Chapter Text
☆☆☆☆☆
– Earth Days: 001 –
Alec can’t breathe.
Even through the water condensed around his ears, he can hear an alarm faintly blaring, its accompanying words too garbled for him to make sense of. Coming out of cryo-sleep is supposed to be disorienting, similar to what the brain goes through when succumbing to hypothermia, only set in reverse. He’d been briefed on it exhaustively during training, but at no point did they warn him about possible asphyxiation. Not unless there has been a significant malfunction on the ship that has been caused by a power outage and not unless the back-up generators have also been affected, but Alec figures if that is what’s actually happening at the moment, the ship should be well on its way to crashing or exploding.
What is the point of even waking up?
His eyes slide open, trying to peer through the dense water to see through the clear glass around him, but all he can make out are oscillating red lights overhead, and all he can feel is the ship rumbling chaotically around him, tempting him to close his eyes once more. Maybe there’s no way out of this situation, and fighting it would only stave off the inevitable.
His muscles start to relax in the small chamber, bubbles fleeing his mouth as he exhales outwards, before he feels the ship give a particularly violent shudder.
“You’ve been assigned to be captain of the Urania-Ω. You are the only one in the crew with any formal military training.”
Sergeant Penhallow’s words echo back at him as shadows start to drift across his consciousness, still seducing him to yield once more to an endless slumber. He was supposed to wake up once they arrived at their destination. Not before it.
“You’re also the only aerospace engineer on board. We’re entrusting you to guide the passengers to safety if anything goes wrong.”
Nothing was supposed to go wrong. Alec had performed all system checks in routine order several times long before they left Earth. He made sure every last wire had been in place; had taken the ship on numerous manual test flights; had verified the cryo-pods wouldn’t accidentally be triggered into thawing by random turbulence before they’d reach their destination; had even hand-picked their navigation droid. Only an extreme emergency should have woken him up, which he’s well aware this might be.
If that’s the case, he really is the only one who can fix this, and he’s simply losing time by allowing his mind to drift and drift, floating as aimless as the ship might be in space right now, instead of waking up and taking care of the problem. The issue could just be a matter of a panel loose somewhere, bolts that need tightening, any number of possibilities that are easily repairable. A quick space walk is all it would take, and none of the passengers would be any wiser. He’d been subjected to all sorts of scenarios during training and had cleared them all without problem, so there’s nothing to be afraid of.
Okay, stay calm.
He has to think through this. He at least knows something is wrong with his cryo-pod. The whole chamber should have drained of water, and the pod door should have automatically opened upwards the moment it detected he was awake. It’s hooked up to his vitals and set to respond the second it registers any physical changes that suggest he’d somehow fallen out of REM sleep.
There is an emergency release from inside as a back-up, one on the interior part of the door that he presses to open it. When it doesn’t immediately respond, he starts banging hard on the glass above him, hands balled into fists, his sore, unused muscles groaning with each movement. It still doesn’t budge, and Alec feels his lungs burn with the effort to keep holding his breath, his body starved for air. The ache sinks all the way to his belly, making him writhe in place as he panics.
His mind is already starting to fuzz back over, loosening its grip on all clarity and sensibility. Pulling him under, hypnotizing him into crawling down the slow-growing trench below his body, one so deep there’s no bottom end in sight. Just the obsidian embrace of nothingness waiting for him.
Gravity sucks him deeper inside, and within, he hears his sister’s voice, joyous, excited. She’s hugging him before her flight.
“Don’t worry, Alec, when we all reunite on the colony, Simon and I can have our wedding. You won’t miss out.”
Then his father and his mother, standing side by side, on the day he graduated from MIT.
“Your first love was always the sky… We could never get you to stop looking upwards. We’re proud of you.”
Jace laughing and bumping fists with him after one of their routine test flights.
“Always gotta one-up my scores. I’ll take you down next time.”
And young Max lying on his back next to him inside an old planetarium, both of their eyes pointed skywards, watching projections of stars rotate slowly.
“I want to see them for real one day, without all the smoke and dust in the way.”
Memories Alec latches onto, guarding them close to his heart, because he knows they’re all waiting for him. They were supposed to meet up and live peacefully in Kepler-452b –or as it’s now known as, Gaia. Start over anew. Thrive in a land that hasn’t been disintegrating before their very eyes.
Now, Alec won’t make it to Izzy’s wedding. Won’t get to watch Max grow old. Won’t get to argue with his parents, hear his mom nag at him about his love life, his father try and talk sports with him, trade barbs with Jace. None of that.
His pulse slows down, water pushing through his mouth and nose, shadows stretching further over his consciousness, before the pod door suddenly flies open, sending waves gushing out over the edge. Alec’s thoughts are still swirling in his head, and he feels like he’s breathing in thumb tacks instead of air, but he takes his first full breath in what feels like an eternity.
The ship’s human-shaped navigation droid is positioned next to him, mechanical hinges scraping together as it fixes the single red light from its oblong head at him.
“Alexander Gideon Lightwood, appointed First Captain of Urania-Ω by the Odyssey Research Institute, New York branch. In the event of an emergency, you were to be removed from stasis first. We have crash-landed in the nearest hospitable planet –Kepler-442b, located in the Lyra constellation.”
Alec’s still struggling to catch his breath as he climbs out of the pod. From what he can see, the other nineteen cryo-pods are all also offline and unresponsive, though the passengers have all been thawed out. That means they’re probably drowning in the pods as they speak.
There’s not enough time for Alec to process that thought as he scrambles over to them on weary, gelatinous legs and picks the pod closest to him. The external monitors surrounding it are also shut off, so he has no reading on the passenger’s vitals, and their body inside is too still. Practically catatonic already.
“Help me get them out!” he shouts at the droid.
“Affirmative.”
The droid’s heavy footfalls quickly march over to the pod, and the two of them work to push the door open, though it refuses to budge at all. Alec’s teeth grit together, muscles tensing up, fingernails pushing through the door’s creases, practically growling as he attempts again to lift the door. It still won’t budge. Which shouldn’t shock him. The pods had been designed to open electronically not manually, and some of the interior latches are too secure for him to even rattle loose.
“Fuck! How’d you even open mine?!”
The droid demonstrates by plugging one of its fingers into a port on the side to bring the pod back online long enough to open the hatch. Every latch inside releases, and water comes spilling out along the sides as the door hisses open.
The woman inside is blond, middle-aged, dressed in the standard utilitarian undergarments provided to all passengers – a short, sleeveless compression top and a pair of compression shorts.
Alec’s fingers immediately move towards the woman’s neck to feel for a pulse as the droid starts unlocking the next pod. There’s nothing. Not even the slightest hint of a throb, and Alec fights to keep his trembling fingers steady.
“No, please–!”
Before he can wrap his head around the possibility that every other passenger might be dead, a loud thumping noise erupts from pod #20. It’s offline like the rest, but whoever is inside is putting up a good fight to get out.
Alec doesn’t bother waiting for the droid as he runs towards it, looking for anything he can break the glass with. There’s a fire extinguisher hanging next to the nearest control console, one he doesn’t hesitate to grab before running back to the pod. The banging has already died down, and he’s fearing the worst. Still, he doesn’t let that stop him as he smashes the glass as hard as he can.
Pain flares along his arms and explodes around his shoulders as he strikes the glass again and again until it breaks and gives way. The body inside doesn’t rise up to steal any water, so Alec keeps smashing at it until there’s enough of an opening to drag the passenger out.
It’s a man this time, probably around Alec’s age. That’s all Alec’s brain registers as he lays the body on the ground and checks his pulse. It’s still there, but it’s faint. He’d probably been well on his way to drowning.
His palms immediately start pressing down on the passenger’s chest to perform rapid chest compressions to try and resuscitate him. He alternates between them and leaning down to clip the man’s nose and breathe into his mouth, trying to fill him with whatever oxygen he has left to give.
It’s fine. Take it all. Just don’t die on me…
His own heart is pounding fast, nerves awoken and on the edge of his skin as he presses down hard, keeps breathing. If he can save at least one person– please don’t die.
He can feel the man’s chest quiver under his hands, and he keeps pressing down, fastens their mouths together, exhales everything he has inside his own lungs until he starts to get light-headed. A few more pods have been opened, but Alec can only focus on giving CPR to one person at a time.
Several more chest pumps later, and the man eventually jolts awake with an abruptness that catches Alec off-guard. The man then twists to the side and starts coughing violently and vomiting out water.
“Are you okay?” Alec asks him.
A single nod is his answer, and Alec lets him catch his breath while joining the droid in removing the next body from pod #3, one that also has no pulse. It’s an older man, whose skin is already sickly-pale and slightly decayed, meaning he probably died long before they crashed. It’s not unheard of that some bodies simply don’t make it through the long cryo-sleep.
The rescued passenger from pod #20 slowly pushes himself onto his feet. “How can I help?” he wheezes out, still looking disoriented and barely conscious.
“We need to get these open as fast as we can,” Alec tells him.
The man nods and tosses the abandoned extinguisher towards Alec before running to find something for himself. He comes back with a large ax, which probably came from the utility room near the bridge. With it, he manages to make quick work of the next pod and tug the body free. A young woman –barely over eighteen from the looks of it.
“No pulse,” he reports before attempting to perform CPR on her like Alec did to him.
There’s not enough time for Alec to quiz him on his training and credentials as Alec pulls out more bodies and tries to see if any of them are even the slightest bit responsive, but it’s already been too long since they were thawed out and submerged. The average person can usually only hold their breath for a minute to a minute and a half. He’s sure more time than that has already passed, and chances are, even if they do resuscitate the other passengers, the passengers might wind up with serious brain damage.
Between the two of them and the droid, they eventually free up the eighteen other passengers and lay their bodies out side by side after several failed attempts at CPR. They all look like ghosts already, skin removed of life, heat, and color, eyes drawn shut, limbs not even twitching slightly. The only other survivor with him looks absolutely grief-stricken as he sinks tiredly to his knees, and Alec isn’t sure what to say or do to make him feel better.
His body is feeling just as beaten and exhausted, barely able to hold itself up, but sheer will keeps him standing. He’s still the captain. Still has to be the one to remain calm and focused even if the backs of his eyes are burning wildly with unshed tears.
Alec forces himself to lay a hand on the stranger’s shoulder to try and offer some vague sense of comfort, and the other man’s muscles jerk a little from the touch. “Did you know any of them?”
The man shakes his head. “My friends and colleagues were on the ships ahead of us.”
That doesn’t give Alec any relief. Just because the two of them didn’t know any of these passengers, it doesn’t mean they weren’t other people’s spouses, parents, siblings, or children.
And Alec had let them all die.
He’s not even sure how. The ship had a pre-programmed trajectory, the same as all the other passenger ships. They shouldn’t have run into any kind of interference on the way. Not when the previous flights had all used the same complex navigation systems to reach the colony safely.
It had to have been an equipment failure somewhere. The power could have malfunctioned due to an unplanned solar flare or they could have collided with space debris –maybe even skirted too close to the electromagnetic field of another planet or celestial body, which could have caused some kind of programming error. If Alec can get the power on the ship back online fully, he can review the whole flight log and check.
But he can’t move past the thought that he fucked up. He fucked up, and eighteen people are dead because of him. It’s all his fault. He was supposed to get them to the colony safely, and they could have at least been spared if the pods had opened correctly.
His body finally gives into the urge to crumble, collapsing next to the other passenger as he cups his own face. Tries to breathe. His lungs feel like they’re being crushed in someone’s iron grip, and he can’t stop wheezing.
A few tears slip free, and his muscles shudder hard, unable to keep it together like he knows he should. Unable to stay in control. The constant reminder that it’s all his fault walls his brain in on all sides, slowly moving inwards, making it hard to think of anything else. It should have been him who died. He had only been saved because he was the captain –the first in line to be rescued in case of an emergency. That’s the standard protocol for all flight missions, programmed into each droid’s internal processing core. It had only been doing as commanded.
The fact that the man next to him had survived at all is nothing short of a miracle. He should have been dead with the rest of them.
“...How?” Alec asks, his voice withered to shreds. He glances at the man’s face, finding his eyes beneath his damp fringe, noting their deep brown color for the first time. “How…did you make it? You would have been last if you didn’t start banging.”
The man’s eyes widen a little, like he’s also realizing at that moment that he could have very easily joined the other corpses. “I used to do a lot of freediving… I can go up to seven minutes without a breathing apparatus.”
Talk about luck. Alec’s sure if he had stalled a moment longer, he’d be completely alone right now. Alone and mourning over nineteen dead bodies.
Another shuddered breath leaves him too fast, his vision spotting at the edges until a hand slowly moves over his, the touch tentative but obviously aiming to give him comfort.
“Hey,” the man murmurs, his voice just as shaky. “It’s okay. Because of you, I’m alive.”
It’s the only consolation to all of this –that Alec had managed to save just one person. Although, he can’t really attest to how ‘saved’ either of them are at the moment. They’re not even in the solar system they’re supposed to be in, and the ship already looks like it probably needs significant repairs. He imagines they’re running on the barest hints of power at the moment, otherwise they’d be in the dark right now, freezing and running out of oxygen.
Whatever functions of the back-up generator still remain should have theoretically been sending power to the pods as well, and Alec will have to check to see why they aren’t as soon as he puts himself back together. As it is, he can barely stomach being alive at the moment even if it’s not the first time he’s experienced loss. The difference is that he feels more directly responsible this time.
The hand on top of his clenches with a little more pressure. “Just breathe… I know it’s a lot to handle right now, but you need to breathe.”
“I can’t,” Alec pants. “I can’t.”
The stranger abruptly shifts positions so that they’re facing one another, his warm palms closing around Alec’s face. “Look at me. Focus on me. What’s your name?”
Alec tries to concentrate on the face in front of him as it blurs and distorts. The eyes are the most hyper-vivid part of the other passenger, the warmth cradled inside reminding Alec of heated chocolate being slowly stirred. Alec doesn’t think he’s ever come across anyone who could express so much with so little.
Before he can answer, the droid pipes up with: “Alexander Gideon Lightwood, appointed First Captain of Urania-Ω by the Odyssey Research Institute (also known colloquially as the ORI), New York branch. Graduated at the top of his class from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a PhD in Aerospace Engineering, born September 9th–”
Fearing the droid is about to lay out his entire personal file to someone Alec has only just met, he quickly intervenes. “I can answer him myself!”
