We shouldn’t have gone to that place. They lied to us. They lied about so many things. We weren’t the first to land on that “newly discovered” dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt. They knew what was there. Our families were not informed of our whereabouts, and they’ll probably lie to them about what happened there as well. We did not know of the true nature of our mission until it was too late to turn back, and I think that was intentional. Our mission was not one of scientific exploration, as we were told. No, our mission was to be an offering, and it was a success.

  I was so na?ve to think that I would go down in history. The idea of my name being mentioned along the likes of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin captivated me as a child and spurred me on a path towards the heavens. I was so consumed by the excitement of exploring the stars that I had pined for since childhood that I failed to consider any ulterior motives the administration might have had for sending us where they did. Not once during the years of my training could I have foreseen what would become of me. Hindsight truly is 2020 as they say. I went through the motions for most of my career. I started off as a lowly Space Force cadet. Slowly and diligently, I worked my way through the ranks, eventually getting reassigned to more prestigious and specialized programs. After years of training and experience, I was finally selected to embark upon a new kind of voyage, or so I was led to believe. I thought it was to be the great defining honor of my life. I was to be part of a crew manning the first vessel to land on a dwarf planet found in the Kuiper belt utilizing a new cutting-edge form of space craft, with a state of the art internal gravitational and balance system capable of landing on objects in space previously thought impossible, such as that dwarf planet. Of course, all this was decades after the exploration of mars, and a few years after the last of the moons of Jupiter had been mined for all useful mineral resources. We were told our primary mission objective was to determine if there were mineral resources on that dwarf planet worth mining, but the greater significance was that we were going to be the first to set foot there. For the first time in years, we would be venturing where no one else had before. 2123 would be the year that we were to expand the realm of mankind yet another step further into the great unknown. It sickens me even more to know how I believed all of it without a second thought. Maybe it was because that’s how they wired you during your academy training for the Space Force. Through constant repetition, you’re trained to follow orders without question, to be a thoroughly oiled and efficient gear in the machine of the larger operation. For a cog to question its assignment is absurd. I think I realized far too late that the way I was taught to see myself would be the seed of my demise. Of course that’s not how I saw it at the time. I didn’t think of myself as an obedient gear in a dubious machine. I saw myself as a pioneer of the new era, one of the brave few willing to go farther than any man had ever set foot. At least I could say I did that, but at a greater cost than I could have ever imagined. The price of swallowing so much propaganda was so much steeper than I could have possibly fathomed.

  We had a small crew; there were only four of us. We were to land on that strange, misshapen exoplanet, collect a few mineral samples, take some measurements of atmospheric quality, plant the flag and be on our way. It was supposed to be simple enough. We knew the temperatures there would be colder than anything man had endured before but thankfully space suit technology had advanced quite rapidly throughout the late twenty second century and the technology we had to insulate ourselves from such a hostile environment was more than adequate. All preparations had gone according to plan, not one thing had gone wrong. I had undergone simulations of the launch hundreds of times, I’d even been a part of numerous physical voyages between mars and the various moons of our solar system to further prepare, but despite all my experience, I felt as though I was piercing the heavens for the very first time once again when we launched for the Kuiper belt. The exhilaration I felt at the thought of it reminded me of the very first time I saw the horizon of our world give way to the majestic deep blue of the heavens, like I was embarking for the very first time all over again. Maybe it felt that way because I knew we were going where no man had before, and it gave me goosebumps to know I would be among the first. By the time I had first launched from earth to Mars, the experience had lost any semblance of novelty. Hundreds had been to Mars by that point. Wealthy benefactors had even begun the construction of a tacky theme park to transform the red planet into a source of tourism revenue. All majesty, all the prestige of such a voyage had long been sapped away, leaving me feeling deprived of the feeling of accomplishment. But being among the first to set foot on what was effectively a large asteroid, that was something new, and I relished the thought.

  The trip was a mere day and a half, a result of years of advancement in spaceship design and newly developed super fuels. However, once we landed on the cosmic body, we had to spend another half day resting because if you thought jetlag from flying across earth was bad, just imagine the toll travelling across the galaxy takes on the body. Thankfully, due to advances in medicine we were able to recover much faster than in the past and before we knew it, the time to begin our work was upon us. I still remember how I felt my heart race as I pulled the hatch open, only to be somewhat disappointed by how I could scarcely see but a few feet in front of me. Even with the most powerful light we had, it was almost pitiful how inadequate it was to pierce the oppressive dark world we had entered. The nearest star was lightyears away from the dwarf planet, it was the main reason we hadn’t even known of its existence until recently, so I should have been aware that it would be dark. But despite the knowledge, I think nothing could have prepared me for what it would really be like. The darkness that enveloped the frozen rock was like nothing else, it was a kind of pitch black that seems to pull you in and never let you escape. It made me feel cold and alone, small and insignificant. Something about it made me feel unwelcome, not just because it was dark, but because I felt a hostility from the planet difficult to explain, as though that rock itself was insulted by our presence. A sort of malevolence hung in the air. I should stress that I had never experienced anything like that in all my years travelling the stars. Pluto was cold and dark yes, but not like that forsaken place.

