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Colt was hanging around set, loitering in the shadow of its outbuilding, which served primarily as the shoot’s storage spot for camera equipment and props but also occasionally as a place to escape the heat. He was nursing a mostly-empty cup of coffee and sweating out the dry heat of the day when he got a phone call.
He’d been waiting for that phone call. Had stuck around even after the last car had peeled out of the place and his was all that was left, baking under the harsh blare of the afternoon sun. He baked too, his skin stinging with sunburn and his blond hair grimy, the last dregs of his disgusting instant coffee bitter and cooling.
But still, he waited. Because the shooting location was far out in the Californian desert and was, as far as he could tell, the only place in fifty miles that got any cell service at all.
He answered immediately, without checking caller ID, which always came from an unknown caller when Ryland called anyway. He didn’t bother to pretend that he hadn’t been checking his phone every few minutes. Hadn’t been holding the device in his hand staring at it, even. But he did attempt, at least, to sound cool. “Yo, Rye. How’d the launch go?”
A very un-Ryland-like pause followed. Then, a voice.
Not Ryland’s voice. Accented, female, clipped and curt. Colt recognized it at once. How could he not? He’d watched every interview, every press release. Read every blog post and article and thinkpiece. Mostly to catch a glimpse or mention of his brother, red-faced and shy, avoiding the attention as he had his entire life.
(Colt loved the attention. He’d often joked that he took all the attention-genes in the womb. Ryland would punch him, playfully, and reply with something like how there were no such thing as “attention-genes”)
The shadow cast by the enormous outbuilding seemed to grow ten feet longer and ten degrees colder as he listened to that voice.
“Hello. Mr. Seavers, is it? I am calling regarding your brother, Dr. Ryland Grace.”
The way Eva Stratt pronounced “Ryland” was… off. Awkward, almost, if that word could ever be applied to a woman like her. Whereas “Grace” was said with unhurried ease, like she’d been saying it her whole life. Like she and his brother were fucking besties or something.
Colt grit his teeth, feeling anger— no, not anger. And not fear. Dread. It climbed the back of his throat, threatening to choke him. It piled, ugly-tasting, into his mouth. Pushed against the inside of his teeth. He felt like he was going to throw up. Maintaining a facade of calm was all he could do, suddenly. “What about him?”
Silence on the other end. “Dr. Grace,” she said at length, tinny and crackling like she was speaking through a shitty landline, and it occurred to Colt right then that she must not be at Baikonur, because Ryland never sounded like that, “after the unexpected deaths of our science team, has chosen to board the Hail Mary as replacement science officer. I was not made aware of any familial relations he had until just recently, otherwise I would have called to offer my condolences sooner.”
A jabbing pain in his knuckles and thumb. Colt realized he was gripping his phone too tightly. He was breathing hard. His eyes were burning and it had nothing to do with the angry eye of the sun. “You’re lying.” His voice cracked. “Ryland would’ve told me if he were going on that mission.”
Eva’s voice turned sharp. “Do not dishonor your brother’s memory by accusing me of such things. He is a hero. And you are lucky he is not here to be persecuted for disseminating highly classified information. And,” she continued, before Colt could protest, “you are lucky that I am no longer in a position to persecute you for possession of that information. Goodbye.”
Just like that, she hung up. Leaving Colt defenseless in the face of the abject hopelessness crashing down upon him now.
“God, fuck! God-fucking-dammit!” He unleashed his rage on the indifferent desert, tearing his voice raw, shouting, crying, screaming. The sun continued to beat down, though maybe now it was just a little bit dimmer, astrophage— Ryland’s name for it, the world’s name for it, because you couldn’t avoid the spotlight after all could you little brother, little brother by three and a half minutes— chewing, chewing, chewing away at the distant fringes of its rays.
The cup of coffee was chucked into the dirt, its meager contents splattering, its white styrofoam body lolling like an unconscious head. And when he realized he was still gripping his phone he reared his arm back to throw that, too. But something gave him pause. He lowered his arm, struggling to unlock it for a few moments, swiping his thumb over its tear-dotted touchscreen, then going through his contacts until he found Jody.
He only hovered there for a second before scrolling to find Court.
The phone rang too many times before his older brother answered.
“Six here.” Nearly muffled by background noise, slurred, thick and nasal. Courtland sounded very much like he was drunk.
And like he’d had his nose broken.
“Did you know?” Colt demanded, his voice shaking, his hands shaking, his world shaking. “Did you know Ryland was going to go?”
A short hitch of breath. A soft choking noise. “Of course I did,” Court said finally. “Because I tried to stop them.”
“What do you mean?” The pieces of his heart sank in his chest. A new knot of dread formed in his parched, rasping throat. When Courtland didn’t answer right away, he said it again, this time a shout. “What do you mean?”
“They drugged him.” Courtland breathed. “They forced him on that ship, Colt. They drugged him and dragged him. He didn’t want to go. I- fuck. He didn’t want to go. He was crying for me. For us.
“And I couldn’t save him. I tried. I was at the site three days ago, before the launch. I was going to get him and bring him home. But there were too many of them to fight, and they were well armed. Stratt made sure I never stood a chance. I don’t think— I don’t think he ever even knew I was there.”
They lapsed into silence, punctuated only by Colt’s heaving breaths and hitch-whistle of air through Courtland’s broken nose.
Courtland sounded like he’d been crying, was maybe crying now. But Colt would never know.
Colt was definitely crying. Tears ran paths through the grime on his cheeks. He wiped at his face with his sleeve, but it was no use. No amount of scrubbing would undo this. This tidal wave of grief.
“Then what good are you, then?” Now he did throw his phone, hurling it as far and as fast as he could without even checking to see if he’d hung up first. It clattered to the ground some distance away with a puff of dust.
That dust dissipated into bright blue sky. Colt watched it and felt something inside of himself splinter.
He sank slowly to the ground, his hands coming up to grip handfuls of his hair, like the pain of it would save him. It wouldn’t. He was too numb.
Even in the shadows the heat was unrelenting, but all of Colt was cold. He tried not to think of how cold it was in the vastness of space. Tried not to think how lonely it must be out there. Tried not to let the realization sink in that he would never see his brother again.
He failed. He failed. He failed.