The stranger’s lips twitch at his response. “A pleasure to meet you, Alexander. I am Magnus Bane, PhD from Brown University in Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry. Born December 8th… I’ll let you ruminate on the year.”
If Alec weren’t busy trying to concentrate on breathing normally, he’d correct Magnus about his preferred form of address, but it’s the least of his worries at the moment. He’s more relieved that Magnus hadn’t been one of those billionaires who cut through the long wait list to get off Earth by sending exorbitant donations to the ORI. Generally speaking, those chosen as passengers tend to either be said billionaires, employees working for the ORI, or field experts to aid in Gaia’s exploration and colonization before they allow the general population to start migrating from Earth. Alec’s whole family had signed on for the Urania-series of missions out of New York, and Alec had made sure everyone else went ahead of him before leaving Earth on the last mission just because he had a lot of work left to finish to prep for the next series of voyages that would follow Urania.
For safety reasons, each ship can only carry twenty passengers aboard at a time, and because the hyper-accelerated speeds required to traverse that distance in a reasonable amount of time are more than the human body can endure, all passengers are put in cryo-sleep to keep their vital functions stable. The trip also takes about four and a half years in which the body is placed into a suspended state, neither growing, transforming, nor aging until it’s thawed out.
His family were closer to the front of the line for the Urania-series and will probably touch down in Gaia in about three and a half years while Alec… Alec is trapped in the middle of nowhere with a droid and a scientist. He’s not even sure how he’s going to get them back on course, considering they crashed all the way in a different constellation.
“Magnus,” he finally repeats after a moment, trying desperately to calm his panic attack rather than allow it to worsen by over-analyzing their situation from a logical perspective. “The droid said the emergency landing protocol selected the nearest hospitable planet when we started to experience technical malfunctions, but it’s hard to gauge how hospitable it is. ORI scouted a lot of possibilities back when they were looking for potential candidates for colonization and ultimately chose Gaia because the years are roughly the same in length as Earth and because of its ecology. You couldn’t find a better replica for Earth.”
Magnus nods as he slowly withdraws his hands from Alec’s face. “So you’re saying we may have landed on one of the rejected options.”
“They were programmed as back-ups into each ship’s navigation systems, so that’s my best guess for where we ended up.”
As Alec wasn’t awake for the crash itself, he can’t really say with any certainty. He still doesn’t even know what went wrong to lead them into requiring an emergency landing.
“The good news,” Magnus tells him, “is that we had to have landed on a hard surface, otherwise, we’d be plummeting right now. And also that we had to have landed in a fairly safe environment, atmospheric-wise, otherwise we’d be dead.”
That’s true. Though the ORI ships can take a lot of abuse from being out in space, there are some toxic environments that would burn up their exterior badly upon descent. He and Magnus wouldn’t have been able to survive penetrating the atmosphere, let alone landing, if they’d been on a planet with Venus’ level of volatility.
“Would you be able to tell exactly how safe the atmosphere is?” he asks Magnus in return.
“Of course. I brought some of my equipment with me onboard. I’d just need to step out at some point to collect samples. Assuming, stepping out wouldn’t instantly kill me.”
Right. Alec has to start trying to get the ship back online to check what their situation is exactly on the outside and to do more than wallow in grief and self-loathing. There’s still one person left to protect and to safely lead to the new colony. He can’t afford to give up now, not when Magnus is depending on him to reach his friends and family.
It’s still his responsibility to do what he can to save the mission, and the passengers are always the first priority. He can mourn the dead when they’ve both reached their destination.
“Don’t push yourself to do too much at once.” Magnus interrupts his train of thought as though he can already tell where Alec’s head is going. “Take all the time you need to cope and clear your mind. You’ll think better if you’re not over-stressed.”
Even if he had the energy to protest, Alec knows Magnus is right. He can’t afford to make any more mistakes, well aware Magnus’ life is now solely in his hands. Plus, his family will be waiting for him in Gaia. His sister promised she wouldn’t hold the wedding ceremony until he arrived just so they all could celebrate together, and he doesn’t want to make her stall forever.
He takes another calm, steadying breath before nodding.
Breathe, Alec… just breathe…
☆☆☆☆☆
The Urania spaceship is shaped like a lance head with its pointed tip located where the bridge is and a wide tail. There are flared wings on both sides to help it fly more smoothly through different types of atmospheres, and the main body is broken up into seven main sections connected through a long central passageway, starting with the utility room located behind the bridge, the cryo-pod room, the research bay, the restroom facilities, the passenger cabin, the cargo hold, and finally, the engine room in the rear.
As soon as Alec had been able to collect himself, he rushed towards the bridge where the ship’s central control panels are in an effort to try and get the ship’s power back online by manually rebooting all the systems. After the fifth failed try, he realizes he’ll have to check the engine room itself since it’s obvious something is cutting the rest of the ship off from its main reactor. The back-up generator at least gives him enough power to access the ORI operating system so the trip to the bridge hasn’t been entirely useless.
Magnus had split up from him earlier to check the rest of the ship’s interior for more damage and to see if it was possible to fit the corpses into the ship’s built-in incinerator. As callous as it seems to remove them that way, the pods were wrecked from being forced open, so they can’t re-freeze all the bodies to take them to Gaia for a proper burial nor can they allow them to decompose on the ship. The smell alone would drive the two of them mad. Burning them is their only option at the moment.
It’s a grim thought he shelves away for the time being as he pulls up their location on the intergalactic navigation system. From the looks of it, they really did land on Kepler-442b, a planet with a solid surface, orbiting a K-type star. The outside temperature is −23 °C at the moment, and the gravity is roughly equivalent to Earth’s. Atmospheric readings are also showing a main composite of nitrogen and oxygen in the air.
Alec activates some of the exterior lights to look outside through the large windows surrounding the bridge. The immediate area around their landing point looks like the coast of an arctic tundra, similar to the Greenland of two centuries passed. There are huge sheets of snow-covered rock formations surrounding them with very few plants and shrubs poking between all the white mounds. There are also icebergs floating adrift across the nearest body of water, which is colored so brightly blue that Alec has to wonder how much colder and cleaner the environment is here than on Earth. He had seen large icebergs in picture books before, but they’d all melted before he’d been born from Earth’s global temperatures having risen to untenable levels.
As his eyes continue to scan over their surroundings, he picks up the sound of Magnus’ footsteps walking towards him.
“It’s beautiful,” Magnus whispers after a moment, his words flooded with awe. “Even when I went on an expedition to the South Pole, I barely saw any snow-capped mountains like these.”
Alec turns to him, catching his profile lit up nicely under the sunlight. “I imagine most of the planet looks like this. According to the data gathered from previous expeditions, the temperatures are lower here than on Earth due to the lower amount of sunlight that’s able to reach the planet’s surface and a stable ozone layer that hasn’t almost completely eroded. The average year is also only about 112.5 days long.”
That last part makes Magnus snort in amusement. “Not sure how I feel being about three times older here than I am on Earth, but maybe once I start hitting years well into the hundreds, I can pretend I’m Gandalf.”
Alec blinks at him. “Who?”
“Wizard from a very old book,” Magnus explains before raking a hand through his hair. “What are the chances of the shower stalls still working?”
Alec navigates to another screen quickly to check their water and filtration systems. The ship is programmed to clean and recycle all the water that goes through the drain so they can keep reusing it all, but those functions also require stable electricity to stay running. “I could divert some of the back-up generator power to the bathroom temporarily.”
They should probably also change out of their undergarments into something better suited for the temperature. He could save them a lot of power by lowering the heat in the ship, but they need to be wearing something more substantial than sleeveless crop tops and shorts.
“You have no idea how relieved I am that you actually know how this ship works.”
Alec glances once more from the screen just so he can steal another glimpse at Magnus’ expression, the gentle cyan glow of the monitors illuminating Magnus’ soft smile. Alec had been too busy panicking earlier to really study him or even notice much about his appearance aside from his eyes. But without the aura of death smothering them from all sides, he can admit to himself that Magnus is really …really nice to look at. Alec’s always been fascinated by the way bones create rich geometric shapes under-skin, and the sharpness of Magnus’ jaw, the slope of his nose, and the roundness of his adam’s apple all look like they’d been carved from the richest sediment on earth with specific intent to build a man who could rival Michaelangelo’s David in strength and beauty.
It takes him by surprise for a second, heat budding under his skin like humid jungle air pluming free from every one of his own body’s cells, before he forces himself to look away. Alec knows nothing about the man aside from his name and occupation, and as far as he’s concerned, they’re just captain and passenger right now. He can’t complicate their survival here by thinking of anything beyond that.
Besides, Alec hasn’t really thought about dating or sex in a long time, not since he first signed up with ORI. All his free time had been depleted in favor of devoting himself fully to the mission of helping their species migrate and start over on a new planet. The ripple effect of so many years of humanity’s carelessness had led to global food shortages and a decline in areas that were inhabitable. The air had grown toxic, the climate too volatile, and the flooding waters were driving people further inland into densely packed cities where populations were surging without control. Territory wars had broken out, poverty flourished, and the inflamed masses kept rallying violently against the wealthy just to survive a few extra years on a dying planet. The only future politicians could promise was one on a planet about 1,800 light years from earth, now under the jurisdiction of the ORI, who discovered how to get there in the first place and how to build cities on it.
There had been all these pamphlets and videos distributed by the ORI internationally, showing luxurious, modern condos for new arrivals, and he and his siblings were planning on sharing one and going on hikes and swims around the beautiful untouched coastal areas. Bleakly, Alec thinks he might never get to see what progress the ORI had made on Gaia for himself.
His shoulders slump a little as he reminds himself to check on the status of the other ships as soon as he gets enough of the ship up and running. At the very least, he hopes his family will all make it there without incident even if he can’t join them. He’d be able to feel more at ease about his own situation if they at least survive the full trip.
Magnus’ hand gently lands on his shoulder, making some of his muscles jump slightly at the contact. “I’d offer you some Earth credits in exchange for your thoughts, but I’m pretty sure all of our savings had been invalidated the moment we left the atmosphere.”
“There’s an exchange,” Alec reassures him. “Earth credits to Gaia credits, so you don’t end up starting with nothing again, plus the first year’s stipend for agreeing to go on the trip at all.”
“Ah yes, how could I forget? They gave all of us a rather lengthy orientation to explain the transition, but I hadn’t really come to terms with how far I’d be from Earth until I woke up here.”
Neither had Alec, and he’d been on numerous flights before. Not all the way to the colony but to different destinations in their solar system, just to investigate all kinds of celestial bodies for raw materials that could be mined.
“To answer you fully,” Alec continues, “I was just thinking about our next steps. We have a few years’ worth of supply rations on board in the cargo hold, mostly in the form of powders and dry food, and the ship can filter urine and shower water into clean drinking water, so we can feasibly survive on board for a long while.” That’s not even counting the potential to find food and water on this planet, assuming there are any other living things on it. There is some vegetation around the ship, but Alec doesn’t know if he can make the right judgment call to determine whether any of it’s safe.
“I did bring seeds,” Magnus points out. “I requested to bring several to study how well they can flourish in an entirely different ecology, if at all.”
Which means both of them eventually going outside to conduct tests, but Alec doesn’t want to risk it quite yet. Not until they’ve fully restored power to the ship. It would give them extra security, especially if there is anything dangerous out there that they may need to run and take cover from.
“We’ll worry about planting and gardening later. Taking care of the engine and the corpses are greater priorities.”
Magnus nods, his expression growing somber at the reminder that they have eighteen people to incinerate. “Do you have a copy of the flight manifest? So we can at least know their names and who they were before we burn them. Maybe try and send a message to Earth so their families are aware… We should also do something about their personal belongings.”
All passengers are allowed to bring up to two suitcase’s worth of personal items with them, and every single item needs to be vetted and approved by ORI before it goes on the ship. Alec had mostly brought clothes, toiletries, and pictures of his family. He’d never been one to hold onto a lot of sentiment nor had he collected much in his lifetime that didn’t have some utilitarian function. He can’t imagine what other people might have selected to take with them.
His fingers glide across the touch panel to pull up the flight manifest records, locating each passenger. A lot of them had been well-renowned tech experts, doctors, and scientists from around the globe, including two surgeons who’d been married to one another. Only one of the passengers had bought his way in, an investor and the heir to a fast food chain empire.
Alec hovers a little curiously over Magnus’ name on the roster before the man in question reaches over and taps it for him. “You can look all you want. There’s nothing thrilling on it aside from my resume and my program application.”
“And your health records,” Alec supplies.
“You’ll be happy to know I’m very healthy. They tested everything from my saliva to the motility of my sperm.”
Alec’s face scrunches a little at that, reminded of all the invasive tests that were conducted to make sure they were fit to survive the trip and that they wouldn’t be bringing any contagions with them, which, yes, did include a sperm test. The extraction part had been a little difficult, and it’s a memory Alec would rather not want to relive any time soon.
Even with blanket permission to peek, Alec still feels like it’s invasive, so he exits quickly out of the screen and starts heading towards the engine room, only pausing to grab one of the standard-issue protective bodysuits from the utility room. It’s made of a special insulated fabric, similar to the neoprene found in diving suits, but thicker and better able to compress tightly around different body shapes. He grabs a pair of boots after and walks along the central passageway, a little surprised when Magnus starts dressing in his own suit to follow him.
Once Magnus catches up to Alec, he quickly explains himself. “I know engineering is your area of expertise, but considering you’re my only companion all the way out here in the middle of nowhere, I feel a little obligated to make sure nothing happens to you.”
Magnus must have things horribly backwards in his head if he’s worrying about him. Alec is the one responsible for him, not the other way around. “You’ll only be a liability, especially if you start tinkering around with things you don’t know. Besides, I’ve been in plenty of malfunctioning engine rooms before. I know how to deal with a few sparks and fire.”
A hand stops him before he can open the final door into the engine room, and Alec turns sharply to see Magnus holding out a helmet to him with his other hand. “Carbon monoxide is odorless and colorless. You’d be dead in minutes if you inhaled it while being trapped inside a room with the door vacuum-sealed shut.”
