My legs were tangling, refusing to obey. Sometimes I would stumble on flat ground – simply because my femur would forget how to rotate in its joint. My body ached as if my insides were bound by tightly stretched wire. Each step echoed with a dull thud in my bones, as if I were dragging not a backpack, but the remnants of my lived life behind me.
I trudged across this scorched earth. Not a planet. Not a landscape. Something else – consigned to oblivion, brought to ruin, irretrievably lost. A world whose memories had been erased from the very fabric of existence. The remains of ships, jagged mountains of scrap, the twisted skeletons of stations and mechanisms whose function had vanished into nothingness along with the ashes of their creators. Everything around exuded decay, but not the kind familiar to the living. It did not breathe with life. Not for a long time. And it would not again.
Every step was agony. Every breath felt as if molten lead had been poured into my lungs. The air was dry and bitter, but it did not just parch – it tore at my throat from the inside, like the finest emery dust. Taste, smell, desire – all had dulled. Only one gnawing necessity remained: to walk.
The weight of the backpack dug into my shoulders, striving to bend my back to the ground. My augmented leg grated with every step. Not because the mechanism was wearing out, but because this entire damned earth groaned with metal, like a dying titan of technology, and I was the last one to bear its burden.
How long have I been walking?
Here, time had turned to nothing. It did not flow, but had congealed, like a poisonous mold corroding rust. It did not pass – it decomposed.
The very concept of distance had lost meaning. The same lifeless outlines loomed before me, as if I were doomed to an eternal circling. Or perhaps it was not I who moved, but this cursed wasteland itself that expanded, devouring itself.
I walked. For to stop meant death.
Hunger and thirst had long since ceased to torment me. They did not clench my stomach, did not dry my throat. They had become a background, a monotonous rhythm, a faint pulse, barely attesting to my existence.
Sometimes I would imagine the taste of water on my tongue, the faint aroma of long-forgotten bread. But my mind knew – these were merely echoes of the past, a futile attempt by a tormented brain to deceive the flesh.
Most of the wreckage of ships and shuttles resting here had long since turned to dust or gaped with such emptiness that any hope of finding anything was futile. Other hulks lay on their sides, sealed by time and destruction, and my strength was too depleted to attempt to penetrate inside.
But, to my meager comfort, some of them still retained a semblance of integrity sufficient for exploration. I did not dare to venture into the bowels of larger vessels, whose labyrinthine layouts were unknown to me. But smaller craft still became the object of my joyless pilgrimage.
I made an attempt to search. Any object resembling packaging, containers, compartments. My gaze snatched one – hermetically sealed, with pictograms vaguely reminiscent of nutritional ration markings. With a jerk, tearing off the seal, I peered inside. I was met by thick emerald mold, with a density resembling fur, and a swaying, jelly-like substance that reacted to the slightest touch. I discarded the find, not even deigning to smell it. Better to accept death than to defile myself with such filth.
The surrounding world was a horrifying sight – colossal teeth, torn out by the roots and thrust into the tormented soil. The remains of stations, broken ships, mangled structures – like the fangs of some monstrous fallen beast, jutting from the earth. Decaying, crumbling, but still bearing the imprint of their former sharpness. I advanced through this graveyard, as if between the roots of a fallen titan, and each subsequent step painfully echoed the previous one.
And I still dragged out my miserable existence. Not by right, not through a desperate struggle. Only by inertia, finding no strength within myself to end this senseless journey. Not yet. But more and more often a tormenting question surfaced in my consciousness: "For what?"
There was no answer.
Only the relentless arrow on the display of a mysterious device indicated my further path.
A full suit of armor, donned over my emaciated body, and a sealed mask with filters – this was my only barrier between life and the corrosive atmosphere. I had modified them as my meager resources allowed: installed additional valves, reinforced internal seals, patched holes in the hermetic layers. Now, it all functioned. With varying degrees of success. The chemical slime that hung in the air no longer caused me a racking cough. Suffocating fumes did not constrict my lungs. But this was only the outer shell.
Inside – it was another matter.
Intolerable thirst tormented my mind. Not just a parched tongue – my very consciousness screamed in agony. I was forced to quench my thirst with my own sweat, licking the salty drops from the inner surface of my mask. Not for the moisture – for the phantom illusion of control over my own body. My throat cramped, and each agonizing swallow felt like a rusty nail being driven inside. My parched lips were covered with painful cracks. I was not sure I could utter anything now. Even in my thoughts – only fragmented words. Clear. Simple. So as not to allow my mind to fade completely.
Hunger was a silent ghost that could be temporarily banished. But thirst was a screaming demon, relentlessly tormenting the flesh. It was like two prisoners in the same cell, where one was a madman armed with a blade. I could tear off the filter and greedily gulp down the murky liquid sloshing beneath the debris, but I had witnessed the fate of those who succumbed to despair. Decay does not forgive recklessness.
