Chapter Text
Only one thing was harder to define for Grace than his own identity, upon waking up from the longest sleep of his life. When the gentle waves pooled around his ankles, they always took him back to a place he had vaguely considered home. Though, he could barely call it that, even in the past.
The theory of basic human needs echoed around his head. Safety, community? He experienced it here on Erid, for what felt like the first time in his life. Happiness became a welcome companion, just as clingy as Rocky himself. As ocean-like water reached him to remind him of the past, Grace dared to say that he truly grasped this elusive concept of home on a planet light years away from his birthplace.
Nothing could break this idyllic state. It had become a constant, and would remain unchanging till the very end. Or so he had thought, even when Rocky cart-wheeled towards him, with speed that could be powered only by a sudden revelation in his mind.
"There will be an expedition. You, me, like the old times?"
Grace threw his hands up as if that could put a stop to Rocky's train of thought. "Woah there, pal. I think I've had my fair share of space-induced cortisol to last me a lifetime. I don't want a repeat of any of the stunts we pulled out there."
Rocky sat by Grace's side. "I understand you don't want any accidents. We almost died, after all. And you are comfortable living here. But our scientists need your knowledge of cells and our experience."
"Why though? Why are we suddenly so in demand? I've been doing perfectly fine as a teacher. No more field work for me." Grace really was more than content with his current daily routine and he kept imparting his knowledge to the younger generations. No outside force could tear him away from the peace that surrounded him now. To Rocky's advantage, the Eridian occupied a space deep within Grace's heart.
"There was a strange, large moon discovered."
"Discovered? I thought you guys had your galaxies figured out pretty well." Grace felt bad for deflecting. He knew Rocky would not raise the issue if it weren't a matter of grave importance. "Sorry, keep going."
Rocky continued on, not paying attention to Grace's initial dismissal. "It seems like it wasn't there before. And it's covered in something the scientists can't recognize so far."
Grace sighed and lay down, staring at the almost-sky, yet to be adorned by the illusion of stars.
"I know you wouldn't be asking if it wasn’t serious."
"Yes. I don't want to take any unnecessary risks either. We really need to investigate it."
Grace had never wanted to be sent to space. It was science itself that led him through all his life, carving a path for his fate. His own curiosity that had brought his demise and salvation. That desire for discovery would never dissipate, for it was merged with his very soul.
"How long ago has it appeared?"
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"Well, the first indicator that something's off is the fact that the ocean is completely red. You were correct about something not seeming right about the surface. I need you to provide me with some samples to work with to first determine whether it's organic or inorganic." Grace started to spit out rapid-fire every single idea to the group of scientists, with Rocky's supporting translation of any new words following just as quickly.
In the face of a new discovery, Grace felt as if a spark long lost in the vast expanse of cosmos was slowly descending back to him. Despite it all, something inside him compelled to resist, just one more time, before inevitably ending up away from home again. Only this time, it wouldn't be against his will. He turned to Rocky, the light that guided him through darkness, the one that had always made Grace push forward.
"See? There is no need to take that risk. We can do our job here." Grace would be lying if he said he didn't want to see the phenomenon with his own eyes, but hesitation still outweighed that curiosity.
"I'm not convinced it will be enough. But I'm glad we are going to be working on it for now at least."
"Of course. If it poses a threat, there is no time to waste."
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The first expedition didn't come back. Erid had rotated nearly a hundred times before it became known that what was supposed to be a fairly short trip, had gone terribly wrong.
"Grace, you know you are the bravest human, and one of the bravest Eridians in our history. Double brave." He didn't say it as a joke at all. One could appreciate the absolute directness of Eridian culture.
Does he know, though? Is Grace brave? Maybe it's a characteristic that deteriorates with age, along with his cells slowly stopping to regenerate. Then the question would be: Is Grace still brave enough?
No doubt, he would do anything to save Eridians again, so he must cling onto Rocky's sincere words.
"Alright, but I'm getting into my own ship and suit. It's a matter of convenience, don't take it personally." The vision of conducting research and exploration in a heavy, clunky Eridian suit didn't paint a picture of a great return to adventure.
Rocky jumped around, each bounce ending with an excited chipper.
Nevertheless, the faintest, uncomfortable feeling still gnawed at Grace from the inside.
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What Grace expected, but not to this extent, was how many memories were brought back by getting into the ship and the suit. Those things that had been a trap, his own personal space prison, in the end saved both Grace from his own descent, and the planets from the inevitable demise.
Rocky had become well-versed in noticing subtle emotion coursing through the human by his side.
"Don't worry, we are better equipped than on our last journey. We're getting more help, too. You were supposed to test your ship after our fixes anyways."
