The Anchor Variable
Ryland Grace x Reader
Summary: Before Dr. Ryland Grace was forced into the spotlight as the sole lead of the Hail Mary, your secret subterranean romance was the only anchor keeping him sane. But when a catastrophic explosion shatters Section 4, Commander Eva Stratt turns your hidden universe into a trap, weaponizing your love to force a desperate Grace into submission. Separated by an unyielding mission directive and left behind on a freezing Earth, your story seems over—until the tight-knit network of female scientists decides to risk everything to rewrite the manifest.
Word count: 7.6k
part 1
"And, uh..." Ryland stepped just an inch closer, his gaze dropping to your lips for a fraction of a second before snapping back to your eyes, his voice dropping to a breathless, intimate murmur. "I hear you think I'm indispensable."
Your eyes warm as you take in his words, dropping down to his lips , unable to stop yourself from copying him. You draw in a deep breath, your chest filling with warmth and pouring out into your veins, a soft smile appearing on your lips.
"I don't think that. I know it," you confirmed, followed by a soft tilt of your head, suddenly shy about the confession.
Ryland's eyes grow wide and the nervous twitch in his hands becomes disjointed, causing him to suffocate the juice boxes in his hands. The boxes deflate with a cardboard crinkle as a steady stream of juice jets out, spraying to the edges of his hair, shaking them into sticky ringlets.
A shocked gasp escapes your lips, bouncing off the walls like the scrape of a shovel against concrete. Immediately, with a sharp slap, you lower your clipboard onto the closest available surface, searching for the nearest dry aid. Unable to find one and the juice steadily leaking, you pull insistently at the sleeve of your lab coat and gently press a part of the fabric to the running liquid and attempt to wipe down the drops dripping off of Ryland's face.
His eyes track your movement, at first frozen in place, and his cheeks are flushed an endearing pink. But the sudden feeling of the fabric forces him to look down at where your palm is wiping down his cheek. The movement of the quick flick of your wrist to a cleaner side of your sleeve and the slow, accidental wipe of your warm fingers against his jaw, attempting to catch the falling amber beads before they fall onto his clothing, lock his deep blue eyes with yours as you slow down your cleaning from the heart-stopping eye contact. His blue eyes had completely vanished, replaced by an intense, raw sincerity that made your breath catch in your throat. A shaky breath leaves his lips; with your hand still on his jaw, he breathes his confession, pouring out of him like a river. The frantic, fast-talking junior high teacher dissolved, leaving only the man who was carrying the literal weight of human survival on his shoulders.
"Thank you," Ryland murmured, his voice dropping to a low, breathless register that seemed to echo intimately in the quiet greenhouse. "I... I wanted to say thank you. And not just for getting Tom stripped of his clearance."
His soft voice trips your heart for a beat and then another as he applies more pressure to the protesting cardboard, taking another step into your personal space. Instantly, that familiar, enveloping warmth radiated off his body, washing over you like a physical balm and cutting straight through the damp chill of the room. You could swear the small seedlings in the laboratory pulled into your shared space like sunflowers worshipping the sun.
"When I'm out there in the main labs, or trapped in those endless, suffocating budget meetings, everything feels like an extinction-level ticking clock," Ryland said softly, his eyes locking onto yours with a vulnerability that laid him completely bare. "It's loud, it's terrifying, and most days I feel like I'm completely out of my depth. But then I look across the room, or I come back to your office, and... you're there. You listen. You make it normal. Standing up to Tom, leaving the coffee—it wasn't just me trying to be a good colleague, Y/N."
He stopped just inches from you, his chest heaving with a quiet emotion. "You are the only thing keeping me sane in this concrete apocalypse. You're my anchor. More than you know."
The air between you grew thick, charged, and impossibly close. For a long moment, neither of you spoke, the steady rhythm of your heart fluttering dangerously against your ribs. Ryland's gaze dropped to your lips for a fraction of a second before snapping back to your eyes, a silent, unsaid question burning in his stare.
Slowly, deliberately, Ryland reached out. Your breathing skips a breath as he moves, then escapes in a gasp of air as he puts down the empty, crushed juice boxes. His fingers brushed against yours, a jolt of intense, comforting heat flaring from his skin that sent an electric flush straight up your neck, exactly like it had in the lab weeks ago. But this time, he didn't pull away. He slid his hand into yours, closing the distance entirely as he stepped into your space.
When his lips finally met yours, the rest of the dying world simply ceased to exist.
