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The television in the corner of my apartment was mostly just providing white noise while I tried to choke down a bowl of microwaved leftover lasagna. Between grading papers and trying to wrap my head around the latest astronomical data anomalies, my brain was pretty much fried.
Then a photo flashed on the screen, and my fork froze halfway to my mouth.
It was Colt.
They weren't using his standard, smiling headshot either. It was a grainy, high-contrast photo that made him look like a fugitive, plastered right next to a bold, red breaking news banner.
"...disturbing update out of Sydney, Australia," the anchor said. "Noted Hollywood stuntman Colt Seavers is now the primary suspect in the murder of fellow stunt performer Henry Herrera. Authorities report that Seavers is currently missing and presumed dead following a high-speed boat pursuit that ended in a massive explosion in Sydney Harbour..."
I sat straight up, my flimsy couch squeaking under me. My heart plummeted straight through the floorboards.
No. I stared at the screen, my eyes scanning the sweeping shots of the harbour, the black smoke billowing over the water, the flashing blue and red lights of the police. My mind instantly started doing what it always does when faced with a massive problem: trying to calculate the variables, find the logic, break down the data. But the math wasn't mathing.
Colt? A killer? It was impossible. Completely impossible.
Growing up in the foster system, we didn't have much, but we had identical DNA that proved we weren't entirely alone in the world. Even after we got split up, even with him living a life of high-octane Hollywood adrenaline while I chose the quiet sanctuary of a junior high science lab, I knew his core composition. Colt was the guy who broke his own bones just to make other people look good. He was a protector, a goofball, a guy who took hits so others didn't have to. He didn't kill people. He just didn't.
"Police are currently searching the debris field, though sources indicate survival is highly unlikely..."
"Come on, Colt," I muttered aloud to the empty room, my voice sounding tight, foreign, and entirely too small. "What kind of mess did you get yourself into this time?"
I gripped my knees, my knuckles turning white. The news anchor kept talking, throwing out words like 'altercation' and 'tragedy,' but my brain was already rejecting the narrative. If Colt was in trouble, he'd find a way out. He was resourceful. Annoyingly resilient, actually. You don't survive falling off buildings for a living just to go down like this.
But looking at the fiery footage on the screen, a cold, hard knot of pure panic began to tighten in my chest.
I reached for my phone, my thumb hovering over his contact. All I had to do was press call. If it rang and answered with his usual "Hey, Ry!" then this nightmare would be over.
But my thumb froze.
What if it went straight to a dead tone? What if a police detective answered his phone? If I called and got confirmation, then it was real. The universe would crystallize around that horrific piece of data, and I’d be forced to accept it. Right now, as long as I didn’t call, there was a chance Colt was alive. It was a Schrödinger’s cat situation. He was both gone and not gone. I chose to keep him alive in the box.
"No," I whispered, pulling my hand back. "Think, Grace. Use your brain."
I stood up, pacing the length of my small kitchen, my mind racing at a million miles an hour. Colt was a stuntman. His entire professional existence was predicated on a single concept.
Making lethal situations look real while making them completely safe.
He jumped out of helicopters, he set himself on fire, he flipped cars. He knew the precise physics of an explosion better than most demolition experts.
I grabbed my laptop, quickly navigating to a news site that had uploaded the raw broadcast footage of the Sydney Harbour chase. I hooked the laptop up to my TV screen, maximizing the video.
"Okay, let's do this," I muttered, grabbing a notepad and a pen.
I hit play. The sleek speed boat tore across the water, a massive fireball erupting a second later, swallowing the vessel whole. I hit rewind. Play. Rewind. Play.
I started timing it. From the moment the fire first sparked at the stern to the moment the main fuel tank detonated, there was a gap. A window.
Two point four seconds. To a normal person, that’s a blink of an eye. To an Olympic sprinter, it's a massive distance. To Colt Seavers? That was an eternity. His reaction times were off the charts. I’d seen him dodge a spinning car bumper with less than half a second's notice.
I zoomed in on the grainy footage, my eyes straining against the pixels. The boat was traveling at an estimated 35 knots. If he dived off the side opposite the initial spark exactly 0.8 seconds into the sequence, the water tension would be brutal, but the energy of the blast would carry over him. The water would act as a perfect shield against the thermal radiation and the concussive shockwave.
I stared at the frozen image of the fireball.
There were only two logical conclusions based on the data.
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Scenario A: He saw the danger, calculated the exit, dived into the harbour, and was currently hiding out because someone was framing him for murder. He faked his death to survive.
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Scenario B: He didn't try to get out. He chose to stay on the boat.
I slammed the laptop shut, the sharp clack echoing in the quiet apartment.
Scenario B wasn't an option. I refused to let it exist in my mind. Colt wouldn't just give up. He had too much energy, too much life, too much obnoxious optimism to ever just let a fire take him.
