Chapter Text
Ryland Grace had never been one for silence.
A classroom naturally was never silent, there was always a scribbling pen and a wobbly chair and a little chatter in the hallway.
But this place, whatever it was, was the opposite of a naturally bustling classroom. Sterile, cold – and so very clinically silent.
Until a mechanical arm came down from the ceiling and freed him of the mask on his face and the tube in his lung, making him involuntarily splutter as he couldn't resist.
"What is two plus two?" A matching mechanical voice echoed through the chamber.
He coughed once more as his brain tried not only understanding the question but forming an answer.
"Incorrect." No shit.
Eventually, once the echoing voice had informed him of the fact that he had been in an induced coma – not why, not where, just that – Ryland managed to free himself from the probing robotic arm and roll off the bunk he had woken up on.
"Hello?" He called out, slowly turning to try and find his bearings. He couldn't be alone in ... whatever this place was.
Sure enough, once his eyes had adjusted to the dim lighting, his gaze travelled over to and up the ladder by the nearest wall, where three more bunks just like his were lined up above one another, their inhabitants motionless.
Still wobbly on his legs, which had to have been at least a little more muscular before, although it wasn't as though he remembered much about who he was, let alone his muscle density, he began climbing upwards.
The first bunk held the lifeless body of a young woman, her dark hair braided neatly and her expression serene. But her skin was cold to the touch and so pale, she might have been a ghost.
Ryland shivered.
The next bunk held another corpse. A man, likely older than both the woman and himself, looking just as serene and feeling just as cold.
When Ryland reached the third bunk and lifted the protective fabric that had covered them all in their sleep away from the body it held, he yelped. He had expected another corpse at this point. Instead, he found his gaze locked with another woman's. The unexpectedness of the sudden human interaction surprised him so much, he almost lost his grip on the ladder.
The woman's eyes widened slightly when she saw his hand slip – but he caught himself just in time.
She looked to be about the same age as the man in the bunk below. Her eyes, the only thing Ryland could see over the mask planted over her mouth and nose, looked like they had seen too many stressful things and her red hair was all over the place – not braided like the younger woman's was.
"Mr. Robot down there hasn't reached you yet, huh?" Ryland whispered. She was still intubated and the machinery that had woken him didn't seem to be very interested in helping her the same way. "Looks like those guys," he made a little gesture towards the lower bunks, "Had faulty life-support and you ... have a faulty bunk that's saying you're dead. That's why it's not reacting to you, I guess. But you're not. You're very much alive." He was rambling, he knew. But he was nervous as hell.
How come there were only two out of four people left? Were they the only ones there? How come he didn't know who he was? And where in the world were they?
"Listen, I'm not exactly qualified to do this," he apologised as he began fidgeting with the tubes, earning himself a sceptical glance from the poor woman he was about to operate on, "Yeah, I know, not really promising – but you don't really have a choice, do you?"
He did his best to be careful, but she still winced in pain and coughed and spluttered like he had a few minutes ago.
She laid there for a few moments, then, staring at the dull sterile ceiling as her body adjusted to breathing on its own again.
"You don't happen to know who you are?" Ryland, now perched on the edge of her bunk instead of dangling from the ladder, asked carefully, "Or who I am?"
To his renewed surprise – and slight terror – she looked at him as though he had just asked her to solve string theory with a ruler. She didn't say a word.
"You can hear me," Ryland noted, "Or you wouldn't be reacting like that—"
"Was? Wer sind Sie?" The woman interrupted him, her voice hoarse from no use for god knew how long ... and her words not English. Ryland swallowed.
"Oh my god, you don't understand me," he realised. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Spanish he might have managed, but that sounded a hell of a lot like German and he didn't know a word of German.
"Fantastic. Really, just— great," he sighed, "Okay. You," he pointed at her, "Me," at himself, "Go downstairs," down the ladder, "To figure out," to his head, "Who the hell we are and what the hell this is," a wild flinging gesture all around them.
She seemed to understand. At least she followed him down the ladder and through the body of this structure they had woken up in. Narrow corridors, more ladders, Ryland would have joked that this looked like some kind of wacky spaceship, but it wouldn't have been appreciated.
While he was busy inspecting the instruments in the laboratory they had come across after about ten minutes of scurrying around the place, all of which looked eerily familiar, Ryland heard his companion gasp from a few feet away.
"What?" He turned to find her crouching at a window he had missed on his first sweep of the area.
He expected them to be under water, perhaps, or looking out at some concrete jungle in some part of the world where no one would ever find them by the looks of their strange situation. He hadn't expected to look out at an endless void of black, spotted with stars. His heart dropped to his stomach. So much for the wacky spaceship.
"Shit."
His companion turned her face towards him, her already pale complexion having gone a shade lighter with shock. She nodded, "Shit."
After climbing an endless number of more ladders and finding an infinite amount of scientific instruments of all sorts, the pair reached what seemed like a command centre.
"Know how to fly a spaceship?" Ryland asked, making his companion frown in confusion. He gestured to the jumpseat in the middle of the massive array of consoles he assumed were controlling the ship. She shook her head.
Ryland shrugged and promptly dropped into the seat, just to scramble right back out when the ship's computer announced, "Pilot detected."
The German snickered.
"Very funny," Ryland grimaced. He glanced up to where the electronic voice had come from. "I'm not the pilot!" He called out, "Is she? Is one of the dead people? Who's on this thing? Where's the rest of the crew?" It couldn't only be the two of them and the dead people.
The voice piped up again, "Hail Mary crew manifest."
Ryland raised his brow, "Hail Mary—"
The ship's name seemed to ring more of a bell with his companion, but before either of them could say anything else, the computer continued, "Mission chief, Director Eva Stratt. Mission specialist, Doctor Ryland Grace."
"That's all?" Ryland frowned, "What about the rest?"
"Crew manifest complete."
"Well ..." He sighed, turning back to ... his boss, it seemed, "Looks like it's just us, Eva."
Somewhere in the back of his mind, her name seemed to dig at a memory. But it was too far buried beneath years of being comatose for him to access it just yet.
They went on exploring the ship – the Hail Mary – in silence after that, each keeping to themselves while never really allowing the other to leave their sight. Just in case.
They had come across a storage room of sorts and begun going through boxes upon boxes of equipment, rations, medicine, when he heard the director call out for him.
"Ryland!"
For some reason, her using his first name made him shiver – but he had no time to wonder why before she handed him a box with his name on it.
"Yours," she told him simply.
"Hey, your English is coming back," he noted with a little smile. She barely acknowledged it.
The box was mostly filled with clothing. Lots of geeky t-shirts, each making him chuckle a little more the more ridiculous the prints got. Underneath were a couple of personal items. A cap, a book, a lanyard, ... and a stack of photographs.
Him in a lab.
Him at a party with what looked like the dead woman in the bunk above his pulling a face in the background.
Him in a lab again.
Him and a black guy in a suit posing in a lab.
Him and suit guy at a hardware store.
Him and Eva in a yellow coat that was far too big on her.
"Look." He held up the last picture for her to see, "It's us."
She wordlessly held one of hers out to him in response.
Him and Eva on the deck of a ship, legs dangling over the edge. Him grinning like an idiot, her laughing.
She didn't give him much time to think about that before she pointed out the other two personally labelled boxes. "Ilyukhina," the woman, "Yáo," the man.
Ryland heard himself gulp. Those two would never open their boxes and wonder who they were. He just hoped they had known before they went to sleep.