“There’s a problem,” I said, looking down over the edge of the cliff at what was supposed to be the next rest stop. Down a couple hundred feet there were about a dozen of the wolf-like creatures I’d seen the night before on top of the ship. They were playing and frolicking around in the snow and the fading light of evening which made me think they were pups that had only just woken up.

“Yep. That’s a problem, alright,” Cyrus said.

“Indeed,” Ai said. “Although it is possible that this also represents an opportunity.”

“How so?” I asked, hoping that the answer was that these creatures were well known for their love of humans, willingness to protect them, ability to cook warm meals and for spontaneously crafting functioning water heaters. It seemed unlikely.

“According to the scans your suit is allowing me to do, there is another survival suit in that ship.”

“Is it better than this one?”

“I do not know. All I am able to access is the S.O.S. signal it’s broadcasting. However, from what I have been able to gather through databases we’ve scanned, the likelihood of it being an earlier or the same model is very low. It seems that very few of the model you’re using sold well.”

“I can’t imagine why,” I muttered under my breath. Down below, two of the pups were pulling apart the carcass of some unrecognizable animal, shaking pieces off as they played tug of war with it. The distance made it a little bit difficult, but I guessed that whatever the creature between them had been, it was originally much larger than I was.

“Cause your suit’s a piece of crap,” Cyrus said. I just closed my eyes and shook my head. If Cyrus took note of that, it didn’t show in his voice as he continued, “But even if you could get in there you’d get eaten before you could ever get the thing on. Maybe these things can’t smell you through your own suit, but I guarantee they could if you took it off.”

“He could carry the suit to a second location and put it on there,” Ai said.

“He could get eaten trying.”

“Could the two of you be quiet for a second?” I asked, irritation clear in my voice.

They fell silent and I tried to concentrate on my breathing, to calm my pounding heart. I wanted that suit. Ai was right. I’d done a little bit of looking myself. Some of the newer models of survival suit were downright amazing in what they were capable of. To be honest, the one I had was amazing in any context except being forced to wear it for months and months. But even a small improvement would make my life here so much easier. Some of the latest models that I’d seen even had modules that could inject taste into food. I’d have done just about anything to taste something that wasn’t chalky chocolate or powdered vanilla.

But I didn’t know that going into that broken wreck of a ship met that qualification. Cyrus was probably right. It probably just qualified as suicide. Which didn’t quite make the cut off on the list of “anything I would try”.

“Ai, how far off is the alternate location for me to stay tonight?”

“It will take you roughly an hour and a half at top speed to make it there. You will need to leave here within roughly seventy minutes if you are to make the trip before the temperature reaches fatal levels.”

“Seventy minutes,” I muttered to myself. A countdown ‘helpfully’ appeared in my HUD. That made things a little more real. That wasn’t long. But the ship wasn’t very big. And if I could lock onto the S.O.S. signal it wouldn’t be hard to find the suit.

A sound tore its way out of the ship. I, along with every pup down below, swiveled to look at what came out of the ship’s exposed loading bay. The creature was enormous. Even from hundreds of feet away I could see the muscles bulging beneath its fur. While the pups looked skinny and coltish, this thing looked like it had crawled out of my nightmares and into a vat of steroids.

I was essentially invisible with the suit’s stealth mode on. Despite its protection, instinct forced me to crouch as the beast let out another howl that traced frozen claws down my spine. The pups reacted as well, though not in fear, but in excitement. They rapidly gathered around the larger beast that I could only assume was their parent. They screamed and howled and nipped at each other and, even though it was sort of cute from this far away to watch their childish excitement, I couldn’t get the image of them all descending on me and tearing me apart out of my head.

The parent let out a howl and the whole troupe began running out of the little valley. Thankfully they were going in the opposite direction from me. Although, maybe not so thankfully. If they’d run towards me that would have obviated the need for me to make a choice about what to do.

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“Kid, you need to go. I know you want that suit but it’s a bad idea. We don’t know how many could still be inside that ship.”

“That is true. However, it seems unlikely that you will have another chance as good as this one to retrieve the suit.”

That was a good point. That was a really good point. Damnit.

“Alright. I’m going.”

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Cyrus said.

