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Eva Stratt officially cracked after 32 days of solitary confinement.
In her defense, making it a month and some change was nothing to turn her nose up at, apparently. Before she had been isolated so completely she had a few neighbors to speak to through the vents. They had spoken briefly on the topic after complaining of other neighbors, the food, and the lack of warmth provided by their single allotted blanket.
“Don’t they know the sun is going out?” One of her neighbors had scoffed, the echo of it bouncing off the metal sheeting in distorted ripples. “I was fuckin’ freezin’ ‘n here before that shit stopped shinin’, how the fuck am I supposed to warm up now?”
And well, Eva had agreed. With less expletives, of course, but the commiseration had at least warmed what was left of her soul enough that the first week in the “hole” merely left her ruminating on how to go about a bit of prison reform after all of this was said and done.
If. If all of this was ever said and done.
She had been incarcerated for a little over 8 years now. The first year after the launch of the Hail Mary had been one with her still somewhat in power. The second had borne the brunt of the political fallout. Single voices had given rise to social media campaigns, which then devolved into public outrage loud enough to have her benign dictatorship brought to trial. Multiple trials, in fact. Her team of lawyers, while quite impressive, were not miracle workers. They argued, and gambled the odds, and hid some rather unsavory things from the light of day, but they never asked her for a confession of anything.
She gave them the truth anyways. They were simply too well paid to let her ruin their efforts in most things, and she figured she was paying them for a reason. It would be a shame to ruin all their hard work.
So, after 3 hellish years of trials around the European Union, Eva was sentenced to 20 years of incarceration. It was a low sentence, considering all they had tried to pin on her, and if she served it in full she’d be out just in time to see the Beetles return after a couple years to recuperate. How kind of the legal system to free their scapegoat with just enough time to spare for her to take another fall for them.
But anyways; solitary confinement. Her vent-mate had made many claims about how their neighbors had handled it.
“Hansen only cracked after a week, but he kept ‘imself from fallin’ to bits by singin’. Kowalski and Miller lasted 3 weeks, so they say, but I know for a fact that Miller was only gone for 3 weeks total and she spent at least a week in medical. They had given her a hardcover and she got creative with it. Now they only hand out paperbacks, if you get a book at all.
“Oh, but Russo lasted about a month! He started screamin’ at the 4 week mark, admittedly, but we all thought he could have the braggin’ rights for it. God knows I don’t wanna beat his record.”
It was around this point that Eva had firmed up her suspicion that her neighbor had been faking whatever accent they were trying to have, but she figured she’d let her keep at it for however long she wanted. It was hard to find decent entertainment in prison, and guessing which accent she was mangling at any given moment was surprisingly a bright spot for her at the time.
Prison had been a rather dull experience for the first 7 years. After a month of “good behavior”, Eva had brandished her smuggled laptop quite brazenly in front of most of the staff and continued her work with the Petrova Taskforce remotely. Most of the guards were more afraid of freezing to death in 30 years than of the consequences of not enforcing her technology ban (a frankly hysterical part of her sentence, if you asked her. She wasn’t even supposed to open an internet browser after attaching the entirety of it to the Hail Mary apparently). Besides, when they had asked her what she was up to and she had responded honestly, they backed off for the most part. One had even asked for multiple clarifications on the genetic modifications the team was currently trying to implement in different strains of rye in order for it to survive the worsening weather climate. He had been very worried that he may have to survive in a world without bread.
And then Mr. Svoboda was promoted.
In a somewhat successful bid to crack down on her and her fellow inmates, Mr. Svoboda (who almost certainly had an actual title, but she would not be using it) had liberally assigned harsher punishments to lighter offenses, reinstated some kind of quota for the guards, and begun calling for greater use of solitary confinement as a deterrent for “bad behavior”. Any inmate who was unlucky enough would be locked in a concrete room with a toilet, a sink, a very thin mattress, their single blanket, and one religious text of their choice. Food would be delivered via a slot in the door, and all human interaction was to be kept to a minimum. There would be no vents to gossip through. While Eva had not ever met Mr. Svoboda, she imagined he had plenty of problems in his personal life to require such rigid and poorly thought out control over inmates he did not bother to even interact with. Her vent-mate agreed.