"He's alive," I said to the empty room, the panic in my chest finally giving way to a cold, hard determination.
I kept pacing, the worn hardwood floor of my apartment becoming a runway for my anxiety.
Do I call? If I call, what happens? Let’s say I dial the number and some gruff Australian detective answers. 'Hello, mate, we found this phone in a charred piece of fiberglass, who is this?' What do I even say to that? 'Oh, hi, I’m Colt Seaver’s identical twin brother, and according to my rough calculations of thermal dynamics and fluid mechanics, he definitely survived the blast, so you guys are doing a terrible job.' They’d think I was a lunatic. They’d think I was a co-conspirator. They’d probably flag my passport.
My heart was hammering against my ribs, a fluttering, hyperactive mess. I picked up the phone again, my palms slick with sweat. The screen illuminated, casting a pale glow over my face. I stared at his name.
Just don't do it. Keep the box closed. Schrödinger's twin.
My thumb twitched. A sudden, stupid, uncontrollable spike of pure panic-driven adrenaline shot through my hand, and before my brain could stop the signal, I hit the screen.
Calling: Colt.
"No, no, no, what are you doing?!" I yelled at myself.
In a total spasm of clumsy terror, the phone slipped right out of my sweaty grip. It clattered against the coffee table, bounced off the edge, and landed face-down on the rug with a soft thud.
I froze, staring at it like it was a live grenade. Why did I do that? Why am I like this? I am a grown man. I have a doctorate.
I lunged forward to grab it and hit cancel, but right before my fingers touched the casing, the ringing stopped. The timer started ticking.
0:01.
0:02.
A sharp, crackling breath came through the speaker, followed by a voice.
"...Ry?"
My brain short-circuited. I snatched the phone off the floor, jamming it against my ear so hard it hurt.
"Colt?" I choked out, my voice cracking entirely. "Colt, oh my god, are you—"
"Hey," Colt’s voice came through, sounding entirely too casual for a man who had been declared dead by international media twenty minutes ago. There was a weird background noise on his end, like wind and a rustling tarp. "Man... it is so good to hear your voice right now, you have no idea."
The sheer, suffocating weight of grief and terror that had been crushing my chest for the last half hour evaporated in an instant. And in its place, a massive, towering wave of absolute fury crashed over me.
I wanted to strangle him. I wanted to travel across the Pacific Ocean, track him down in whatever ridiculous hiding spot he was in, and personally throttle him.
"Are you insane?!" I hissed, dropping my voice to a harsh, furious whisper so my neighbours wouldn't think I was having a psychotic break. "The news said you're dead, Colt! I just spent the last ten minutes calculating the blast radius of a speedboat fuel tank because of you!"
"Hey, hey, keep your voice down!" Colt whispered loudly, the sound of crinkling plastic echoing on his end. "And for the record, I didn’t do it, Ry. I didn't kill Henry. Someone set me up."
"I know that, you idiot!" I snapped, rubbing my temples as a stress headache started to bloom behind my eyes. "Of course you didn't do it. You don't have the guts for it."
"Hey! I have guts!" Colt sounded genuinely offended, his bravado masking whatever fear he was actually feeling. "I'm highly capable of being menacing! I survived a drop that should have killed me, I think I can handle a little—"
"Colt, you're a stuntman," I interrupted, my voice dropping its furious edge and softening. "You get paid to pretend to get hurt so other people don't have to. Your entire psychology is built around preventing harm, even if you do it in the most ridiculous, high-velocity ways possible. You couldn't kill someone if you tried."
There was a long silence on the other end of the line, save for the distant sound of a siren somewhere in Sydney.
"...Thanks, Ry," he said softly. Then, his tone instantly flipped back to that classic, frustratingly nonchalant Colt Seavers cadence. "But seriously, you calculated the blast radius? Why didn’t you just call me?”
"Because what if you didn’t answer?” I said frustratedly. “I couldn’t accept that you…”
I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence.
“The numbers said you had a two-point-four-second window from the initial ignition to the primary fuel tank detonation," I said instead, the rhythm of the data grounding me, helping me shake off the lingering adrenaline. "Based on the boat's velocity and standard reaction times for someone with your specific neurological wiring, you had more than enough time to get off that boat."
I threw myself back onto the squeaking couch, staring up at the ceiling.
"So you either did exactly what I think you did and dove clear of the thermal blast, or you chose not to. And since you're currently breathing into my ear and complaining about your reputation, I'm glad to see my hypothesis was right."
"See? Look at that," Colt muttered, and I could practically hear the smirk on his face through the line. "I did a classic rolling break into the water. Lost a really good jacket, though."
"I don't care about the jacket, Colt," I said, a hand coming up to pinch the bridge of my nose as the reality of the situation fully settled in. "What's your plan?"