  One of the others and myself paired up to embark on a walk across the surface of the stellar body to collect mineral samples, the others stayed with the ship to observe atmospheric quality. I had some reservations about splitting up, despite the fact we were bound to do so at some point, but all our suits were equipped with tracking devices so getting separated would be a difficult task to say the very least. As we walked, I took in my surroundings, or at least what little I could see. The surface appeared to be made of a grey metallic sand with visible ice crystals woven into it. Because of the all-consuming umber that enveloped the planet, we could barely see two feet in front of us. This brought about a primal, frankly childlike fear of the unknown, which was only tamped down by the knowledge that life of any kind was virtually impossible in a place like that. So dark and cold, it was the most inhospitable place I had ever seen. We had made it but a few paces before the light of the ship had disappeared from our vision. That would have been cause for alarm if it wasn’t for the fact that I could still clearly see its location on my wrist monitor. “Alright NAME REDACTED, I think this would be a fine spot to collect some surface samples” I said in my typical rigid and straight-to-the- point manner. I heard no response from my colleague, initially. Wondering what had snatched his tongue, I looked over at him to see him staring off into the murky distance, standing still as a statue. He seemed transfixed by the swirling smoky shadows that composed our surroundings, almost like he was waiting for something to emerge from them. “Do you see something NAME REDACTED?” I asked. His only response was to begin muttering, quietly and incoherently. I grew unnerved at that. Seeing as my colleague was an even more seasoned explorer than myself, the idea that he was struggling with psychiatric strain under the implications of our isolated and perilous mission before I was, came as quite alarming. “NAME REDACTED, snap out of it, what are you looking at?” I could barely get the last word out before he did something that made my breath catch in my throat. He just sprinted into the darkness as fast as his suit would allow. No warning, no explanation, he just darted into the void. “NAME REDACTED!!” I shouted after him but there was no point. Within just a few paces, he was gone, swallowed up by the dark. It was like a siren beckoned him to thrust himself into the abyss. I was dumbstruck at the sudden action; panic began bubbling up like a pot quickly coming to a boil. I attempted to contact him several more times, with no response. The oppressive blackness that surrounded us on all sides made it impossible to see where he had gone, I couldn’t even make out footprints because I noticed a low cloud of dust began to rise from the surface of the asteroid due to his abrupt foot movements. It concealed the ground as it hung lazily above it, looking like a cloud of dust on the sea floor after the sediments were disturbed. For a split second I was tempted to chase after him, but that reflexive decision was stymied by my lack of awareness of his position, and my fear of becoming lost myself. Worse still, part of me feared becoming possessed by the same mania that compelled him to do such an insane thing. I stood there for several painstaking moments, thinking of what to do.

  What on earth could have compelled him to do such a thing I had no idea, but I worried deeply for his safety. I attempted to contact the ship but for some reason our communication systems were malfunctioning. Realizing decisive action was necessary, I decided to make my way back to the ship to inform the others in hopes that we could fashion a plan of what to do next. As I marched back to the ship, I found myself torn between cursing my colleague for his bizarre actions that endangered our mission and fearing for his safety. As I followed the ships’ location on my monitor, my eyes were torn from the screen by the glint of something shining through the dust cloud. Something sparkled beneath the haze, and I knew it was not something native to the exoplanet. With a trembling hand, I reached into the fog to retrieve the source of the glint. My panic rose further at the sight of one of our mission patches, there in the palm of my hand, looking like it had been ripped from the space suit of one of the men. Had one of them had an accident? Had they tried to follow us out there? Or worse, had others succumbed to the same type of madness that compelled NAME REDACTED to run out into the shadows like a madman? There was no good reason for me to have found such a thing, in such a state, in such a place. I attempted to use it as fuel to push my resolve to get to the bottom of it. I moved faster than before, more eager to get back to the ship than ever. I eventually found the ship where it had been, and I climbed aboard only to find that the other two astronauts had indeed vanished as well. Looking behind me I noticed that the hatch door hadn’t closed all the way, in fact, I noticed that it no longer could. It appeared to have been opened so forcefully that it was damaged and couldn’t lock properly. The very hinges had nearly been ripped off. At the sight of that, the despair crept in closer. The communications systems only produced static and just like that, in what felt like only a few moments, I had been reduced to a level of solitude not experienced by any human being before. Where could they have gone? The question clung to me like a tick. I knew that finding my missing crewmates was my only chance at getting our ship back in working order and salvaging the situation that had soured so quickly. If I wished to return to mars at all, my salvation would hinge on retrieving them. I engaged my distress beacon, in hopes that maybe some of them might come to their senses and return to the ship. Still, knowing I had to do more than just engage the beacon and wait around. With great reservation I resolved that I needed to set off into the darkness, to try as best I could to find at least one of them. I hinged my hopes on locating at least one of my wayward crewmates, thinking that if I could do that, perhaps they could inform me as to what in God’s name was happening. I checked my monitor, attempting to pinpoint their positions, but couldn’t see any of them. I decided I would just have walk out into the dark in one single direction and scan the shadows as best I could. It wasn’t a great plan, but I likened it to being stuck with a spoiled buffet and selecting the most edible item from it. As I emerged from the ship, I tried my best to close the damaged hatch door. The sight of it made me worry about the implications it had for the rest of our vessel, but I knew that would have to be my secondary priority. I needed to find the rest of the crew, and if I could do that, we could tend to our damaged ship after. I took my first few steps outside, shining the flashlight through the inky shadows, I managed a shaky chuckle, as it seemed like I was playing a game from my childhood. “Ghosts in the graveyard” I believe it was called, only the stakes of that game were considerably higher.