It was a quiet, breathless kiss, soft and desperately deep, hinting of apples, sealing an unspoken promise amidst the rows of green seedlings. His hand moved to the side of your face, his thumb brushing your cheekbone, his touch radiating a fierce, protective warmth that grounded your shaking hands. His other hand made its way comfortably around your waist, pulling you into him like an anchoring root of an ancient oak tree. Your pounding chest met his, two drums of life beating for each other. Your hands moved to entwine themselves in his hair, pulling him closer than ever. The desire to melt into his warmth like ice does in the sun was overtaken by the overwhelming feeling of fondness. Ryland made a soft groan in response to you drinking in his warmth; it was just under his breath, but it made everything that much more intense. In the middle of a subsurface bunker built for the end of days, you found a definitive, unshakeable beginning.
When he finally pulled back, just enough for his forehead to rest gently against yours, his breath hitched. A soft, breathless laugh left his lips, though his grip on your waist remained fierce and unyielding.
"We can't let her find out," you whispered against his skin, reality gently crashing back into the warmth of the moment. Ryland squeezed his eyes shut, nodding slowly as the terrifying image of Commander Stratt flashed in both of your minds.
"Stratt," he agreed, his voice a low, private murmur, warm like honey flowing into your ears. "Yeah. If she thinks for a second that I'm distracted, or that you're a 'structural liability' to my focus, she'll have one of us reassigned to a filtration plant in North Dakota before sunrise."
"Or worse," you murmured, looking up into his clear blue eyes. "She values your brain too much to let anything compromise it. If she sees this as a distraction to the mission, she will eliminate the variable. We have to keep this entirely in the dark."
Ryland looked down at you, his thumb tracing a comforting circle on your hip, his eyes full of an unshakeable, fierce dedication.
"Then we stay in the dark," he promised softly, treating the pact like an absolute, fundamental law of physics. "No notes. No public displays. Just us, behind closed doors, when the cameras are off." He leaned down, pressing one more soft, lingering kiss to your lips—a secret vow shared in the humid silence, completely unaware that the world outside was already turning its heavy, catastrophic wheels toward your ending.
The rhythmic, low-frequency hum of the subterranean bunker's ventilation system was a constant reminder of the concrete ceiling keeping the apocalypse at bay. But inside the cramped perimeter of your office, the sanctuary felt entirely detached from the ticking clock of the human race.
Ryland was fast asleep beside you on the narrow, government-issued canvas cot, his frame curled tightly to fit the small mattress. His face was relaxed, stripped of the grueling exhaustion that usually claimed his features by nightfall, and his head was buried deeply in the crook of your shoulder. One of his heavy arms was draped possessively over your waist, anchoring you to him. Through the thin fabric of his shirt, his radiating, clean warmth bloomed against your skin—a sensory anchor that had effortlessly become your entire universe while the world above froze and died under a dimming sun.
Absently, your fingers traced the soft, tousled strands of his honey-blond hair, with every soft swipe, a soft waft of the mint soap you all used emanating from it. Somehow he made the usual, cold and sterile smell soften closer to mint ice cream. Your mind drifted back over the blur of the last few months.
Everything had fractured and reformed the day Dr. Tom was permanently stripped of his clearance and escorted from the facility. For the first few weeks, Section 4 had stalled under the weight of a chaotic leadership vacuum as the remaining staff struggled to recalibrate the fuel-injection projects without a lead engineer. Seeing the project falter, Eva Stratt had stepped in with her usual, ruthless efficiency, abruptly promoting Ryland to second-in-charge of Project Hail Mary.
The promotion changed everything. Publicly, Ryland could no longer afford to be the hyperactive, unvetted junior high school teacher in a bright yellow rain jacket. To command respect from the hardened, cynical senior staff during high-level payload reviews, he had been forced to adopt a rigid, composed, and authoritative professional persona, brows constantly furrowed and shoulders tense. Gone was his usual ruffled bird's nest of hair, replaced with a presentable and respectable haircut. You had sat through grueling cross-departmental briefings, watching him stand at the mahogany tables with a stiff, unyielding posture, delivering complex payload logistics with a cold, precise confidence that made him look like a stranger. Your heart clenched, a pressing pain against your ribs as expressions you hated on him came over his face: tiredness, hopelessness, and most of all, exhaustion.
But the true agony was the double life it forced you to lead. Because the underground network of female scientists still believed Ryland was just an accidental hero harboring a massive, helpless crush, you were forced to actively play along with their relentless teasing. Just three days ago, Amy, Jen, and Sarah had cornered you by the break room counter, giggling as they pointed out how Ryland's rigid composure seemed to falter slightly whenever you entered the telemetry lab.
"He's practically melting into his shoes, Y/N," Jen had whispered with a knowing, sly smile. "The poor guy is second-in-charge of human survival, and he still looks like a lovesick schoolboy when you pass him a tablet."
You had forced a light, dismissive laugh, rolling your eyes with practiced ease while your heart hammered a frantic rhythm against your ribs. You had to swallow down the terrifying urge to look away, utterly petrified that they would notice the slight flush on your neck, or read the subtle signs of a profound, secret commitment written in the way your eyes lingered on him for a fraction of a second too long. You had to hide the fact that you weren't just colleagues saving humanity anymore; you were two people desperately trying to save each other.