And I walked on.
Overcoming another obstruction, I noticed something that disrupted the familiar picture of desolation.
The terrain had changed.
The chaotic jumble of debris, the absurd landscape of dead structures growing into each other like malignant tumors – all of it had vanished. Everything had quieted down. The surface had leveled out. It was as if space itself had sighed in relief. The air had noticeably thickened, and the horizon lines had become unnaturally straight, precise. Almost architectural. Sharp. Full of ominous meaning.
Below, a depression yawned. Frighteningly regular in shape. Almost a perfect geometric figure. As if it had not been destroyed, but carved out with surgical precision. Created for a specific purpose. I froze in place. This place did not belong to chaos. It seemed alien even here, among the silent witnesses of others' tragedies.
Too perfect angles. Too precise outlines.
In the very center of this strange place stood the skeleton of a half-destroyed base.
Not an escape pod. Not a hangar. Not a fragment of a fallen station. A base. Perhaps storage facilities. Perhaps an abandoned scientific outpost. Its architecture was strikingly different from anything I had seen before: neither ornate techno-futurism, nor crude military functionality, nor the organic forms of an alien xeno-culture. Something painfully… Terran.
Panels that were once, probably, dazzling white. Walls covered with faded logos whose symbols I could not decipher, but whose outlines evoked a strange déjà vu. Too familiar. Rectangular entranceways. Angular sections, devoid of any ornamentation. Rusty remnants of floodlights. It was as if a fragment of a long-dead era had miraculously survived in this realm of darkness and was only now revealing itself.
An inexplicable feeling constricted my chest.
It was as if I had approached the grave of a long-forgotten mother tongue.
There was not even a hint of alienness here. Everything looked painfully rational. Human. Technological. And from this, a chilling dread gripped my heart.
For even this haven of reason was dead.
An icy shiver ran down my spine. Not from the wind – there had been no wind here for a long time. Just… a shadow. Long, unnaturally elongated. Not from the faded sun. But from something else. From something that was still hidden from my sight.
And at that moment, I saw them.
First – only with peripheral vision. A vague movement, as if the very fabric of the universe had torn for a moment. I narrowed my eyes, pressed myself to the ground, cautiously peering from behind the ragged edge of a metal plate.
About a hundred paces away, against the backdrop of a pile of rusty scrap metal, indistinct patches of movement flickered. Several distorted silhouettes. It was difficult to say exactly how many – perhaps four, perhaps six. They did not stay in one place. They crept. They sniffed the dead air. They scanned the lifeless landscape with their gazes.
Their bodies were distinguished by a painful angularity. No armor, no semblance of clothing – only bumpy gray flesh and deformed limbs. They moved on two or four limbs. Some crawled vilely across the ground. One hobbled sideways, like a crab, another dragged a mangled leg behind it. They were similar in size to a human, and some even surpassed it. But most striking was their movement – sharp, mechanical, devoid of any grace. The movements of predators absolutely certain of their superiority.
Scavengers. Or something more repulsive.
I had encountered such creatures before – fleetingly, at the very beginning of my journey. But then it was only a solitary monster, larger than these. Now there were many. Too many. One of them sharply raised its grotesque head, stopping dead. The movement was unnatural, but not extravagant – simply too swift for flesh and blood. Perhaps it had caught my scent. Or picked up a barely audible sound. It was hard to say for sure.
Another one twitched to the side, a sharp jerk like a dog that had caught the scent of prey. Then it returned to its previous, senseless course. Indifferently. Aimlessly. Just scanning the area.
I froze in my shelter, not moving a muscle. I pressed myself to the ground, as much as my bulky armor allowed. My heart beat evenly. Not from courage – from exhaustion. My body itself remembered the ancient law of survival: in the presence of a predator, one's breath must be quieter than death.
No otherworldly magic. No supernatural forces. Just flesh and blood. Just hunger, driving them mad. Just another form of life, alien and hostile.
I knew: should I attract their attention – a painful death awaited me. Not because these creatures possessed some special power. Because I was only a mortal, clad in worn armor.
I began to retreat slowly, my heels feeling for the edge of the precipice leading down – to the dead carcass of the base. Ruins. The remains of a once majestic construction. Perhaps a refuge. Perhaps a trap. But in any case, better than remaining defenseless in the open.
I did not look back. I did not check if these creatures were pursuing me. I simply began my descent. Slowly. Silently. Trying not to disturb the dead silence of this place.
In the direction of the gaping voids of the ruins.
Down – to where death might not come so quickly.
And where, perhaps, I would have a few more precious moments to contemplate before oblivion consumed me.
