The ping on the radar, signaling an incoming ship, jolts me from my half-conscious state.

  I blink, certain I am hallucinating again. I've been amazed the last few months by what a desperate, starved, traumatized mind can conjure. And there’s no way it’s the rescue ship. In training, they drilled the protocol into us—eight months was the maximum time before a rescue mission would be able to reach us.

  Today marks eight months and six days.

  The makeshift shelter I've constructed in the remains of the Boundless Sky's airlock creaks around me.

  The ping sounds again—clear, unmistakable.

  Eight months of false hopes have taught me not to trust anything, especially not my own mind. I've long since stopped counting the times I thought I heard the voices of my crew in the wind or the creaking metal.

  I drag myself to the cracked display panel anyway.

  And there it is: a bright dot descending through HDX-937b's upper atmosphere, following a controlled trajectory.

  My heart stops.

  "Hello?" I rasp into the comm unit, its wires spliced and taped together after the crash. Static answers me.

  I clear my throat, fighting against months of disuse. "This is Science Officer Elias Thorne of the Boundless Sky. Do you copy?"

  More static, and then—impossibly—a voice crackles through.

  "—repeat, Radiant Hope to any survivors of Boundless Sky. We are beginning descent procedures. Please respond—"

  Captain Margot Raines of the Radiant Hope, our sister ship. We trained together at the GSA before we split off into two individual crews for the mission. Standard protocol dictated they follow our flight path when our signal went dark—but it appears they weren't expecting to find survivors any more than I was expecting to survive.

  The transmission cuts out, swallowed by the planet's ionized upper atmosphere.

  I stagger to my feet, heart hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat.

  "I'm here!" I shout, though I know the signal is too weak to transmit. "I'm still here!"

  There's no time to wait for better contact. If they're coming down, I need to be visible. I lurch toward the airlock controls, already in my enviro-suit as I have been for nearly two months now, awaiting rescue. I have to get outside. Have to signal them before they decide there's nothing left to save.

  But as my hand hovers over the manual release valve for the airlock, I hesitate.

  If I am hallucinating and I release this valve, I’m dead. This sealed airlock is my only source of shelter. Once it’s decompressed, I’ll be stuck in this enviro-suit until I die of dehydration.

  The radar pings again.

  If I'm hallucinating, though, I suppose, it's one hell of a hallucination. I’ve never hallucinated radar pings before, let alone three perfectly spaced ones that have a corresponding indicator on the display and a radio transmission from someone I haven’t spoken to in years.

  The chances I’m hallucinating are reasonably low.

  The chances they’ll declare a total loss of life and leave me here if I don’t get outside right now, though, are really fucking high.

  The radar pings again.

  I glance down at Bennett's body lying next to me in the airlock.

  She's still in her suit where I laid her, helmet clasped shut to contain the sickly-sweet stench of decomposition that had begun to fill our shared space.

  I know she's already dead, but I can't bring myself to open this airlock door if I don't check her suit's seals first. I check all the clasps quickly.

  The radar pings again.

  I hit the button. The air hisses out as the doors open for the last time.

  As I stagger from the wreckage, a fireball cuts through the atmosphere. It moves impossibly fast, a distant speck growing larger, sharper, until I can make out the silhouette of a landing shuttle.

  I'm not imagining it. Not this time.

  I exhale, a ragged sound against the helmet's stale air circulation. My body sways with exhaustion and disbelief.

  A cloud of dust erupts as it nears the ground, landing struts extending, engines roaring in a deep, guttural tremor that shakes the cracked ground beneath me.

  The shuttle's ramp begins to lower, corrosive toxic dust swirling around it. Their shuttle airlock opens, and as it opens, I realize with sudden horror I need to tell them about the dust.

  "The dust!" I shout into the radio, hoping they can hear me now. "The dust is toxic! Don't let it into the shuttle!"

  Someone lets out a choked laugh—half glee, half sheer disbelief.

  “Elias! You’re alive!” Says Dr. Harlow Greaves, the Medical Officer of the Radiant Hope.

  "This is Captain Margot Raines of the Radiant Hope," comes a measured voice through my comm, as if I didn’t already know that. She was always a stickler for procedure. “What dust?"

  "This!" I scream, pointing to the air where the dust is swirling around us. "The dust!"

  Raines hesitates, then continues forward with more caution. Two others exit behind her, their movements suddenly more deliberate, afraid of the dust.

  Or afraid they’re standing in front of a madman.

  "Dr. Thorne, please clarify the nature of the threat,” Raines orders.

  I force myself to breathe, to speak evenly, to communicate like a trained scientist instead of a crazy person.

  "Blood contamination is lethal,” I rasp, each word an effort. “Surface contact and ingestion don't appear to cause short-term symptoms. We collected as much data as we could on the Sky’s memory core.”