A soft, congested murmur broke the quiet, pulling you from your thoughts.
Ryland shifted against your shoulder, his nose nuzzling tighter into the fabric of your shirt as his eyes blinked open. The moment his blurry blue gaze found yours, the stark, unbending gravity of the second-in-command completely dissolved. The stiff professionalism he wore like armor out in the corridors evaporated into the shadows of the room, leaving only the boyish, goofy man who had fallen hopelessly in love with you in a secondary greenhouse.
"Hey," he whispered, his voice thick and raspy from sleep.
"Hey," you murmured back, your hand moving down to cup his jaw. "You're supposed to be asleep. You have the UN oversight committee reviewing the fuel matrix at zero-six-hundred."
Ryland groaned dramatically, burying his face back into your neck for a brief, whining second before rolling onto his back, pulling you with him so that you rested against his chest. "Don't remind me. If I have to stand in front of those generals one more time and pretend I care about their geopolitical logistics instead of the actual math, my brain is going to short-circuit."
He looped his arms around you, drawing you impossibly close until you could feel the steady, comforting thud of his heart beneath your cheek. Even in his exhaustion, his proximity felt like a protective hearth, a localized shield against the apocalypse raging beyond the concrete walls.
"You were brilliant today during the payload review," you teased softly, tracing a circle over his chest. "Very stern. Very authoritative. Jen told me you looked genuinely terrifying when you shut down the structural team's complaints."
Ryland let out a suppressed, breathless giggle, his chest vibrating beneath you.
"Terrifying? Me? I was literally panicking the entire time that I had a smudge of dry-erase marker on my nose. I kept trying to catch my reflection in the glass table." He tilted his head down, a dimpled, boyish grin breaking across his face as he bumped his forehead affectionately against yours. "Did I look cool? Please tell me I looked at least a little bit cool." He continued to nuzzle his temple into the side of your hair, nearly purring like a kitten at the impending compliment.
"The coolest," you whispered, smiling as you leaned up to press a soft, lingering kiss to his lips.
He melted into the touch, his grip tightening around your waist as he held you there, stretching the quiet moment out as if he could physically halt the ticking clock of the mission. It was in these silent, stolen fragments of the night that the pressure eased. You shared the exhausting late-night shifts together, mapping out the nitrogen-buffer systems while the rest of the base slept, punctuated by the unyielding routine of Ryland secretly leaving a steaming, homemade cup of premium coffee on your desk every morning without a note—a silent, comforting baseline of normalcy in a world gone mad.
Ryland exhaled a long, content sigh, his fingers tangling in yours as he pulled your hand up to press a warm kiss to your knuckles.
"Whatever happens out there," he murmured into the dim safety of your office, his blue eyes searching yours with a quiet, fierce intensity that made your chest ache. "Whatever Stratt throws at us tomorrow... we have this. Just us, behind closed doors."
"Just us," you whispered back, burying your face into his shoulder, allowing his radiating warmth to completely envelop you. You held onto him tightly, utterly oblivious to the fact that out in the sterile light of the command deck the time left for your hidden universe was rapidly running out.
The quiet sanctuary of the secondary greenhouse lab felt entirely detached from the rest of the facility. You were standing near a rack of newly sprouted seedlings, hands tending to them, laughing softly as Ryland recounted an absurd interaction he'd had with an international logistics officer earlier that morning. His hands were moving animatedly, his boyish, dimpled grin completely displacing the stern, authoritative second-in-command mask he was forced to wear during the day. He leaned in close, his radiating, familiar warmth enveloping you as he dropped his voice to whisper the punchline, making you giggle and bump shoulders with him at the ridiculous joke. For a fleeting moment, the weight of the dying world vanished.
Then, the sharp, demanding chime of his government-issued pager cut through the humid air. Ryland blinked, the laughter dying on his lips as he pulled the device from his lab coat pocket. He stared at the glowing text on the tiny screen, letting out a heavy, defeated sigh.
"It's Stratt," he muttered, running a hand through his honey-blond hair. "She wants me up on the surface immediately. Something about an urgent arrival at the landing pad."
"Go," you whispered, offering him a reassuring smile, though the sudden chill of reality pricked at your skin. "Don't keep her waiting."
He nodded, but before he stepped toward the sliding glass doors, he leaned down and pressed a fast, desperate kiss to your lips—a breathless promise hidden safely in the dark. Your gloved hands reached to his tousled hair before stopping short; the dirt would be a sure giveaway.
"Ry, your hair."