The descent proved treacherously slippery. Sand mixed with cold ash and metallic shavings crumbled under my boots, like oil-soaked clay. Several times I lost my balance, once hitting my own leg hard – a sharp pain pierced my side, but I did not utter a sound. Not because I had enough willpower. But because the scream had long since become lodged somewhere deep inside, finding no way out.
Below, a sinister silence reigned, devoid of any smells. The air was thick, but almost sterile – like in long-abandoned hangars or scorched laboratories. Dust did not rise into the air, but hung motionless in the stale haze. It seemed the world itself had held its breath in anticipation of something terrible.
I approached the nearest gaping opening of the entrance. A corridor half-buried in debris. Underfoot – a rough metal floor, covered in chips and the marks of merciless time. Barely discernible faded markings. On one of the walls, I felt a twisted sign. In the distorted dialect of an ancient language, something like "ACCESS A3" was written. I ran my fingers over the dusty letters, leaving a clear trail in the gray gloom.
So, I was the first to break the centuries-old silence of this place.
Inside, absolute darkness reigned, only the weak beam of my flashlight pierced the thick gloom. Shadows did not play on the walls – they seemed to retreat deeper, yielding to the meager light. The walls were dry, covered with a layer of age-old dust. Not a trace of mold, not the slightest hint of moisture. Only dry, lifeless death.
I moved along the corridor, trying to step as quietly as possible. The old base emitted mournful creaks, but not from the wind – from old age, from the corrosive rust of time. I passed piles of broken furniture, walls melted by explosions, and dilapidated cabinets. Most of them gaped with emptiness. One cabinet was locked – I had to use force. Inside, I found only decayed clothes, crumbling to dust at a touch, and an empty metal flask. I brought it to my face and inhaled the stale air. It smelled of cold steel and eternal oblivion.
The corridor turned sharply downwards, transitioning into a steep descent. Ahead, a staircase leading into the black maw of the lower levels was visible. My hand felt for the cold metal railing – surprisingly, it had survived. I began to descend slowly, trying not to disturb the dead silence of this underground realm.
Below, an hangar awaited me.
Vast. Partially collapsed. The twisted ceiling yawned with a black hole, burying one of its sides beneath it. But in the center… it stood.
A ship. Squat, barrel-shaped, with a blunt, stubbornly protruding nose and armored plates of the hull. Most likely a cargo transport. Or an autonomous long-range shuttle. Inside, a musty smell reigned… not disgusting, but heavy, stagnant. The air seemed motionless, like stagnant water in an abandoned swamp. I took several cautious steps forward. Sooty portholes were covered with a network of cracks. One of the outer panels had been torn off, exposing the interior space.
I squeezed inside.
The first thing that hit my nose was a humid mustiness. No freshness. Damp, mold-covered panels. Microscopic fungi corroding the hull. A nauseating smell of decaying plastic, permeated with the spirit of bygone years. An unpleasant heaviness immediately arose in my head. The air was thick, stuffy. I turned the ventilation regulator on my mask all the way up.
Inside, a claustrophobic tightness reigned. Small cabins, dust-covered seat belts, empty containers. I examined each compartment. Most were empty. In a couple, I found only rusty remnants of equipment, some tools covered with the patina of time, and melted fragments resembling a portable energy reactor. Everything here breathed death.
I did not find a mess hall. I found only two sealed packages. I touched them. They crumbled with a dry crackle, like brittle ice. Inside, a powder sloshed, once a nutritious mixture. Now – only deadly poison. I did not even try to open them.
My gaze slid across two lifeless bodies.
One sat motionless in the pilot's seat, its head thrown back. The protective mask was cracked, and its eye sockets gaped with white, dried-out spots. I found the second body in the cargo compartment. A woman. Her pose seemed strange – hunched over, she seemed to be embracing her stomach. Or trying to hide from imminent death. She had died without ever getting up.
I looked at her for a long time. Not out of compassion – that feeling had long since atrophied. I tried to understand: how many agonizing days had she spent in this dead womb before her heart stopped?
No answer existed.
In the corner lay a flashlight. I picked it up. It showed no signs of life. But the glass was intact. I attached it to my own, in case my own light source failed.
I left the ship. Slowly. Not so much from fatigue as from bitter disappointment. I had hoped to find some useful cargo, but had discovered only another silent tomb.
Now only the base itself remained – the last chance for salvation or another death trap.
Beyond, only dead silence awaited me, endless rooms covered in age-old dust, and, perhaps, something else… something that would be better never to find.
At least a sip of clean water…
At least a faint hint that my journey had some meaning, that I was not simply wandering towards an inevitable end. Even if that end was just another grave.
But death, perhaps, would not come immediately.
The gloomy corridors went deeper and deeper, into the very heart of the dead world.