Grace couldn't argue with that. There was no logical reason to mull it over in his head again and again. Even Armando was, with much effort, hauled back on the ship for additional backup.
"Let's do this baby."
Thumbs down. Rocky barged onto the ship, their own temporary haven once again.
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Stars are guidance. The heart and fate of the universe. There was no space without the presence of stars, no life without the burning surface of many suns. He and Rocky sacrificed everything to solve the greatest mystery of the universe to save them. Astrophage had gone extinct, save for the clusters kept for science and fuel production in Eridian labs.
Then how could Grace explain the pitch-black darkness surrounding the celestial body before him?
"Rocky, I don't think it's a good idea to approach it. What if it's another astrophage situation and we bring it back home on the ship's surface?"
"Sterilization and quarantine exist."
"Wait, is that sarcasm I sense?" Grace raised his brow. "I'm impressed." His attempt at humor hardly hid the concern behind it. The fact that an expedition disappeared without trace added to his wariness.
"We can stay back and follow while the other ship scouts the surface."
"Tell them not to land, I have a bad feeling about this."
The pristine gold of Eridian ships, so bright and enticing among the stars, now looked tarnished when flying from the dark, empty sky towards the infinite red ocean.
Grace frowned at the beeping screens after measuring basic parameters upon the descent. "Why is it so hot out there?"
"It's quite cold."
"Well, of course for you it is with your insane 210 degrees. For our human standards it's boiling hot."
"It would need to be 100 degrees to boil."
Grace waved a hand.
"A hyperbole."
They stayed silent for a moment, but Grace could almost hear Rocky thinking out loud. A sentence would be said in about three seconds. Grace started counting down in his head. Three...
"Maybe we should split up from the crew."
"No!" Grace snapped and immediately regretted it and gentled his voice. "Not a good idea. We don't know why and how the expedition disappeared. We can't risk splitting up."
The ocean truly had no end. They were flying for what felt like hours. Grace had no idea how the flow of time worked here yet. Maybe it was the effect the endless landscape had on his mind.
The Eridian ship came to a sudden stop. Rocky and Grace saw it too - a faint outline of the vessel they were searching for, completely covered in red. It looked like it had perched on something below.
Rocky jumped around, overjoyed with relief. "They must be alive."
Grace let out a breath he had been holding since the set-off. His shoulders sagged in tandem. At last, the crew were found, and hopefully rescued with success. They had the samples. The mission was almost complete.
As he sank down in the chair, his line of vision caught sight of the corner of a screen from a visor. The camera revealed strange ripples forming on the horizon.
"What is that? Rocky, do you see it?" He kept turning to his companion for confirmation that the fickle mind was not playing tricks on him.
"Something may be moving, but I'm not completely sure. We should get closer".
They still had time to investigate before the Eridians aboard were all rescued, so Grace carefully approached the ripples. The closer he got, the more they took on the shape of swirls.
"Grace, do you hear that?"
"Hear what?" Of course, as a mere human he wasn't blessed with superb hearing ability, to his regret in such situations. "And why do I feel like right now we are operating on 90% questions, 10% statements?"
"Wait, is that a ship?"
"Definitely not a statement. Wait, what?"
A vague outline formed on the surface below them, the more he stared at it.
"It... looks like a submarine." Grace quickly added, "A ship for diving under water. Very human-made looking, too. Its rough shape is unmistakable." His mind couldn't even begin to unpack what it meant.
"Grace, I see a thing moving."
"What thing? In the submarine or the ocean?"
"It has your shape... looks so human."
Grace inhaled sharply and gripped the controller tight. "Please tell the others to hurry up. The engineers need to pry it open somehow."
"I'm letting them know. Grace, I think we found another human!"
In just a few minutes, the Eridian crew came to the rescue. They made quick work of the rusty submarine, which put up no resistance. The anticipation was killing Grace, but he didn't want to get his hopes up. Who knows how long it had been floating around here.
The ripples disappeared. Everything stilled, along with Grace's breath. The Eridians kept working the submarine. Only Rocky broke the silence.
"Grace, when you went fishing on Earth, how big were they usually?"
The question seemed a little random to Grace, but he was thankful for the distraction. Even the most banal conversation with his best friend had the power to ease any nerves.
"Great question! Usually people catch pretty small ones, but a seasoned fisherman would aim for-" He showed a line, roughly the length of his arm. "something this big. They are pretty rare, though. The biggest ones can reach the size of my whole body and then some." He giggled when he recalled the stories about the hunts for giant, legendary white sturgeon prowling the waters of the Bay Area.
"Then why is this one bigger than our ship?"
His smile fell in an instant, whole body tensed.
"Grace, are we in danger? It's coming to us!"
"Oh no, no, no." He glanced at the position of the Eridian ship. "Faster! We need them aboard now!" In the camera, the slithering ripples kept drawing closer.