  It hadn’t been a particularly long time since losing my crew so I knew they couldn’t have gotten far. Hopefully if I found one of them, they’d be lucid enough to clue me in as to what was going on, I clung to the thought like a life preserver in a vicious storm. There I was, shuffling through the frigid murky surface of a place my forebearers couldn’t even fathom standing on. I took careful, slow, methodical steps, because the last thing I needed was to fall. Our suits were designed with every precaution our scientists could imagine, but even knowing that, the memory of the patch on the ground gave me doubts. The thought of colliding with that jagged unforgiving surface made me worry I could irreparably damage the equipment. The further I marched into the void the more my stomach churned as a sense of dread began to overtake me. I was practically in disbelief at how rapidly our mission had spun out of control. I began to ponder what could have made my crewmates act the way they did. Perhaps some sort of madness had descended upon them, despite the years of psychological training we had all gone through to prevent such a thing. Maybe the pressure of it all was just too much, and they simply buckled beneath that weight, but somehow, I didn’t belief that. After what felt like an eternity of stumbling through the dark, I finally saw the signal of one of their suits just several yards away. A flicker of hope sparked within me. Finally, I thought, perhaps I could begin to salvage the situation. Even though he was so close, it wasn’t until I was mere feet away from the beacon until I could even begin to make out his form. Since it appeared some sort of mania had overcome my crewmates, I approached him cautiously. As he slowly came into view, a sense of wrongness gripped me like a vice. There was a thickness in the air as I approached. I could see that he was kneeling, which I thought especially strange. His arms seemed to be folded in his lap, culminating in a posture that looked disturbingly serene for the place he was in. It looked almost as though he was praying, like he was in some kind of temple, and not on the surface of a hades like exoplanet lightyears away from the rest of humanity. I attempted to communicate with him through our intercom system, but he didn’t say a word. A sense of dread built up more and more as I shuffled around to see him face to face. Once I finally got a direct look at him, it took every once of willpower I had to avoid releasing the contents of my stomach into my suit.

  He was dead. But he wasn’t just dead, he had been massacred. His vizor had been torn open, as though by force of suction and his face was an unrecognizable mess. It looked to be mangled beyond repair, almost like the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun. No eyes, mouth or nose remained, only a horrible cavernous hole. Bits of flesh seemed to have been pulled through the shattered remains of his visor as well, displaying the vacuous single orifice down his throat. Ice crystals had formed, solidifying him into a grotesque statue. I reeled away from the sight of him, gripped by despair, terror and anguish as bitter tears began to flow down my cheeks. Our situation had changed yet again. The mission was no longer imperiled, it was nonexistent. Something had killed one of our crewmates, and our situation had officially deteriorated into a fight for survival.

  We were supposed to go down in history. We were supposed to be heroes. That same colleague and I had spoken about how children would be reading about us in the future. At that point I knew none of that would come to fruition, that the warm sense comfort and accomplishment that conversation brought about was nothing but wishful thinking. As I stared in abject terror at the remains of a caring father and devoted astronaut, a terrible notion gripped me, a premonition that the remote rock we landed on would be an unmarked grave that we all shared. I grieved for a few moments, thinking of the man’s family, and felt compelled to give something akin to a eulogy, to say something in respect of his memory. I can’t recall exactly what I said, but I knew at the time it felt inadequate. I wanted to say more, I wanted to take more time to sift through my panicked racing thoughts to pluck out a more profound sentiment to honor him with, but I knew standing idle any longer was not an option. Despite the terror that gripped me in its terrible clutches, I wasn’t ready to consign myself to the same fate just yet. I still wanted to live. I knew it would not be easy, but with enough effort, three astronauts could still repair the damage done to our ship. As I prepared to search for the others, my mind shifted to wondering what on earth could have done that to the man. It almost looked like he had been attacked by a physical being. But what kind of being or force of nature capable of doing such a thing could possibly survive in that icy black void? It made me shudder. Part of me didn’t want to find out.