"I'll find you tonight," he murmured, smoothing it over with practiced precision. You watched him leave, nodding in confirmation as he shot you a questioning glance about the state of his hair, completely unaware that it would be the last time you would ever touch him without a barrier between you.
Ryland rode the central elevator up to the surface, stepping out into the biting, stark cold of the outside world. He found Eva Stratt standing near the edge of the concrete facility, her eyes fixed on the horizon as a transport vehicle approached. But before a single word could be exchanged between them, the ground beneath their feet violently shuddered.
A deep, localized thunder roared from the subterranean depths of the base. Behind them, a massive plume of black smoke and pressurized fire erupted from the primary biology cleanroom's ventilation shafts, shattering thick concrete structures and throwing a shockwave across the surface. An Astrophage enrichment test had gone catastrophic.
Ryland stumbled, his face turning entirely ashen as he stared at the destruction. His mind didn't catalog the catastrophic loss of equipment or data; his heart violently seized with a singular, paralyzing terror: You.
He spun on his heel, his professional mask entirely shattering as he sprinted back toward the smoke-choked elevators, screaming your name into the freezing air. He almost ran right into the crater left by the explosion. He catches his footing at the last minute and turns on his heel, running around the perimeter of the deadly circle, poisoning his mind with plagued thoughts. Through the murky, polluted air, a flash of light catches his eyes: the secondary greenhouse. Floor-to-ceiling windows shattered in complex webs of glass, trying their hardest to keep together—their only purpose in this scenario. But he cannot see through the now opaque glass; there are only dark shadows.
He becomes vaguely aware of the blaring sirens of firetrucks stationed exactly for these types of disasters. As he approaches the source of the pollution, he watches in trepid anticipation as the first responders in harnesses smash through the shattered glass, lowering down, looking for survivors.
One of their hands reaches impossibly far, offering help to stand to a shaking figure hidden behind a dented steel cabinet. It's you.
You were safe, blocks away in the secondary greenhouse, shielded by reinforced blast doors. Ryland approaches with a slowed jog, his chest heaving at the pinching pain in his ribs, as he attempts to catch his breath from the air of relief choking his lungs as he takes in your form. Stop. He needs to stay professional. Everyone is looking. Attention is heightened. Nothing will be missed.
His desperate eyes, now an icy blue in fear, catch your eyes as you are escorted out of the shards of the makeshift exit, dug through by the hardworking hands of the responders. He follows in hurried steps to one of the many ambulances waiting on the perimeter of the crater.
His eyes track every movement of the paramedics as they attend to you, darting wildly around to all of the medical supplies they are pulling out. White flashes of bandages force skips in his heartbeat; an EKG machine drains the hot blood from his cheeks and lips. Needles and scissors fill his veins with a freezing chill. He forces himself to plant his feet among the mixed shards of the wreck, awaiting the opportunity when he can get a moment with you. He scans your state. Your lab coat is coated and grayed from the waves of ashes you pushed through on your way to the ambulance. Sprays of dirt color your sleeves and there are remnants of it in your hair. Your chest is heaving with effort and such force that the crumbles of dirt are exhaled out of your hair. Your lungs are begging to get a full breath of fresh air; a red twinge appears on your face as you fail to get one. One of the medics pushes an oxygen mask into your hand, instructing you to put it up to your face.
You insist you are fine, begging the medics to aid those who need it more. Shallow breaths, echoing rattles of the breaths you normally take, are all you are able to manage while inhaling the crisp oxygen in quick puffs as its clearness overpowers your weakened lungs.
"Please, I am okay. Help the others. Please," your voice is light, like smoke, barely there, straining your throat but still firm and determined. Muffled against the mask, your voice steadies him, and his breathing syncs with your quiet pants as you lock eyes. As long as Ryland breathes at the pace you breathe, he can convince himself that you are alive and he can fervently deny that he is just on the edge of hyperventilating.
"Dr. Grace, keep an eye on her. Let us know if anything changes" is all he catches as the room in the back of the van clears out, the medics backing out to run to the many yells of their colleagues. His eyes zero in on you and there is a moment of pause as your eye contact deepens. It only intensifies when he doesn't break it as he climbs into the back and pulls the doors shut behind him.
His tall figure shadows you for a split moment before his warmth falls over you as he wraps his arms around you in animalistic desperation. You return the hug with just as much fervor.
"I'm alive, I'm okay," you manage to whisper out, words distorted by the flow of hissing air coming out of the mask. His body starts to tremor as he hears your voice once more. Ryland pulls back to look into your eyes. You lift your eyes to join his, but he sees them snap to the side, looking past him and giving him a firm shove back as your eyes widen. He stumbles into the seat on the wall, his eyes painted in hurt confusion. The ache in your throat is searing; you can feel it scrape the soft tissue in your throat raw.
"The logs and data are safe." Tears well in his eyes at the recognition of your actions. You are trying to keep him safe.
