I dragged myself to the corpse of the Reliant. Rip and Ai both deserved that much from me. I had to at least check. Maybe one of the aircraft had survived. It was technically possible. Or, I thought it was until I saw what the nano-kaiju had done to the ship.

The ship that had survived impact from space hadn’t been able to stand up to the nano-kaiju’s might. There were pieces left to be sure. But that was all. Just pieces. Plating meant to weather the hardships of mining asteroids and solar flames was discarded like torn tinfoil. Great chunks were smashed into the ground like tombstones. And the engine that Rip had been so proud of was gone. I didn’t know how the monster had eaten it but it must have. I couldn’t find so much as a piece of it left.

But I searched anyway. Pain shot through my feet at every step but I was eventually able to start walking again. I looked and looked, feeling like a carrion bird sifting among the bones of some predator’s abandoned kill, savenging for a scrap of meat. I hobbled through the torn flesh of my old home and I was rewarded for it. I had hoped for a VTOL or even one of the helicopters. All I found was a beaten and bruised ATV.

I recognized the thing. It was probably the single oldest vehicle we’d had besides the Reliant herself. The ancient warthog of a truck was a strong contender for the ugliest thing on this planet. It was squat, dented, and splashed with a dozen shades of clashing paint. But, despite being nearly crushed beneath a chunk of metal the size of a small house, it ran.

Well, it moved anyway. Calling what it’s churning wheels did in the way of locomotion “running” was probably being too generous. But it moved faster than I could just then and it could do it for literally days. Not only that but it would probably take something like a six foot thick brick wall to stop it’s forward movement.

As I rolled out of what remained of the hanger bay and into the ice and snow, I wished I could tell if the truck was going to be fast enough to catch up to Cyrus. But I had no way to know how fast he could go, or if he’d go directly to Ai. Not only that but the ATV wasn’t insulated for weather this cold. I pulled up the map of the terrain between myself and the Ariel. I would have to stop for the night somewhere.

And I only had one option. If I was going to have any chance to make it in time, I had to push as hard as I possibly could. That left me with only one possible shelter for the night.

The old crashed ship where the frost wolves lived. The one that I’d passed up on before.

An hour or so later the ATV went over a particularly rough patch and a chunk of plating fell off my shoulder. Instantly I felt the cold there, pouring in like someone had doused me with cold water.

That reminded me of the other thing that I had passed up on at that ship. There was another survival suit waiting there. Maybe a better one.

All I had to do was sneak past the giant toothy monsters that guarded it.

I pushed harder on the accelerator even though the ATV was already going as fast as it could. It sent blazing pain up through my foot but I didn’t care. I didn’t have time to care about pain. Ai was in trouble.

I desperately wished I could talk to her. Through everything that had happened to me on Persephone, she’d been there to steady me. Without her I would never have lasted as long as I had.

And I was without her now. But there was nothing to do but grit my teeth and hope that I could be there in time. I begged the ATV to go faster. I pleaded with the Universe itself to slow Cyrus down. With every passing moment I sent out another prayer to anyone and anything I could think of asking for one chance to save her.

The trip was shorter than I would have thought possible even though every moment stretched and dragged like light being pulled into a black hole. Even without a black hole, Persephone’s light was well and truly gone by the time I was nearing my destination.

When I was still a little more than half a mile out, I cut the engine and took a moment to think. Was there any other way? Could some other course give Ai a better chance? If I contacted Cyrus again could I reason with him? With... it?

I knew I couldn’t. But I tried anyway. It just sent back a picture of an android giving me the finger with the caption, getting cold? The only true answer to that was yes, very much so. I didn’t say that, but Cyrus didn’t answer any of my messages again after that.

So this was it. It was time to go.

I got out of the car and surprised myself by not hesitating as I turned on the suit’s stealth function and started to move as quickly as I could in the direction of the downed ship. I still couldn’t run but the time off my feet had been enough that I could lightly jog for most of the way. I found myself wanting to run full out. To get there and stand in front of that entrance again.

Cyrus had told me not to go in there, I remembered. Why? What had it been afraid of?

And why wasn’t I afraid now? There wasn’t time to think about it. I looked down into the valley where the ship was embedded. I couldn’t see any of the wolf-like creatures but I saw the fresh tracks in the snow all through the valley. If they weren’t here, they had been.

Nights on Persephone were generally all but impenetrable, but tonight it seemed to be even worse than usual. Maybe the stormy clouds were letting in even less of the pale starlight than on another night. But the suit’s vision was beyond anything a human could allow and the angular metallic surface of the ship stood out amongst the rocks and snow around it.