Well, her vent-mate had actually said something like “I bet his dick is so fuckin’ microscopic that he can’t even fuck a bubble wand,” but. Same difference in the end.
Anyways.
Solitary confinement.
For reading, she had selected the King James Version of the Holy Bible. While she wasn’t much of a religious person, she figured now was certainly a good time to catch up and categorize all the different ways she had managed to secure her spot in hell. They were many and varied, but luckily nuking Antarctica was not specifically mentioned as a sin so her genocide of most species of penguins may squeak by St. Peter. By the end of the first week, she had read the entire text cover to cover 3 times. The first time had been the quickest, the second out loud, and the third she had attempted to copy her old neighbor’s fake accent. It wasn’t like anyone was listening anyways. It still did not help her puzzle out what she was attempting to fake.
Her perception of time had begun to warp about 3 days in, but the rigid light schedule and mealtimes had kept her somewhat oriented enough to know at least when she was supposed to be awake and when she was supposed to be asleep. But then one day she received only two meals before lights out. And a few cycles after that she received four meals before the lights went out. And what she thought was day 16 had her getting a single meal, about an hour's worth of lights out, and then two more meals before the next lights out.
So either Eva had forgotten how to count, or someone was deliberately attempting to drive her insane. Hilariously, the idea of someone trying to sabotage her did not make her start a spiral into paranoia but instead motivated her with an incredible amount of spite. It was nice to know she still had some in her.
So Eva began to hum, and then sing, as her neighbor had claimed “Hansen” had done to keep himself together. Little nursery rhymes, old choir songs, half forgotten hymns from her early years of required church attendance; all of them made an appearance in her concrete walls. She started during the periods without light, but figured it would do no harm to let herself keep it up even with the lights on later. Her fourth read through of her bible was done in a sing-song voice that would’ve irritated the fillings from her molars had she had an audience, but she didn’t. There was no one to hear her to complain about it.
There was no one there to hear her. There was no one.
Hm. Well, the rumination probably did not help.
It was at this point that, had anyone asked (which they did not, because they were not there), Eva would have originally said she “cracked”. She began to hear auditory hallucinations. She had started imagining some music to back up her singing, like perhaps a piano accompaniment, but the notes began to continue long past when she stopped singing along. Typical earworms stretched into nonsensical notes that played randomly at times. A b flat when she turned the pages of her bible, a high c as she bit into a piece of bread, a low f sharp in the middle of the night as she stared into the pitch black nothingness of her room. And then the piano notes began to evolve into random tunes, or the plucking of stringed instruments, or the breathy tones of woodwinds. Once it even was the slightly haunting notes of whale song, which she did not even remember knowing, but she must have for it to play so perfectly in the furthest corner of her room from her mattress.
And then they evolved into whispers.
It was nonsensical, at first. Which, she remembered, was quite typical for a hallucination. Sounds that could be human words, in a plethora of languages for her to decipher, just out of reach. The whispers did not stick to a single voice, but were instead a strange chorus of many and were not ones she could identify. It was actually nice to know that even if she had gone a bit crazy it was manageable. Obviously there was no one there, she was in solitary confinement. A bit of random music and whispers weren’t bad at all to deal with.
And then the whispers began to narrow down. It whittled away until the choir became a trio, then a duet, and then a solo.
It was male, and gentle, and damning.
“Stratt,” breathed the voice. She refused to name it. Eva knew it was not there, so she did not respond.
“Stratt,” the voice whispered, as she ate.
“Stratt,” the voice said, as she read.
“Stratt,” the voice demanded, as she hummed and tried to sleep.
“Eva,” said the voice. Her music had begun to accompany him, strange notes mixed with whale song building chords of strings or woodwinds that she could not describe nor remember later. “I know you can hear me. You can’t ignore me forever.”