Eva Stratt swings open the door without warning. She spares you a quick glance, the crinkles around her eyes smoothing out as she confirms your state.
"Dr. Grace, with me. Now." She pushes the door back further once she has confirmed you are in an unembarrassed state. Your ears register the thick, choking emotion consuming him.
"Thank you for keeping the data safe; we will have someone retrieve it." Tears well in your own eyes as a guilty shiver of panic pierces his already worried eyes.
Ryland can barely spare you another panicked flit of his eyes before he forces himself out, following Stratt, who did not wait for him to join, confident he is trailing behind her.
Stratt is barking something at the others they pass, but it takes several moments of mumbled buzzing before they become clear words.
The primary science crew was completely gone.
In the hours that followed the disaster, the atmosphere within the bunker shifted from exhausting to utterly suffocating. Because Ryland was now the only human being left alive on Earth who fully understood the cellular division of the organism, the algae math, and the fuel matrices, Stratt officially locked the mission leaders. He was designated as the sole remaining lead specialist for the Hail Mary suicide mission.
The promotion to the top tier of the mission devoured every second of his time. The domesticity of sleeping curled up on your office cot vanished entirely. He was constantly surrounded by UN officials, military generals, and Stratt herself, moving through the concrete corridors like a ghost condemned to death.
Your secret romance was pushed to the absolute brink, surviving only on starvation rations.
You were forced to sit across from him in high-level payload reviews, watching him adopt a rigid, unyielding, and chillingly composed authoritative persona to command respect from a room full of grieving senior staff. You had to sit silently while Amy, Jen, and Sarah sat beside you, nudging your shoulder and giggling quietly, whispering about how the new lead scientist still seemed to have a hopeless, unrequited workplace crush on you because his eyes occasionally flickered in your direction.
You had to bite the inside of your cheek until it bled, forcing a polite, detached smile, playing along with the lie while a wild panic clawed at your throat. You were petrified that they would hear the frantic drumming of your heart, or notice the subtle, agonizing signs of your secret commitment.
The only proof that your universe hadn't completely died lived beneath the heavy mahogany briefing tables.
During a grueling, four-hour review of the ship's nitrogen-buffer systems, Ryland would sit with his back perfectly straight, his voice flat and clinical as he dictated engine safety margins to the room. But beneath the table, his hand would blindly find yours.
It wasn't the gentle touch of a lover anymore. It was a fierce, trembling, desperate hand-squeeze. His fingers would lock into yours, gripping your skin with a terrifying, bone-crushing intensity that communicated everything he couldn't scream out loud: *I'm not leaving you. I'm not going into the dark alone. I will find a way.*
You would squeeze back just as hard, your knuckles turning white under the shadow of the table, using every ounce of your strength to project absolute composure to the scientists sitting right next to you. By the end of the meeting your hand buzzed in numbness, but you could only welcome the feeling. It left you with the constant reminder of the feeling of Ryland. And above all, it was only yours.
The secret remained perfectly safe, buried deep in the dark, hidden from the prying eyes of your colleagues and the security cameras. You managed to protect it from everyone.
The heavy steel door of the command deck clicked shut behind you, sealing out the sterile, humming chaos of Section 4. Eva Stratt didn't look up from her computer terminal immediately. She let the silence stretch—heavy, clinical, and absolute—before she finally raised her sharp, unreadable eyes to meet yours.
"Sit down, Y/N."
You didn't sit. The tension in the soundproofed room was thick enough to choke on. "If this is about the secondary greenhouse telemetry, I've already uploaded the logs," you said, your voice tight, trying to maintain the rigid professional distance you had relied on for months.
"This is a matter of personnel," Stratt said, her voice flat and matter-of-fact. She slid a single digital tablet across the glass desk. "As of ten minutes ago, the primary science crew has been declared a total loss following the cleanroom explosion. Dr. Ryland Grace has been officially designated as the lead specialist for the Hail Mary. The mission manifest is being locked."
The air left your lungs in a sharp, physical gasp. The world tilted slightly on its axis. You reached out, your fingers gripping the edge of her desk just to keep your knees from buckling.
"You can't send him," you breathed, a sudden, frantic terror clawing at your throat. "He's an administrative lead now. He's a teacher. He isn't military—"
"He is the only human being left on this planet who understands the cellular division of the organism," Stratt interrupted coldly. "He goes."
You swallowed the hard lump in your throat, stepping closer, abandoning every single rule of secrecy you and Ryland had meticulously kept. You didn't care about the consequences anymore. You didn't care about professionalism, or the chain of command, or the underground network of researchers who thought you just shared a cute workplace crush.
"Then change the manifest," you demanded, your voice rising, trembling with a fierce, protective desperation. "Put me on the shuttle. I know the nitrogen-buffer systems better than anyone else alive. I'm going with him."