  Fearing deeply for my own safety, I felt abandoning the search for the time being was warranted. After all, what good would it do me to remain outside with whatever monstrosity did such a thing? At that point I just needed to find some shelter to compose myself, to gather my thoughts, and to think of a new plan that didn’t involve wandering the shadowy hades. The sight of his remains was seared into my brain like the mark left by a red-hot branding iron. The image haunted me, clung to me like a curse, and I knew I would never forget it as long as I lived. The thought of what could have caused such bodily harm caused my feet to move much faster than before, I found myself subconsciously retreating to the ship. I began to sweat in my suit, partially due to the exertion, but also because I was tormented with the knowledge that whatever had massacred my crewmate could be anywhere in those shadows, the notion it could be just beyond my line of sight made my heart palpitate. I made it back to the ship much more expediently, albeit with beads of cold sweat cascading down my face. However, upon returning, and finally getting a look at the ship, I gasped at the sight of the state it was in. When I had left to seek out the other crewmates, the ship’s door was the only thing with any sign of damage or distress. Its sleek metal shell with the mission label painted on both sides of its hull in crisp blue font still projected an image of confidence, it was a symbol of the effort and innovation of our program. Upon my return, it didn’t even look like the same vessel. It looked like it had been sitting on the surface of the asteroid for decades, wear and rust and a thick coating of surface dust clung to every inch of it. Patches of damaged and slightly torn metal could be seen all over its hull, jutting out at angles that hurt simply to observe. Even the landing pillars which it stood on appeared slightly warped, leaving the whole structure hunched over, looking like an injured animal, wracked with a limp. It was a far cry from the sleek, innovative machine that first landed on the exoplanet. Our ship had been reduced to a wrecked shell of its former self in the span of what seemed like ten minutes. I couldn’t have begun to guess what could have caused such damage to the once proud vessel. Perhaps some kind of dust storm had come through while I was away, but I struggled to believe that.

  I wasn’t left to ruminate on the cause of the ship’s deterioration for long though, because the need for refuge remained as daunting as ever despite the condition of the ship. I crawled back into the weathered shell of it like a terrified field mouse seeking refuge from a hawk. My logical mind knew that there was no point as the vessel provided no real safety, but my primal mind didn’t care. I think I just wanted to be in an enclosed space. Once behind the air lock, and in the ship’s interior, I called out frantically, hoping, perhaps in vain, that one of my crewmates had found themselves in a similar position, scrambling back to our dilapidated vessel in search of shelter. A deep pit in my stomach formed as I heard no reply, and with each subsequent second of torturous silence that passed, that pit grew deeper. I then had the idea of checking for their beacons. Surely, I thought, their tracking beacons would allow me to reconnect with them, if any had returned. I hoped with everything that upon checking, I would see the blinking lights somewhere within the bowels of the ship. I hesitated to check for a moment, because I didn’t even want to acknowledge the possibility of my greatest fear coming to fruition. Eventually though, I craned my neck to my wrist monitor and shifted the setting to the beacon locator. The pit in my stomach grew to match the depths of the Grand Canyon as my worst fear came true. their beacons were nowhere to be found. I slumped down in the hallway of the ship, despair washing over me as I silently wept at the understanding of my new cruel reality. I was completely alone.

  Some logic, or at least I think it was logic, remained within me and eventually compelled me to pull myself together. Despite all the traumatic events up to that point, I still wasn’t ready to die. I wanted to survive, and that desire propelled me. After some deliberation, I decided to make my way to the observation deck. Perhaps it was a sort of mania of my own that made me wish to see into the darkness, but my reasoning was that if there was something out there snatching up members of my crew, I’d like to see it before it saw me. I managed to jam the hatch door behind me, using a series of tools on board, forming a crude makeshift barricade. I feared it would do little but perhaps slow down the beast that massacred my crewmate, but at the very least it served as a tiny source of visual comfort. A small effort at establishing the illusion of security to hold my mind from the madness that terror was beckoning it towards. I noticed that the atmosphere within the ship was getting worse, the damage that had been done to it was slowly allowing the ice and chemicals of the planetoid we landed on to creep into the vessel, I could even make out the occasional ice crystal forming on one of the walls.

  On shaking feet, I clambered down the narrow corridors of the ship towards the observation deck. Upon my arrival, I was relieved to see that most of our surveillance equipment was still intact. For a few surreal moments, I just sat there in the chair in front of the screens, looking out into the void. It felt like I sat there for hours, and the longer my eyes explored the inky depths, I strangely found my heart rate begin to slow. I wasn’t sure if there was some sort of hypnotic element to the shadows, or if I had simply resigned myself to my fate, but I began to calm down. I couldn’t even say how much time had passed when something began to come into view. At first, I thought my eyes were simply playing tricks on me, but the more time went on, the more it came into view. It started off as what seemed to be a ball of light in the distance. At first, I thought the screen had been damaged, but as it approached the ship it was made clear that the screen had no issues. I watched it with bated breath, not knowing what else to do. As it grew nearer, I began to make out more details. It was strangely…. Beautiful. It appeared to be some kind crystalline being of light that danced and swayed in the darkness in a bizarrely graceful fashion, like a jellyfish in the depths of the ocean. It almost looked like a collection of snowflake crystals under a magnifying glass. It came closer still and I could make out a series of tendrils, made from those same glimmering crystalline shapes. It was more beautiful than anything I had ever seen before. Maybe it was that my mind had completely snapped but for whatever reason I didn’t fear the thing. On the contrary, the longer I watched it, the more I felt an odd compulsion to get a better view of it. It was like the creature of light somehow communicated with the deepest section of my reptilian brain and was convincing that part of me at the very core of my brainstem to come to it, to see it in person. I shook the thought from my head, my developed mind retaking the wheel and screaming to the rafters what madness it would be to approach such an anomaly. Whatever it was, I thought it was likely the thing that killed my colleague, as it was the only other creature that seemed to be out there. I turned off the monitor and did my utmost to ignore it, the terror returning, ordering my nervous system to wretch my body away from the screens