Obviously not. But she could for at least 12 more years, perhaps even 15 if she was lucky. She’d even settle for 13, to give humanity their best shot at surviving their recent cold plunge. Eva did believe in God, it was better than the alternative, but she refused to believe in ghosts. Her choices, no matter how little she regretted them, could haunt her when the job was done and no sooner.
No matter how many times she read that damn bible, it was clear that forgiveness could only be granted to those who had regret. And that was the one thing she did not have.
“Alright,” said the voice, sighing into the cell walls. “That’s fine. I’ll wait.”
And it figured that she couldn’t escape grade school herding techniques even when she was 11.9 light years away from the only person bold enough to try them on her, didn’t it?
But Eva continued her routine. She read her bible, she sang her songs, she started stretching, and she ate her meals. She slept when it was dark and woke when it was light. She kept a log of her stay via a pile of loose threads from her mattress to double check that she had her days straight. She ignored the strange flute-esque trilling and steel drum-esque beating and near cricket song from the corner. She ignored the return of the choir, who no longer sang in any words but simply harmonized together, underscoring the soloist who refused to leave. The soloist, the voice, she ignored the most.
It spoke of the beach. Of fog, and sand, and sunlight refracting off of waves. It spoke of sound, of the different patterns sound waves made at different frequencies. It spoke of a classroom, of making a solar system from paper mache, of propagating little pea plants in paper towels, of the magic in watching a student's face bloom in understanding.
It did not speak of astrophage. It did not speak of space. It did not speak of anything she had not heard from it before, in the long nights aboard a ship in international waters. Were it not for the nature of the situation, perhaps the voice could have been a welcome reprieve from the isolation of her cell.
But it was not real. There was no one there. There was no one.
Come the dawn of day 32, Eva had nearly fooled herself that this new routine could constitute as almost normal. Sure, she had begun to bite her nails. Sure, she had begun imagining wringing the faceless Mr. Svoboda’s neck. Sure, she had to ignore an entire corner of her already tiny cell, since it seemed all the music that could exist in her finite world originated there. For a given measurement of madness, Eva felt, if not comfortable, then content with the current state of her mind. Perhaps this was a small sampling of the kind of hell she would be plunged into once the sun began to brighten. Perhaps the devil himself would steal the voice of the man she had commended to the stars and say gentle nothings into the stagnant air between them. Eva could deal with that. Eva could even grow to like it, she felt. To hear that voice, not screaming nor sobbing nor pleading, but simply calmly lecturing about the nature of plants with higher cold tolerance and how they could be cross bred with other species for preferred flavor profiles would be a very light sentence, all considered. Perhaps her team of lawyers had reached out to the great beyond while she was stagnating behind bars for her. Perhaps God, who could not grant forgiveness to an unsorry bastard like her, could still grant her mercy. Perhaps this was just the waiting room to heavenly judgement, purgatory in four concrete walls and the universe's strangest elevator music.
Then she couldn’t count her loose threads coherently and knew she was fucked.
At her first count, she had 34 threads. Which was wrong, but not too alarming. Eva had just woken up, counting a few strings more than once was to be expected. Her second count totaled to 30 strings. Also wrong, she needed 32, so she must have dropped one at some point. Eva peeled up the corner of her mattress, the one closest to the cell door, and checked to see that she had not forgotten any threads beneath it. There was nothing, so Eva recounted again, filing each loose thread slowly from her right hand to her left. Now she had 31 strings, which was better but still not 32.
She needed 32 of them. She had been here for 32 days. She had read her bible and sang her little songs and compartmentalized the fuck out of her auditory hallucinations for 93 meals and 29 instances where her lights were out. She had puzzled out the time passing as best she could based purely on how many Hail Mary’s she could chant like the English peasantry of old. She had imagined up a few dozen emails that she needed to send out to her taskforce members and edited them six ways to Sunday in English, Russian, and Dutch, just in case. She had successfully ignored the memories of the many, many essays she had read as an undergraduate detailing the many, many long-term effects that prisoners of war all over the world had after captivity. She had even hummed along to some of the insistent choir music from that dreaded corner of her cell. She was supposed to have 32 strings, 32 threads, 32 strands of sanity onto which she could hold onto in her own two hands.
