Chapter Text
It was rare for Olesya to have a Friday off.
Sure, there was the legally obligatory two days off a week—but when you’re dying for humanity, your schedule gets pretty tight.
But around 9pm last night, almost all of her meetings and appointments with Hatch and the rest of the engineering department were postponed to next week leaving her entire Friday (and weekend) free. She tried not to overthink it, but having a whole department shut down in the Vat cannot be good. The power seems to be working and the no mystery sirens went off in the middle of the night which should be a good sign but somehow made it worse—it could be anything that Stratt deemed keeping under wraps. Even Grace wouldn’t answer any of her messages.
After a morning gym session (astronaunting requires so much exercise, there are no days off) and lunch in a somewhat empty canteen, Olesya found herself heading to the shared office space the primary flight crew shared–enough for some desks pushed against each other, a spot on the floor for Olesya’s minor engineering projects, and a small coffee table and sofa set. It is smaller compared to her lab space at Roscosmos but astronauts have to get used to living in each other's pockets anyway. Having a deskspace was scarce on the Vat, but having her own workstation away from the chaos of everything else is one of the perks of prepping for a suicide mission.
“Ilyukhina?”
“Yáo?” Olesya blinks, staring at her commander in his workstation with his laptop open. “What are you doing here? I thought you had a piloting simulation, no?”
“It was cancelled,” Yáo replies with a wave of his hand. “Don’t you have a session with Hatch for the beetles?”
“Also cancelled.” Olesya sits on the sofa, kicking her feet to the edge of the table, so she can lean against her knees. “Dimitri sent a message last night that all beetle testing and training are postponed. Has not replied to me since.”
Yáo hums thoughtfully and scrolls through his laptop screen. “There are no internal memos or slack messages from operations.” Yáo taps on his mouse a bit more. “DuBois’ calendar is also free, I just messaged him to come here.”
“Annie?”
“Dr Shapiro is at Baikonur labs with the secondary crew until Monday.”
Olesya tries to pass the time being normal and reviewing the beetles design she was meant to go over with Hatch today. It is taking everything in her to not just go to the labs and ask what is happening. But who knows what kind of chaos there is in the labs right now. It would be safer to just stay put where she is.Yáo was clicking through his computer but Olesya bets he’s probably just as worried as she is.
Fifteen painstakingly slow minutes of pretending to be busy in front of a colleague later, DuBois opens the door to greet them.
“So all of our schedules have been cleared,” DuBois acknowledges.
“Yes,” Yáo answers his unspoken question. “Everything is postponed to next week. But we do not know why.”
DuBois puts his bag on his chair and sits on the edge of his desk. “Leclerc messaged me this morning, there are eighteen people in the sick bay–at least one from every major science, engineering, and operations team excluding flight crews.”
“Eighteen?” Yáo says in disbelief. “Food poisoning?”
“Maybe it was dinner yesterday,” Olesya tries to add helpfully. “New mystery sauce could be too much mystery.”
DuBois shakes his head with a glum expression. “Suppression overdose.”
Olesya’s brain shortcircuits. “You are joking, yes?”
DuBois leans forward a little. “A med team was at their lab yesterday because two of his colleagues were on an altered patch. The Caregivers on his team are rotating shifts so the Littles always have someone in the sick bay with them.”
“Do they know how it was altered?” Yáo asks worriedly.
DuBois shrugs his shoulders. “Leclerc is unsure.”
Olesya leans back on her chair and rests her chin on her hand. “I didn’t even know we had that many Littles.”
“Or enough Littles to slow operations on this ship when they’re out of commission." Yáo clasps his hands on the table.
Stratt had told them that one of the criteria for being on the flight crew was that there cannot be any women or Littles on the crew. She bent the rules since the coma gene pool is so small and allowed three women on the primary and secondary teams, but there are no Littles on board—all of them are Caregivers bar Shapiro who is a Neutral.
She has seen the basket of Little hormone suppressants by the pads and tampons in the sick bay. She would pass by the drop area every time she needed to restock but she has never seen anyone in it. She assumed it more for policy and regulation for the couple of Littles they may have on board—not for eighteen of them. Turns out no one was in the drop area because they have crazy suppressants.