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  As more time went on, I noticed more strange occurrences. I could feel a sort of buzzing all over my body. It almost felt like waves of static electricity were washing through the ship, causing goosebumps to form on my arms and the hairs on my neck to stand up. The longer I sat there, attempting to figure out what could be the cause of the strange phenomenon, the more I noticed something else. I could just about discern that the sensations were coming in waves. As the sensations grew, I could feel that the waves of pressurized air felt like they were coming every several moments in a consistent, rhythmic manner. The next thing I noticed was that with each ensuing wave, I felt less and less agitated. I realized I had ceased my sweating, that my heart rate had slowed, and my breathing had returned to normal. As I sat there longer still, I noticed that not only had I calmed down, but as the waves of static charged air continued, I began to feel, good? It was like the longer the waves continued, the more a feeling of warm serenity descended upon me like a comforting blanket. I started to feel like was becoming intoxicated, even, like a had swallowed a generous mouthful of decadent cognac and the spirit was beginning to work its magic, spreading warmth throughout my body from the base of my stomach. It was such a strange and bizarre thing, to start to feel faintly euphoric amid such troubling circumstances, I thought. But that thought, fortunately, was what snapped me out of my stupor, due to the horrific realization it inspired. The waves of warm charged air were likely the doing of that being, it was lulling me into a sense of security. Something about that being allowed it to affect me even from such a great distance, practically telepathically. At that realization, my mind was torn in two directions. Part of me wanted to escape further into the bowels of the ship, to get away from that intoxicating influence, but another part of me wanted to despair, to simply end my suffering and walk out into the cold, to let that thing do whatever it wished with me and to simply have it be done with. Whatever that thing was, part of me felt it would eventually have me, that it would eventually possess my mind, and compel me to exit the ship. I could feel within my bones that this was its intention. But eventually, my desire to survive retook control. I decided that if that thing would eventually have me, I would make it work for its victim.

  I quickly exited the observation deck and made my way further into the interior of the ship. The path I walked was guided by the dim blue lights of the auxiliary power systems. The fact that the main power of the ship already appeared to have been depleted by the damage it had received in my absence made me swallow dryly. I worked my way through the mess hall and down into the food storage unit, the farther I got from the observation deck, the more the buzzing in my head faded. A flicker of hope sparked up within the depths of despair that gripped me, as I came to understand that its influence only reached so far. I began to think that perhaps I had managed to outsmart that creature, at least for the time being.

  My relief was short lived, though, as the simple critical question of ‘what next?’ reared its ugly head. The icy grip of dread tightened around my stomach as I considered my options. Even if I were able to get the power started, the ship needs a crew to operate. That brought my mind back to the others. As I began to mourn the loss of my shipmates again, to weep for the families they were leaving behind back on earth, I was shaken from my thoughts by a loud clang, coming from what sounded like the ship’s entrance. My heart sank deeper than it had before as I felt drops of sweat accumulate on my forehead. I jumped slightly after a second abrupt clang followed, confirming that my ears weren’t playing tricks on me. The clanging continued in a rhythmic fashion, with increasing strength. I wasn’t sure if something was trying to get in, or simply get my attention. One thing was clear though, I couldn’t just stay there and do nothing. I made my way back to the observation deck, my mind scrambling to form a plan with each step I took. Finally, I made it through the hatch into the room with all the monitoring screens, some of which had gone offline in addition to the one I had turned off earlier. I couldn’t see anything from any of the other monitors, but that terrible banging persisted. I shuttered knowing that if I turned on the monitor where I had seen that strange light creature, I would likely find the source of the banging. Part of me didn’t even want to see what was making the sound, but I knew if I wished to remedy the situation, I had to know what I was dealing with. My finger shook like a leaf as it closed in on the button to turn the screen back on. With a light press the screen flicked on, and I almost fell backwards at the sight of what it revealed.

  Outside the hatch door of the ship, moving like some grotesque automaton, like a puppet on a string, slamming his fists wildly and repeatedly against the door was my other crewmate, NAME REDACTED. The way he moved made me feel unwell. It was as though it wasn’t him piloting his own body, but rather some new host that wasn’t yet accustomed to its new vessel. The movements were erratic and disjointed, and as he threw his fists against the door, his limbs seemed to pivot at unnatural angles. The sight was ghastly. He moved so ferociously, the wild swings like that of a bear swiping at its prey with unquestionably lethal intent. He was out of his mind, that much was clear. Had he been himself he would have simply contacted the ship to request permission to board once he found he couldn’t open the door. Something had driven him utterly mad, and I strongly suspected that being was involved.