“I have those all the time. Ai, the air bike can outrun those things right?”

“Over long distances, almost surely.”

“Then I’ll just take it down there and if anything comes out I can run away.”

“That’s assuming they don’t get close enough to catch you over a short distance.”

“You’re not helping, Cyrus,” Ai said.

“You’re damn right I’m not helping. This is a bad idea. I don’t want the kid getting killed for a suit he doesn’t need to have.”

“Quiet both of you. I don’t need you two distracting me.”

Ai fell silent at once, though it seemed somehow smug. Cyrus meanwhile muttered to himself for a few moments before he too went quiet. I got onto my bike and tried to listen for any approaching monsters with gigantic, dripping fangs while my heart pounded a speed metal drum solo into my ears.

The bike was really loud so I had to wait a few minutes to let the wolves get far enough away that they wouldn't hear it and return. The timer still going in the corner of my HUD wasn’t really helping my nerves, but just the thought of a suit that could actually keep me warm was enough to hold me in place while I watched it. With fifty minutes to go before I had to leave, I cranked up the bike and headed down to get a closer look.

The ship looked like one of very few I’d ever seen on Persephone that was almost entirely intact. Not only that but I could also see that repairs had been made to it at some point. They weren’t the quality of repairs that you would see at a shipyard. They were the kind that happened when someone crashed on a hostile planet and had to make do with what scrap was available.

At least one person had survived this crash. There was no way they could still be inside right? So that had to mean either they’d abandoned it or…

I drove over the carcass the two wolf pups had been playfully mauling. It was still too big to be human but that didn’t mean that they’d never tasted human before.

There were three or four possible entrances from what I could see. The hanger was open, the only way in or out big enough for that largest wolf. There was a door and what looked like a window or, more likely, a maintenance port a little further up the side of the ship. The last option was a broken piece of the ship that someone had begun repairing to make a functioning door but had never had the chance to finish. I almost missed it with the way that the snow had built up around the spot.

I held the air bike there for a moment considering possibilities. The hanger was a no go. Too open and easy for something to sneak up on me. The broken hole was also a bad call. I couldn’t see where it would lead and I could easily wind up trapped if I couldn’t get back out once I’d gone in. That left the door and the maintenance port. The port was definitely the better option, if only because it was too small for any of the wolves, even the smallest pups to get into. Assuming there was nothing else that lived in the ship that was small enough to fit through there and dangerous enough to eat my face, that was the best option. Big assumption though.

I went over the options two more times in my head before I realized I was just stalling.

Have you ever stood at the edge of something, maybe like a bungee grav jump or a zipline, or even at the top of a cliff overlooking deep water and wanted to go over the edge, but simply could not will your body to move? That strange feeling of my body disobeying my desires, my orders to step into the ship was disconcerting in a way that was similar to the suit taking over my movements but terribly deeper. This was not an instrument designed to protect me fulfilling its function. Except it was. The instrument was just my body and its instincts rather than a piece of technology. The wall stopping me from going into that place was ancient, something buried inside of every single human that has ever been. The wall of cowardice.

“Kid?”

Cyrus’ voice was quiet, gentle. It made me realize that I was hearing something else, a rapid chattering sound that I realized was my teeth a few seconds later. I tried to answer him, by the only sound I made was somewhere between a grunt of acknowledgement and a whimper.

“It’s alright, Euclid. You don’t have to go in there,” he said. “This is a risk you don’t have to take. No one's gonna think less of you for not going in there. Not me and not your computer girl.”

But I would. I already did. Because I knew that I had decided that going into that dark place was the right choice and I knew just as well that I was going to turn away from it.

“Kid, don’t worry about it. We can mark this spot on the map and come back sometime. Hell, I might need that suit in there once you pick me up in your ship. Then there’ll be someone else to go in there and watch your back.”

I felt that crystalline moment stretch, the choice slipping out of my fingers like a lifeline.

“Yeah. Yeah, good idea,” I said and angled the bike’s air jets to turn around and leave.

“I will bring up the directions to the alternate location now,” Ai said, her voice as bland as ever. And yet in my suit’s tinny speakers it rang with hidden disappointment.

The trip was very cold.