Something in her heart winces. Olesya knew that Littles are smart and competent enough to handle the work needed here–-the one Little in her graduating class worked twice as hard to remain at the top. But to have a Little working on the Petrova Taskforce breaks her heart a tiny bit. The high stress environment must not be good for them. Without proper care and drops, Littles could fall very sick from normal work and school stress alone. A doomsday preparation taskforce is ten times more than normal work and school stress. She could probably needle Grace for more answers when she sees him.
As part of the primary flight crew, Olesya has had the privilege of working closely with so many people on the taskforce across all departments. The three of them needed to know everything there was to know about every part of the mission. She doesn’t recall recognising anyone as Little. Sometimes it was easy to tell if someone was Little—small tiny things like biting their fingers or shirts with misaligned buttons. But there was no one she could outwardly pinpoint as Little. But again, scientists and researchers are an eccentric bunch regardless of classification.
Yáo and DuBois were chatting about amending the timelines when Yáo gets a notification on his phone.
He quickly taps something back and puts it down. “Stratt is coming. She has a task for us.”
“What does she want?” DuBois asks, ever the pragmatist.
Yáo shrugs. “She just asked where I am and who is here with me.”
Olesya stretches her arms above her head. “Finally, I will go crazy if I have to stare at this anymore.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be reviewing that?” Yáo raises an eyebrow at her.
She waves him off. “Technicalities, I already reviewed it yesterday for Hatch.”
Yáo is about to retort when someone knocks on the door. In true Stratt behaviour, the director doesn’t wait for a reply. She comes in anyway and closes the door behind her.
Stratt is only holding one cup of coffee, meaning she probably already drank the first—and yet, she looked more tired than Olesya has ever seen her. Stratt takes a deep breath and sighs.
“I have a request for the three of you,” she asks carefully. “It is not directly related to the mission, and you have the right to refuse. But this is incredibly important to the wellbeing of the taskforce.”
Olesya sits up straighter in her chair, but DuBois cuts to the chase.
“It is about the suppression overdose?”
If Stratt is surprised she does not show it. She nods her head at him. “You’ve heard about it?”
“From the climatologists.”
Stratt puts her coffee down on the edge of his desk and looks at the three of them. “A total of eighteen individuals are being treated for suppression overdose—eight of them with confirmed cases of Suppression Fever.”
“How can we help?” Yáo asks.
Having a few more Caregivers in the sick bay likely wouldn’t hurt. Those Littles must be so scared and hurting right now. Olesya has babysat Littles all throughout university and some of her working life. On occasion, she would volunteer at hospitals and care sites with her sister back in Moscow.
“Due to the number of individuals affected by this, I am hiring more assistants and need to travel off the ship in 20 minutes.” She pauses for a moment. “However, I have recently acquired a Little,” Stratt says flatly and Olesya’s brain shortcircuits again. She wouldn’t have pinned Stratt as a Caregiver, let alone one who would adopt a Little.
“How recent?” DuBois asks, raising an eyebrow.
Stratt looks at her watch. “Nineteen hours.”
“Congratulations,” Olesya says surprised.
“I need someone to help look after him for the night. Your team is the only one unaffected by the overdose and has the time and manpower to do so.”
“Was he affected by the suppressants?" DuBois asks carefully. Olesya lets out a sigh when Stratt nods.
“He has suppression fever and still has an IV line in. He’s been sleeping most of the time, so it shouldn’t be too hard.”
“We can move to the sick bay,” Olesya suggests, already forming a plan in her mind. She hasn’t looked after a Little in so long, her instincts are starting to go crazy. “Not very hard.”
Stratt shakes her head. “He’s afraid of the sick bay and his room is being deep cleaned and being searched for more suppressants until the evening. Here will have to do until they are done.”
Olesya immediately starts discretely (well as discretely as she can) putting her screwdriver set into a locked drawer in her desk.
“Of course,” Yáo answers easily. “Thank you for trusting us with this.”
“Nonsense Commander Yáo,” Stratt objects, walking towards the door again. “I am already trusting you to save humanity, this is just a part of it.” She pulls the door open and Carl No-Last-Name, her bodyguard/friend/hitman-for-hire-probably, walks in carrying a sleeping Little on one arm, a duffel bag over his shoulder, and drags an IV pole beside him.
“Dr Grace?” DuBois says somewhat shocked.