Hands that now began to shake. That trembled like the San Francisco coastline just a year before. That shivered so hard it was as though the ice age she and the rest of humanity had been dodging had finally descended in her tiny little concrete prison.
“Oh Eva,” said the voice, still gentle, still damning. “You need to breathe.”
And she would have snapped back that she was, but it turns out that she wasn’t. Not really. Hyperventilation was not very effective for oxygen intake, she could admit.
“I’ll count for you, if you want,” said the voice. And then there was the horribly welcome sound of shuffling, as though there was a body drawing nearer to her. “I always had my students try box breathing, so it’ll be all fours. Ready? Inhale, two, three four. Hold, two three four. Out, two three four. Hold again, three four. There we go, good job-”
And so she shut her eyes and breathed. And breathed. And breathed.
Two hands, soft but callused, slowly enclosed her shaking fists. They gently coaxed them open, surely causing the loose strands to fall to the floor. Two thumbs rubbed circles until her breathing was deep and even and her hands had relaxed their grip entirely. And when at last she was under control once more, two eyes met hers when she looked up.
They were blue. Blue like mid-summer skies had been in the heat waves of her childhood. Blue like the seaside of his home.
Eva wrenched herself away from his grip, hitting the concrete wall behind her.
“Don’t be scared,” the voice said, but she could deny it no longer. It was not just a voice. It was Dr. Ryland Grace, here from beyond his star filled grave.
His hands were still reaching out, but they drew away slowly when she did not meet them. The yellow rain jacket that haunted her dreams slowly encompassed them as he leaned back into a crouch, grass-stained blue jeans brushing against well worn white converses. He slowly reached up to adjust his glasses back over his eyes where they belonged. Eva tracked each movement he made, hawk eyed.
“I’m sure you have a lot of questions-”
“Why do you look like that?” She interjected. Grace seemed startled, pausing to look at her wide eyed.
“Um, what?” He tapped the frames of his glasses twice as he cocked his head.
“Why do you look like that?”
“...were you expecting me to look different?” It seemed the ghost of Dr. Grace had gained a new stim, as he tapped his glasses twice again. It figured that even death could not keep him from fidgeting. He snorted, huffy as he always was when he was trying not to be annoyed. “Here, how’s this?”
Another double tap and suddenly he appeared as he did in his classroom the first day they met. Charcoal grey suit, blue undershirt, red tie in a simple four-in-hand as though copy pasted from Google. Her mouth dried in shock.
“Or no, wait, this isn’t how you wanted me. How’s this?” Two taps, and then Grace was in his mission orange coveralls, blond hair shining gold and patches pristine in the harsh prison lighting. The perfect image of an astronaut. Well, except for-
“...you got the wings wrong. We gave you gold, not silver,” she said.
“Gold wings are for when you come home,” he said. He slumped from his crouch to sit with crossed legs in front of her, leaning back enough that she relaxed a bit away from the wall.
“Gold wings are given for your first successful mission,” Eva said. “And you were always going to succeed, so you were sent with yours.”
He hummed, harmonizing with the ever present choir, and crossed his arms. The patch remained silver.
They sat like that for a while. Eva with her hands twisting into her blanket, Grace with his tightening and going loose on his arms, both staring at each other as the music pulsed and swelled and ebbed around them. Grace was the first to look away, sighing.
“What are you doing here, Stratt?” he asked, fingers twitching.
“I committed a crime, so I am serving out my sentence.”
“Uh huh, ok. Let’s say I believe that. Why are you still here?”
“What am I supposed to do, break out of prison?” Eva exhaled harshly through her nose. “With what army, exactly, am I to accomplish that?”
“Oh wow, I sure wonder what army. Not like you had one on speed dial the first time they tried to get you for piracy. Or on the boat. Or when you needed to kidnap me.”
