PRELUDE TO ACT II: THE FOUR WHO RAN INTO HELL

The leader, still coughing from time to time, was hunched over the small emergency supply-kit, distributing radiation tablets to the group. They had realized that the ship, their only escape from the prison, had poisoned them during the journey. The telltale signs—headaches, nausea, and a metallic taste in their mouths—had hit them hard just a few hours into the flight. Dave was the first to notice, pointing out the sickly green hue creeping onto their skin.

The air was thick, cloying. Every breath tasted like metal, every cough like chewing on a spoon. Squinty stared at his own hands, wondering why they looked... wrong. Greenish? Sick. He felt his teeth grinding, the pressure between his ears pulsing like a drumbeat.

"These... pills. Just... just... keep eating ‘em,” the heavy one groaned. His voice sounded distant, like it was underwater. He shoved a pill into his mouth and blinked, his face scrunching up like a child tasting something sour. "S’all keeping us from cooking... from the inside.”

Squinty blinked. Everything felt slow. Everything felt... like it was sinking. The ship, the comet, his mind, all sinking into the same place, disappearing into the black. "Less than a day and it’s already... killing us,” he said, barely recognizing his own voice. It felt like someone else was saying the words, drifting through him.

Something thudded inside Squinty’s skull. A noise. A pulse. His head throbbed. He caught a flicker of the leader’s face. Dark. Fuzzy. A blur with eyes. "We got here," the leader said, or something like it. "We... got here. That’s what matters."

Dave, a shadowy figure, floated past him, his face pale and stretched. His mouth moved but the words didn’t land. "At least... made it. Now we gotta..." The words evaporated. Squinty couldn’t hold onto them. Something about... this place? This... ship? The walls were closing in, or maybe they weren’t there at all.

Everything was flashing. A blur of lights, of darkness, of faces too close and too far away. He thought he saw the ship above them, thought he saw the shadows slithering through the spaceport... but none of it made sense. Every breath felt wrong. Every second, he felt like he was slipping out of himself.

He could hear them all, talking, coughing, muttering, but it felt like static, like noise from a broken transmission. His own thoughts scattered like grains of sand, and all that was left was a deep, cold throb in the pit of his stomach, and the greenish hue crawling over his skin.

Nothing was right.

Nothing was clear.

Squinty spoke, “Where are we, man? What is this place?”

“I think we’ve found a Dyson Tree.” The leader answered.

Dave blinked, confusion plain on his face. “A what?”

“A Dyson Tree,” the Leader repeated. “It was this idea, back in the early days of space exploration. Terraforming comets, asteroids, maybe even small moons—turning them into self-sustaining habitats. Trees built to harvest solar energy, support life, grow ecosystems. Humanity was trying all sorts of crazy shit back then, and some of it worked. For a while, anyway.”

The fat one, his stomach aching with radiation and a bladder ready to burst, waddled away from the group. “Gotta piss,” he muttered, his voice gravelly and distant, as if swallowed by the air. His body, bloated and sluggish, trudged toward the shadowy corner of the spaceport where the faulty lighting created a dark void. He didn’t care much about the others anymore; his head was buzzing with a dull ache, his mouth tasted of metal.

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Above, something moved in the vastness of the superstructure, slithering unseen among the girders. But to the fat one, none of it existed—just the pressure in his gut and the relief he craved. The shadow stretched out before him, deep and inviting, a refuge. He stepped into it, the darkness like a blanket swallowing him whole.

He wasn’t in there more than a heartbeat when it hit. A scream, his scream, split the air—sharp, raw, full of terror. The others, hunched over their own misery, snapped to attention, their minds slow to catch up. The sound echoed through the spaceport, ricocheting off metal beams and hollow walls.

Squinty, wide-eyed and disoriented, turned just in time to see his brother—being lifted, rising like a balloon, legs kicking uselessly. There was nothing holding him. No hand, no claw. Just... force. Unseen, unexplainable, dragging him up, higher and higher.

Their AVPs flickered, shifting perspectives, zooming in on the fat one’s terror-stricken face. Huis, watching from afar, felt the scene pulse through his AVP like a wave of electric fear, but his nanodrugs slowed the intensity, wrapping the terror in a bubble of thrilling detachment.

The fat one thrashed, his mind scrambling to understand what was happening. Pain tore through his shoulder, sharp and unrelenting. His shirt soaked with blood as it ran down his arm, dripping in warm streaks. He clawed at whatever had him, but his hands met nothing but cold, unyielding hardness—like steel, like stone, like something that defied all comprehension. It was impossible. He couldn’t grasp it.

He was being dragged, hauled upward by something invisible, something that wasn’t there. His legs kicked uselessly beneath him, his breath coming in shallow, panicked gasps. The world around him blurred, narrowing into the searing pain and the crushing grip that pulled him into the shadows.

Huis felt it all, absorbed the agony through the AVP—the sensation of blood-soaked skin, the terror swelling in the fat one’s chest. But for Huis, it was distant, like watching a horror show from a comfortable seat. The nanodrugs dulled the edges, making it bearable, even thrilling.

The last thing his friends saw of him was the fat one’s body rising, his scream echoing through the dark spaceport. Then, only silence. An unseen force dragged him further into the unknown.

Squinty screamed in panic, bolting after his brother. “No! No, come back!” His voice cracked with desperation. “He’s my brother!” The leader and Dave shouted after him, but they didn’t follow, their voices fading as Squinty disappeared into the dark.

The last they saw of him was his silhouette vanishing into the recesses of the port. "Come back!" they yelled, but Squinty was already gone.

In Squinty’s AVP feed, he sprinted after the fading cries of the fat one, bursting through the final docking gates and onto the comet’s surface. The rough, pockmarked landscape stretched beneath him, his eyes locking onto a shadowy form high above—his brother, floating eerily on what looked like a conveyor belt suspended in space.

The AVP glitched, distorted by radiation sickness, leaving the scene unclear, hazy. Squinty could see his brother, but the details slipped through the feed, everything blurred and disjointed. His mind couldn’t process it.

Meanwhile, Dave and the leader, disoriented and barely able to perceive their surroundings, clung to the wall, moving slowly and carefully. They could hardly make out anything through the flickering images on the AVP. Every step felt heavier than the last, weighed down by exhaustion, sickness, and the oppressive darkness of the spaceport.

"Stick to the wall," the leader rasped, his voice ragged from fatigue. He coughed, the sound rattling deep in his chest. "Slow... steady."

The spaceport stretched out in front of them like a yawning void, filled with flickering shapes they couldn’t focus on. They shuffled along, fingers brushing the cold, solid surface of the wall, their breaths shallow and strained.

After what felt like hours, the leader’s hand found a solid edge—an opening, a doorway.

"Here," he muttered, nodding toward it.

They slipped inside, collapsing into the small, enclosed space. It wasn’t much—barely more than a cramped, foul-smelling room—but the walls felt solid, pressing in close. Comforting. They sank to the ground, too tired to care about anything else.

Dave curled up against the wall, trembling from radiation sickness. The leader slumped beside him, his head resting on the cold metal. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. They just needed sleep, even if they weren’t sure they would ever wake up again.