Chapter Text
If Grace had learned one thing recently, just one thing, it was that the government didn’t have to take no for an answer.
So, when they approached him for another top secret science project, despite his obvious reluctance, he decided he’d rather accept than be dragged in against his will. There’s no way they’d force him into space again, right?
In the back of the black Sedan, being taken to who-knows-where, Grace began to worry about what they were bringing him in for and fidgeted with the seat belt. It was Rocky’s fault he had even returned in the first place—once they discovered Earth and Erid were closer than either planet was to Tau Ceti, Rocky was determined to visit. Grace was hesitant—he had no real connection back on Earth anymore and had found a happy life on Erid—but Rocky kept trying to design something that wouldn’t take too long of a trip. When he finally succeeded, he was just so excited about it. Who was Grace to say no? Maybe it would be nice to see the results of his hard work.
So they strapped a sleeker model of the translator onto him, jumped into the spaceship together, and settled in for a trip in the fastest spaceship in the known galaxy. A trip that would have taken years on their old astrophage models would now be a matter of months. Upon arrival, Rocky was quick to obtain celebrity status. There were articles. There were photographs. Grace heard he even made it onto the big screens in Times Square. Rocky ate the attention up, of course. When the government officials approached Grace for this project, Rocky was off at a lab that could reproduce his atmosphere, showing them how he made Xenonite objects.
When the car finally came to a stop and the doors opened, the only building in sight was large and nondescript. Everything else around them was empty fields and rolling hills—a tell-tale sign that whatever was in this building was not meant to be public knowledge.
The halls inside were even more bland. White painted walls, polished concrete floors, and plain wooden doors barely labeled and mostly locked behind keypads. They led Grace to one of the unlocked rooms, but he could tell this wasn’t his final destination. It was an empty board room—no science in here at all.
“So… are we going to have a meeting about whatever it is you pulled me in for?”
“Wait here,” the driver said sternly, and closed the door behind him when he left.
Grace sighed and slumped into a chair. “I miss Carl.”
While he waited, Grace bounced his knee absentmindedly. There was nothing in the room that could give him a hint as to what was going on, not even a presentation waiting for its presenter. It seemed to take ages before anyone else arrived, and though it was a good thing, three men in suits didn’t exactly scream ‘interesting’ to him.
“Dr. Grace,” the first man greeted, extending his hand across the table. “I’m Leo Shaw. Thank you for coming in today.”
Grace half stood to reach the proffered hand, stuck in an awkward angle until the handshake ended. “Hope I can help.”
“We’ll see soon enough.” The men sat across the desk, laying folders in front of them and opening them in sync. “We have a couple of questions for you, Dr. Grace, if you don’t mind.”
He splayed his hands out on the table and shrugged. “It’s why I’m here, isn’t it?” In response to their blank stares, he cleared his throat and nodded. “I don’t mind.”
“Good. Now, you have spent the better part of two decades away from Earth, right?”
“Well, for part of that I was in a coma,” he chuckled. The men merely blinked at him. “Wow, tough crowd, huh? Yes, according to Earth standard years, it has been several decades now.”
“And several of these years were spent on planet Erid, correct?”
“Yes.”
“We understand that their time cycle is vastly different from ours, so we will not attempt to try to quantify the time you spent among the Eridians. However, we are interested in how much you have learned about them. Do you have more of a broad knowledge—basic planetary statistics, predator versus prey, maybe eating habits—or does your knowledge of the Eridians go more in-depth?”
Grace’s smile faded and he grit his teeth. “Did you do something to Rocky?”
Shaw waved his hand dismissively. “Your Eridian is still exactly where you left it, doing what you left it to do. The question we ask is simply tangentially relevant to the actual topic.”
He relaxed at that, if only a little. He’d fight the government to free Rocky if he was turned into a test subject—but he wasn’t exactly prepared to fight the government any time soon. “Why don’t we stop beating around the bush then, and you tell me what you actually brought me in for?”
With a sigh, Shaw closed his folder and folded his arms together on top of it. “Dr. Grace, with your return, even temporary, you are currently considered the world’s leading scientist on the topic of Aliens. Between your advanced knowledge of the astrophage and your time spent living among the Eridians, there is no human who knows more actual alien science than you. We do not need your help studying anything Eridian. But we hope you’re willing to help us look at something else we’ve yet to identify.”
“It’s not another threat to Earth, is it? I’m afraid I’m all out of hero juice.”
Shaw didn’t answer. Instead, he and his entourage stood and gestured for Grace to follow.
He did so reluctantly, being led further through the maze of identical hallways to an unremarkable door. Shaw punched a number into the keypad and the door unlocked with a solid click. The light of the hallway pooled into the dark interior of the room as the door opened.
Grace blinked as his eyes fought to adjust to the dim light, cautiously hanging by the door even as it closed behind him. The room was fairly simple—a large desk sat on one side of a thick metal wall with a small window of reinforced glass. The wall could be circumvented on either side, though, leading to the room’s main attraction: a several thousand gallon tank full of a red, viscous liquid.
Grace pressed his lips together and hummed curiously. “That’s a tank of blood?”
“Yes. We need your help studying what’s inside.”
“You mean the blood?” He frowned. “Are you sure you don’t have anyone better for this? Like, aren’t there doctors who spend their entire lives analyzing blood? Surely they’d be—”
He was cut off as a loud thud made him jump. For a brief second, an inhuman hand pressed against the glass. It had five long, thin fingers, with thin membranes stretching between each to make it webbed.
Grace gulped.
Something was in there.