost tipping his chair over backwards. He yelped and flailed for a second before the chair fell back on all four legs.
“Rocky! Y-“
“Why was Grace sleeping, Question? And leaking. Disgust, disgust, disgust.” Rocky repeated, whistling and trilling as he scrambled across Grace’s desk, tilting his carapace upwards to face him again.
Grace groaned and ran a hand through his hair, looking out the nearest window. It was dark in the biodome, parroting a late night back on Earth.
Oh, fudge.
“Sorry, bud. I must’ve dozed off while I was…” Grace looked down at the papers scattered underneath Rocky, checking to see what it was he had previously been working on, “…uh, fleshing out some more clarifications about, uh, Earth. For the science team.”
Rocky made a sound close to a hum, mulling over the response in his mind.
“Bad dream, Question? The reason why Grace was leaking?”
“Yeah, but it’s the same one it usually is. It’s no big deal, Rock,” Grace nodded, sighing. He reached around Rocky to grab his glasses, situating them on his face and wiping his cheeks off at the same time.
Usually nobody was here when he had that nightmare. Sometimes Rocky, but even then it was rare. He seldom had the nightmare anymore, and Rocky hardly ever showed up while Grace was sleeping, so the chances of it being observed were slim. The first time Rocky had witnessed a bad dream, it was on the Hail Mary. Grace had screamed in his sleep that time, and Rocky was convinced he was dying or deathly sick. He had woken Grace up by ramming his xenonite ball against Grace’s body until he was shaken awake. He demanded Grace tell him he was okay, thus learning about human nightmares and dreams. It was a concept completely foreign to eridians, which Grace honestly should’ve expected.
Grace sighed again, leaning back in his chair. He was fine. The nightmare only bothered him while it was happening. After he woke up, it was always just annoying. He was grown! He shouldn’t be tormented by childish night terrors anymore. It was stupid, stupid, stupid. He looked up, narrowing his eyes at Rocky.
“It’s fine, really.. but why are you here, Rock? You don’t usually check in this late at night.”
“Oh, yes! Yes, yes, yes! Very exciting! Eridian astronauts discovered something in Erid’s orbit!” Rocky whistled excitedly, spinning around in a circle, his appendages scrambling about in a way that was hard for Grace’s eyes to follow.
Grace cocked an eyebrow at that, smiling at Rocky’s excitement.
“What, like an asteroid? Big enough to resemble a new moon, maybe? Or old ship parts…? A stray part of Mary?” he rambled, adjusting his glasses as he verbalized his frantic trail of guesses.
“More exciting!” Rocky trilled, reaching his carapace up to tilt towards Grace. “It is a human! We have brought them to the lab.”
What?
Grace startled, standing up quickly. This time, the chair really did fall over, landing on the floor with a thud.
A human? Orbiting Erid? Grace couldn’t fathom it. Were they in a ship? Were they from Earth? Were they even alive?
Had Stratt sent someone else to finish the job? Had Grace somehow failed?
He froze, feeling his stomach drop to his feet. This was not exciting. This was potentially extremely horrifying and traumatic.
On the other hand, it was something new. Not only something new, but something familiar. Someone like him. Someone he could talk to, and really touch.
Okay, maybe it was a little exciting.
“Grace heart rate increase,” Rocky observed, crouching slightly. “Excite or fear, question?”
Grace blinked, trying to gather himself. What was he supposed to do? What did the Eridians want him to do? What did he want to do?
“Grace.”
He shook his head quickly, nodding, “Yes, right, right..” he paused, picking at the skin on his thumbs. “A little bit of both. I’m just… nervous, I guess.”
Grace huffed, reaching up to fix his hair. Right, composure.
“What condition are they in?” he asked.
“It is difficult to tell. They are covered in human blood that does not belong to their body. They have one less appendage than you, and their face is hard for eridians to understand. They make little noise, we cannot see them as well as we would like.”
Grace considered this for a moment.
“But they’re, like, alive?”
“They are breathing, yes.”
“Are they stable?”
“We are not sure.”
“Where’s their ship?”
“They did not arrive in a ship.”
“What?”