"We have them! Go, go, go!"
As soon as Grace got the signal the body had been pushed into the decompression chamber, he tested the limits of the engines. He didn't dare look at the camera capturing the image behind the ship. The Eridian crew was already far above them.
Grace was still trembling long after they left the orbit. The feeling of being chased beyond the planet was haunting him.
"You have to show me what you saw." Grace had to know what he feared, even if he'd rather forget about its existence.
Rocky tinkered with xenonite for a moment before presenting the result. He carefully handed it over. It looked almost like a snake, maybe an eel? As Grace turned the model around, a mouth riddled with countless, sharp needles stared directly at him, about to devour anything standing in its way.
"Grace."
"Yeah?" he whispered.
"Don't freak out, but it was bigger than our ship."
Clank
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Armando took quick work of the survivor. The declaration that the male specimen was alive did little to either soothe Ryland's body running on adrenaline, or stop his brain from forming a hundred questions per second.
"Grace, don't you want to see your human? I want you to see them first. I'm restraining myself for you."
Grace switched to autopilot with shaky hands, then stood up on no less wobbly legs.
Rocky trailed just behind him.
Tattered, bloody rags were left scattered on the floor. The survivor lay on the table, a tube in his throat. Armando did a good job cleaning up all his wounds.
Grace turned away from his torso, and looked at the face framed by long, black hair.
His eyes stayed closed, not in peaceful slumber, but in a paralysing nightmare that contracted your lungs. Shallow, uneven breaths barely raised his chest. His expression remained pained, even in the comatose state he was in.
Grace wished he could ease his suffering, take a part of that pain and bear it for the person before him.
Let him wake up. He cannot die. Tears threatened to spill at the memory of his late crewmates. He knew nothing about this stranger. How would Grace even honor him if the universe gave him no tomorrow? Who would then answer the questions that now were sure to haunt Grace forever? He wanted to shake him by the arms, scream for the man to wake up.
He backed away slowly. Rocky trailed behind him silently to the pilot cabin.
"I though you'd be happy to see a fellow human."
"I am! Just. Who is he? How did he end up here? What is this moon? If we don't find out I'm gonna explode."
"Don't explode. Armando took care of him. He will explain everything when he wakes up."
"You're right. I guess he isn't going anywhere."
"I can't wait to talk to him. Maybe he will become the second best human I know," Rocky chippered.
Grace tensed. The truth he hoped Rocky would never find out, is the hostility some humans held towards those unknown to them.
Sensing his unease, Rocky decided to do his best to lighten him up. "Come on. Let's start working on those samples."
Grace nodded. Not a bad idea, to concentrate on what he was able to control, at least for now.
They found themselves in the lab. A scientist's soul yearned for a semblance of calmness found in the midst of even the most complex research. Grace streamline focused on the sample under his microscope. Armando had gathered some of the mysterious liquid from cleaning up the newest arrival, but it had long dried up, becoming a crusty piece of solid matter.
"Huh. It looks like blood." Grace muttered to himself. He wondered about the true nature of the substance.
Trying to rehydrate it, he let a few droplets of water into the mix, bringing it back to liquid form. Time to put it under the microscope.
"If not blood, what is it then?" Rocky wondered.
Grace hummed as he looked at the smear.
"Are those..." His frown deepened with each second. "Are those blood platelets?"
"Explain."
"It's something found only in mammals. Humans, and animals like dogs or giraffes I've shown you some time ago."
"How is it possible that there is so much to cover up the whole moon? Maybe the sample got mixed up with the human's blood. Check again."
"It's directly what Armando collected when the guy was covered from head to toe in it. I can compare it with the one from the other crew later, but..." He shook his head in disbelief.
They both fell unusually silent. They struggled to make sense of everything they had discovered so far.
"I hope he wakes up by the time we get home."
"Can we go see him again?"
Grace looked up above his skewed glasses. "Come on, you don't need my permission. I'm not the CEO of humankind."
"I think it's better if he interacts with another human first."
Thinking about it, Grace imagined how shocked the stranger would be upon seeing Rocky, if he had never met an Eridian before.
Grace hummed in agreement. He should have considered it more, given he knew exactly how it had felt to get out of the coma himself.
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The journey back to Erid went on for a week. The comforting presence of the stars enveloped the ship. The survivor remained still, frozen in time on that lightless moon. Only his expression got rid of the pained wince.
"The patient has been given morphine."
"Will he pull through?"
"The patient's condition is stable."
Inspecting the damage by himself was a line Grace didn't dare cross. He trusted that Armando took care of anything hidden beneath the gown.
