5

After James shook off the imaginary dusty from his clothes, his gaze scanned his surroundings intently, and he found himself in a large hexagonal room, each corner leading to a different corridor.

Above him stood the now closed off gateway, and he noticed that the ceiling was quite high, too tall to be accessed by foot. He wondered if the creatures that had once lived on this planet possessed wings. The room itself was incredibly methodic in its geometric construction, so it was unlikely that the people of the Wanderer has simply forgotten to install stairs.

Lost in his musings, James was brought back to his senses due to a signal from his helmet: the air on the interior of the Wanderer was breathable by humans, even if the oxygen content is ever slightly lower, and the humidity is quite high compared to Earth.

James smirked as he started taking off his helmet, and took a deep breath, pleased that he could have more freedom of movement without it. Safety be damned. As the stagnant air that laid dormant inside the Wanderer filled James's lungs for the first time, he couldn't help the slight headiness that overcame him. The air was indeed different from Earth, from any other planet, really. And you can feel the difference, for when James took that breath, it seemed almost like…like breathing wasn't quite as efficient as it should be. As if, despite inflating his lungs with air, they weren't quite filled. As if James was standing on a very high mountain and the air was thin, anemic.

James shook his head to get rid of the slight temporary dizziness, and decided to drop his helmet right on the center of the room. It would serve both as orientation for when he wandered through the Wanderer and as a goal to return to. This was just fine -James convinced himself- nothing he haven't faced before. Besides, it's not like that one time he had to outrun a bunch of angry rhino-like creatures in Ternkley, after his helmet broke in a oxygen poor atmosphere. That…wasn't fun.

Smiling oddly fondly at the memory of this past predicament, James started to sit down on the cold metallic floor as he reached for his pockets. There he happily retrieved a snack, and started munching on it, unfazed by his current situation. He had learned the hard way to always carry some sort of food on his person, regardless of the situation. Experience has proved him right over and over again.

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He took the time of this reprieve to gather his thoughts, collect images of his surroundings and formulate a loose plan. Content with his meal and his planning, James jumped to his feet, ready to tackle the problem at hand. He might not have wings, but boy, did his thoughts fly.

Moving confidently to the doorway right in front of him, James examined it. To no one's surprise, it was also made of the metal he had come to know by heart, and just like the rest of the room, it stood untouched by time. Trying to mark the metal itself in any physical way would be foolish and pointless, as it would regenerate immediately, and all traces of his passage would be obliterated in seconds.

Making up his mind, James hands moved towards his tool belt deftly, uncovering a small, sharp laser knife from it. Then, without thought or hesitation, James offered his opposite hand to the knife, cutting his palm deep enough that the carmine red liquid that coursed through his veins adverted it's normal path, and painted his hands and wrist blood red.

Wincing slightly at the sensation, James put away his knife and smeared his hand on the doorway he intended to first explore. Let it be my claim to this forsaken planet, my touch of reality to this permanent time capsule, thought James as he chuckled mirthlessly.

Under the diffused white light that emanated from orbs carved into the walls themselves, the bloodied palm imprint reflected it's color harshly, it's redness almost an offense to the full dark gray that permeated all spaces in the Wanderer.

James stared at it for a while, ensuring that the mark wouldn't simply vanish into thin air, the blood sucked in by the greedy and hungry metal that seemed to always eliminate all presence of life at its surface. Still, the blood lingered, flowing slightly downwards as gentle gravity exerted its pull on it.

Convinced that he could now find his way when it came to navigating the paths out of the hexagonal room, James face curved into a challenging smirk, as he strode with determination into the dark-lit corridor, that beckoned to him with a sweet promise of discovery.

However, in his absence, James couldn't see the soft contours that the harsh surface underneath the bloody mark took, the metal itself reacting to the metallic iron in his blood.