Not branches – rather, a slow absorption by the planet's depths. It seemed as if the base had not been erected, but had grown out of the very earth, like a gigantic stone mushroom. Each step echoed with a muffled sound, and the battered metal beneath my boots barely perceptibly shuddered – a faint sign that the ravaged structure was still holding. Or merely mimicking stability, ready to collapse at any second.
I passed several lifeless rooms – only bare walls and an ominous emptiness. Here and there, terminals still remained, but the screens of most had long since gone dark. One, clinging to the last sparks of dying energy, suddenly flickered to life, flashing with a dull emerald light. A line appeared on it in a language that my mind could almost identify… and then it plunged back into darkness. As if it regretted its fleeting awakening. I did not touch it again. It was dead. Like everything around.
In the next room, I saw only withered furniture, a broken washbasin, and a cabinet forcefully driven into the floor, its door hanging limply on rusty hinges.
However, my gaze caught on something else. At first, I could not understand what was before me. Only an elongated silhouette dissolving into the thick shadows. Then the outlines became clearer, forming a horrifying picture.
A human. Or rather, only the pitiful remains of what it once was.
A withered skeleton, hanging limply in a noose. The rope, old and tattered, but still bearing the weight of dead flesh. The noose was tied with methodical precision. Beneath it – an overturned box, which had served as the last support of despair. It had not hurried. Everything had been done deliberately and coldly. The jaw hung open – a silent testament not to a death cry, but to the relentless passage of time.
I did not try to delve into its last thoughts. I simply stood and looked at this silent drama. Perhaps it had foreseen a painful and prolonged agony. Perhaps it had lost all hope of salvation. Or perhaps it had grasped some truth inaccessible to my understanding. It had left while still retaining the remnants of will to make this final choice.
I silently offered a brief prayer and hurried away, not wishing to linger in this place of despair.
After an endlessly stretching corridor, a vast cavity yawned before me, like a gaping maw in the depths of the rock. The space suddenly expanded, disappearing into the thick gloom. The high ceiling vanished into impenetrable darkness. The walls spread out to the sides, drowning in shadows. But even in the meager light of my flashlight, I felt the grandeur of this place. Life had once surged here. This was the center. The heart of this dead base.
I stepped inside, feeling the icy air penetrate beneath my armor. The first step echoed with a chilling crunch. The second – a soft, barely audible creak. I directed the beam of my flashlight downwards, fearing to see the worst.
A horrifying sight met my eyes: the floor was literally strewn with dead bodies. Withered skeletons, decomposing remains of flesh, clad in armor or torn civilian clothing. Dozens, perhaps more. One leaned against the wall, its helmet pierced through. Another huddled on the floor, clutching its arms around itself as if trying to retain its fleeting warmth. A third lay face down, pressed against the cold stone floor, as if begging for oblivion.
They had all left this world long ago. Their bones had withered, and their eye sockets gaped with black emptiness. Only their unnatural poses spoke of the fact that their death had been agonizing. Many had tried to crawl, desperately clinging to their escaping lives.
I took another cautious step, trying not to disturb the remains of the deceased, and looked ahead, towards where a faint light flickered.
And I saw… water.
In the very heart of this terrible hall yawned a small pit, approximately ten meters in diameter. Perhaps the trace of a powerful impact. Perhaps an artfully created reservoir. It no longer mattered.
Water splashed within it. Crystal clear. Absolutely still. Not a single murky suspension. Not the slightest trace of dust. It shimmered in the gloom, quietly, ghostlike, but distinctly. Like frozen glass. Like an impossible promise of salvation.
I cautiously approached, trying not to scare away this vision. My heart beat faster – for the first time in long days, not from chilling horror, but from a timid glimmer of hope. From the ghostly chance of survival.
I knelt down on one knee, feeling the junk armor painfully dig into my bone. I slowly pulled off my soot-covered glove. With a trembling hand, I reached for the life-giving moisture.
There was no smell. None at all. And it was the most wonderful aroma I had perceived in recent days, filled with the stench of death and decay. Purity. Freedom from poison. From rot. From the betrayal of this cursed world.
My fingers almost touched the mirror-like surface.
And at that very moment, I heard footsteps.
Sharp, like hammer blows on stone. Dry, lifeless. And too swift for a normal step.
I turned around – instinctively, before I had time to realize what was happening. The beam of my flashlight swung wildly over my shoulder, snatching the approaching threat from the darkness.
And it was there, like a spawn of a nightmarish dream.
The creature. The very one that had relentlessly pursued me from the very beginning of my journey. Not a phantom. Not a play of light and shadow. Solid. Real. It made no sound. No growl, no howl. It merely rushed forward, its movements frighteningly silent.
And its mad dash was directed straight at me.