  Then, suddenly, the banging stopped. After seeming to reach a crescendo in speed, it finally all just stopped. I wanted to be relieved, but my instincts were still on high alert, something still wasn’t right. After looking to the door to check that it was still locked, I hesitantly returned my eyes to the monitor, and my blood ran cold. NAME REDACTED was just standing there, slightly hunched over, facing the monitor directly, standing as still as a statue, except for his arm waving at the monitor left to right, slowly, with that same jerky disjointed motion. The sight made me feel ill. His visor completely covered his face, but I could feel the horrible gaze, not of him, but of whatever was controlling him, bearing down on me. I could feel in my bones that it was looking at me, somehow through him, and wanted to make sure I knew that.

  He just continued to wave, moving like a gruesome marionette. His body wasn’t anywhere near as mangled as our other colleague but upon closer inspection, I could confirm that his suit had numerous tears all over it, there was no way he could still be alive. No, that monstrosity was using him like a lure attempting to trick me with one of my own comrades. The notion made me sick to my stomach, because of how insidiously clever the thing seemed to be. However, it also made me furious over the desecration and utilization of NAME REDACTED. He had been a dignified human being with goals, ambition, thoughts, feelings, a family waiting hopefully for his return, and that abomination had reduced him to a tool for its own insidious means. As I looked closer, against my better judgement, I could see the spectral polygonal tendrils of light connected to his suit and extending backwards into the murky abyss behind him, it was without a doubt the most insidious display I had ever seen. The thing was not only malevolent, but it was also developing new ways to coax me out of the ship. It was experimenting with different tactics, strategizing, learning. It was almost as though the thing had knowledge of human beings. After all, as crude and disturbing as the display was, without question it seemed to have a baseline understanding of how we communicate with each other, and it was using that against me.

  After a few painstaking moments, the waving ceased. It was like it realized I wasn’t going to fall for it. As if to confirm that suspicion, NAME REDACTED, or rather his body, in a single terrible instant, was yanked back into the darkness. The way the tendrils reeled him back so abruptly almost seemed as though the creature was experiencing frustration. It moved in the way one would slam a door, stomp their feet, or otherwise seek to display discontentment. Perhaps I was just anthropomorphizing the monster, or maybe it really was growing ill-tempered at its inability to claim the last stubborn crew member. Regardless, despite my situation in its entirety, there was some relief at the conclusion of the macabre puppet show; that it didn’t seem to work. I renewed my efforts to scrap together some kind of plan, my brain running like a six-cylinder engine trying to force something to come about, some idea to materialize. Still, the best I could come up with was to make my way to the communication room and to send out a distress signal. Attempting to get ahold of mission command, and to plead for an extraction seemed like the only thing I could do. Every fiber of my being was screaming at me to run, to hide, to conceal myself as well as I possibly could, to do anything but tread through the more open corridors of the ship, many of which at that point were surely dimly lit at best and pitch black at worst due to the power outages.

  I steeled my nerves and forced myself to begin the perilous journey from the observation deck to the ship’s communication center, on the complete opposite side of the vessel. I could feel my heart thumping in my throat as I moved through the narrow corridors, the floor beneath my feet barely visible in the dim blue auxiliary lights. The farther I walked, the more my ears began to register low metallic groaning sounds coming from the walls of the ship, punctuated by unsettling tinny clangs. Each tiny clang made my heart palpitate. I could feel a bead of cold sweat trickle down my forehead and onto my cheek as I attempted to pin down the source of the sound. It didn’t seem to have a source, but rather came from all directions. Perhaps the ship was not as suited to the exoplanet’s atmosphere as we had thought, perhaps it was beginning to seriously strain from the combination of the atmosphere and the mysterious struggle it had been through. Pushing the thought to the side as best as I could and attempting to channel all my focus on the task at hand, I continued to tip toe down the zigzagging corridors towards the communication center. The hatch door eventually came into view, and I noticed that it was only partially closed. This gave my heart a fresh tension as I began to fret over why that might have been. I stopped in my tracks. At that point I didn’t trust my senses, I didn’t trust a single misplaced shadow, and I certainly didn’t trust anything in the ship that wasn’t exactly where I remembered it being when we landed. I was in quite the predicament in that moment, the communication center represented the best plan I had for making it out of there alive, but I wasn’t sure it was safe to enter.