  There's a moment of silence, then rapid-fire orders from Raines. "Arden, Greaves, full decontamination protocols.” Her meaning is clear: Nothing returns to the ship without going through the full particulate matter decontamination process in the airlock.

  Greaves glances down at his suit, already glittering with the fine particles.

  I sway on my feet, suddenly extremely dizzy. I haven’t been on my feet in months.

  Greaves steps to my side to support me.

  "Even more amazing, then, that we've found you alive," Dr. Vance Arden says, the Science Officer of the Radiant Hope. "We expected to find nothing but bodies. Where are the others?"

  My chest sinks, hollow and heavy.

  I look away, my gaze fixing on the distant horizon where the planet's toxic dust swirls in perpetual motion.

  "The rest of the crew," Greaves says. "Where are they, Thorne?"

  My throat closes. I open my mouth, but no sound emerges.

  My hands begin to tremble inside the patched gloves.

  His grip on my arm tightens. "Elias? Maya, Carlos, Anne—Where are they?"

  I stand, frozen, unable to meet his eyes.

  Greaves's excitement drains away, replaced by dawning comprehension.

  "Captain," Arden's voice cuts in, sharp and strange, over the crackling comms. He's stepped away, deeper into the wreckage, his sensors sweeping the area. "I've found Laurent."

  Dr. Anne Laurent, our Medical Officer, her body wrapped carefully in canvas, placed in the most sheltered corner of the wreckage we could find, safe from the toxic dust.

  Moments later, "I've found Rivera," Raines calls out, her voice unsteady.

  Lieutenant Engineer Carlos Rivera. We laid him near the airlock entrance where he'd died, canvas folded over his wrecked remains. Bennett and I had been too weak to move his body by then.

  A sudden cry from the direction of the airlock makes everyone freeze.

  "Oh my God…" Arden's voice is barely recognizable, but I know what he’s looking at.

  Greaves turns where he’s bracing my body and looks past my shoulder, toward the fetid husk of an airlock I've been living in for two months.

  Empty ration packets litter the floor, along with sample bins full of feces that I’ve closed to contain the smell as much as possible. A battery sits in the corner, with a single solar panel and the water recycler both sloppily spliced into its control panel.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  And in the corner, laid to rest as peacefully as I could manage, is Captain Maya Bennett of the Boundless Sky.

  “Holy shit,” Greaves whispers.

  I’ve never heard him swear before.

  My entire body begins to shake.

  Greaves recovers first, his medical training kicking in. His feet move before his mouth does, dragging me toward the shuttle. "I need to get him back to the ship. Now."

  "Arden, help me move the bodies," Raines murmurs into her radio, her usually composed voice unsteady. “Greaves, get him stabilized.”

  “No,” I protest, trying to wrest my arm out of his inexplicably strong grasp. “I need the data on the dust.”

  “Arden and Raines will grab the memory core,” Greaves says carefully, still gently dragging me back toward the shuttle. “Right?”

  “We’ll recover everything possible,” Arden tries to assure me.

  My chest constricts so suddenly I can't breathe. Heat flushes through my body, a violent surge of something between rage and despair.

  “Not everything possible,” I nearly shout, ripping my arm out of Greaves’s grasp. “Everything. That data could change the world. They died for it.”

  They died to keep me alive so I could bring it back to Earth.

  I shake harder. “You don’t understand,” I mumble, on the edge of falling apart. “I promised.”

  A single beat of silence.

  Then Raines’ solemn reply. “I swear on my life, Dr. Thorne, we will recover every byte of data it is possible to recover.”

  I hear Arden and Greaves’ sharp intake of breath.

  Something in her tone reaches through the fog. I remember training exercises, Raines' attention to detail, her respect for protocol. If anyone will treat those memory banks with the reverence they deserve, it's her.

  Mission accomplished.

  My knees buckle. Greaves catches me before I collapse.

  "We need to move now," Greaves cuts in sharply.

  I'm shaking. I can't stop shaking.

  Greaves guides me through the shuttle's exterior door and into the cramped airlock. The door seals behind us with a hiss.

  He immediately activates the decontamination sequence. A fine mist begins to spray from nozzles in the ceiling and walls, coating our suits with decontamination solution. The liquid beads on the surface of our helmets, carrying away the microscopic particles that could mean death if they breach our protection.

  "The others," I manage, my voice barely audible on the radio. "Don't leave them here."

  "We won't," he promises through his mirrored visor. “We’ll bring everyone home.”

  I nod, a small movement that sends waves of dizziness through me. I would have fallen by now if it weren’t for Greaves holding me upright.

  "Whoa, easy," he says, concern sharpening his voice. "Just a few more minutes and we can get you out of this suit."

  My breathing becomes shallow, each inhalation harder than the last. The edges of my vision begin to darken. My body has reached its limit.

