Chapter Text
Chapter two:
Forty-eight hours
It's been months.. Almost a year without the Ryland Grace. I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss him. I missed everything about him. Most days, I still couldn't understand how I let it all fall apart.
The first few months after the divorce were the worst. I couldn't eat properly. I couldn't sleep.. And when I did sleep, I would wake up in the middle of the night, sweating and breathless trapped in the same recurring nightmare.. It was hell.
Eventually I had to start taking sleeping medication. It worked better than I expected. I could finally get a good, full night's rest, only waking up once a while when the memories got too loud. But sleep didn't mean peace. Ryland was still everywhere.. In the silence of my new apartment, In the spaces between my thoughts, I still caught myself turning slightly in bed, expecting a warmth that wasn't there.. I let him keep our old shared apartment. I couldn't stay there. Not with all the memories of us engraved into the walls.
Some days, I would sit on my sofa for hours, staring out of the window, replaying conversations that no longer existed. Trying to rewrite things that I could never undo.
Because what's done is done. No amount of regret will change that.
My phone rang just as the sky outside started to dim. I glanced down, finally breaking my gaze with the setting sun.
Eva Stratt, my mother. I wasn't answering it, not after the time she called. I reached down and switched off my phone. For once there was only silence again, the kind I preferred. I turned back to the window. A second later, it rang again, Eva Stratt. I frowned, I almost ignored it. Almost let it ring out.. Almost.
My thumb hovered over the reject button. But something in me shifted, no matter how much I disliked her, she was still my mother.. And I was tired, unable and unwilling to keep running from her. Without thinking through it any further, I sighed and answered, bringing the phone to my ear. There was a pause before I heard her unmistakably blunt voice. It was deprived of any emotion like always, ever since my father passed away that is.
“Are you finally going to stop avoiding me, or do I need to keep calling until you listen?”
It didn't sound like she was speaking to her own flesh and blood. Her own daughter. It was like she was a boss addressing a subordinate. Demanding, direct, impatient. No loving mother would speak to her daughter like that. But then again, Eva had never been the loving type, not since dad died and I cut her off.
“Im avoiding you for a reason, Eva."
I couldn't.. No, I wouldn't call her mother. It didn't feel right anymore.
“We could have this argument all day,” she said, cutting straight through me, “But I would rather not. This is urgent.”
A pause.
“Something is happening that cannot be discussed over a phone call. I need you at Johnson Space Centre, Texas, within fourty-eight hours.”
I grip into the phone tighter, my knuckles turning white.
“I'm not doing this,” I said, my voice sharper than I intended
There was silence on the other end. I'd like to think she was listening but it would probably just wash over her head.
“I don't know what you think this is, Eva. You don't get to show up and start throwing orders at me expecting to be an obedient mutt. I'm not one of your employees, I never will be.”
I take a slow, steady breath.
“I cut you off for a reason. You don't get to walk back into my life like you still have a place in it just because something ‘urgent’ came up.”
I swallowed
“Find somebody else.”
There was a long dragging silence on the other line, the type of silence that spoke louder than words. The type of silence that you'd get after you said something hurtful.. The silence she got from me after she exclaimed she never wanted to see my face again years ago.
“I expected that answer.” she finally says almost like she was predicting it like a sick little game.
Something in my chest tightened
“Then why would you call me?”
“Because you're one of the few people who will understand what I'm about to tell you, and after you hear what I'm about to tell you, you will change your mind.”
I open my mouth to protest before she cut me off and began talking again
“Stars are dying.”
Her voice had changed, still controlled, still Eva, but stripped of all argument. What was left sounded like a fact.
For a moment I thought I hadn't heard properly until she continued on.
“Not one. Not two. We've confirmed it across multiple systems. Stars that should have billions of years left on them are collapsing on timescales that don't make physical sense.”
I really didn't want to prove her statement right. I didn't want to become whatever she was trying to pull me back into. I didn't want to fall into her world again like some obedient mistake she could summon when it suited her.. But underneath all that. I needed to know. I needed to be sure that all she was saying was true.
“I'll be there.”
I mutter, I hated saying it, I should have just hung up instead of admitting to her that she was right.
After that the line went dead, no goodbye, no reassurance, no time to change my mind. Just silence again. I slowly lowered my hand and placed my phone back on the sofa beside me..
If she was right, and the stars really were dying at a rapid pace.. We were in great danger.
I slowly rose up from the sofa and walked over to my balcony window staring up at the now, night sky.. All those stars. What on earth could be killing them? Whatever I just agreed to, it wasn't small. It wasn't optional.. And it definitely wasn't something you walked away from once you'd stepped into it.
I felt sick. Not sick from nausea.. From the weight of what I had just agreed to. It sat under my ribs like something solid, something that had already started rearranging my life without asking for permission. My thoughts wouldn't stay still. They kept breaking and falling apart and reforming into something worse.
Forty-eight hours.
Johnson Space Centre.
Eva.
After that everything blurred.. Pacing happened without feeling like a decision. clothes ended up in a suitcase I didn't remember opening. Personal things were picked up, put down, and picked up again like I couldn't decide which version of myself I wanted to bring. In the end, I left most of it.. There didn't feel like a point.
The ride to the airport was too quiet. The city passed in streaks outside the window, familiar in a way that suddenly felt temporary. Like I was watching someone else's life through the wrong side of the glass.
At security, my ID was scanned more than once. Not because there was a problem but because someone had already flagged my name. A man in a plain suit met me after the check-in desk. He didn't introduce himself properly.
“You're expected,” he said simply.
I gave him a slight frown
My flight wasn't listed like a normal passenger route. I wasn't seated with tourists or business travellers; it was dead, quiet, barely anyone onboard. Everything was arranged too quickly.
When the plane finally took off I lent my head against the window and watched the ground fall away. The clouds swallowed everything I knew. For a few hours there was nothing but engine noise, maybe an exchange of words from one person to another every so often. But pretty much just silence, the type that makes you think too much. I didn't sleep, partially because I couldn't. My brain was too awake and stirring with thoughts about this whole thing.
Eva's voice saying stars are dying like it was the most simplest sentence in the world.
A black car was waiting on the tarmac. Not in the normal pickup area. On the edge of the bloody runway, where normal passengers weren't supposed to go.. Two military personnel stood behind it, waiting like stone statues. One of them stepped forward.
“Dr. Andreeva.” he said checking a tablet
What the fuck.. I just gave a slight nod.
“Follow us.” he was so blunt with it.
I had no choice, it's not as if I could just turn around and run off now could I?
The airport disappeared behind tinted glass as they drove me, not saying a single word, not playing anything on the radio, just silence.
When the car finally stopped, I looked up.. It was huge.. To say the least. The car door opened as I stepped out and the cold air hit my face.
No turning back now. And for the first time since Eva's call, I understood something I hadn't wanted to admit. I hadn't chosen to come here. I had already been accounted for.