Grace blinked, his lips parted slightly in shock. That couldn’t be right. Humans couldn’t breathe in space. There are microscopic organisms — tardigrades, for example — that could survive in the vacuum of space, but even then, they certainly don’t thrive there. The only thing keeping them alive is staying in a state of cryptobiosis, which is hardly living. It just shuts all their stuff down until they’re back where they need to be to feed and grow.
But humans aren’t capable of cryptobiosis. Humans aren’t even capable of hibernation! Grace thinks that as a species, humans really aren’t much more than their crazy advanced brains. Even in that field, eridians have them beat.
“They were floating through space until they found their way to our orbit,” Rocky interrupted Grace’s train of thought, tapping his appendages on the desk.
“Did they have an oxygen tank? Was it their suit then, that was covered in blood, or—“
“No. No, they were not wearing any sort of shell or suit.”
Grace couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t make sense of any of this. How were they alive? How did they get all the way out here? Who sent them? And again, how the fudge were they alive???
“Are they awake?” he asked finally, tilting his head ever so slightly, his eyes narrowed curiously.
“No. They were not awake when they were found, and have not woken up yet.”
“Okay.. okay. Are you getting me so we can visit them?”
“Yes.”
“And here I thought you just missed me,” Grace huffed out a small laugh, rubbing his palm against the top of Rocky’s carapace, relaxing at the warmth that radiated off of the eridian.
“Yes, this too,” Rocky chirped, pressing the top of his carapace up against Grace’s hand before bounding off of the desk and scrambling towards the door, expecting Grace to follow him.
Here goes nothing.
—
The eridians had put the new human in their shared lab. They had their own lab-like establishment somewhere in their own civilization, but had built one as an extension of the biodome for Grace to use as he pleased. They seemed to not mind wearing their xenonite suits in the lab in exchange for a shared space, which Grace was eternally grateful for.
The human was placed in a room Grace hadn’t ever seen before. It was big, but not huge, with ceilings that Grace felt were kind of too low. He wasn’t one to complain though. There was a bed against the middle of the farthest wall, and a few light sources that emitted a warm light to the whole room. Three eridians were situated near the bed, where they observed the human carefully. They quietly trilled at each other, shifting about.
The human.
Grace gasped quietly, rushing forward to stand at the opposite side of the bed.
“What do we know so far?” Grace questioned. He was met with silence, which told him more than enough.
It was a man. He had been washed clean of whatever blood Rocky mentioned, but he still looked pretty rough. It was nothing like Grace had ever seen before.
The whole left side of his face and neck was deeply scarred, as if it had healed over some sort of infection. Whatever was there before the scar, Grace was sure it was something right out of a cheesy body horror movie. In addition to the scarring, Grace took notice of sharp teeth that protruded out of the man’s cheek, starting at the left corner of his lips, almost like a second mouth.
The guy looked freaky. He looked crazy insane, all fully donked up like this. Grace’s brain scrambled as it ran in circles, trying to explain the anomaly in front of him.
“You are allowed to touch him,” one of the eridian scientists across from him chirped, watching Grace carefully.
Grace simply exhaled and nodded, observing the man for a moment more. He noticed something poking out from the man’s hair on the same side of his head as the scar. Grace reached forward, brushing the man’s hair aside to take a closer look.
Holy fudge.
It was a fin. The man had black fins like a fish, and they stuck out from the side of his head where his left ear should have been.
How was that possible? What was this guy?
Grace kneaded his bottom lip between his teeth as he thought. What could’ve caused this? A genetic deformity, possibly? That just felt impossible. He hadn’t ever seen anything like this anywhere, and combined with everything else he knew about this guy, it seemed like such a tame explanation.
Could this be the result of the sun dying? Had people mutated somehow? Radiation can break DNA strands or cause bases to bond improperly, so perhaps his body had just reacted negatively to the shift in cosmic radiation. But again, that would mean Grace had failed. Eridian astrophysicists had already confirmed that Earth’s sun was stable, so while it was possible he had failed, it was unlikely. But that didn’t exclude the possibility of Earth’s conditions being irrevocably damaged.
Did Stratt send him up here to show what happened to Earth? To show Grace the consequences of his inability to fix things?
He shuddered. That would be cruel. Stratt was infuriatingly right, but she was not a cruel woman. Grace knew this.
And gosh, that didn’t even begin to explain the blood, or the ability to survive in space without any gear or oxygen.