“I was just about to get that,” Alec grits out.
No, he wasn’t, but he tries not to let it show on his features.
He yanks the helmet from Magnus’ hands and heads inside, glancing through the faint lights and billowing steam to try and glance at the engine. The ORI had created and patented a unique engine that operates like a small nuclear reactor but only produces extremely minute traces of radiation and gas emissions, far more environmentally sound than the reactors they have on Earth. It’s the crux of how these ships are able to perform such large jumps in speed through vast distances across space. They are also notoriously difficult to knock offline.
Magnus shines a large flashlight to help as Alec brushes aside the steam to see better. From what he can observe, the engine itself is fine. It hadn’t taken any internal or external damage. It’s the cables that connect it to the rest of the ship that had been damaged.
His eyes squint as he steps in closer to check. It looks like the cables had been lacerated or chewed through. Unless several rats had snuck aboard at some point, he’s not sure what could have caused it.
“Alexander,” Magnus whispers before moving the flashlight closer to one of the interior walls nearby to guide his gaze.
There, Alec spots several tiny metal …crabs gathered in a massive colony, using pincer-like appendages to attack more of the wires stretched out across the walls. They’re so small, he likely would have missed them if there weren’t so many clustered together, all fighting to destroy the ship from within.
“They look like nanomachines. Definitely not the kind produced by ORI,” he murmurs. “Grab the extinguisher. That should compromise their hinges and make them fall.”
Within moments, Magnus sprints away to grab the fire extinguisher canister before handing it to Alec to spray the nanomachines. The fact that the nanomachines are on board at all means someone set them up to crash and die before they even took off –likely one of the thousands of terrorist groups that sprung out of the Earth First Movement.
A lot of people back home have been hypnotized by the extremist rhetoric that there’s no reason to abandon Earth and pour all their finances and resources into space exploration and colonization. They believe the ORI are a part of a large-scale conspiracy to trick the masses into thinking the Earth is dying in order to drain public funds away from those who plan to remain on Earth and to further line the pockets of the rich, which is so utterly absurd to Alec, he still can’t fathom there are actually people out there who still fall for it.
The nanomachines gradually plummet to the ground in a slow-building pile before Alec summons the ship’s navigation droid. “Can you run a diagnostics report on them? They should have an internal chip that can help us figure out who made them and where they came from.”
“Affirmative,” the droid tells them, its metal feet clamping loudly across their floors to meet up with them.
How the nanomachines even got in without being detected on the ORI security scans is a mystery. Alec had also checked the engine room top to bottom before they took off. He’s sure he would have noticed if there were that many inside.
The droid quickly opens a hatch in the center of its metal torso to insert one of the nanomachines so it can run a quick analysis. “Central processing chip manufacture methods correlate with those used by the Circle.”
That’s what Alec was afraid of. Out of all the terrorist organizations, it had be one of the more violent and better-funded ones. He curses under his breath, still baffled they snuck nanomachines aboard the ship. They must have infiltrated the ORI somehow, either as one of their security team technicians or as a passenger.
His eyes trail over Magnus with a frown, not wanting to believe he’d be among them, but Magnus had seemed a little too transparent about his personal file earlier, and it couldn’t have been a complete coincidence that he was the only one to survive. Maybe Magnus was never in any danger to begin with.
Sensing his suspicion, Magnus rolls his eyes in irritation. “I’m not one of them. Frankly, I’m insulted you would even think so. Those radical purists want to build a better nation by also removing all the ‘aberrations’ from it, which includes yours truly.”
Alec isn’t sure what Magnus means by that, doesn’t have time to slowly take it apart inside his head, but he doesn’t want to abandon his suspicions until he has more definitive proof. “How do I know for sure?
“The cargo hold,” Magnus replies. “If one of the Circle members snuck them aboard as a passenger, there would be evidence left in their luggage.”
As much as Alec doesn’t want to rummage through the belongings of the dead, the nanomachines had to have been smuggled aboard somehow. The luggage hadn’t been under Alec’s purview to check. There were other ORI security officers responsible for searching through every single piece to make sure there was nothing inside that was contraband or hadn’t received some prior official approval. However, it would take a single officer on the wrong side to let something dangerous slip through.
The droid is left to run a sweep of the engine room and remove any remaining nanomachines while Alec starts going through each of the capsules stuffed with the other passengers’ belongings. Most of them are filled with clothes, toiletries, electronics, assorted personal items, jewelry, some stuffed toys, and printed-out photographs.
“This one has a small opening carved into the glass,” Magnus points out before dragging the capsule over to Alec. There’s only one bag inside, a black duffel. When Magnus unzips it he reveals that there is also only a single item inside… a large snow globe of old New York City from the turn of the 2nd millennium.
“Let me see.” Alec takes the snowglobe in his hands, turning it over before finding the base of it has a small hatch on the bottom which had been pried open. “The nanomachines must have been hidden inside.”
“The label on the outside says it belongs to Malachi Dieudonné from pod #3.”
The old man. He must have been on a suicide mission to take them down and send a message to the ORI and all other similar institutions. He probably ingested poison before the freezing process since it’s obvious he had no intention of ever making it all the way to Gaia. How had he slipped this far unnoticed? There had to have been someone on the inside helping him, especially since all passengers were carefully vetted to make sure none of them have committed any serious crimes in the past or are affiliated with any terrorist organizations.
Alec grabs a hold of one of the portable tablets in the cargo hold to log into the ORI network and review Malachi’s file. “He’s a computer programmer with a PhD in Computer Science from the Rochester Institute of Technology. He acted as the CEO of ECCOTech for two decades. It’s hard to tell how much of his file had been fabricated, but there’s nothing here that would have been flagged as a security risk.”
ORI even collaborated with ECCOTech to build their ship’s operating system. Whoever Malachi really is, he’d done his best to avoid suspicion, and now, seventeen innocent people are dead because of him. He might not even be the only one out there ready to sabotage their flights, a realization that leaves Alec feeling a punctuated chill beneath his lungs. He has to find some way to send a message back to the New York branch about the incident, but to do that, he has to first repair the engine so they’re not running on just a fraction of its power.
“What are you thinking?” Magnus asks for a moment, still crouched next to the capsule containing Malachi’s ‘belongings.’
Alec narrows his eyes, already intent on returning to the cryo-pods. “That we burn Malachi’s body first.”
He hears no protest at all from Magnus as the other man stands up to follow him.
☆☆☆☆☆
There’s nothing like a shower to make someone feel reborn, and Alec is grateful he’d bothered to divert some extra power to heat the water. It’s probably a horrible waste, but he can’t be bothered to care as he enjoys the hot water sluicing its way between his back muscles and riding the curve of his spine.
The ship’s restroom facilities only have three shower stalls positioned next to one another, and he’s trying not to focus on the fact that Magnus is just a thin wall away, head tipped back, body also lodged under the warm spray. Alec had caught enough glimpses of him earlier to note that he has quite a sculpted and athletic build for a scientist. From what scant bits he’s learned here and there from Magnus, the other man had been a dedicated explorer on Earth when he wasn’t cooped up in his lab, enjoying everything from diving and hiking to climbing the few mountains that were still standing, so it really shouldn’t surprise Alec.
In fact, Alec would be impressed by that level of physicality if he weren’t busy trying to strangle the twin pair of flame-infused snakes coiling their way around his stomach everytime he hears Magnus let out a blissed-out sigh from the stall next to him. It’s the last thing he should be thinking about, especially when he didn’t come on this journey to make eyes at his passengers, ones who may be straight. Alec had glimpsed at Magnus’ file long enough to know he is single and without kids, but that doesn’t mean Magnus might not want either of those things with a woman one day.
God, what is Alec even thinking? He’s sure he’s only entertaining the thought because they’re out here in the middle of nowhere, in space, and the mind and body both start growing desperate when death feels imminent. It’s been four years already since his last serious relationship, and though he’d convinced himself that he didn’t need anyone and that he was better off focusing on his career, the thought that he could have died nearly a day ago without knowing what it was like to kiss someone again or sleep surrounded in their scent and body warmth is still too overwhelming for his brain to comprehend.
But having a messy fling with one of his passengers isn’t the solution to dissolving the sudden weight of his own loneliness, and he’s sure he’ll get over it once he gets their flight back on track. He’s already resolved to spend tomorrow working on some of the easier cables to mend in the engine room, but to do that, he’ll have to take the whole ship offline for a few hours except for the cabin pressurization system, meaning he and Magnus will be left freezing. It’s a small sacrifice they’ll have to make, but Magnus had already told him he’ll just pile on blankets and endure –he’s apparently roughed it outdoors enough times and in far less desirable conditions.
Magnus’ shower is the first to be shut off, and Alec hears him pad across the metal floors over to the sinks to brush his teeth. Steeling himself, Alec tentatively steps out of his shower next, wrapping a towel around his waist to give himself some modesty before pushing his hair back out of his face. A few water drops cascade down his own spine, beading their way to the small of his back, and he’s quickly flooded by the natural chill clinging to the ship’s interiors.
Meanwhile, his eyes are already skirting up the mounds of thick muscle molded along Magnus’ arms and shoulders, watching them tense and relax with each movement before he mentally snaps himself out of it a second time. It’s just another body, like any other he’s come across, and he should be better than this. He’d already survived a tour of duty in the U.S. Air Force without so much glancing at a single guy the whole time.
He’s about to start brushing his teeth when he catches a peripheral glimpse of Magnus, his eyes raking over the nape of Magnus’ neck this time. There’s a long vertical scar, one that looks like it came from a messy, crude cut instead of any done with surgical precision. It runs from the bottom of his hairline to the center of his shoulder blades.
Magnus spots him staring in the mirror and raises a hand self-consciously over the scar. “A gift from the Circle.”
Something hard and jagged expands at the base of Alec’s throat, making him already dread the worst. “Did they chip you?”
“Oh, how they did,” Magnus replies, trying to inject some humor into the situation. “Apparently they thought I was an illegal refugee and not a college freshman legally in the country on a student visa. Had to pay some back-alley surgeon to remove it.”
The explanation only worsens Alec’s growing nausea. “Magnus, you could have ended up paralyzed if the knife slipped the wrong way, or it could have gotten infected.”
“I was nineteen and barely had enough to feed myself. It was the only way to get rid of it.”
An aberration… –that’s what Magnus had called himself. At least, in the eyes of the Circle, simply for looking different. Being born elsewhere. Alec understands now how much he fucked up before.
“I’m sorry,” Alec murmurs, head bowed, eyes now staring down at the sink. “I should have never accused you of being one of them.”
“It’s fine. It was all in the past. It didn’t stop me from living as freely and as colorfully as I desired.” Magnus follows those words with a flourishing gesture before turning away to grab his clothes for the evening.
Even if he’s playing it off casually, Alec can tell it still bothers him. It’s written in Magnus’ eyes, the veiled torment that he dresses up with pretty smiles. The Circle had spent years renegade-chipping foreigners to monitor all their whereabouts and activities –those they didn’t outright murder. They believed that with resources so limited, it was better to get rid of those who they felt were undeserving and only leeching off the government. Alec’s well aware he’d been born more fortunate than most that no one had ever questioned whether or not he belonged in New York.
After solemnly brushing his own teeth and dragging on his sleep clothes, Alec heads towards the passenger cabin, which is mostly composed of sleeping berths built into both walls on either side, modeled after Japan’s pioneer capsule hotels. They are small and cramped, and Alec can’t claim to enjoy sleeping in them when he’s over six feet tall, but he’s adjusted over time.
Magnus picks a sleeping berth across from him so they’re directly in each other’s sight line in case anything happens. His body is turned over on its stomach, arms crossed under his head so he can rest his chin on them and stare over at Alec through the dim lights.
In contrast, Alec is lying on his back, his feet extended towards the berth’s opening as he stares upwards, unable to fall asleep immediately in spite of how harrowing the day had been. A part of him keeps thinking he’ll wake up inside the cryo-pod again, unable to breathe, clawing his way to escape. The memory alone is too unsettling for him to move past, well aware that if not for the droid, both he and Magnus would have also wound up as corpses floating around in water until some other explorer would find their bones centuries from now.
His hands pull tighter around the blankets, trying to at least close his eyes, but he keeps hearing Magnus breathe from across the walkway, both his own body and mind growing more and more keenly aware of the scant few feet separating both of them.
“Even if you get the ship up and running,” Magnus absently muses out loud, “the cryo-pods aren’t working. We’ll be close to five years older than everyone else if we stay awake the whole ride to Gaia, and that’s not even accounting for our organs liquefying at a high velocity.”
It’s a thought that’s crossed Alec’s mind a few times. He’s not even sure if there are enough supplies to sustain them that long, although they are carrying a lot of non-perishable food with them. It was supposed to be shared with those who are already on Gaia whenever they arrived.
“I can probably repair two of the pods even if they’re not my specialty. There are manuals onboard, and the ones the droid opened weren’t smashed through. We can even run a few tests to make sure the doors will automatically open after the thawing process.”
“Okay, but which one of us will be getting frozen to test that out?”
Alec can feel Magnus’ eyes pointedly staring at him as he answers, “It would make more sense if it were you. I know the ship’s systems better.”
He hears Magnus scoff as he shuffles a little noisily in his sleeping berth. “As much as I trust your expertise on the matter, I am not exactly eager to get back inside.”
“You’re the one who bragged about being able to hold your breath for seven minutes.”
Magnus snorts this time. “I can’t tell you how often that’s come in handy in the bedroom.”
The comment slides through Alec like thick, warm caramel, slowly edging its way from his chest down to his stomach. He’s sure Magnus hadn’t meant anything that suggestive by it, but his mind lands him in the worst spot.
And because he doesn’t want that to be the last mental image he carries with him before he sleeps, he changes the subject quickly. “You said you had friends who went in the ships before you. Were they all on the Urania series?”
“No, they were scattered throughout the previous series. One of them was even on the Calliope series, Ragnor Fell. A highly respected surgeon and kind of a surly asshole before he’s had his morning coffee. Also just an asshole in general.”
Alec can definitely relate. “My family all went on the Urania series. We had tried to get the same vessel together, but there was no way they could accommodate the request, so we all split up. I ultimately picked the last voyage out.”