Stratt didn't blink. She didn't look surprised. Instead, a tiny, almost imperceptible shadow of pity passed over her hard features—the first time you had ever seen her look remotely human.
"I brought you up here, Y/N, as a courtesy. Because I am well aware of what you and Dr. Grace have been doing in the secondary labs when you thought the security cameras were turned off," she said softly, her words shattering the secret you had burned your world down to protect. A burning fear set in your bones and lungs; you were staring right down into the eyes of an all-seeing being. The fear at the realization that nothing could ever be truly hidden from Eva Stratt lit your muscles on fire as they all tensed impossibly tight.
"And because I knew you would demand exactly that." She reached into her desk drawer, sliding a second file across the glass. It was your biometric screening.
"You don't have the coma gene."
The words felt like a physical blow to the chest, knocking the wind from your lungs. You stared down at the bold genetic markers on the paper.
"We ran the markers twice," Stratt continued, her voice unyielding. "Without the genetic sequence, the therapeutic stasis will cause absolute neurological death before the ship even clears the asteroid belt. If I put you on that rocket, Ryland Grace will spend four years sleeping next to a rotting corpse. The answer is no."
"Then I won't go under!"
The scream tore from your throat, desperate and wild. You slammed your hands flat against her desk, leaning over the mahogany wood, your eyes burning with unshed tears. A sharp sting in your palms invited the burning fear further into you, its flames licking at the chambers of your heart.
"I'll stay awake, Eva! I'll stay awake for the transit!" you pleaded, your voice cracking as you threw your baseline scientific logic out the window. "I can monitor the engines. I can tend to the algae manually. I can handle the isolation. Just let me stay awake!"
"The ship's life support cannot sustain an active human metabolism for a four-year transit," Stratt countered, her voice sharpening, cutting through your panic like a scalpel. "An awake human consumes four times the oxygen. You will starve the Astrophage-led life support, you will deplete the rations, and you will choke to death in the dark within eighteen months. And in the process, you will kill him, too."
"I'll ration! I'll eat half-portions, I'll sleep twenty hours a day, I'll synthesize secondary oxygen scrubbers using the nitrogen-buffer tanks! We have the scrap aluminum from the chassis overhaul, I can code an automated intake cycle—"
"You are bartering with science and physics, and they do not care about your feelings," Stratt snapped, standing up, her cold mask snapping back into place.
She stepped around the desk, stopping mere inches from you. She looked down at your shaking hands, her sharp eyes boring into yours with a terrifying, absolute clarity.
"Look at the telemetry, Y/N. If you are on that ship awake, you take his oxygen. If you go under, he wakes up to a corpse. Either way, your presence introduces a catastrophic failure point to his life support." Her voice dropped to a low, clinical whisper that made your blood run cold. "Are you trying to save him? Or are you trying to kill him?"
The absolute finality of her words crushed you. The room went entirely cold. You stepped back, your hands shaking; your mouth opened, but no sound came out. The realization that your own DNA had betrayed you—that your desperate, consuming love was the very thing that would sentence him to death—completely broke you. There was no loophole. No clever engineering fix. All hope for a manifest change was dead. The story was over. You were staying on a dying planet, and Ryland was going into the ink alone.
And then, the red alarms outside the door began to blare.
Right on the heels of her question, the high-priority security klaxons wailed, casting a rhythmic, blood-red pulse through the transparent walls of the command deck.
You spun around, your heart leaping into your throat. But Stratt didn't flinch. She didn't even look at her terminal. She merely stood there, calmly adjusting the cuffs of her blazer, her sharp eyes fixed on the empty corridor outside the glass.
"Command, we lost him!" a radio on her hip hissed, cutting through the siren's wail. "He broke containment in Section Four! He's bypassed the secondary checkpoint—he's heading up the central elevator!"
Cold, paralyzing dread flooded your veins as you looked from the blinking red alarms back to Stratt's utterly unmoved, stone-faced expression.
"You knew," you whispered, the horrific realization settling deep into your bones. "You didn't bring me up here to be kind. You brought me here to be bait."
"Dr. Grace is an incredibly predictable man, Y/N," Stratt said softly, her voice devoid of emotion, only carrying an absolute, calculating authority. "If my guards tried to sedate him in his quarters, he would have hidden. He would have fought his way to the surface, or dragged this facility into a multi-hour manhunt we do not have time for. But I knew if he discovered he was being sent away, his very first instinct would be to find you."
She gestured out to the long, reinforced concrete hallway leading directly to the glass room.
"I didn't have to hunt him down," Stratt said, delivering the final, psychological blow. "I simply put the only thing he cares about in a glass box at the end of the hall, and let him run straight into the trap. Save your breath. He's already here."