“What does the rest of his body look like? Under the gown you gave him,” Grace looked up, questioning the scientists and doctors across from him. He recognized them as Stu, Cobble, and Calcite (he had been tasked with naming every eridian he met with English words, and usually settled with types of rocks or movie characters).
“The scars on the left side of his chest match the scars on his face and neck,” Stu whistled. “He is missing his left appendage…arm. He has more fins on his back. They are bigger than his head fin. Curious, curious, curious.”
Grace hummed, placing his hands on his own hips. Fins, weird face teeth, half blind, deep scarring… what the donk was this guy?
Fins. Fins….
Gills! Does he have gills?
Some animals — like lungfish or coconut crabs — have gills and lungs, which would explain why if he did have gills, he could breathe oxygen. Maybe gills would explain more about his space breathing, too. Perhaps he was some weird humanoid space fish. Semi-cosmic instead of semi-aquatic.
Grace moved the man’s hair again to look at his neck, leaning over him slightly to get a closer look.
Yes! The man had curved flaps of skin on his neck that somewhat resembled gills. They were pressed against the regular skin on his neck, closed as he was breathing oxygen rather than… space? Water? Grace still wasn’t sure.
“Gosh, what is this gu….ohhh..heyy..” Grace blinked as he realized the man’s eyes had opened. Even while taken aback, Grace noticed the man’s slitted pupils and the blueish gray color of his left eye. It reminded him of the fog he loved so much.
Grace watched the eridians shuffle backwards in his peripheral vision. He faintly heard Rocky’s slightly panicked chirps, but the other eridians must have held him back. In some weird way, they must trust that he won’t hurt Grace. That’s comforting, at least
The man’s chest rose and fell dramatically as he took panicked breaths, his eyes darting around wildly before landing on Grace. His pupils went from shaky slits to round, cat-like circles.
“An angel..” the man muttered hoarsely, eyes moving back and forth as he looked between Grace’s eyes.
Oh. What?
“Ah! Ahah! Uh, well, not—“
“Do you—“ the man cleared his throat, trying to find his voice. “—serve The Light?” suddenly, his eyes lit up, and he sat up quickly, forcing Grace to stumble backwards a little bit.
“If you serve The Light, are you the one that’s supposed to take me to the people? For their judgement?”
Holy cow this guy is messed up.
“I’m not an angel! I’m a scientist. A biologist, really, if we’re getting technical.” Grace waved his hands around as he explained quickly, furrowing his eyebrows at the man.
The guy just stared at Grace with narrowed eyes, almost like he didn’t believe him. He stayed quiet. It looked like he was having a whole other conversation within his head.
Grace inhaled sharply through his teeth, taking a small step back and holding his hands up defensively.
“Okay, okay. Let’s start over. My name is Grace,” he offered a nervous smile. “You speak English. But you…don’t look like me. What are you? Who are you?”
“Hasn’t The Light told you I’m coming? If you work for it, surely you know what I am… and what my duty is,” he said to Grace, speaking slowly as if he was talking to someone who spoke a different language.
“I don’t-! I don’t know what you’re talking about! I don’t know any ‘Light,’ and I might be the farthest thing from an angel here, actually. I’m just a teacher. I teach.”
The man stared, his pupils slowly thinning again. He kept silent for a moment more, watching Grace carefully. He seems to be deliberately ignoring the eridians. He also seems to just now be realizing how tired his body is.
“Your name is Grace.”
Grace nodded.
“But..you’re not an angel.”
“Yes. My name isn’t even really Grace. That’s just my last name. My full name is Ryland Grace. Dr. Ryland Grace,” he paused. “Well, Dr. Captain Ryland Grace.”
“Your name is captain?”
“Ryland.”
“Your title is captain?”
“And doctor, yes.”
The man huffed, leaning back against the head of the hospital bed. He shut his eyes.
“Do you have a name?” Grace tried, slowly lowering his hands.
“What are these things?” The man gestured towards the eridians, his eyes still closed.
“Do you have a name?” Grace tried again, ignoring the question.
The man paused for a long time. Grace could feel his anxiety rising the longer he was quiet. The more they talked, the more he realized that this was another person. He was talking to another real person.
“Simon. My name is Simon.