  Greaves's scanner beeps urgently against my chest. "Shit," he mutters, eyes darting between me and the readout. His voice rises, pitched toward the comm. "Thorne's crashing."

  "Can't override safety protocols," comes Raines's tight response. "Four more minutes minimum."

  The mist continues its methodical work, indifferent to my deteriorating condition.

  Greaves grips both my shoulders now, lowering me carefully to a seated position against the airlock wall.

  "Stay with me, Elias," he says, his professional demeanor cracking. "We didn't come all this way to lose you now."

  "The data,” I mumble again, feeling like I'm about to pass out.

  “Being loaded right now,” Greaves assures me. "Rivera, Laurent, and Bennett. And the memory core. We've got everything, Elias. Everyone's coming home."

  Relief washes through me, stronger than any medicine Greaves could administer. My eyes close briefly, the weight of my eight-month vigil finally, truly lifting.

  Greaves tells me to open my eyes for him, to stay with him, but I pass out anyway.

  A soft beep registers at the edge of my awareness—a heart monitor, steady but slow. My body feels impossibly heavy. Every muscle is sore, my skin hypersensitive and raw.

  The scent of medical-grade antiseptic fills my nostrils, sharp and clinical—nothing like the stale, recycled air I've breathed for months.

  A voice pulls me from the fog. "Elias?"

  It's Greaves, standing beside the bed, arms crossed but eyes softer than I remember.

  I try to sit up, fighting my weakness. After spending months lying around, conserving calories, I can't bear to be horizontal.

  But unlike last time I was awake, I'm not able to on my own.

  Seeing my struggle, Greaves frowns but adjusts the bed, raising me to a semi-reclined position. "Better?"

  I nod, though the movement sends a wave of dizziness through me.

  The new angle gives me a better view of myself—arms and legs like twigs, purple-yellow bruises all over my body, puffy red lines where the suit's seams cut into my skin.

  Greaves follows my gaze, his expression softening. "We've started a nutrient infusion protocol," he explains, gesturing to one of the IV bags. "Your body needs to recover. We'll begin with liquids tomorrow, then soft foods as your digestive system adjusts."

  I can't tear my eyes away from the ruins of my body.

  "How long was I out?" My voice is rough, barely more than a whisper.

  “Twelve hours. You were dehydrated, malnourished. We had to stabilize your vitals before waking you." He shifts uncomfortably, his professional detachment slipping. "You gave us a hell of a scare."

  I exhale, looking past him to the window. The stars blur beyond the glass, distant and untouchable.

  I'm not sure if I should feel relief, or something else entirely.

  "The data core," I say, the words scratching my dry throat. "Did you recover it intact?"

  Greaves nods. “Moss has it. Preliminary analysis shows the memory banks are preserved. He’s working on accessing the data as we speak.”

  Relief washes over me like a tsunami. Tears prick the corner of my eyes.

  "Those mineral compounds—we've never seen anything like them,” Greaves says.

  I'd stopped noticing the fine dust that coated everything, that worked its way into every seam and seal.

  The same dust that killed Carlos, seeping into his bloodstream through a single cut. The same dust he believed could revolutionize humanity's expansion into space if properly refined. Dust that could one day produce the energy needed to feed billions of starving people.

  I look down at my arms, half-expecting to see the glittering residue still there. All I see is pink, raw skin.

  "You've been scrubbed clean," Greaves continues, watching my reaction carefully. "Three times. We weren't taking any chances."

  He moves closer, his white medical coat a stark contrast to the subdued colors of the equipment. I find myself staring at the pristine fabric, wondering how something can be so untouched, so clean.

  "Arden's preliminary scan shows unusual metallic properties in the samples we collected," he says, careful not to reveal too much until official analysis is complete. "Given what happened to Rivera... I can see why you were so insistent on bringing all the data back."

  I nod slightly. Rivera had seen it immediately—the potential applications if the material could be safely processed.

  "We assume the dust had something to do with the Sky's crash," he says carefully. "So after we rescued you, we immediately left orbit. We're en route to Earth."

  "The others," I say, eyes closing briefly. "Have you—"

  "Captain Raines has prepared the bodies for transport," he says gently. Then, softer: "They'll receive full military and civilian honors when we return."

  I nearly scoff. As if medals and flags could make up for what happened.

  "Let me check your vitals," Greaves says, moving to the monitors.

  I watch his hands as they move methodically—adjusting IV lines, tapping notes into a tablet.

  I wish it were Laurent checking my vitals. She would have known what to do to help us recover from the dust exposure.

  She would have saved Rivera.

  My heart aches.

  "How bad?" I ask.

  His eyes flick toward me, then back to the monitors. There's a moment of hesitation before he answers, like he's choosing his words carefully. "You survived eight months on a deadworld. I'd say you're doing remarkably well, all things considered."