The shadows were deepest near the ridge of the valley and so I stayed as close to that edge as I could. The silence was complete. Even my own suit didn’t make a noise between my careful steps and its own abilities to silence itself. It felt like being a ghost or moving in a dream.

The cold ran through me like a stream. My arm was already going numb where the plate had fallen off and between the suit’s attempts to compensate for the loss of heat and having spent so much time in stealth mode, the battery was beginning to run dry. I really was gambling everything on another suit being in that downed ship. If there wasn’t, there was no question what would kill me. It wouldn’t be starvation, but it would be hunger.

The various entrances loomed before me, growing larger and wider like mouths ready to devour me, the shadows within deepening to the point that nothing the suit had could have pierced them. But even once I was standing on the very edge of the largest opening, I couldn’t hear anything inside. No whispered breath of a monster’s heaving lungs. No clink clink of deadly claws tapping against steel. There was only darkness and silence.

That was what death was. Darkness and silence. And I felt so damn tired. That kind of rest might even have been worth being torn apart first. So I told myself that the worst case scenario wasn’t death, it was that I would succeed and thus have more work to do. The thought cheered me just a little. It seemed like something Ai might have told me if she’d been there.

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I stepped in.

Nothing happened. Alright, I told myself. Hard part is over. Just got to keep doing that.

The darkness enveloped me. I didn’t want to use any light but I also didn’t think that feeling my way through the darkness would work very well, so I turned the suit’s headlamp on at its lowest setting. I was braced to find a ten foot tall, slavering wolf beast waiting just ahead. Instead there was only an empty corridor.

I had a map of the ship, something Ai had downloaded for me the last time I was here. It had a list of the most likely places the new survival suit could be. It was just a simple matter of checking them all. The first wasn’t even terribly far from the entrance I’d come in through.

The suit would likely either be in its case or someone would be wearing it. I really hoped that no one was wearing it. As I understood it, the suit would still be sanitizing itself and would be technically clean even if I had to pull it off of a rotting corpse. But I could understand that intellectually and still feel like I needed a shower just from considering the idea of putting on the last suit another man ever wore.

The two places marked where the suit might be that were closest to the entrance were empty. Those places being a storage closet and what I was pretty sure was a bathroom, did not fill me with confidence that the suit would be in any of the marked locations. Assuming it was actually here at all.

I stepped out of the maybe-bathroom and instantly knew something was wrong. My body froze and I killed the light from the suit. I didn’t want to move but I needed to look around, to find whatever had tripped my instincts. I looked down the hall, further into the ship. Of course, I couldn’t see anything that way, not without my headlamp on.

Then I turned back to the way I had come and it was just as dark as the way forward. Which was wrong. I should have been able to see the entrance to the ship looking that way. And then the darkness shifted slightly and I heard a series of sharp inhalations. And then everything went silent and still again.

“Oh. Shit,” I breathed.

A rumble flowed down the hall from the moving shadow. It echoed and rebounded off the walls, reverberating through my body until I couldn’t tell if I was shaking from fear or if the sound itself was shaking me. Cold sweat oozed from my pores and I felt trapped, needing to run and never stop and at the same time needing to stay still and hope it couldn’t find me. But neither option would work and I knew it.

The shadow began to shift and slide, motions indistinct against the surrounding darkness. I only had seconds to come up with a plan. I couldn’t stand still. It would trip on me even if it couldn’t see or smell me. I couldn’t just run. This thing was faster than I was and knew its lair. I couldn’t just step back into the bathroom. I’d be trapped and it would eat me.

I wanted to turn on the headlamp, see what was coming for me. Look it in the eyes. I wanted to be that brave at least.

And then it hit me. I knew what to do.

I whipped my head towards the shadow and turned on my headlamp at its brightest setting.

The frost wolf’s hideous face seemed to erupt out of the darkness, gigantic, jaws packed with gleaming teeth surrounded by jowls stained red with old blood. It’s fur-coated muscle seemed to make its already huge bulk swell to impossible dimensions. But its red, hateful eyes flinched away from the sudden brilliant light I’d shined in its face.

It howled in shock and pain, and I ran. Every step felt like my injured feet were being smashed by hammers but I ran. It didn’t take long for the frost-wolf to overcome my surprise and I knew my lead wouldn’t last long. On the bright side, I could see the hallway ahead of me now. It’s important to enjoy the little things in life. Like not having Cyrus there laughing at me as I made panicked rabbit sounds.