“It was the correct call to make, one life for millions, if not billions. I do not regret it.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Grace said, voice low and somewhat flat. “I don’t think I’ve ever doubted that. Not since I remembered what happened, at least.”
Eva’s heart skipped a beat. Of course he remembered. He was dead. It was unlikely that any kind of amnesia would have stuck around once his body expired, whether that was from nitrogen or starvation or the second round she had placed herself in Yao’s gun. She hoped it had been quick, however he went.
“I’m glad I remembered it. It was only right to remember that I was a coward, after all. I can’t even recall all my students' names in my final class, but even if I never remember anything else at least we’ll both know that you were right.” Grace turns back to her just as the words settle deep in her gut and oh, no. This is worse. That he doesn’t remember anything but her and the mission and his class, and even then not everything is infinitely worse. This is the crime they should have put her away for. This is the repentance she should be digging out of herself to give the world.
Eva’s mind flashes back to an email in her inbox. It had begged and pleaded and asked her why. It had been angry, and grieving, and heart sick. It had sent photos, childhood memories, had offered anything to prove it was the truth. She had shown it to her team of lawyers; had confessed her darkest crime and awaited judgement.
They had deleted it. Had told her not to say a single thing about it. She had listened.
Even in death Dr. Grace still did not have all his memories. The weight of her sins grew even heavier.
“But we aren’t here to talk about me,” said Grace. He had closed his eyes, taking a deep breath in and slowly exhaling. “I’m here to talk about you, Stratt. You aren’t done yet.” His eyes opened, blue enough to cut her to the quick. “You’ve run away. We both know how well that works out, so let’s do it differently now.”
She flinched, pressing into the wall behind her once more.
“How exactly?” she whispered. “Do you expect me to just walk out of here? To just snap my fingers and disappear?” Eva scowled even as Grace slowly smiled and shook his head.
“You’re smart, Eva. You’ll figure it out.” He slowly stood, his outfit melting away before her eyes. From the ether appeared his fox sweater and a baggy pair of old white cargo pants, strangely matched with a light green shirt she never packed for him. His bare feet were adorned with anklets that jingled together, and when she looked back up at him his ears were pierced and dressed with hanging metal earrings that clicked together as he moved. His smile softened even more as he looked down at her, one hand on the wall behind him.
“You’ve believed in me all this time,” he said. “Is it so hard to think that I might believe in you too?” Grace patted the wall once, twice, then turned away towards the corner she had been avoiding. On the side of his thigh, clearly stitched over a small hole in his pants, shines a patch with golden wings.
“I’ve done all I can, and I did it in great company. The rest is up to you.”
He walked, slowly, towards the corner where the chorus seemed to swell in relief. A sweet trill, a double note, began to repeat from the corner and grew louder as he got closer.
Eva is suddenly struck with the realization that this may be the last time she ever speaks with Grace, no matter how real it is. She does not want him to leave, not before she gains enough courage to apologize for the way she had to send him off. Not before she can tell him about the email that haunts her waking moments when the lights have long gone dark. Not before she can ask about his ridiculous lack of shoes and sudden jewelry.
But mostly because she desperately does not want to be alone.
“You have a niece, now,” Eva offered, achingly. She did not reach her hand out, no matter how it aches to grasp at him. “Two, actually.”
But Grace did not turn back around. He simply cocked his head a bit to the side.
“I thought I didn’t have any close friends or family?” His hand patted the wall twice absent mindedly.
Any response Eva could’ve had balloons in her throat so much that nothing can escape it. She chokes on every possible response. Her fingers clutch, white knuckling her mattress, ragged nails catching on one of the seams. But Grace simply nodded, earrings swaying together like windchimes and tinkling gravely. He pushed off the wall and continued into the dark corner until he was gone, swallowed by the final few trills of flute song and hums of his accompanying chorus. Her cell, once more, is silent.
There is no one to haunt her anymore. There is no one there.
There is no one.
(They let her out 32 Hail Mary’s later.)