Chapter 3
Chapter three
The pain.
He had never felt anything like it.
Unimaginable.
But he could not decide if the physical pain was worse than the emptiness, the quiet inside him.
For hours now, days, he had lain alone in the silence, a never-ending echo of nothingness, his own thoughts repeating back to him in a loop.
An aching hollowness had filled him.
They had not warned him it would be this way, though they must have known.
Along the journey, the silence had grown.
Now it screamed at him in deafening waves, gripped him by the throat and choked his breaths, while the taint of the dead planet soaked through his skin and bones.
The urge to leave this place, to return home, drove him hard, but he could not until he completed his task.
Nothing was familiar in this place.
The air suffocated.
The rain drowned.
But he was no longer alone.
His mind remained silent, but an outside source guided him, a light in the darkness.
A lure he could not name.
An energy he could not place.
It would have pulled him forward even if he had not been following orders.
He reached out with his senses, but found his mind empty of thoughts except his own.
But there it was.
A warmth.
A draw.
A distraction.
A comfort from the burning of his flesh.
There were no thoughts to taste, but he could feel something, the same pulsing sensation that had led him here, one he could not name.
It hit him in waves, a note of familiarity about it.
Something from long ago.
Or not so long?
It was hard to remember through the pain.
A hand touched his shoulder, and he hissed at the contact.
He took a deep breath.
An unwelcome medicinal scent filled his lungs, corrupting him worse than the radiation.
He coughed, then fell, his legs weak from the planet’s attack on him.
The metal grating of the floor pressed into his hands and knees, adding to his pain.
But it grounded him too, reminded him of his purpose.
Of why he was here.
And for whom.