  I inched my way closer to the hatch door to try and hear anything from inside. Hearing nothing discernable I braced myself before cautiously entering. To my relief there was no intruder. Maybe one of the others had also tried to send out a distress before succumbing to the influence of that insidious creature, that was the best guess I could come up with. Once I got a look at the state of our communications systems, I felt the first bit of optimism since the whole mission went awry. It appeared to be in working order. The auxiliary power seemed to be enough to keep it functional and sending out an SOS seemed doable. I wasted no time in doing just that. I promptly typed in the code to contact mission command and waited tensely for the tone to signal the call had gone through. It took a few moments and just when my heart began to sink at the thought of failure the characteristic ‘beep’ sounded. I acted quickly. “Mayday, mayday, this is NAME REDACTED calling from INFORMATION REDACTED. We are under attack by hostile life forms. Our vessel has been severely damaged, and two casualties are confirmed. I am requesting assistance as quickly as possible from any agency vessel closest to our immediate location. We need to be extracted; I repeat we need to be extracted. Over.” I sent out the alarm and hoped for the best. The signal had gone through, I knew it had from the fact that the monitor indicated it had been received. That was why I grew confused as to what was taking so long for a response to an emergency signal. I tried again, sending out the same distress call, and still nothing, no response. I became enraged and began cursing the federation, cursing the mission, cursing the very day I enlisted and unwittingly sealed my fate. That was when the seeds of doubt were firmly planted in my heart. As I continued to wait in hopes of a response that same metallic groaning sound, I heard in the corridors became noticeable once again. As I got to hear it more clearly, I noticed it was accompanied by the sound of banging. The color drained from my face at the realization that it sounded as though something had gotten into the ship. My mouth grew dry, and I frantically put out the SOS once more, my voice noticeably quivering in abject terror as I spoke. To my surprise, after the last call I finally received the indicator that someone was on the other side of the line, and they were about to respond. The speaker crackled for a moment before I heard the voice of one of the generals coming through on the other end. “We have received your SOS signal.” They then paused. I should have been elated to get a response to my signal, but I wasn’t. There was something in their voice that made me queasy. I couldn’t tell with certainty in that painful moment before they continued what it was, but I had a guess. They continued. “It is…with the utmost regret, that we must inform you that we are unable to retrieve you, your vessel, or any of your crewmates” I felt the specter of despair descend upon me as my terrible suspicion was confirmed. The emotion I heard in that voice, the feeling he evoked that I wished more than anything in the world to be wrong about, was in fact guilt. “Your family will of course receive the full benefits of your service. They will have every need catered to, your children will have the entirety of their schooling funded by the agency, and this mission will be commemorated. You will be remembered as heroes. You have the undying gratitude of the Space Force. Thank you for your valiance, dedication, and service.”.

  I was left speechless. They really weren’t coming to get us; we were being abandoned. I sank to my knees, the feeling of defeat overwhelming and all encompassing, swallowing me whole like quicksand. I was so distraught, so devastated that I almost missed a crucial detail of the signal. Almost instinctively, trying to check if what I thought I heard was correct, I did what I could to replay their response and noticed something peculiar. There was no reference to myself, or my specific circumstance. Almost as though they weren’t speaking to me at all. Almos as though…it was a prerecorded message. Yes, the wording was very vague, as though it were designed to be a catch all message for whatever catastrophe would befall the mission that might result in an SOS signal being sent out. The notion brought about a flare of rage and confusion within me like a bolt of lightning striking tinder thoroughly dried in the midday sun. The idea that they knew something like this would happen but sent us anyway nearly broke my mind from the fury flooding through it like water rushing from a burst dam. I briefly tried to rationalize, to contain myself as best as I could, but this was practically impossible. If we truly were being abandoned, I had to know why. At that point what other purpose did I have? I wasn’t going home, and it seemed like that might have been the plan of the very organization I entrusted my life with, all along. I wanted answers, I needed them. But how would I even go about searching? I was in the husk of a ship, falling apart, being damaged by whatever unknown hazardous elements of that alien atmosphere had been beating away at it, and had little resources for which to avail myself. Not to mention I was stuck with whatever monstrosity was marauding about the halls of the ship making all those horrendous sounds. Before I could even begin to think of what to do next, the clanging began to reach a crescendo, and I was able to pinpoint where it was coming from. I began to panic at the realization that the sound was moving down the hall, rounding the corner and rapidly approaching my exact position. I had no intention of being caught by the source of all that racket, so I made my way out of the communication center as quickly as I could. Darting down the hall, trying to get away from whatever had entered the ship. Whether it was some kind of alien monster or one of my former crewmates mattered little to me, I knew that it meant me harm. I ran frantically, knowing my life depended on it. After turning a corner, I failed to notice a damaged portion of the ship’s wall, protruding at a low angle and felt my foot snag on it, causing me to fall to the ground. My heart hammered in my chest as I scrambled to my feet, only to be met with the face of another one of my crewmates, NAME REDACTED. It was the last member of our team left to be accounted for, but he was in no better shape than the other two. He had been our youngest team member, a promising engineer with a bright future, but as I stood face to face with him, he had become something else. His eyes were milky and blank, his expressionless face looked at me as though he were a machine, beads of sweat the color of a noxious pearly substance coated his face as he breathed raggedly. “NAME REDACTED, what happened to you?” I asked, unable to contain the terror in my voice. His expression never changed, but rather he stepped forward, using the same lumbering unnatural movements as the one from outside. “It showed me the light, NAME REDACTED, it was beautiful.” He said, his voice unnaturally monotone. He continued to step towards me, as I stepped back. “You must see it, NAME REDACTED, you must see the light.” I shrieked as I turned the corner and sprinted away from my former crewmate as fast as I could. Whatever that monstrosity did to him, it wasn’t right, it wasn’t natural, it was abominable. It took away his life, his humanity, corrupting him into a sort of tool for its own terrible utility. My stomach had an unbearable aching pit in it as I continued to run aimlessly through the bowels of the ship. I ran like a madman until I heard something that made me stop in my tracks, I heard another set of clanging footsteps. Another one of my crewmates must have returned and now two of them were hunting me through the corridors of our stranded vessel, beginning a game of cat and mouse I couldn’t afford to lose.