Ryland hadn't found out from a brief or an email. He had found out because a security detail had shown up at his workstation with a sedative kit. And instead of letting them take him, he had fought. He had broken away, running through the concrete corridors of the bunker—not to find a surface exit, but running directly toward the command wing because he knew exactly where Stratt had taken you.
Through the thick, soundproofed glass walls of the briefing room just outside Stratt's office, you saw him.
He burst around the corner, his honey-blond hair a frantic bird's nest, his sunny raincoat unevenly buttoned and flapping behind him. His blue eyes were wide with a terrifying, wild panic, completely stripped of his usual cheerful, quick-witted sarcasm. He wasn't the second-in-command right now. He was just Ryland. And he was looking for you.
The moment his gaze locked onto yours through the glass, a broken, breathless sob escaped your lips. He lunged for the door handle. You sprang yourself at it.
He never touched it. And neither did you.
Three heavy-armor security guards tackled him from behind, their weight slamming his tall frame hard against the concrete floor. You screamed, but two guards instantly seized your shoulders from behind, pinning your arms back, forcing you to watch. A flaring ache ate at your shoulders; you would dislocate them if you had to, permanently damage them if you needed to, all of it if it would get you to him.
From the periphery, you could see the sudden, shocked reactions of the Section 4 women who had crowded into the hallway—Amy, Jen, and Sarah pausing in absolute, horrified realization. The secret relationship you had hidden in the dark for months was shattering right in front of them. But nobody moved. Nobody breathed. The air was entirely frozen.
On the floor, Ryland fought with a violent, animalistic strength he didn't know he possessed. He kicked, throwing his weight upward, his fingers clawing desperately at the rough concrete, dragging his body inches forward until his hand slammed flat against the bottom of the glass wall. His hands scraped at the glass, sliding off with nothing to anchor to. Your own hands, as if magnets, snapped up against the glass, following the slow slide of his down the glass, streaks of red despair left in their wake.
He looked up at you through the window, his face pale with pure, unadulterated terror, reaching up toward you through the acrylic.
You fought against the guards holding you, sobbing, pressing your own palm flat against the cold glass, trying desperately to align your fingers with his. Centimeters of reinforced, soundproofed plastic separated you. You could see the veins straining in his neck as he screamed your name, his lips moving frantically, but the glass swallowed the sound entirely, leaving you in a suffocating, silent horror.
*I'm right here,* his eyes begged. *I'm right here.*
Then, the clinical hiss of the pneumatic syringe hit the side of his neck.
You watched the light instantly drain from his clear blue eyes. His frantic, reaching fingers lost their strength, sliding slowly down the smooth acrylic, leaving behind more tragic, smudged streaks on the window as his body went entirely limp on the concrete floor.
The guards released you, and you collapsed to your knees against the glass, pressing your forehead against the cold barrier, staring at his unmoving face, pleading his name in an unforgiving mantra. All hope was gone. The darkness had won. A gut-wrenching wail erupted from your mouth. You desperately clawed at the door handle, wrenching it violently as you forced it to open. It refused to budge. Another wail left you, the sound closer to a horrified screech. It was locked. There was never a chance.
They were never going to let you say goodbye. You wouldn't be able to hold him or kiss him one last time before they took him.
You watched as more people surrounded him—doctors and nurses now.
"No! No! No!" Each word of protest brought forth a new, immense strength as you pounded your hands against the glass, the force distorting the bloody fingerprints he left as he fought his way to you. Your wails intensified, wracking you in full-body jerks; everything hurt and you couldn't breathe. You couldn't breathe, and yet your lungs desperately mourned the loss of your love—your Ryland.
You watched in horror as they loaded him up onto the gurney and your desperation became suffocating. You shoved your fingers into any possible seam of the acrylic prison. The skin on your fingertips roared in protest at the pain. An animalistic desperation pulled at you, your mind no longer coherent and your heartbeat no longer yours. The yells tore at the open sores in your throat; you could feel the burning drip of the blood at the back of your throat. Those across from you paid you no mind, only speeding up as they pushed a limp Ryland further into the hall. He looked peaceful; he looked like your boyish, sweet Ryland that had stolen your heart.
A searing grip on your arms turned your desperate, throat-tearing wails into an ugly yelp.
"Get her into a cleared room!" Eva Stratt. This was all her fault. She did this to you. She did this to Ryland. You attempted to lunge at her with everything your trembling legs could give, but the stone-solid hands of the guards around you refused to give you the chance.
You don't know how long it has been. You don't care. They didn't care to let you know either. You had exhausted yourself enough to only be able to sit motionless in the room, with no energy left to cry. They left you in a dark cell, covered in concrete walls. You were left to stare at them. Only you, the stable walls, and your thoughts. There was no window, light provided only by a withering little bulb at the top of the most confining ceiling surface. You could feel the hardness of the cold, unforgiving floor beneath you. They deemed you too unstable to even have the comfort of a bed. It was only you and the four bare walls. How pathetic.