Whether or not that was for the best, Alec can’t tell. He’s still worried the other ships may have been attacked in a similar fashion as theirs, something he’s doing his best not to voice, lest he make the possibility more concrete.
“My adopted brother is the captain of the Urania-ψ spaceship,” Alec continues. “He went on with my sister, and my parents took my little brother on the Urania-Φ. They work for the ORI, too, so they got special clearance for my youngest brother.”
Magnus makes a soft noise of understanding. “So they’ll be arriving ahead of us by quite some time. I imagine us being unfrozen will set us back.”
Izzy will have to postpone her wedding even longer, assuming Alec can even get the two of them back into space and on their path once more. If not, he’s not sure what he’ll do. He’s trying not to face the reality he may never see his family again. That he and Magnus might die here all alone without sending their loved ones a single goodbye.
All the memories and life events he’ll miss out on. He’ll never get to see Izzy in the wedding dress and veil she packed. Never get to listen to Jace’s horrible stand-up routine while trying to deliver his toast to them. Never hear Max whine about being too old to be the ring-bearer or his parents give Simon’s family judgmental looks.
He wouldn’t even know what it would have been like to get married himself and be a father, all things he’d once dreamed of as a kid when his future had seemed to be brimming with limitless potential before reality set in. He’s thirty now and had thought he could have put off thinking about it for another few years, but he’s suddenly regretting all the times he’d chosen work over himself.
“Yeah,” he finally says after a moment. “Hopefully not too long. We should get some sleep so I can start on repairs in the morning.”
He doesn’t want to unload all his fears on someone he’d met barely a day ago. He’d only just be placing a greater burden on Magnus when he has no certainty how their fate will pan out. Even if Magnus seems fairly calm and rational, Alec also doesn’t know how quickly all that will degrade if he were to tell Magnus there is a good chance they might end up spending their last remaining days as the only two people on this planet.
“Good night, Alexander.”
Magnus’ soft voice suddenly jerks him out of his train of thought, and Alec drags his comforter over his head and mutters a half-hearted “good night” in return.
☆☆☆☆☆
– Earth Days: 002 –
The chill had been more than Magnus had been prepared to deal with as he wraps himself in a thick blanket over his insulated parka. He’d left Alec to fiddle inside the engine room while sequestering himself up in one of the stations in the research bay with a flashlight and a portable tablet running on battery power so he can study the planet they’re on.
Since the planet receives about 70% percent of the sunlight they get from Earth, it will be a struggle to get the seeds he brought with him from Earth to grow. Not unless they can build a greenhouse to trap in light, heat, and carbon dioxide, or if they were able to rig the interior lights to simulate the sun’s intensity, but that’s a big if. Considering Alec is still working on getting the engines to give them an adequate amount of heat and light inside just to be able to function normally, Magnus isn’t placing his bets on that happening any time soon.
According to the public ORI database, the planet they’re on had last been explored about forty-five years ago, before either he or Alec had been born, as a possible candidate for a replacement Earth. The drastically low temperatures on a global scale and the difficulty it would take to terraform the planet had gotten it stricken from the list of candidates, along with the hostile creatures already inhabiting the planet.
Of which Alec had neglected to mention.
Any further reports on said creatures are restricted and likely only accessible with Alec’s level of security clearance. A terrible, terrible shame. Magnus would really like to know what’s lurking around the corners outside their ship, waiting to murder them.
He hopes it’s more on the polar bear scale and less… on the Tyrannosaurus rex one. It gives him a lot of second thoughts about exploring outside, but he’d like to at least collect some soil and water samples to see how much of it they can use to supplement their standard of living here. Magnus knows their supplies are bound to run out at some point even if they ration themselves, and if the hostile alien creatures don’t kill them first, then malnutrition will.
Or the cold.
His fingers pull the blankets tighter around himself, trying to also gauge if the air is even breathable or toxic to them. The ship’s sensors had read there was 19.8% oxygen in the atmosphere, slightly lower than Earth, and around 80% nitrogen, which is promising, but Magnus would like to complete a few more formal tests to make sure they don’t accidentally breathe in anything harmful in their lungs like lead or alien poisons.
Though Alec had been skirting around discussing it, Magnus is aware they might end up on this world for longer than either of them are prepared to handle, which is terrifying in a way Magnus hasn’t wanted to process yet. Even for a natural-born adventurer like him, it’s disquieting to think of spending an eternity alone with a stranger, especially one who seems to enjoy patronizing him. Even if Alec had apologized, the accusation Alec had hurled at him yesterday about who sabotaged their flight had been a sour note in their relationship that hadn’t given Magnus a lot of promising insight into the ship’s captain.
Another terrible shame because he is rather handsome –beautiful eyes, stunning physique, a face that reminds Magnus of all the actors in those stunning old Hollywood swashbuckler films. Had they met under any circumstance, Magnus wouldn’t have hesitated to hit on him, but considering he’s now reliant on Alec for survival, he has no intentions of letting his guard down around him.
Trust has always been difficult for him to construct for anyone, only holding a few to any level of high regard. Very few. And Alec works for an institution that allowed a Circle member on board, something Magnus knows couldn’t have been an easy feat to accomplish without inside aid. While he doesn’t think Alec is at all in league with the Circle, he’s still not sure if Alec also wouldn’t eventually sacrifice him for his own survival if he had the choice.
Yes, he saved him once, but Alec has a family to get home to. Magnus is no one to him. There’s no question Alec wouldn’t prioritize reaching the colony first. The real conundrum is whether or not Magnus wouldn’t do the same. He also wants to see Catarina, Ragnor, Dorothea, and Raphael again. Wants to reach the ends of the universe, let his wanderer’s heart thrive, do more to help the new colony, and give the people he loves and cares about a chance to survive.
Dying early is not an option for him, no matter how hard fear has him gripped at the moment, so he has to at least find some way to cooperate with Alec until they get off this planet and back into orbit. That means doing what he can to contribute even if Alec is stubborn, single-minded, and hates actually asking him for help.
At least, the droid seems a little more delighted to have him on board, even if the droid isn’t really the best conversation partner. Given that Magnus’ choices on companions are very limited, he still tries to make friends with it as he motions it closer.
“Did the ORI give you a name?” he asks the droid.
The red light on the droid’s oblong head glows eerily as it focuses on him. “My manufacturer is TALOS. My model number is N1138. My serial code is–”
“Not quite the answer I was looking for,” Magnus interrupts. “I meant a name, like mine is Magnus, and Alec’s is, well, Alec.”
“A given name. Negative, I do not possess one.”
How callous of the ORI. The poor robot deserves a name. After all, the robot is the main reason he and Alec are alive, protocol or not. “Well, how about we call you something a little easier to reference instead of ‘droid’?”
What is even a good robot name? All he can think of is naming him after the famous science fiction writer, Isaac Asimov, out of his own personal love of classic literature, but he’s not sure if Alec or the droid will even get the reference –or care.
Well, he doubts Alec will come up with anything more creative, so Magnus is going with that. “I, hereby, dub thee Isaac Asimov, the droid.”
The droid’s light flares then dims, clearly trying to process Magnus’ ramblings. “I will now respond to all commands by the address of ‘Isaac Asimov.’”
Magnus’ lips twitch. “Good boy. Now, if you’d kindly roll up a little closer. Your circuits are nice and warm, and I am freezing.”
“Do you wish for me to activate space heating settings?”
He can do that?! Why didn’t Alec tell him this sooner?
“Yes, please! I can’t feel anything south of my stomach at the moment.”
“Affirmative.” The robot’s torso opens like a pair of cabinet doors as a panel that reminds Magnus of a grill grate is unveiled. Behind it is a heated sphere, which he recognizes as the robot’s processing core.
It starts to emit an intense warmth that wafts over Magnus’ body quickly, making him feel pleasantly sweltering all over. It would have spared him so much grief if Alec could communicate like a normal human being instead of abandoning him in favor of tinkering away for hours –which Magnus realizes is a petty thing to complain about. Alec is trying to fix their engine, something he knows is very difficult for a team full of engineers to do, let alone one single man.
Come to think of it, he hasn’t heard from Alec in quite a while.
His body slides out of the research station he’d been curled up in, leaving the portable tablet there as he motions to the droid to follow him. Together, they take the central walkway to the back of the ship where the engine room is, hearing the sounds of sparks going off and Alec’s soft-spoken curses. To avoid terrifying him, Magnus knocks lightly on the door before poking his head in.
“Are you alright in there?”
Alec’s bent over on the ground in his bodysuit with a parka similar to Magnus’ thrown over it, twisting the copper wires and soldering them together with a soldering iron. Alec doesn’t bother to respond to him at all until he’s finished.
“Why is it suddenly so hot in here?” he asks while then busily fitting the molded heat shrink over the damaged exterior portions of the cable to hold it all together.
“Isaac unceremoniously revealed to me he’s part space heater.”
Alec glances over his shoulder to look at the droid. “You named it?”
“I was starved for company,” Magnus replies, gesturing vaguely at the droid. “I know you’re busy, but if you don’t take a break to eat, you’re going to pass out and electrocute yourself.”
“Impossible. The power is mostly off,” Alec points out before standing up anyway. “There are thousands of severed cables in here, which is going to take a long time to fix, but I can at least get certain portions of the ship up at a time, like the lights and the central air.”
It’s a start. Magnus imagines they won’t be able to take off for a long time. Not unless the engine is in pristine shape, otherwise they could risk exploding before they even leave the atmosphere of this planet. Better to die here of old age than in a fiery blaze.
“You know, you can also teach me and have an extra pair of hands to aid you.” Magnus’ hands rise and wiggle in place as demonstration. “I’ll have you know I’m naturally very dexterous with my fingers.”
The comment, he realizes, is dangerously close to a flirt and horribly inappropriate. But still a little worth it just to catch Alec nearly tripping over his own boots while following him out the engine room.
While he had his own vague suspicions about Alec’s sexuality the night before, it’s getting more and more difficult to ignore all the clues pointing out the obvious, even if it’s none of Magnus’ business really. Not unless Alec decides he wants to talk about it, which is unlikely given that most of the things Alec has to say are blunt and informational rather than personal or intimate.
“It’ll be faster if I do it myself,” Alec replies sharply once he regains his footing.
Magnus can’t help but turn to face him at that, arms crossing over his chest. “Are you implying I can’t learn how to repair cables quickly? Have you ever learned how to cross-stitch? Or tried Intarsia knitting? Trust me, I can learn to repair a cable faster than you can learn to embroider.”
His mother had been rather passionate about knitting, and Magnus used to spend hours holding her yarn for her and watching her fingers weave the needles around one another with all the trained agility and elegance of a Baroque pianist. Alec should use all the help available to him instead of slowing them down by being difficult for the sake of being difficult.
“What does that have anything to do with fixing cables? If you mess up a stitch, it doesn't mean death for the two people trapped inside.”
“Three, including Isaac,” Magnus reminds him in the pettiest voice he can muster. If Alec weren’t being so childish about this, he wouldn’t have to resort to being equally immature to match him.
“Just leave it to me.” Alec’s voice sounds final and resolute as he noticeably quickens his steps towards their food stores.
So he’s really that determined to have the last word. Magnus would be impressed at his level of obstinacy if he also didn’t want to shove Alec’s face straight into their stacked piles of packaged food at the moment. He settles for grabbing a boxed meal instead, one that so gleefully informs him it is ‘chicken and potatoes-flavored.’ If it’s anything like last night’s dinner, it’ll probably taste of chalk and nothing else.
The two of them busily add water to their powdered food and heat up their meals then eat in silence, glaring at one another from across two different research stations. It’s a cold war that lasts through most of the day as Alec eventually returns to his tinkering while Magnus tries to peek through the windows from the bridge to see if anything is out there.
There isn’t a lot of wind blowing around at the moment in spite of the deep chill, and some part of Magnus is horrified by the thought that this might technically be the planet’s permanent state year-round –at least in the section of its northern hemisphere they’re currently camping out in. The planet doesn’t have Earth’s tilted axis to create dramatic differences between seasons, and each rotation on its own axis takes up to about a week –exactly 171.2 hours compared to Earth’s 24 hours. Given that they arrived at the beginning of a new rotation, in time to catch the sunrise, they won’t get to see night until a few more Earth days.
That’s… far too long, in Magnus’ opinion. And because the planet’s mass is greater than the Earth, it has three natural satellites, one large moon and two smaller ones, orbiting around it, which probably makes for a beautiful sight in the evenings.
Magnus is looking forward to it and wonders if Alec would let him camp out on the bridge instead of on the sad rows upon rows of funerary caskets they’re currently trying to pretend is any kind of passenger cabin. Magnus has endured seats on planes that are larger than his sleeping berth.
Not that he really needs permission to camp anywhere. What is Alec going to do? Physically haul him into the proper sleeping spot? The passenger cabin isn’t any safer to sleep in than the bridge. Besides, it would be strategically better for their survival if Magnus did have visual access to the ship’s exterior in case anything does try to attack their ship.
The droid slides into the bridge to join him after a while, his head tilted in a manner one might mistake for curiosity. Magnus imagines Isaac is actually probably running some kind of brain scan on Magnus to make sure he hasn’t lost his mind from boredom.
“What attracts your visual senses, Passenger #20?”
“Magnus,” he corrects the droid quickly before tapping the bridge chair next to his own. The droid accepts the invite and settles onto it, his metal hinges echoing through the large area. “I was looking at our new star. Did NASA or anyone name it yet?”
“The star Kepler-442 has not been named yet. Neither have any of the planets orbiting it.”
“So I could technically name it Planet Bane, and no one would dispute me on it?”
The robot gives a long pause as though he’s actually giving his question some deep thought.
Before he can answer, Alec cuts him off. “You are not naming it Planet Bane. According to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, you’re not allowed to claim sovereignty of celestial bodies.”
Of course, he would say that. If Magnus could roll his eyes any harder, he would. “Doesn’t that only apply to nations trying to claim sovereignty? If I am here claiming the planet on behalf of myself, then I can name it as I please.”
Alec’s gaze narrows from his current post, leaning against the entrance to the bridge. “And what makes you think I don’t want to name it?”
In turn, Magnus’ brows rise in both interest and surprise that Alec would even play along, however jokingly. “Alright, how do we want to decide who gets to name it? It has to be something where we’re both equally matched.
