I grew up in space. My origin @henryhound was from Earth of course, and you'd think that I would just call myself @henryhound, but when he ported over to a biotic life, he really considered that his death. Trust me, I've thought about it. If anyone today was @henryhound, it would be me. He was a happy 88-year-old man. I'm a childish 230-year-old prankster.

He lived on earth. I live in space.

And it's not like I've lived in the space near Earth. Immortality comes at a price. The government funded my transition, and shortly thereafter I was out there beyond the rift on the other side of the asteroid belt, flying ships and exploring within the confines of my military life. The Extroverts pursue life beyond our solar system way more actively, so even as part of the #extrovert_starmada, we've been traveling farther out.

In fact, I believe the war will end when we simply abandon this solar system.

My point is ... I wasn't shocked when we stepped outside our little docking ship onto the surface of this small rock.

"Ooooooh, wow, space!"

It wasn't like that.

It was like...

"Space ...."

"Yup."

"More space ...."

"Look ... a rock. Woo."

But it is definitely more interesting when you have your hand on a pistol and hope to find one of your #memoryshards. Curiosity was getting the better of me. I wondered what memories I had lost here.

I set my jumpsuit to #gravitymode so that small thrusters would fire, making my movements in zero gravity seem more Earth-like. The design is exceptional. Anything I need, like oxygen and water, is recycled from my own body for my personal use, and I had some little vials here and there with extra that would be replenished automatically, if possible, based on the environment.

The suit also works like a vacuum sponge, sniffing in whatever chemicals are in the surrounding environment. This it uses mainly for the thrusters. But there are four tubes on each hand that can weaponize some of these chemicals. Mine was nothing phenomenal like what the Gravity Rangers have, but it would help in a pinch.

The site looked like it was abandoned, which again, did not surprise me. Our battle would have alerted them. Whatever the Introverts were doing here, they were now likely doing it somewhere else. So this was mostly a reconnaissance mission. Search and destroy, which is where @astrowave and @cyberneticflare came into the picture.

They took the lead with @pixel_princess. @shadowhacker directed us from her powerful terminal, and a dozen m1 drones flew ahead to scan and transmit information back to us - but mainly to @shadowhacker. @photon_binary stayed in the back with me.

The asteroid was nothing special. We had landed on a small landing pad, and shortly thereafter @astrowave set a charge on the exterior door to a building that seemed to ease itself into the rock. I started to wonder how much of this rock was actually rock.

Before I could take it in, we were all rushing inside. I waved my left hand ahead of me, to brush away floating debris from the blast, and I instinctively drew my glen10.

And then I ran into the back of @pixel_princess, my suit unexpectedly spraying a bit of methane (that's my side of the story anyway), as we abruptly stopped and nearly toppled to the floor. If they all weren't smushed together, I'm sure they would have been staring at me, but seriously, they couldn't smell the methane, and there's nothing I can do about compressed gas tubes. They either release the pressure or break.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

kittyboy: "I swear. I didn't fart. I'm being squished."

Silent groans responded.

kittyboy: "I refuse to be embarrassed by something I didn't do."

More of the same.

We had hit another door. We were crammed in a transfer chamber that was used to preserve oxygen within the building; the exterior door would only open if the interior door was fully sealed and vice versa. That gave us another door to blast, so we walked back out so that @astrowave could set another detonation.

After boom #2, we rushed in again.

Now we had access to a larger room and a set of hallways to the right and left. Ahead of us was a set of smaller rooms, open office space essentially, with glass walls, and empty terminal ports where computers would have been.

The m1 drones shot forward and disbursed about the compound.

Our comms lit up.

shadowhacker: "Scans show two subterranean floors, each about 250 square meters of rooms and hallways."

shadowhacker: "The bottom floor connects to a single large room, 80 meters wide and 20 meters tall."

shadowhacker: "The room is heavily shielded, probably prevent emissions or transmissions. Head there."

A map began to form in my mission codex, a set of data I could reference during the mission. A red marker appeared, and a blue line formed directing us from where we were to the red marker. Shortly after, it disappeared, freeing up the map. The directional guidance would always be available, but ultimately our lines would populate based on our leader's commands. Other markers started to appear on the map too, indicating closed doors, likely ambush points, etc.

If any lifeforms, biotic or otherwise, were identified, those too would show up on the map. Instead, as expected, the facility was empty. When I saw that, I realized I had been gripping my #glen10 fiercely and softened my grip.

kittyboy: "Looks like the only enemy here is me."

Everyone turned to look at me. I held my arms out to the sides.

kittyboy: "Buh dum dum, ching? You know, because of the running into each other thing, and the methane thing. Ha ha ha?"

pixel_princess: "That's really not funny."

She shook her head in an unfunny way at me that I thought was mildly cute. If she knew that, she would have shot me.

kittyboy: "No. It's not. It was a dumb thing to say. I say dumb things. Don't believe me?"

I pointed at the air to my right.

kittyboy: "Ask him. Hey you? Does @kittyboy say dumb things?"

I stepped over to where I had been pointing.

kittyboy: "Oh my god, he does. The dumbest. This one time, he was talking about how the best financial investment was fake teeth, since we could stop aging but not the decay on our teeth. And I was like, technically teeth grow back. And he was like, that's bones, you idiot. And I was like, am I the idiot? And then I realized we both were!"

@pixel_princess slapped me across the helmet.

As further punishment, she sent me with @cyberneticflare and surly @photon_binary down the left hallway, while she and @astrowave went to the right.

We would rendezvous at the red marker, down on the lowest level, in the middle of that very big hugenormous room. That sounds great, right?

@cyberneticflare led the way. I had to go next since technically I was more military than a scientist. I kept my #glen10 out. We had to be ready. @photon_binary, meanwhile, had his own scanning device that he had already started using to relay data to his optic displays.

My own heads-up display now had the direction called out, with a minimap in the lower left. The lower right of the hud showed me information about my weapons. The upper left showed me my health information, but only if and when it mattered. The upper right was reserved for mission instructions, which would first flash in the upper center as a notification before tucking away to the upper right.

If I wanted, I could show the position of the rest of the #firesquad (@pixelprincess and @astrowave) on the minimap as well or pull up a larger view on the hud display. I was mildly interested because I wanted to get to the red dot on the map first. I love chasing red dots, and I was not going to let those mopey militaries beat me to it.

So I started running, protocol be damned, passing @cyberneticflare (who appeared to shout "hey" from within his helmet), leading the charge to our doom.

I'm not foreshadowing.

I'm telling you.

To our doom.