  "That's not an answer," I bite back, irritated by his evasion.

  Greaves sighs, setting down his tablet. When he looks back at me, his expression has changed—the clinical mask slipping to reveal something raw and pained. "Severe malnutrition. Your muscle mass is down almost forty percent. Kidney function compromised from dehydration." He pauses. “And that's just the physical inventory."

  I close my eyes, unable to bear the sight anymore. Heat rises to my face—shame, anger, I'm not sure which.

  "Your body was shutting down. Another week, maybe two, and we wouldn't be having this conversation."

  My stomach lurches violently. Another week. Just seven more days and I would have joined them.

  My hands grip the thin sheet covering me, twisting it between my fingers.

  A week. That's all it would have taken.

  My next thought is almost wistful.

  So close.

  Greaves notices my reaction, his features morphing with compassion and concern.

  It grates against something jagged inside me. I don't want his pity. I don't deserve it.

  He moves to my side, a scanner in his hand. "I need to check your neural activity," he says, the device humming as he passes it over my head. "You've been through severe trauma, and we need to establish a baseline."

  "My brain's fine," I mutter, turning away from his concern.

  "Let me be the judge of that," he replies, but there's no edge to his words. A small, sad smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. "You were always a terrible patient, even during training."

  His voice shifts into something more careful, more measured. "Elias," He says. "I know it's soon, but I need to ask you a few questions about what happened. It will help me treat you more effectively. For medical purposes only,” Greaves assures me, his eyes meeting mine with an intensity that makes me want to look away. "The official debriefing can wait."

  I swallow, tasting the metallic aftertaste of the medication. "Go ahead," I manage, bracing myself.

  Greaves pulls a stool closer, sitting at eye level with me. "I need to understand the physical conditions you endured. Food intake, water rationing, temperature fluctuations, atmospheric exposure—all of it. Any toxins or pathogens you might have encountered, including these minerals." His voice is clinical, but his eyes never leave my face, watching for signs of distress. "Take me through the physical risks you were exposed to."

  The question is straightforward enough. Medical. Practical. But as I open my mouth to answer—

  My mind flashes to Rivera three days after he cut his hand during repairs. His face contorted in agony as the veins around the wound turned black, glittering with the same particles we'd seen in the soil samples.

  "It's the dust," I whisper to him and Bennett, gripping his hand. "In his bloodstream."

  Rivera's eyes lock with mine, the scientist in him calculating even through the pain. "Document everything," he manages through gritted teeth. "The progression. The symptoms. The time frame. And don't forget what I told you about the molecular structure," he adds, his breathing labored. "If they can stabilize it, if they can process it safely…”

  Even dying, he was thinking about the data.

  "Elias? Elias!"

  I blink, finding myself back in the med bay, Greaves' hand on my shoulder, his face creased with concern. The monitors beside the bed are beeping rapidly, reflecting my spiking heart rate. His grip is firm but gentle, anchoring me to the present.

  "You're safe," he says firmly, his voice cutting through the fog of memory. "You're on the Radiant Hope. You're not there anymore."

  I swallow, feel the sheen of cold sweat on my forehead. I give a short nod, not trusting my voice.

  Greaves doesn't remove his hand, the physical contact a tether to reality. "You don't have to answer," he says, his voice gentler than I've ever heard it, softened to the point of being unbearable. "I shouldn't have pushed so soon."

  I do not want to be treated like something broken in need of saving.

  I throw his hand off mine. My response is positively robotic. "We retreated to a detached pressurized airlock three months ago. Oxygen recyclers operating at 25% capacity upon rescue. Water rationing down to 300 milliliters. Food intake down to half a ration pack per day."

  He sets down his tablet and just looks at me, really looks at me, for the first time since I woke up. "Elias, what you went through... Most people wouldn't have lasted one month, let alone eight."

  I know what he’s implying, and he’s wrong. I didn't survive because I'm special or strong. I survived because I promised them—promises to get the data home, to make their deaths mean something.

  Greaves' hand returns to my shoulder, a steady weight grounding me to the present. "You're safe now, Elias."

  But safety feels like a foreign concept, something that belongs to the person I was before the deadworld. Before I watched my crew die one by one. Before I became the only one left.

  "Get some rest," He says, standing. He adjusts my blanket with unnecessary care. "We'll continue when you're stronger."

  As he moves toward the door, I call after him. "Harlow."

  He turns, eyebrows raised. I've never used his first name before, not even during training.

  "Thank you," I say. "For coming back for us.”

  Something flickers across his face—guilt, relief, sorrow, I can't tell.

  "Of course," he says quietly, voice thick with emotion he can't quite hide. "You would have done the same."

  The door slides shut behind him, leaving me alone with the beeping monitors and the stars beyond the window.