Fair is fair, and Magnus isn’t going to back away from a challenge if this is the kind of game Alec wants to play.
“We can let the droid decide,” Alec answers after a moment. “Droid, pick a number from 1 to 100, and don’t tell us what it is. Whichever of us makes the closer guess, wins.”
“Affirmative.” Isaac’s CPU whirls with a series of enigmatic beeps for a moment. “Ready.”
And because Alec has found his gentlemanliness from wherever he dropped it earlier, he motions to Magnus to go first –with a stern warning. “If you say 69, you’re automatically disqualified.”
“Oh, please. I have more dignity than that. Now, let’s see…” If he were a droid, what random number would he generate? He pretends to think about it for a while just to watch Alec grow impatient.
“Magnus,” Alec snaps, two minutes in.
“Alright, alright. I’m guessing 99. I like to be bold and risky.”
Alec lets out a sigh before offering, “Fifteen.”
The droid leaves them both in suspense for only a half-second before replying, “Thirty-seven.”
Magnus can’t help but grimace at the loss. He had some perfect names working through his head –mostly to indulge himself in naming at least one celestial object after something that isn’t Greco-Roman.
Fair is fair, indeed.
“What did you have in mind then, Alexander?” he asks.
Alec’s eyes slide from one end of the horizon to the other, steadily approaching the bridge windows. In the bright light, his eyes burn like golden-green tourmaline, and he reminds Magnus of Sigurd from the Völsunga saga on his way to battle the blazing fires of the dragon, Fáfnir. Magnus can’t help but feel a little rendered breathless by him before snapping himself out of it, unwilling to lose himself any deeper within his own romantic comparisons. Alec may be a beautiful sight, but he also easily dampens that beauty by opening his mouth.
Except not at the moment because Alec replies, “Well, Titania is the sun obviously, and Oberon is the planet who’s trying very hard to control the sun. Trying and failing because she acts on her own whims and accidentally falls in love with an ass.”
That was not where Magnus was expecting Alec’s mind to go at all. His mouth spasms a few times before he finally surrenders to the laugh bubbling out of him. “Here I was concerned you had never even heard of a single book.”
Alec shrugs a little sheepishly. “Who doesn’t know Shakespeare? Besides, you kind of have this Puck quality going on.”
Is it flattery, or is it an insult? Magnus prefers to take it as the former. “You just wait until I unpack my cosmetic kit. I simply didn’t want to waste it all on you and the droid.”
Not that he has any enthralling events or parties to dress up for at the moment nor will he for a long while. It would certainly help Magnus feel a little more stable if he wasn’t walking around the ship looking like a wrung-out rag all the time. Besides, any chance to fluster Alec further is difficult to pass up, even if Magnus is the one feeling a little knocked off-balance by Alec’s demeanor at the moment. If he’s not careful, Alec will accidentally resuscitate an old romantic’s heart from its cozy afterlife.
In an effort to distract himself from that tiny pull on Alec’s smile, Magnus motions Isaac to follow him. “If you’re done tinkering for the day, we ought to heat up dinner. I’m thinking something adventurous like rice and lamb that tastes exactly like cardboard.”
As much as he appreciates not starving, he does really hope he can eventually grow some fresh produce on the ship just so their last meal in this universe isn’t microwaved powder. Tomorrow, he’ll do some rigorous poking about outdoors to finally grab those samples.
☆☆☆☆☆
– Earth Days: 003 –
Human bodies had evolved with the Earth to harmonize with the planet’s natural day-to-night cycle. By the decree of the average human circadian rhythm, they are still compelled to sleep during what would be evening hours on Earth even if light is currently shining from every open window while they’re on another planet.
Maybe there will be a time when the bizarre day-to-night cycle here won’t be so jarring, but for now, Magnus is shutting as many panels as he can to make sure they’re thoroughly trapped in the dark so he can at least pretend it’s night.
Once the passenger cabins are secured, Magnus swings into his private berth feet first so he can roll on his stomach and glance at Alec who has decided to turn himself into a human-burrito this evening. Honestly, Magnus doesn’t blame him for that impulse. Even with the heating returned to the ship, the interior still feels strangely glacial inside, whether it be because metal doesn’t quite insulate as well as brick and concrete or just the fact that they’re two people sharing a space clearly meant for twenty.
The cabin space definitely feels even emptier this evening, mostly because Alec seems too exhausted to want to chat, and Isaac likes to go into stasis at ‘night’ to preserve energy. That leaves Magnus staring upwards at the ceiling of his berth, eyes moving over the powered off light fixtures and all the other devices the berths come equipped with to heat or chill the area further. If they weren’t running on back-up energy, he would crank his personal heater on high right now and dream about lying stomach-down in a nice log cabin next to a roasting fire. Anything is better than feeling like he’s rolled up inside a sardine can.
Somehow, in spite of the discomfort, he does manage to fall asleep for an hour or so before a loud noise from outside jars him awake. It sounds like a banshee shriek, and the ship quivers around them in response as if caught in the throes of seismic activity.
Isaac comes sprinting into the cabin seconds later, his metal legs clanking loudly. “Possible extraterrestrial activity detected.”
Alec is already crawling out of his berth and heading towards the bridge. Unwilling to be left behind while something might be creeping around outside, Magnus scrambles after the two of them, only pausing to grimace the moment the light from the bridge hits him. The sun’s rays are too intense for him to bear after shrouding himself in so much darkness inside the passenger cabin, and they pierce straight into his corneas, forcing him to visor his hand over his eyes just so he can actually see.
The bridge windows are slightly frosted up, but there’s nothing immediately lurking outside of them. Just the gentle coastal waters lapping at the rocky shore nearby and the miles of uncharted snow around them.
“Can you run a scan from inside the ship?” Alec asks the droid.
“Affirmative. The scan will only reach a radius of 200 meters around the ship.”
The light on Isaac’s head pulses as it slowly rotates while running an infrared scan around the ship. Once he’s completed the task, he presents his report: “Possible extraterrestrial detected 72.9 meters northwest of the ship. Body temperature reading is 10° Celsius. Approach with caution.”
Alec doesn’t stand still long enough to digest that information, immediately heading into the utility room to grab one of the thicker exoskeleton space suits that comes equipped with armor plates.
Magnus’ eyes widen as he scrambles once more to follow him. “You’re not going out there. You don’t know what that thing is, how big it is, or what it can do to you.”
His words don’t even make Alec slow down a single bit as Alec presses the compression button on his suit to make it mold tight to his body. His hands then latch onto one of the helmets that comes equipped with a built-in wireless comm system. “It’s fine. I’m taking a laser rifle with me.”
“That’s not going to protect you if it’s three times your size, Alec!” There’s brave, then there’s stupid, and Alec is pretty firmly dancing on top of the second category at the moment. There’s no way he’ll survive if the creature moves in on him with all the mauling speed of a tiger.
“I’ve dealt with worse than one alien creature. I’m just going to stop it before it damages the ship’s exterior.”
Magnus stubbornly moves in Alec’s way, purposely blocking him from the rifle. “No, I’m not letting you go.”
In response, Alec clenches his teeth together, his eyes narrowing in irritation. “Magnus, let me get one of the rifles. I’ll fire a few shots, chase it off, then come back inside. It won’t take more than ten minutes.”
He must already be forgetting that Magnus can match him perfectly in obstinacy. “I already said I’m not letting you go. I’m not letting you leave me behind.”
If Alec goes out there and gets himself killed, then Magnus is the one who’ll be trapped here by himself without any way to repair the ship. He’s not going to lose the only other human on this world, no matter how incredibly stupid he’s being at the moment. Besides, Magnus is generally sort-of fond of his surly companion when Alec’s not being completely reckless.
Like now.
Another shriek echoes through the ship’s main body, the sound nearly deafening, and Alec takes advantage of Magnus’ shock to grab a rifle.
“Fuck,” Magnus curses before grabbing another of the exoskeleton suits and yanking it on. “Fine, if you’re fully intent on going, then I’m going with you.”
That finally stops Alec in his tracks. “Absolutely not!”
“I’m not letting you go out there to die!” Magnus snaps in return, feeling at his wit’s end already. “Either we both go out together and die together, or we both stay in here! Like it or not, we only have each other, and I’m not going to get through this without you!”
Probably sensing they’re only wasting time by arguing, Alec heaves out a sigh and eventually grabs another rifle from the wall. “Do you know how to fire one of these?”
Not particularly, but Magnus isn’t going to admit that right now. Alec will use it as further grounds to abandon him here and go out and die a hero in the snow. Magnus had meant what he said. They stick together no matter what.
His fingers latch onto the rifle as he nods with a confidence he doesn’t quite feel in his bones and braces himself for whatever lies ahead, no matter how terrifying it may be. As soon as he secures his helmet, he follows Alec to the exit hatch near the bridge so they can step outside.
The creature is still hidden out of sight, but Alec slowly edges his way northwest of the ship, keeping his rifle steady. His feet only crunch slightly over the snow, making minimal sound as he slowly stalks forward like a lion in wait, and Magnus tries to follow suit, even with all the tension riding his muscles threatening to lock them into place.
Both his hands tighten around his own rifle as he keeps his eyes peeled for any movement, but the scanner on his helmet isn’t picking up anything at all. Whatever it was, it may have already disappeared on its own.
Alec’s steps quicken to survey the exact area Isaac reported more closely, walking in a slow circle as some of the arctic winds around them pick up. It’s only when he’s completed his revolution that Magnus feels another tremor run through the ground. It shakes with enough force to nearly knock him off-balance, and he feels whatever it is rapidly approaching Alec, which provokes him into running as fast as he can to shove Alec out of the way and into the snow before something comes bursting straight out of the ground.
It lets out another shriek as it surges upwards, and Magnus barely has enough time to roll on his back and steal a glance. From his fogged up lenses, he can see what appears to be a thick serpent, poking out of the snow like a giant sandworm. Its scales glimmer with shades of aqua, bright blue, and silver, as its mane flares out around its head, and spikes start to slowly grow out of its skin.
“Move!” Alec shouts before training his rifle straight at the serpent.
The laser fire sears through some of the serpent’s scales but mostly serves to anger it as it aims for Alec, jaw coming unhinged, fangs on full display.
Magnus darts out of its way at the same time as Alec does before Magnus tries pulling the trigger of his rifle a few times. To his horror, no laser fire comes out at all, and he curses under his breath, wondering if he had grabbed a defective one or not.
“Take the safety off, you idiot!” Alec shouts through his helmet’s speakers.
Magnus blinks a few times before muttering a soft “oh” to himself and switching the safety slider off. He then starts firing wildly at the serpent, burning a few more of its dorsal scales away. The pain makes it wail and turn directions from Alec towards him, forcing Magnus to break off into a quick sprint towards the highest rocks on the coast just to dive behind them and stay out of reach of the creature’s spikes.
Alec’s feet plod loudly behind him, running while shooting just under the snake’s mane to where its trachea would be to silence it. Once enough of the laser fire burns through the surface of its flesh, the serpent wheezes out and all the quills that had been slowly expanding outwards around its mane are released at once, sending spikes violently flying in every direction.
Magnus dives to the ground behind a large stone in time to avoid them, but he hears Alec hiss over his helmet’s speakers.
“Shit.”
Alec’s body collapses fast from a large spike pierced through his shoulder, one that easily eats through the layered armor of his exoskeleton suit. Magnus doesn’t even let himself take another breath before he’s rushing towards Alec’s side to look at it. With the creature all but slowly bleeding out near them, it’s less of a preoccupation at the moment than making sure Alec is all right.
His fingers brush lightly over the spike as his eyes crawl over Alec’s face twisted in pain. “I have to get you into the exam room now.”
With little knowledge of the creature’s composition, the risk of infection is very high, assuming the spike isn’t venomous or acidic first. Even the exposure of Alec’s wound right now to the open air is a threat, and Magnus really wishes the other man hadn’t decided to try and brazenly battle a large snow serpent on his own. What the hell was he thinking?
His hands rip the rifle out of Alec’s hand, tossing it over his shoulder with his own, before he winds an arm around Alec’s waist to drag him back to the ship quickly.
“It’s not as serious as it looks,” Alec protests. “It’s just a tiny stab wound.”
“Do you know what’s going to happen if any venom or foreign bacteria enters your blood supply?” Magnus asks him, not bothering to mask any of his frustration. “Your immune system is only attuned to fight bacteria from Earth. Even the tiniest contaminant from this planet could kill you.”
That seems to shut Alec up fast as Magnus presses the hatch on the ship to go inside then shuts it closed just as quickly. He tosses their rifles on the ground and heads straight to the research bay, which has a small sectioned off exam room for injured crew members.
“Did Captain Lightwood sustain damage?” Isaac asks, already tailing them.
“Yes, he did! Because he’s a moron!” Magnus deposits Alec none too gently near the exam table. “Now strip. I’m going to clean and disinfect the wound as much as possible, take samples, and hope you don’t die.”
His own hands are working quickly to pull his helmet and suit off, abandoning them fast so he can focus on bandaging up Alec. He orders Isaac to grab the supplies from the pantry compartments all around the exam room, well aware they’re stocked with a lot of common first aid supplies and a few more sophisticated surgical ones as well.
Alec struggles to get his own exoskeleton suit off the injured arm until Isaac cuts him free and helps him push the remainder of the thick fabric and armor around his waist. The shirt he’d been wearing underneath is also severed off by Isaac until Alec’s sitting topless on the exam table, waiting for Magnus to examine him.
Once Magnus gets a pair of latex gloves on, he starts drawing his fingers around the bloodied spike in Alec’s shoulder, trying to test how deep it is and if it’s penetrating any major blood vessels. “Only the tip managed to sink in thankfully, but it’s still deep enough that I’ll have to suture the wound shut once I remove the quill.”
“I told you it wasn’t that bad.”
Magnus’ eyes narrow, tempted to push the spike in deeper for that comment alone, but it wouldn’t be very ethical of him. As it is, he’s struggling to keep his own heart rate from going through the ceiling because he doesn’t want Alec to suffer a slow and painful death wasting away from disease.