"I have to see Jody first," Colt said, his voice dropping an octave, losing the bravado entirely. "I gotta show her I'm alive. She's... man, she thinks I'm gone, Ry. I can't let her live with that. After I find her and figure out who is behind this, though? I don't know. I'm playing it by ear."
I opened my mouth to respond, but the words died in my throat. My gaze drifted down to the glowing screen of my phone, specifically to the digital counter ticking away the seconds of our call.
07:42.
A cold spike of dread, entirely different from the panic of thinking he was dead, pierced right through my chest. My brain, finally catching up to the laws of modern technology after being derailed by sheer emotion, screamed at me.
What am I doing? Calling him was a monumentally stupid move.
"Colt," I said, my voice dropping into a harsh, urgent whisper. "Hang up. Hang up right now."
"What? Why? I was just getting to the good part where I complain about the harbour water taste—"
"This call can be tracked, you idiot!" I snapped, standing up from the couch so fast my knees banged against the coffee table. "You are the prime suspect in a high-profile murder investigation involving an international incident in a major harbour! The police, the media, whoever is framing you—they are going to look at your phone records. They will see an incoming call from an American number, routing directly to a tower near your location. They'll know you're alive."
"Oh, come on, Ry," Colt scoffed, though I heard a slight shift in the rustling plastic on his end. "It's a big city, and they think I’m dead. They wouldn't waste their time tracking a random phone call from a junior high science teacher."
"Yes, they would!" I yelled softly, running a hand through my hair. "A connection was made. The data exists. If they look, they will find it. Hang up the phone!"
I could have hung up. The button was right there under my thumb, an easy fix to a terrifying problem.
But I didn't press it. God help me, I didn't want to.
"Look, even if you’re right," Colt said, his voice dropping, the bravado completely draining away this time. "Wouldn’t it be too late anyway? If they’re tracking it, they’ve already got the signal."
"No, that's a common misconception based on TV tropes," I started. "Triangulation takes time depending on the network density, and pinging a tower only gives them a general radius, but if you stay on the line—"
"I just don’t want to be alone right now, Ry."
Colt’s voice cut right through my explanation. It was quiet. Vulnerable. A tone he almost never used, not since we were kids sitting on the steps of a foster home waiting for social workers who didn't care.
"I know you’re not really here," he murmured, the wind rustling over his microphone again. "But..."
"I get it," I interrupted softly.
The panic in my chest deflated, replaced by a sudden, heavy ache. I looked around my apartment. The stack of ungraded papers on the kitchen counter. The single bowl of cold, ruined lasagna. The quiet, suffocating stillness of a space meant for one. No pets, no partner, no car. Just me, my books, and the stars I stared at because they were easier to understand than people.
My life was safe. It was predictable. And it was incredibly, profoundly lonely.
"I understand perfectly," I said, leaning my head back against the couch cushions, completely abandoning any thought of hanging up. "Stay on the line, Colt. I'm right here."
A soft exhale blew through the receiver, the tension in Colt's shoulders practically audible as he settled deeper into whatever hiding spot he’d found.
"It’s completely dark out here" he murmured, his voice sounding small against the distant ambient noise of the Sydney night. "Tell me about the stars."
I blinked, swallowed the lump in my throat, and looked out my own window. It was day on my end, but I closed my eyes and pretended the sky was a deep, velvet expanse, punctuated by those tiny, reliable pinpricks of light that had kept me company for as long as I could remember.
"Well," I started, my voice automatically dropping into that soft, rhythmic cadence I used when a student was overwhelmed. "Right now, where you are in the Southern Hemisphere, you've got a completely different view than I do. If you look up, you're probably seeing the Southern Cross. Crux."
"Yeah?" I heard the faint rustle of his jacket as he presumably tilted his head back. "What's the deal with that one?"
"It’s small, but it’s incredibly bright," I said, leaning back into my couch and staring up at my own ceiling, visualising the celestial sphere. "Sailors used it for centuries to find south because there’s no equivalent to the North Star down there. You have to use the pointers Alpha and Beta Centauri to draw an imaginary line. Alpha Centauri is actually a triple star system. It’s the closest star system to us. Just about four point three light-years away."
"Four light-years," Colt repeated softly. "That's... a long way to jump."
"Incredibly long. If you traveled at the speed of light, it would still take you over four years to get there," I explained, letting the comfort of astrophysics wrap around us both. "But the cool part is, when you look at it, you're looking at the past. The light hitting your eyes right now left those stars a little over four years ago. No matter what kind of mess is happening down here on Earth, those photons just keep traveling, completely indifferent to our problems, perfectly on track."
"I like that," Colt whispered. “Tell me more.”
So, I did. I sat in the quiet of my apartment, thousands of miles away, and talked him through the constellations, the life cycle of red giants, and the beautiful, unchanging physics of the cosmos, keeping the universe spinning safely for both of us until the panic finally faded into the night.