With my light on I saw a ladder leading up to the next floor. The wolf couldn’t follow that way. I hurled myself at the ladder, aiming as high as my battered feet would allow me. I slammed into it so hard that I felt it lurch and shudder in its frame. I hauled myself up with my arms more than my legs and grabbed the top of the ledge above.

The wolf’s thunderous steps gathered as I pulled myself through the hole and I felt it brush my foot as I came through the hole. There was a terrible crash as the wolf’s bulk crashed through the ladder like a child knocking down a tower of blocks.

The wolf let out an enraged howl and disappeared from sight down the hallway below. It must have known another way to where I was. I hadn’t escaped. I’d only delayed the moment it would catch me.

I couldn’t keep running this way. I needed to find the suit, and fast. I needed a security terminal. If there was any power left in the ship or if my survival suit could power the security system for just a little while, I could search the whole ship much faster. But it would mean standing still somewhere for several minutes and that clearly wasn’t an option. But that wolf would catch me long before I searched the whole ship looking one room at at time.

My feet seemed to crash against the metal floors despite the suit’s stealth systems. The noise echoed and rebounded through the halls, making it sound as though a dozen wolves were closing in. For all I knew, there were.

I stuck my head into every open door I could find, the light of my headlamp following my gaze in swift searchlight blurs. Every time I saw a chance to change floors, I took it. The more I could confuse my position for the wolf the better.

Time passed like in a dream. It could have been five minutes. It could have been a year. But as I flung myself down yet another hall I heard sounds that put fresh ice-water into my veins. I heard the clicks and pounding of a wolf’s feet on the floor above me and at the exact same time from the floor beneath me there came a howl that seemed to shake the ground I ran on.

I wasn’t being chased by one wolf anymore. There were at least two now. That number would only grow.

Panic was whispering to me that I was already trapped but I slammed my mental doors shut on that voice. There was no time for panic.

It was thoughts of Ai that filled my mind then. She had to be worried about me. I refused to let worrying about my sorry ass be the last thing she thought about before Cyrus killed her.

The next few minutes were bad. More running. More darkness. The monsters hunting me always at my heels. But the minutes that followed them were both better and worse.

I found the security terminal I was looking for. I plugged into it and if you have ever had to deal with a slow computer system, let me tell you, it’s a lot worse when the thing making you hurry is imminent death.

A stream of curses that would have made Rip proud poured from my mouth and it was all I could do not to bash the screen in. But the wolves didn’t find me before I found what I was looking for. The case with the survival suit was close. Up a floor and down a hall. A hall that was being stalked by one of the wolves.

A sudden beeping nearly made me jump out of my skin in fright. The noise couldn’t have been much worse. Powering the ship’s system and cameras along with everything else I’d done since leaving the Ariel had drained the suit’s power to dangerous levels. I was almost completely dead.

I laughed at that thought. It came out wild and thready. The voice of a man in bad old-age makeup from one of Rip’s favorite old movies echoed in my head, “He’s only mostly dead!”

I killed my headlight and climbed the stairs in complete darkness. As I rose, getting closer and closer to the wolves, the voice told me to, “Have fun storming the castle!”

The heroes had won in that movie. It took place in a world where it felt like the heroes would always win if they tried hard enough for long enough. I didn’t think I was in that world. But maybe I just hadn’t tried hard enough.

At the top of the stairs I knew the room where the suit was kept would only be a few yards down the hall. Past that, I could hear the wolf walking away, its claws click clacking against the metal. I was closer to the door than it was. All I had to do was get there first. It wouldn’t be able to get through the door.

The beast continued walking away and I held my breath, waiting for it to get as far away as possible before I made my move. Just when I started inching my way forward I heard a single soft clicking sound. From behind me.

I didn’t look back, I just turned on my headlamp and hurtled down the hall. The wolf that had snuck up behind me let out a roar that threw my heart into my throat and I answered it with a scream of my own. Pain, fatigue, terror all were consumed in the fire of my need to get to that door.

I made it. I threw myself through the door with a triumphant shout. The wolf passed across the opening at almost the same instant. It was so close I felt it tug against my left arm, the last limb to fully go into the room.

A message flashed on my HUD. All I was able to read was that something was critical and then the suit died and the world went black. But even as it did I fell on the case. My arm was itching for some reason but I ignored it and fumbled at the case, trying to open it.

Something wasn’t right. Not with the case. The case slid open at my touch and filled the room with light. And in that light I could see what the suit had been trying to tell me was wrong. Specifically, what was wrong with my left arm.

It ended in a bleeding stump.