A few gentle strokes with one of the ship’s clean towels manages to wipe off most of the blood around it so Magnus can see better as he carefully braces a hand on Alec’s skin while wrapping a pair of tongs around the edge of the spike with the other. “I’m going to pull it out and then apply pressure on the wound. Do you need any sedation or something to bite down on?”
Predictably, Alec shakes his head. “I’m fine. I’ve been shot before.”
“This is a lot larger and deadlier than a bullet, but have it your way.”
The spike is yanked out in one swift move, leaving blood gushing out that Magnus rushes to plug up and apply pressure to with more clean towels. Alec lets out another loud, hearty “shit”, and his lashes dot with unshed tears.
With Isaac’s help, Magnus and the droid manage to clean and disinfect the wound as best they can after collecting some blood samples. Thankfully, there’s no swelling nor any visual evidence to suggest there was anything venomous about the spike, but he still checks Alec’s pulse and heart rate a few times to reassure himself.
“I’m going to numb the site with a quick pinch then suture it shut, okay?”
Alec nods, looking worn out but thankfully not too disoriented. They’re both going to need a long, restful sleep after this, but Magnus is still feeling over-anxious about any possible long-term side-effects of the wound. He doesn’t want to have to toss Alec’s body in the incinerator a few weeks from now and be left alone with only a droid for a companion, slowly going mad on a planet by himself.
Isaac brings over the anesthetic in a syringe for Magnus to administer, and Alec gives him room to work.
“How do you even know how to suture?” he asks Magnus, watching him through slightly hooded eyes. “Didn’t realize they gave all this medical training in the microbiology field.”
Magnus grabs some dissolvable stitching fiber and starts carefully threading it through Alec’s skin. “I almost went completely into medicine. I took some courses but pivoted into microbiology because I wanted to understand diseases better. Why the human body isn’t equipped to fight against the worst of them and how we could make them that way. We’ve had several centuries of cancer research now, and it still destroys lives.”
The backs of his own eyeballs are riddled with pinpricks, knowing he’s giving away a little too much of himself right now, but he needs Alec to realize the risk. What he stands to leave behind by being reckless with his own body. Magnus had already been left behind once by the person who meant the most to him in the world, and he can’t go through that again.
“Whose life?” Alec’s voice softens considerably, and his eyes brim with an intensity that Magnus can’t meet at the moment.
He focuses his gaze on his own hands instead. “My mother.”
A long, silent pause fills the exam room until Alec eventually breaks it.
“...I’m sorry, Magnus.”
The weight of his sincerity crashes against Magnus’ chest, practically shattering his lungs, and Magnus still fights to keep his tears in as he ties up the sutures and snips them off at the ends. Hopefully, Alec is right, and he is making a big deal out of nothing. That the wound will heal given time and patience, but it’s hard to brush off his own fear right now.
A hand sneaks through his own when he sets all the medical instruments down, Alec’s fingers slowly moving to cup his, startling him a little with their warmth. Magnus glances down to see their joint grip, and he doesn’t realize when or how he started shaking. It’s kind of impressive he still managed to neatly sew up Alec’s wound in spite of that, but he attests it to a few too many years of sewing and knitting practice. His mother had trained him too well.
They stay facing one another for a second long silence as Magnus races to collect himself. He’s no good to anyone if he falls apart, and he’d already run through all the stages of grief years ago. Reenacting them now will only compromise their chances of survival, and both of them need to be rational right now.
“We should go back to bed,” Magnus murmurs. “I’ll give you some antibiotics and painkillers from the cabinet even if I’m still not sure they’ll do much against the bacteria from this world. I was hoping I could run a few tests before we ever got to this point, but when does life ever wait for a careful and measured approach to the scientific method?”
“I’m sure it’ll be okay,” Alec tries to reassure him once more. “I survived drinking in mouthfuls of dirty water when I was on tour and only came out of it with a little bit of dysentery. I’m pretty hard to kill.”
Magnus snorts gently. “There’s nothing ‘little’ about dysentery, but if you do exhibit any side effects, even of that nature, please promise you’ll tell me.”
Alec sighs a little, looking like he’d rather do anything but that. “Fine, I’ll loop you in on all my bathroom adventures. Can we go to bed now?”
Even if Magnus still wants to be mad at him, he is having a hard time with it. Alec’s pretty face is half the reason, but the other is the glimpses he occasionally gives Magnus of his most sincere and gentle self layered underneath all that soldier bravado. Alec must have had to wall himself in deep to survive in a world like theirs, but the person he could be is enough to stir awake a deeper sense of yearning from within Magnus.
Maybe not for anything more serious than friendship at the moment, but if Magnus ever decides to steal a page out of Alec’s book of recklessness, he’d plunge face-first into desires he’d hoped had gone extinct by now. Only the sheer will not to overcomplicate their already forced companionship here keeps him from even entertaining the thought longer than a few seconds. He’d rather focus on helping Alec get them both out of here alive so they can reunite with their friends and families on Gaia one day.
☆☆☆☆☆
– Earth Days: 004 –
After what happened almost a day ago, Magnus isn’t taking any heavy chances while exploring the ship’s exterior, and after being wrangled into a day off, Alec, for once, is the one watching him work as Magnus drags his exoskeleton suit on. It’s a strange change of pace, but Magnus also doesn’t want to leave too much of this world unexplored if they’re going to be trapped here for a while. That means gathering samples and running tests, starting with the dead serpent now camped out next to their ship.
But before he can do that, he has to subject himself to hearing Alec explain how to use a laser rifle like he’s five years old. All things considered, Magnus likes to think he managed pretty fine on his own yesterday, even if he’s never been particularly fond of firearms. After his run-in with the Circle, he preferred to focus on martial arts training for self-defense rather than carrying around anything he could potentially blow off his own foot with.
He’s starting to rethink that decision the more Alec explains to him things he already knows.
“Tell me again where the safety is. I don’t think I got that the first seven times you pointed it out,” he mutters sarcastically.
Alec narrows his eyes at him, clearly losing patience. “Would you take this seriously? I am a liability right now if I go out there with you, so you’re the only one who can defend yourself.”
“Alexander, I’m only going to shave samples off the corpse then grab a few of the soil, water, and surrounding sediment. After that, I’ll set up some atmospheric instruments to measure what’s in the air. I’ll hardly be gone that long.”
He’s well aware Alec said the same thing when he was planning to go out yesterday, but they’re no longer being bombarded with ground tremors and loud shrieking. Isaac’s scans had also come back negative for any living extraterrestrials nearby.
“I’ll be watching you from the bridge windows,” Alec assures him nevertheless. “If anything happens to you, I’m going out, injury or not.”
“My hero. Now, will you please give me the rifle?”
Alec reluctantly hands it over, and Magnus attaches it to the back of his suit so he can keep his hands free to gather. He’s carrying a satchel full of specimen tubes, a barometer, and one of his atmospheric detector tools to measure what gasses and microbes are outside and whether or not the amounts fluctuate over time. He plans to plant them relatively close to the ship, so his equipment is not in danger of being ripped out or eaten by predators.
Once his supplies are firmly secured and his helmet is tugged on, he leaves through the exit hatch so he can grab a few tubes of soil first. Beneath the snow, there are several traces of short, dark blue patches of grass and topsoil. It looks moist enough from the thick snow coating it, but Magnus can’t gauge how rich in nitrogen and other minerals it is just from eyeballing it. He wants to believe that it’s safe enough to use for growth, at least for perennial plants and more winter-suited crops, but he’ll have to test it out.
Afterwards, he approaches the water, watching with slight trepidation as the tide draws over the black pebbles littered across the shoreline. It doesn’t look any different than the water on Earth in that it has roughly the same consistency, although it is weirdly over-saturated with blue pigment.
His body crouches to scoop some of the water into the tube before something swims by quickly, the motion catching him off-guard. He jolts back, trying to look to see if there is any fish at all wandering about near the shallow waters, but it doesn’t circle back towards him. Whatever it was, it probably swam off in terror.
Magnus tightens his fingers around the test tube to return to his task until the water stirs again. This time, the fish pokes its head out, revealing itself to have a lamprey’s mouth with rows upon rows of sharp teeth arranged in spirals and red gums flaring between.
Magnus’ body jolts back a second time, reaching for his rifle as the lamprey-like creature tries to wriggle towards him without any regard for the change in environment, its long, serpentine form supported by deep blue salamander-like legs.
Magnus shoots it before it can latch onto any part of him, and he immediately hears his receiver buzz with static.
“What was that?” Alec asks him from inside the bridge.
“Just the marine life trying to chew off my face.” Although, calling it a marine animal might be a stretch. Being out of the water hadn’t slowed down its pursuit. It had probably been closer to an amphibian or reptile in spite of its mouth.
“Magnus, be serious.”
“I was,” Magnus replies. “And before you come running out here, it was small. I lasered it to death.”
He quickly checks to make sure his bag is secure and his laser rifle in place before he wanders towards where the snow serpent’s carcass had been left yesterday. While there are huge splatters of blackened congealed blood on the ground, the actual body is nowhere to be found at all. Magnus has to wonder if they even killed it completely or if it’s lurking somewhere, waiting to attack. Not wanting to find out, he adds some of its dried blood to a tube and checks the hole it had come out of.
There’s a long tunnel that seems endless and perfectly carved out in the shape of the serpent, and it extends several meters downwards from the surface. Any creature who could devour through snow and soil that fast probably wouldn’t allow itself to be taken out with mere lasers apparently, and Magnus hopes it doesn’t decide to return with any friends in tow. For all he knows, they could target and hunt in large, coordinated groups, and he and Alec might be parked right above their collective habitat.
Once all his outdoor instruments are set up and connected to Magnus’ tablet so he can obtain real-time data from within the ship, he’s left with his final order of business: merely to look around.
After being cooped up in the ship for the first few Earth days on this planet, he’d nearly forgotten how nice the sunlight feels even if the warmth doesn’t really penetrate his suit that well to touch his skin. It’s still freeing in a way to see the sun glow in the distance, a beautiful orange dwarf now named after the queen of the fairies. It floats between two mountain tops and draws him into the illusion that he never once stepped foot off of Earth. That he’s actually standing in front of the Himalayas for the first time, breath stolen, feeling small and powerless against their roaring winds. If he had more confidence they wouldn’t wind up dead, he’d suggest a hike to Alec, but he’d rather take their exploration slow until they learn more about the planet, which would be easier if they could fly and observe the land from a safe distance.
Just as that thought drifts through his mind, a large reptilian bird flies overhead, letting out a loud cry. Magnus isn’t given time to duck away as it swoops down low and drops something heavy and dark green over him and part of the ship.The consistency gives it away before anything else, and Magnus winces in disgust as he wraps up his satchel to protect the contents inside.
“What was that?” Alec asks him again through his helmet.
Magnus doesn’t want to answer. He’d rather hurl himself into the water right now for as thick and oozey the substance feels, dribbling between the seams of his armor plates. “I think I got covered with pterodactyl droppings.”
The line goes dead on Alec’s side for a few minutes while Magnus wonders how he’s going to clean himself off before he gets back on the ship. It’s not safe to bring in any outside substances, let alone toxic ones that probably smell putrid.
“Alexander?”
Isaac is the one to answer after another minute of prolonged silence. “Captain Lightwood is laughing too hard to respond. I will use my hosing function to clean off your exoskeleton suit. Please remain outdoors until you are deemed safe to enter the premises.”
“Laugh it up,” Magnus mutters miserably into his helmet mic. “I think I may have at least solved the mystery of where the snake’s body went, presuming that flying creature is a scavenger.”
Better it eat the serpent than any of them, but Magnus doesn’t want to linger long enough for it to fly back around. He camps near the ship’s entrance and waits for Isaac to thoroughly hose his suit off and clean it out before he enters inside.
As soon as the hatch is closed behind him, and the air is pressurized once more, he starts plucking off his suit and helmet as fast as he can and walking past the bridge in the hopes he can just beeline straight to the showers and wash himself off for a straight hour. Except, Alec cuts him off, grinning like a child on Christmas morning.
“Don’t,” Magnus warns.
“I didn’t say anything.”
But he’s grinning like he had, and Magnus would like to keep some dignity intact at the moment. Of course, he only manages to keep a straight face himself for a moment longer before he, too, bursts out in giggles, and it doesn’t take long for them both to wind up bent over with tears in their eyes, ruminating over the insanity of it all, from a prehistoric-looking bird to its specific level of aim to not only strike their ship but get Magnus as well.
It’s a story Magnus would like to both bury and to also share with his friends one day, preferably with too many glasses of wine in him, but who’s to say if that day will ever come? If there’s anything that can sober him fast, it’s the realization that Alec really might be the last person he’ll ever know and talk to. The last person he’ll ever feel some kind of connection with. And while that scares him, it’s also a little comforting at the moment.
He could have had no one at all to laugh at him until he’s rudy-cheeked and tear-stained, and Alec wears that look well. It ages him down by a few years and makes him look so boyish and gentle that Magnus can’t stop himself from mentally tracing over the creases around Alec’s eyes and mouth until Alec is out of breath and slumped next to the wall.
Alec still manages to murmur, “You really do smell terrible.”
“Well, I was on my way to shower, but someone cut me off. If you’d be so kind as to let me through.”
“Please,” Alec practically begs.
Magnus hardly needs to be told twice as he disappears into the showers, shedding clothes along the way. He’s never been happier to have the warm spray dousing him all over and washing away the stench with it. He only wishes he had some of his nice herbal-scented toiletries from back home instead of the generic ORI body wash to clean himself off, but it’s better than nothing.
His hands scrub it harshly over his skin and through his hair, layering the soap on as thickly as he can. It takes several more cycles of covering himself head-to-toe in it and rinsing it off before he can finally declare himself clean enough, and by then, he’s just tired and in need of a long nap. He’ll deal with his specimens later.
☆☆☆☆☆
– Earth Days: 007 –
Alec’s never cut anyone’s hair a single day in his life. Not even when he’d been young had he ever taken a scissor and just lopped several strands off his toys out of pure childish chaoticness. Izzy was the one who loved to give all her dolls makeovers, much to their mother’s abject horror, and Jace had cut Alec’s hair once while he’d been sleeping.
Again, much to their mother’s abject horror.