  At that point I knew there was no safety for me on the ship. If I were to stay within the confines of its weathered walls, they would certainly apprehend me at some point, I was a fish in a barrel. But if I were to go outside, I would be amid the polygonal alien monstrosity that was surely the maestro of this demented orchestra of events. Still, I would be out in the open, I thought. There was room to run, to get away, a slim chance to prolong my life that I ultimately decided was worth taking. Before I could weigh the decision any further, it seemed that it was made for me, as the hazardous atmospheric elements began to erode the walls of the ship. The wall right beside me began to creak and whine as the walls began to pulsate and sway, warping under the pressure. It was clear that the structure of the vessel wouldn’t hold against the strange properties of that foreign world. Without a second thought I made my way to the nearest emergency exit, thankfully just a few meters down the corridor, and slammed the switch activating the hatch door. To my surprise it still worked despite all the damage the ship had received and I was abruptly jettisoned back into the murky black exterior of the dark world outside the ship’s walls.

  The force of the suction caused me to tumble out onto the dusty surface, and even though at that point I was familiar with the shadowy atmosphere, the dark still caused me panic as it consumed my surroundings. As I struggled to my feet, I attempted to turn on my suit’s flashlight. It seemed that it had taken some damage during the fall, causing the light to flicker on and off intermittently. Still, it worked, if barely. I moved as fast as I could, but the heavy atmosphere still slowed me. My head moved on a swivel as I looked everywhere for that same sinister light from before. I found myself running aimlessly, frantically, desperately through the abyss, at that moment reduced to nothing more than a frightened animal looking for shelter of any kind. I felt like a fieldmouse running through the prairie, the eyes of ravenous hawks doggedly following my every movement, sending electric bolts of fear through my nervous system. After running for a bit, thankfully with no sight of the polygonal multicolored light, I did notice something in my surroundings. There was what looked to be a wall in front of me, some kind of massive boulder or cliffside. The dark was so powerful that I couldn’t see the structure in its entirety but nonetheless, I began to follow its surface to the right. It didn’t go on for too long before I found what I was hoping for, an entrance. It seemed I had found a cavern on the surface of that murky world. Without much thought I scrambled inside. Even at the time I acknowledged that I was rolling the dice with such a decision. After all, for all I knew, something worse could have lurked within the subterranean portion of the exoplanet, but I thought nothing could be worse than what I had already experienced. I didn’t care. I simply wanted shelter the cavern offered it. My breathing grew heavier as I made my way through the narrow walls of the small cavern, I could feel the temperature drop with each step I took. Breathing slowly became difficult, and I quickly searched every inch of my suit to find out why. Unfortunately I soon found the reason; it appeared that a small hole had been torn in the suit when I fell and had grown as I was sprinting across the planet’s surface.

  The sight of that hole made it clear that my fate was sealed. That cavern would be my mausoleum. Operating on pure instinct at that point, I simply tried to crawl further into the confines of the rocky walls. All I wanted was to retain myself, my humanity. All I prayed for was that I wouldn’t be reduced to the fate that befell my former crewmates, so further into the cave I crawled as I began to gasp and wheeze from the decreasing oxygen. I found myself pulling rocks aside, like a shrew burrowing into a hole, and as I scraped and clawed at the rubble, I pulled away a loose portion of rocks that revealed something that made my blood run cold. My vision was beginning to blur from lack of oxygen, as I felt the cruel grasp of hypoxia wrapping around me, but what I saw fall out of that rubble between the flickering glimpses the light of my suits light was unmistakable. It was the suit arm of the very same suit I wore. The same blue and grey material, the same insignia, all of it. There was no question, we were not the first ones to set foot on that planet. The horrible realization fell upon me with the weight of the entire ocean. The implications of the discovery brought about a flurry of questions that tormented me in those final moments. Others had been sent to that exoplanet, there was no question of that, but why? Why had they been sent there? Was it for the same reason they sent us? Everything about the search for minerals, was it all a lie? Were we nothing more than a sacrifice, some kind of offering to that bizarre being of light? The questions bubbled up like an unstoppable geyser as my world continued to grow dark. As the light faded faster and faster, as my grip on consciousness was soon to be lost completely, one last terrible question echoed out of my mind before all went black. If others had been here before us, would they be sending more after?