He took a closer look at the stranger's features. Grace tried to jog his memory to recall whether he had seen the man among the other scientists, or perhaps pilots. Nothing. He huffed in frustration. He was never told about any other expedition being sent out here. Maybe he had been lied to again. At the same time, he doubted that a rusty submarine that looked hastily put together, judging by those welded plates, was Stratt's doing. Where even was his ship?
"Maybe he needs more time to recover like I did," Rocky wondered.
"Right, we should let him rest some more. Come on, Rocky." He motioned for the Eridian to follow him. They were supposed to land in a day.
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Grace dozed off under Rocky's watchful presence. The deeper he slept, the further his brain dove into the realm of dreams. From that crucible, it conjured a beach, seemingly not unlike the one in front of his house. He strolled along the shoreline, while the sound of waves slowly died down. With each passing moment, the fog cleared, uncovering the endless dunes of crimson, fine sand. As he took another step forward, it swallowed his legs. He was flailing his arms to no avail, for his body drowned under the mass, its warmth now burning him. He failed to take a breath. He would die.
"Dr. Grace. The patient has woken up and is in distress."
Mary's loud voice tore him from sleep. Sweat-soaked shirt clung uncomfortably to his body as he looked to his right. Rocky was by his side, softly poking his arm in an attempt to wake him. An undertaking for once too gentle to pull Grace out of the uncharted, nightmarish depths.
Once he steadied himself on Rocky, they ran together. What they saw upon entering the room was terrifying to watch. The man thrashed around wildly. Before their eyes he broke the soft restraints that were supposed to keep him safely put on the bed. With both hands the man reached for the breathing tube to yank it out of his airways.
Armando readied a syringe and aimed it at his own patient.
"No! Don't sedate him! Don't do this to him!" Grace sobbed. Memories brought him back to being forced onto the cold ground. Sharp pain of a needle. His vision blurring slowly as he looked at Carl pleadingly with every ounce of strength left. Such an act of betrayal couldn't be the first thing he did to someone he was supposed to save.
"Grace please, he is hurting himself! Humans are too fragile!" Rocky's pitch heightened in distress. Grace hadn't heard that sound in a long time.
The man's eyes remained closed, whether from still being half-comatose or to shield himself from seeing something, the real reason unknown to Grace.
"Hey! It's okay, you're safe here." Grace tried to calm him down like a feral animal. He gentled his voice as much as he could under pressure. "We have saved you. You will be okay."
The tube was out. The man gasped in desperate need for air. Grace got too close and was almost smacked by a hand. He managed to duck under it fast enough to pull a breathing mask on him.
The survivor freezed and curled in on himself instead of fighting. He was gone somewhere far away again.
Grace slid to the floor. He felt defeated. He wanted to be someone he had wished for himself when he first woke up. Someone who would reach out to another person, guide, and reassure he was not alone. All while here lay the man screaming in agony mere seconds ago, and Grace could do nothing to help him.
Rocky gently tugged onto his shirt. "You handled that well, Grace. He's calmed down, so maybe he will be more lucid when he wakes up next time."
They now both shared the heavy weight of responsibility for his survival. Disappointment and pain born from this situation was theirs to carry alone.
"We are landing soon. We will make him more comfortable on the ground." Rocky urged Grace to leave the room and head to his pilot seat. It would do them good to take a short break in favor of what they knew how to control.
Hours passed quickly. Other Eridians welcomed them after landing as the airlock gave way. A few quickly moved to assist with the newfound human.
"Where should we transport him? Directly to your house?"
"I believe there is no better option. It's a waiting game for now. When he wakes up it's best if he sees something familiar so he doesn't go into shock."
After the commotion dissipated, the two friends were left alone.
"I will go see Adrian, and you should rest. We can start working out this weird moon tomorrow." Rocky gave an encouraging bump to Grace's leg. "When the new human recovers he can help us."
Grace grinned. His best friend was the guiding light that dispelled the shadows looming over him. Rocky's excitement to interact with the man was contagious.
When they parted, Grace headed back to his house. He opened the door silently and almost tiptoed not to disturb a whole new person living here now. It was time to check on him. After looking around, he found that the Eridians laid him on Grace's own bed. A good call. Grace was more than glad to take the couch to let him rest properly.
He lingered for a moment before deciding that staring at him might be too invasive and readied himself for sleep. He was exhausted to the core, but the whole expedition still weighed on his mind, even when hiding himself under a pillow. He turned to lie on his side when he felt something pinch his stomach. A squeak barely escaped him. Better avoid disturbing a new roommate on your first night together. Grace reached into a pocket to fish out the culprit and put on his glasses to take a better look at it. The miniature model made by Rocky stared at him in kind, just as terrifying as before.
He debated putting it on the table, but decided against it in case his guest stumbled upon it.
Grace hid it back in his pocket and tried his best to let sleep take him.