It was difficult getting through his first months of middle school while waiting for it to grow back, and the trauma still affects him today because Alec can’t get himself to even approach Magnus’ hair with a pair of electric clippers without feeling his stomach turn itself inside-out.
This whole thing had been Magnus’ idea because Magnus –unwisely– hadn’t cut his hair before he’d gotten frozen and had been restless about how floppy and long it had gotten since he’d woken up. Alec thinks it looks perfectly nice, but he hadn’t volunteered his opinion because it was going to come out in one long, endless stream of stupid, and he hadn’t wanted to make things weird between them.
Well, any weirder than the fact that he’s been staring at Magnus’ head for fifteen minutes now, trying to figure out at what angle he’s going to approach this task. The prospect of ruining Magnus’ nice hair is too dire of a consequence for him to face, not just because Magnus might despise him for it but also because Alec doesn’t want to damage anything on Magnus’ body. It’s almost sacrilege for him, having already been fighting a losing battle not to admit to himself how much he generally likes looking at Magnus.
It would be easy to blame it on the fact that Magnus is the only other person in the world for him to look at, but even without that pressing factor, Alec thinks he would still have a hard time resisting. Had they met on any day back on Earth, he’d have worn his vision out well into the negatives just from staring at Magnus and not talking to him. Staring from a comfortable distance across the room, hands in his pockets, self-assured in the fact that Magnus did not want to be bothered by an engineer who smells like burnt toast most of the time.
But they’re here and forced to exist with one another as more than roommates, which means Alec is now Magnus’ hairdresser because Magnus can’t see the back of his head. It’s a responsibility that somehow feels more overwhelming than manning an entire voyage to the cosmos, especially when Alec keeps hesitating to put the clippers anywhere near Magnus’ hair roots. If he goes in too close and slices open Magnus’ skull, Alec’s not the one with the sewing experience required to put that many pieces of his head back together.
The fear continues to rotate its way through his mind as Magnus waits impatiently on a chair in front of him with a nice protective tarp around his shoulders and on the ground to catch all the shorn hairs.
“I just need you to get in close on the back and the sides,” Magnus instructs while gesturing to the aforementioned areas. “It doesn’t have to be an elegant fade, but something a little more artistic than what I have now.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather do this on yourself? What if I take out your ear?”
At the question, Magnus tugs worriedly on one of his own earlobes. “It’s made of cartilage, so it would technically be one of the better body parts for you to sever off of me.”
That’s not helping Alec’s confidence at all. “I feel like I should subject you to the same task after, but my hair is not that long yet.”
“I could trim your hair elsewhere, but I think the body hair suits your physique quite nicely.”
The compliment flees Magnus’ lips so effortlessly and without much thought that Alec has to wonder why it proceeds to ram into him from all sides like he’d stepped straight into a busy intersection. Neither his brain nor his body know what to do with it right now, only clinging desperately to some level of control just so Magnus’ ear can be spared, cartilage or not.
“Okay, I’m going in,” Alec warns him when he can find his voice again.
“Do be gentle but firm with me, Alexander.”
He’s really going to have to gag Magnus at this rate. That innuendo nearly cost him a good chunk of the hair he didn’t want to have buzzed off. “Shut up, and stay still.”
Alec forces his hand steady as he begins to shave the back of Magnus’ head, little by little, trying to do it in increments. It works well for the first few strokes of the electric razor, but then Alec accidentally takes off a little too much in one patch, leaving a noticeable bald spot in the back. He tries not to let it show on his face, aiming to even out the hair around it, but the shorter and closer he gets to Magnus’ skin, the weirder it starts to look.
Magnus looks like he’s doing his very best not to paw at his hair or turn towards the mirror, and Alec is suddenly really glad he made the other man face away. He starts on the sides, hoping to more or less match the short length and give Magnus a decent mohawk-fade. Unfortunately, all he can see are the uneven patches of hair and the one tiny bald clump in the back that he knows Magnus will never let him live down.
His hand brushes through the freshly buzzed hair as he works to take out all the excess strands that were already shaved off while trying not to linger anywhere, but there’s something really tactile and pleasing about fresh haircuts, and Magnus happens to have exceptionally soft hair. It feels good underneath his fingers, especially around the back of his head, following the slope of his skull onto the nape of Magnus’ neck where his touch halts against rough skin.
The scar there is still so crude-looking that Alec can’t imagine how terrifying it had been to be sliced open like that. Magnus probably hadn’t even been given any anesthesia for the pain.
“Does it still hurt at all?” he asks gently, his thumb trailing along the top of the vertical cut, well aware he should stop himself. Well aware yet disobeying himself on every level.
Magnus’ brows rise a bit before he straightens his posture a little more. “Not really. I forget it’s there most of the time until someone rubs over it a few times with their thumb.”
Alec rips his hand away in embarrassment before clearing his throat. “I was just brushing all the shaved hair off. I think it’s– …it’s not that bad.”
Minus that one bald spot that Alec can’t bear to look at.
Magnus slides out of the chair to examine his handiwork in the mirror before feeling along the back of his own head. It doesn’t take him long to locate the exact spot in question. “I’m going to cry if I examine this on a hand mirror, aren’t I?”
“It’s not like anyone but the droid and I are going to see it,” Alec replies in a sad attempt to make him feel better, and it would take a lot more than a tiny bald square about two and a half centimeters wide to make Alec think Magnus is hideous.
Magnus heaves out a sigh anyway and grabs the electric clippers to help fix some of Alec’s handiwork on the spots he can see. “It is my fault for asking, but I think with a little more practice, you can avoid giving me a little window in the back of my head next time.”
The fact that there will be a next time hadn’t been something Alec had been planning for, but they might be here for a while. Though he’s been working on the engine as much as he can, he’s also one man alone. He can only perform so much meticulous handiwork in one 24-hour period along with all the frequent tests it requires to make sure the cables are transferring energy and data smoothly. Even the slightest error can mean death for the two of them, so he’s going slow and being a perfectionist about every detail.
After Magnus has settled on a look he’s satisfied with, he turns to run his fingers over the longest hairs on the top-center of his scalp, which flop a little messily without any product. “Probably the best I’m going to get in the middle of space. Come on.”
Magnus motions to Isaac to vacuum up the tarp and the restroom floor before dragging Alec out by his arm. His destination is their sleeping berths first where he collects a bunch of pillows and linens before fixing Alec with a small grin that makes Alec a bit uneasy.
“What are you planning?” Alec asks.
“Keep following me.”
Magnus leads him straight to the bridge where all the windows are open, showing several side by side panels of the evening sky. Spread over the horizon are the planet’s three moons, with one positioned so close, it looks absolutely colossal compared to the other two moons. It’s hard not to feel dwarfed by its presence even though it’s still several millions of miles away.
Alec’s eyes are wide as he moves closer to the bridge windows to observe them better.
“They’re beautiful,” he remarks slowly.
Magnus is already laying the blankets and pillows down for them, creating a makeshift bed that would have him and Alec sleeping side by side. It’s something Alec is trying hard not to think about, focusing instead on the scenic view between the snow-capped mountains in the distance. He never thought he’d see anything as breathtaking, not after so much of Earth had been polluted with enough noxious gasses to conceal much of the New York skyline and dye it sulfurous reds and browns.
“I’m making an executive decision for us to camp here tonight,” Magnus tells him once he’s finished.
The ‘executive decision’ in question makes Alec quirk an eyebrow in his direction. “And when did you earn enough rank to decide where we sleep?”
Magnus’ grin widens as he flops down on his back, stretching out along the blankets with feline grace. “A few days ago. I boldly promoted myself to Head of Research on this mission, and this is lunar research.”
Alec can’t even argue with him on that. Magnus has been dutifully working hard to gather information and catalog everything on this planet down to the smallest molecule just to aid future explorers of this region. Considering how bare the ORI reports of this planet had been, it would be really helpful in case they decide to spread out and build more colonies in the future. At the very least, it’s also helping him and Magnus survive here longer by understanding the inherent dangers of their environment.
There’s only about a foot left of space between them when Alec lies down, taking care not to actually touch any part of Magnus’ body with his own in order to give him his personal space. He’d just started getting used to sleeping in the same room with Magnus every night, and this feels like a step in a very dangerous direction, but he also doesn’t want Magnus to think he’s repulsed by him either. Far from it.
It takes a bit of shuffling to get truly comfortable underneath the thick comforter Magnus also brought out for them. By then, Magnus’ eyes are half-closed, trained on the evening sky as though he’s hypnotized.
“What do you think we should call them?” Magnus asks, his voice almost a whisper.
Alec follows his sight line to the moon and grows quiet and contemplative for a moment. Then, he answers, “Well, if Titania is the sun, and Oberon is the planet, then the moons have to be Peaseblossom, Cobweb, and Mustardseed.”
A quiet snort falls from Magnus’ otherwise still body. “You left out Moth. Technically Puck, too.”
“I’m sure we’ll find something for both of them eventually.”
Magnus turns a little, his body curling slightly on its side, and Alec can feel his eyes land on the profile of his own face. It makes Alec hyper-aware of his own skin around his bones, and he tries not to breathe too loud or twitch like he wants to. Being on the end of that incandescent stare never fails to make him feel any less than being swallowed whole by the hottest, brightest star in the galaxy. He’s sure Magnus isn’t even aware of what he does to him when he looks at him like that.
“Please tell me a story,” Magnus requests with a rare hint of shyness. “So I can fall asleep.”
Alec blinks up at the ceiling, unsure if he knows a lot of stories. He’s never been an avid reader even with all the digital repositories floating around on the internet back home. His nose had been too deeply buried in technical manuals to have much time for literature.
He ends up settling for something a little more personal from his childhood. “I always wanted to go to the beach as a kid. I saw these pictures in old postcards from the 20th and 21st century of the beaches in Bimini. Did you know they used to have all these resort islands that were vacation hotspots in the Bahamas?”
Drastically rising sea levels had wiped most of the Caribbean islands off the map before he could ever see them. He only had photos to reference how splendorous they’d once been.
“Anyway, for my fifteenth birthday, Jace and Izzy wanted to give me the beach experience. They actually bought a few bags of synthetic sand and a tiny pool that kids swim around in and made palm trees using paper and cardboard. They had to build it in our basement, and my mom lost her mind when she found out they covered part of the floor in sand.”
Legend says his siblings are still grounded years later… but Alec had never smiled more than he had that day. They even let Max swim around in the kiddie pool for a few hours.
“We had virgin piña coladas and pineapple on pizza, which was awful, but it fit the theme. Jace even had a playlist set up to loop some ‘Kokomo’ song over and over. If I ever hear it again, it’ll be too soon.”
His eyes slant in Magnus’ direction, realizing the other man had fallen asleep already. His hand is curled between them in a fist and his mouth is hanging open, making him look, for all intents and purposes, dead to the world.
Alec can’t help but smile in amusement as he drags the blanket a little higher over their arms. For once, he’s kind of glad one of his boring sibling stories managed to put someone to sleep, if only because he knows Magnus doesn’t sleep as well as he does. It’s also rare of Alec to see Magnus’ face smooth of worry lines and looking this vulnerable, his own gaze drawn to the gentle shadows cast by Magnus’ lashes.
If he let himself, he could spend the whole evening awake just watching him over the three moons, thinking that somehow Magnus has managed to supplant some of the greatest cosmic marvels in the universe without even trying. But he already made his mind up on the first day that survival was their main priority. Getting involved with Magnus beyond that would cloud his judgment, and he doesn’t want to lose his last passenger because he’d gotten too distracted by him to make the right choices.
All those dead bodies have been visiting him each night since they landed, standing around his bed, looming phantoms blaming him and not Malachi for their demise. A part of Alec would agree that he somehow should have noticed there was contraband technology hidden aboard the ship. Maybe if he’d checked all the luggage himself or questioned the ORI security staff who loaded it all…
He also can’t help thinking there are more Circle members out there ready to sabotage the other flights, and there’s no way for Alec to know right now or warn anyone else. Even if he got the ship completely back online, he suspects they might be too far out of range from everyone to send and receive messages, and there’s so much debris and cosmic interference that would make it even more difficult to try. Alec’s not holding his breath for success, but he has to keep moving forward.
There’s no option for him to fail again.
☆☆☆☆☆
– Earth Days: 012 –
A few buds are starting to peek out from the soil –tiny, green, curved little stems with maybe one leaf. They’re small now, but the progress has been promising after Magnus had not only set up a garden area inside the ship’s research center but had also used clear tarps to make a small dome-like green house. Well, ‘dome’ might be a little generous to describe it. It looks more like a circus tent with a central rod holding steel arms in place over boxed rows of soil he’d spent days cultivating to make nutrient-rich, using mostly supplies they had on the ship. And also some of their wastes, but he hadn’t gone into too much detail while telling Alec about it as he didn’t want to give the poor man nightmares. Thankfully, the results are paying off so far.
He’d planted one row of potatoes, one row of carrots, and one row of asparagus plants to test out how well they can grow under a synthetic environment. To supplement their growth, he’d also moved a lot of the heat and solar lamps he could find onboard to his makeshift greenhouse to simulate the sunlight and is hoping that he can trap enough carbon dioxide around the crops to help them grow faster.
It’s all terribly unsophisticated, but Magnus is rapidly reaching the limit of how much powdered food he can live off of. Even though all the meals had been specially designed to provide them with all the essential nutrients and vitamins they need to live, the taste has been making it harder for him to keep his appetite. It doesn’t help that Magnus has been burning so much nervous energy off by running on the treadmills located in one of the far corners of the passenger cabin.
If Magnus can make this work, he can supply them with more appetizing options and also keep them both alive for a lot longer than what their food stores promise. He can also try and see if he can fish anything edible out of the water, but the lamprey-like creature he’d already encountered doesn’t give him a lot of hope. Neither had the snow serpent. None of their meat had looked particularly appetizing, and even if Magnus hadn’t found anything particularly alarming about the samples he’d taken from the serpent’s blood, he still has his reservations about their own Earth-borne bodies being able to handle the food from this world.