Fury licked at your veins. They took everything from you, and now not even some comfort was out of the question? They took him from you.
Ryland. Your throat tore out a rattling sob, echoing like a brick against stone. They stole him, right in front of you. Anger bit at your unreasonable mind, sinking its fangs into whatever sense you had left. More gut-wrenching sobs tore their way out of you.
There—a pound of footsteps outside the steel door. Your agonizing sobs twisted into bloodcurdling yells of anguish. You had given them everything and they still took more. The steps outside quickened in urgency. The annoying squeak of a heavy hinge echoed over your yells as the door opened. The need for air stifled your cries. You looked at the open door with the blinding light. A dark shadow was greedily eating up the little light that reached you. Your fingers made their way into your hair, pulling at it in treacherous tugs.
"Get her arms." The shadow sprang at your elbow; you yanked it away, burnt by its ill intentions. Your palms slammed against the ground as you pulled at the floor to get away from the carnivorous dark. They lunged again, aiming higher at your shoulders now. Cutting pain entered your arms as you were pulled down, stomach pressed against the cold floor. The hair wildly splayed at your neck was brushed harshly aside with a gloved, soulless hand.
The metallic sting of a second syringe bit deep into your own neck.
You didn't even have time to scream as a heavy, artificial darkness rushed up from the slabbed floor, and the cold reality of the bunker settled over you.
The voice was a gravelly, sterile whisper, echoing from the deep, frozen recesses of your fading consciousness. It didn't sound real. It sounded like a ghost haunting a nightmare.
"Ryland Grace will eventually remember you," Eva Stratt's voice reverberated through the dark, a cold phantom from the bunker you had left behind. "And losing you might just break him enough to completely derail this mission."
You gasped, your eyes flying open as you tore yourself away from the heavy, suffocating weight of the chemical stasis. Your chest heaved violently, your heart hammering a frantic, erratic rhythm against your ribs as your lungs dragged in a sharp, painful breath of incredibly clean, recycled oxygen.
The air was freezing.
The chaotic, roaring din of the Task Force Hail Mary facility was completely gone. There were no shouting guards, no heavy blast doors, and no humming concrete corridors. There was only a terrifying, absolute silence, broken only by the faint, rhythmic electronic pulse of a life-support computer.
Your head snapped to the side, your vision swimming with a blurry, post-sedative haze as you tried to orient your shaking body. Your fingers clawed frantically at the rigid, padded fabric—not your lab coat.
As your hands swept over the unfamiliar fabric of the suit, your fingertips brushed against something stiff tucked securely into the clear plastic sleeve of your forearm console. It was a crinkled, hastily folded piece of official Section 4 scrap paper.
With trembling, uncoordinated fingers, you pulled it free and smoothed it out against your knee. Written in a rushed, frantic collective scrawl were words that answered the impossible question of how you were even breathing right now:
"Y/N—Stratt gave the order, but we forged the stasis manifest entry, overrode the primary weight telemetry, and sealed your pod while the command deck was in lockdown. She couldn't have bypassed her own security grid without us. Keep him tethered. Bring him back to us. Amy, Sarah, Jennifer, and Ellen."
A choked, breathless sob escaped your lips as the truth settled heavily into your chest. Stratt had provided the cold, pragmatic execution, but the women who had teased you in the break room—the ones who had watched your secret romance shatter in the hallway—were the ones who had risked everything to ensure you weren't left behind to die on a freezing Earth.
Slowly, you looked up from the note, your gaze locking onto the thick, triple-reinforced acrylic porthole just inches from your face.
The Earth was gone.
Outside the window, framed by the stark, white metal hull of the spacecraft, was a vast, terrifyingly beautiful expanse of pitch-black nothingness, pricked by millions of cold, unblinking stars.
You were in space. You were on the Mary.
A profound, shivering dread flooded your veins as the weight of Stratt's final, echoing words—and the fierce defiance of your friends—settled into your bones. The commander hadn't left you behind to rot. Out of a terrifying, pragmatic pity, and through the secret, desperate intervention of the Section 4 crew, you had been hidden away in an experimental stasis pod because they all knew your love was the only anchor capable of keeping her lead scientist sane.
You turned your head slowly, looking deeper into the silent, dim cabin of the drifting ghost ship. A few feet away, encased in a glowing medical bay, Ryland Grace lay perfectly still, his eyes closed, his mind a blank, drug-induced slate.
You were completely alone in the deep cosmic void, lacking the gene to survive a long-term coma, awake before him, waiting for the day the man who had burned the world down for you finally opened his eyes and tried to remember who you were.