The sleeping Little with straw blonde hair with a pacifier and an uncomfortable looking IV line in his hand is in fact, Dr Grace.
Stratt is giving instructions to the three of them but Olesya can only focus on the fact that Grace is a Little. The lead scientist in astrophage research who so carefully teaches them about the catastrophic space dots.The one she liberally stole sour candies for and from. The one who watched her dramatic Russian melodramas with her because she got horribly homesick. Her Gracie–the lanky scientist she has corralled into being her friend. Fuck, how did Olesya not realise he was a Little?
Right, stupid crazy suppressants.
What on Earth was he thinking?
Stratt explains each section of a laminated piece of paper with Yáo because of course Stratt is the kind of Caregiver who laminates instructions and emergency contacts for babysitters.
DuBois clears more clutter away and Olesya helps Carl move Grace and his IV pole to the sofa. She has her hands under his armpits as she adjusts him to not fall off the cushion and she can feel his rib cage. Carl rearranges a small stuffed dog so it is securely under Grace’s arm and tucks a blanket around the Little. It was strange to see the usually stoic man acting so soft but Olesya can’t help feel the same about Grace too. His hair is lifeless and floppy and his face is concerningly pale. The only real signs of life are the slow rise and fall of his chest and the pacifier bobbing in his mouth.
“How did something like this happen?” Olesya asks.
“In essence—free patches, too many Littles who know how to use lab equipment, and a stressful work environment. It is up to Dr Grace if he would like to share explicitly what happened, but I would prefer if you didn’t ask him directly,” Stratt replies as if she is reading a report. “Just know that we are doing everything we can to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”
“Is he supposed to be this tired?” DuBois asks.
“The medicine is part sedative.” Stratt kneels beside Grace and Olesya shuffles to the side. “Ensures the process is pain free.” Ever so gently, she puts a hand on his forehead, brushing his hair to the side. “Ryland,” Stratt whispers softly. It takes a moment but Grace’s eyes slowly open, blinking up blearily at his Caregiver. “Carl and I have to go now. We will be back tomorrow. Yáo and the team are here for you. Be good for them, okay?”
Grace makes a small sound and Stratt strokes his cheek until he closes his eyes and his breath evens out again. Olesya felt like a voyeur—intruding on something so intimate that she was never meant to see.
“Stratt,” Carl says bluntly, tilting his head towards the door.
Stratt brushing the imaginary dirt from her clothes when she stands—the office was not that dirty. Just a normal amount of dirt.
“His spectacles are in the bag with a change of clothes and diapers. One of you will have to collect his bottles from the sick bay—he will need one when he wakes up. A nurse will check his line in the evening. The—”
“Director,” Yáo interrupts. “Is this all covered in the instructions?”
“Yes.”
“We will be fine,” Olesya reassures her, waving her hand. “We have taken care of Littles before, the sick bay is close, and you have a jet waiting, no?”
“Right,” Stratt nods, clearly debating something in her mind. Instead, she thanks all of them, takes a last glance at her Little, and walks out of the door with Carl two steps behind her.
“Oh my god,” Olesya whispers when the door closes. “Gracie is so Little. How did we not know?”
“Did Stratt give you his range?” DuBois asks Yáo quickly.
“His paperwork says 3 to 5 but the doctors said he’ll probably be smaller since he’s sick. The sedative doesn’t help either. That is why he’s in diapers.”
“He’s too tiny to be overdosing.” Olesya sits on the arm of the seat and puts a hand in Grace’s hair, petting it gently. Something inside her heart blooms when he makes a satisfied noise and snuggles under the blanket with his little dog friend. “They all are.”
“All eighteen of them.” DuBois sits on the coffee table, his knees bumping into the sofa. “How could they do this? For why?”
Yáo crosses his arms. “There is no need to speculate, it won’t do any good. What we can do now is be here for Dr Grace.”
“You can feel his ribs.” Olesya sighs “I don’t think you’re supposed to be able to feel bones like that.”
Yáo tsks and sighs. “We can just do what we can. One step at a time.”
Olesya just hums in agreement and twirls her fingers in Grace’s hair.
They can be there for him, they must—no matter how temporary everything is. But that is life isn’t it? Everyone just lives and cares for each other in the space of temporary.
It is what it means to be human.