However, progress on his plants is a good reason to celebrate, and Magnus is a little tired of looking so dowdy all the time, even if his hair hasn’t quite entirely grown out in the spots Alec went a little too bold with. Maybe Magnus really would have been better off shaving it himself, but he had enjoyed having Alec’s fingers in his hair for however short the duration. Alec’s body does run pleasantly hot, and his fingers have this uniquely rough texture from all the work he’s been doing trying to sodor and twine cables together. Magnus hadn’t expected to enjoy feeling Alec’s touch against his scalp and stroking down the nape of his neck as much as he had and had to bite down the inside of his cheek so he wouldn’t accidentally moan out loud and scare Alec off.
It’s been getting even harder lately to keep his distance because he knows Alec’s eyes follow him everywhere. He feels the firm weight of them bearing down on him when he steps into the room, taunting Magnus for continuing to pretend he doesn’t notice, but he’s also aware Alec must be abstaining for the same reasons he is.
Too complicated. Too risky. Too messy. Magnus is more focused on keeping an amicable relationship between them in spite of their numerous arguments, which are always inevitable given both their egos. Throwing sex into the mix is akin to locking themselves into a room with a live grenade, and it never ends well.
But colleagues. Friends. That’s much simpler. Magnus trusts his friends explicitly with his life and considers them to be family, and he can see himself one day seeing Alec in the same light. Or maybe whatever relationship they have right now will end the moment they disembark on Gaia. It’s difficult to tell with Alec, who seems to be constantly weaving between being endeared and being irritated by Magnus.
Where the pendulum will land tonight is anyone’s guess, but Magnus hasn’t disturbed him once and has instead beelined into the bathroom to work some product in his hair before trying on a bit of eyeliner just so he can feel like himself again. Even the familiarity of drawing a few light strokes has him slightly uplifted. A bit of glitter is then smeared along his bottom lids near his waterline, and he dabs some more on his cheeks and nose to highlight them before brushing tinted lip balm onto his lips until he’s smiling more fondly at his own reflection than he has in a long time.
Of course, the look won’t be complete without any nail polish, so he summons Isaac to follow him into the bridge where the light is the clearest so he can sprawl on the ground with a towel.
“I know you can paint nail polish on. You’re too smart of a droid not to be able to pick it up fast.”
Isaac stares down at the tiny bottle before plucking it from the ground and studying it. “Accessing learning protocols… Initiating a new task. What do you title this new task?”
Magnus rucks his loose tunic up to his elbows and folds the bottom of his sweat pants to give Isaac better access. “Painting Magnus’ nails. Watch and learn, Isaac.”
It only takes a few strokes for the droid to pick up the ability, and Magnus allows him to practice while admiring Isaac’s precision. When he first learned to paint his nails, so much pigment wound up everywhere else but on his nails. However, Isaac is practically a professional already –which he attests to just very good programming. Droids are exceptional at easy, repetitive tasks.
“Just remember to keep the paint on my nails and not get any on my skin,” he tells the droid, sprawling out in a more relaxed state once he’s confident Isaac won’t suddenly try and paint his mouth with nail polish.
“Affirmative. The paint will be applied to the nail bed only.”
By the time the droid has moved onto working on Magnus’ toes, Alec comes barging into the bridge before stopping abruptly a few steps in. His expression is so adorably perplexed that Magnus can’t help but stare even if he has to tilt his head at an uncomfortable angle to do so.
“How many weird tasks are you going to teach the droid?” he asks. “It’s bad enough you tried to teach him to dance yesterday.”
“Only because you wouldn’t dance with me. Someone has to be my partner during these long, cold nights, Alexander.”
And it’s not like the droid was terrible at it. Maybe too stiff for obvious reasons, but he can do a serviceable box step. Probably better than Alec, but Magnus will likely never find out for comparison.
Alec responds by gesturing feebly at the bridge windows which are immersed in so much orange and vermillion solar light. “It’s technically… the afternoon. Sort of.”
Adjusting to time in this world is still a work in progress, but it’s also one that Magnus has made absolutely no progress in. Both his mind and body are constantly confused by the painfully slow cycle, and while he should be getting ready for bed, he finds himself hitting a state of hyper-awakeness under the sun’s beams instead.
There are some pills to aid him in sleeping in the exam room, but he’s been trying to abstain in case they need them for emergency reasons. However, they’re tempting him tonight, especially when Alec looks like he’s ready to climb into his berth and simply pass out. What an enviable ability, one Magnus could also easily achieve if the ship had any alcohol on it.
As it is, he’s not sure how else he can wear himself out… minus the immediate lurid suggestion his brain is all too eager to supply, but he’s not going there.
Luckily, Alec’s next words help divert his attention further away from that possibility. “Did you at least make any progress on your research?”
“I did,” Magnus answers. “The crops are growing, so hopefully we can eat something solid and with flavor soon.”
“I’ve never been more excited to eat carrots.”
Neither has Magnus, but it will be a while before they grow that big. They’ll have to endure the microwavable powder in the meantime.
“It’ll do your body good, not that you need it,” Magnus comments.
It has the desired effect of making Alec tuck his chin in towards his chest in embarrassment. A bit of red flares along his ears in a manner that shouldn’t amuse Magnus so much, but Alec is too fun to tease, especially when he’s quite animated about his reactions. How someone like him remains single is absolutely criminal, and Magnus almost wishes Alec wasn’t so he wouldn’t be tempted all the time to see just how far he can make that flush spread.
Sadly, Alec’s already retreating out the door before he can try. “I’m going to get ready for bed. Joining any time soon?”
Magnus shoots his nails a glance before shaking his head. Even though Isaac’s finished, he doesn’t want to ruin them by moving too soon, and outside of that, he’s still not at all tired. Maybe he can read through some of the books on his tablet, even if he’s already been through all of them countless times before.
“Probably later,” he answers. “How often does one get to see a beautiful sunset that lasts for over a day?”
Alec doesn’t question his words as he heads further down the main passageway. It leaves Magnus too alone with his thoughts, memories already wafting through of his last night on Earth. He had to give his beloved cat away to his neighbors since animals aren’t allowed aboard on any of the flights yet, which hadn’t been easy. Chairman Meow had been his steady roommate for fourteen years already, and he couldn’t bear the thought of saying goodbye. But his number had come up earlier than he had planned, leaving him scrambling to pack and say all his goodbyes.
All of his friends had parties before they left, but the only one still on Earth to celebrate with him had been Camille. Magnus had no intention of calling her over and getting embroiled with her any further, the mental scabs she’d left on him still barely healed because he always picks at them when he can’t sleep. He always remembers cherry-stained lips and a seductive voice in his ear, sharp nails pinching into his back, the promise of forever a lie she’d woven enough times already that she could whisper it to him even on the cusp of orgasm.
Magnus had only sent her a single text message to let her know he was leaving.
‘I’m departing for Gaia in the morning. Goodbye, Camille. -Magnus’
Nothing over-involved or emotional. He’d closed that chapter of his life several years before, and Camille had already expressed no intention of leaving Earth herself. This was always how it was going to end between them, but he still feels hollow. They had once spoken about traveling together side by side and starting anew together, shedding the dredges of their past and being reborn and happy.
How naive he’d been to think a love that burned that strongly wouldn’t eventually implode from within and suck all the joy and life in the universe with it. Even now, he’s clamoring to find the silver lining in his situation, but this is fitting for him as someone who’s always run away and reinvented himself. Now he’s being forced to sit stationary in one place, surrounded by a gallery of his own mistakes.
The thought festers through him so deeply that he convinces himself the sound of thunder roaring low is just in his head until he sees the dark clouds rolling in. His eyes widen, watching them as they flash a vibrant electric blue.
That should ward him off from even thinking about going outside right now, but he hasn’t yet experienced a storm on this planet. He’s also rather curious to analyze the contents of the planet’s sleet to see if it could serve a safer alternative source of water than what’s in the coastal shores near them.
“Isaac, fetch me some of the tin buckets from the utility room. I’m going to gear up.”
The droid glances at him, his red light brightening slightly. “Chance of snow is 90% based on Earth calculations and atmospheric pressure readings. Outdoor travel is discouraged.”
“I know, I know, but I’m only going to collect some snow and rain and maybe dance a little like Gene Kelly.” Assuming the hail here isn’t the size of baseballs. In which case, he’ll probably just end up with brain damage.
“Be careful,” the droid tells him as Magnus suits up quickly in his exoskeleton suit and helmet.
A few drops of snow are already falling on top of the ship and on the window, light smatterings that aren’t cause for alarm. More blue lightning weaves powerfully across the clouds, illuminating the area around them with bright, blinding flashes. Magnus ignores them as he steps outdoors with two metal buckets, collecting as much of it as he can hold.
The planet truly does look more stirred alive under the influence of a storm, chasing away some of the surrounding barrenness of the cold tundra by unleashing strong winds and bright color. Magnus can’t help but stare up at the horizon as the storm clouds drift quicker than usual, and he wishes he could feel the chilled snow against his flesh as it smacks into his helmet instead, rolling down the entire length of his glass visor.
The slow downpour persists until a heavier curtain of precipitation sweeps through the area, removing all visibility, and the buckets fill fast. Before Magnus can carry them back, however, he notices the water on the shore climbing rapidly and nearing the ship. Magnus knows it won’t be long before it partially floods them in, and given the cold temperature outside, they might wind up getting frozen and trapped in the snow if they continue to sit this close to flooding water. There’s no telling how long the storm will last, but it’s already dropping obscene amounts of snow from above.
As soon as he’s safely back inside, he closes the hatch, pulls his helmet off, and takes off running towards the passenger cabin.
“Alec!” he calls out in a panic. “Alec, wake up!”
The other man is already wandering the main walkway with all the sluggish intensity of a recently revived zombie. It’d be cute if they weren’t on the verge of having their slow, ensuing deaths eternally preserved in ice on a planet no one will visit.
“Is it snowing?” Alec mumbles.
Magnus doesn’t have time to wait for him to come to his senses. He grabs Alec by the wrist and starts hauling him towards the bridge to show him the situation outside. “The shore is flooding upwards fast. The ship is going to get stuck eventually, and we won’t be able to open the hatch to escape through the ice.”
Realizing the severity of the problem, Alec curses and maneuvers around his body fast to climb into the pilot’s chair. Snow is still pummeling down over them hard, along with heavy hail, and the wind has decimated any remaining visibility.
Alec’s hands fly across the control panel quickly, trying to gauge how much progress he’s made so far on repairs. “The ship has only reached 10% of its full power. If I divert everything into flight, I might be able to move us away a few miles and land us in a better position, but it’s going to be a rocky flight, considering I can’t see shit at the moment.”
He pulls up several navigation screens that show some of the surrounding topographical maps. They’re rough, and Magnus has a hard time telling the ocean apart from the land when everything is broken down into green and blue geometric shapes.
“They really neglected mapping this planet out that well,” Magnus sighs out before sinking into one of the other chairs on the bridge and buckling himself in.
Alec is already channeling whatever engine power they do have into getting them hovering off the ground as quickly as possible, while the droid helps him go through all their pre-flight checks.
“At our current level, the ship can fly an estimated 3,000 feet from the ground,” Isaac reports.
Alec’s brows furrow as he takes a hold of the manual steering controls and starts lifting them off the ground little by little. More hail keeps smashing into the bridge windows, and the ship vibrates hard as its main thrusters are switched on to blast them even higher.
“Keep an eye out for more forest or temperate terrain,” Alec instructs. “I’m going to fly us to a warmer part of this planet based on the temperature readings from earlier ORI fly-bys.”
The ship rattles louder as they hit turbulence, and Magnus still can’t see anything at all when they start moving south. The snow pelts its way violently over the bridge windows while the radar shows them flying over what looks like nothing but water. Miles and miles of water.
For a moment, Magnus worries they’ll stop mid-flight and plummet downwards to drown, but Alec looks confident enough about the ship’s stability. Either that or he’s just as terrified as Magnus is and is simply better at hiding it.
Magnus’ fingers dig into the handrests, clutching onto them for dear life as Alec keeps on the same path for nearly an hour until the snow and rain starts to wane little by little. There are traces of light peeking through thick storm clouds and blue-white webs of lightning that dissipate until the two of them can see once more –not just the beautiful orange of a sun ready to slumber but flocks of bird-like creatures flying in scattered formations and bright blue and violet tree tops surrounded by glowing flecks floating in the air that look like fireflies from a distance. Magnus can’t tell what they are, but they give the forest this strange ethereal quality. The more whimsical part of him wants to call them fairy lights, but the truth is probably that they’re some kind of airborne fungal spores or particles that they should be wary of.
Isaac points out a spot suitable for landing, one in a large enough forest clearing where they won’t brush up against too many trees as they descend slowly, and as soon as they’re low enough, Mangus bolts out of his chair to look at the trees more closely.
Their overall structure reminds him of large oak trees except with smaller, fatter trunks, and thick, wiry branches spread out in every direction. They’re also covered with striking blue-violet leaves that give off a prismatic sheen beneath the sunlight. Rather than being largely composed of chlorophyll, they probably have an entirely different biological make-up that Magnus would really like to study if his stomach ever stops trying to crawl its way out of his body through his throat.
The ship finally releases its landing gear so it can be planted comfortably on the ground, and Alec doesn’t let out a single breath of relief until they’ve stopped moving completely. That’s when he collapses forward, cupping his face in his hands and looking moments from breaking down in tears.
“We made it,” he whispers. “We really made it.”
Magnus cuts through the space between them, just so he can give Alec a hug from behind his chair. There are so many ways this could have gone wrong –so many ways it could have failed, and they could have died. Maybe if it had been anyone else in the pilot’s seat, they would have plunged into the ocean fast or would still be buried in snow.
But they really made it.
He’s so overjoyed, he doesn’t care about anything else except the fact that they’re alive, and the ship is out of harm’s way. He’ll worry about exploring their new landscape in the morning. For now, he can’t feel or think past Alec swiveling in his chair and launching himself against his body to hug him more properly.
Magnus’ chin lands gently on Alec’s shoulder, and he smells layers of ORI-produced soap and shampoo on him. Mostly, he smells Alec and realizes how afraid Alec had been when he can feel every light tremor the other man had tried to conceal. His muscles are jumping all over the place, and Magnus is sure it’s Alec’s heart that’s pounding chaotically right now between them and not his own.
“It’s okay. We’re okay now.” Magnus pulls Alec in closer, knowing it’s probably not very often that Alec gets to hear those words.