The air smelled old and rusty inside the cramped junk pod.
Donnes was frantically typing on the command panel, wiping the tears off his face to hide his pain, to not cry out loud like a child.
His eyes kept running between looking out the pod's glass window and the keyboard in front of him as he typed out message after message.
"They'll come back. They have to." His hope still burning bright.
But the comms stayed dead.
His crew had abandoned him. The pain was not just about being left behind; it was betrayal. He thought of them as family.
Every fond memory with them was now hurting him like sharp pain. His heart still failing to accept the reality.
"Why won't they answer?"
He has been trying to contact them for the last forty-eight hours, but they didn't bother replying. Then finally, one single message.
"You were a burden, a waste of ship resources, useless in everything, and a nuisance to everybody."
It was Kathy's voice.
Cold and detached.
"No. No, that's not true. Kathy... you said I was your friend."
[Power level: 3%.]
Donnes ignored the pod's warning and kept trying to contact them, apologizing. He wrote several times that he would become a slave, or even go into cryo to be a blood bag, just take him back.
But no response.
[Power level: 2%.]
The screen died mid-keystroke. His breath hitched in his throat.
"No, NO!" He smashed his fists against the panel. "GARRETH! YOU SWORE! You can't do this to me, Garreth! I am your Brother!"
[Power level: 1%. Life support only.]
They even shot him out in this old junk pod with probably a faulty power battery.
"They hated me this much?" he asked himself, and a sudden clarity hit him.
They never loved him in the first place to even hate.
The moment the ship hit a supply crisis, he was their first choice to throw out, without a doubt. Like trash in the corner.
The lights went off suddenly and the hum of the heating mechanism went silent.
The faint whirl of the air filtration was still working, but for some reason Donnes started feeling lightheaded.
"Fucking HELL!" he shouted. He realized it all at once. They swapped out the oxygen module too.
He pulled out the manual mechanism you could pedal to recharge the battery, but that section was also empty.
"AAAAAAHHHHHHH! WHYYYY!???"
His eyes were now full of tears. Terror of death, darkness, cold, and loneliness. A loneliness you feel after being betrayed by those you thought were family.
His eyes looked outside, towards the only source of light in this unending void of darkness. The roaring engines of his Home, The Ship, the family he called, leaving him behind.
He kept wiping the tears away like a child, but they wouldn't stop. It was his heart crying out loud and not stopping. His innocent heart has been torn into pieces.
"I am sorry... please take me back." he mumbled as his eyes couldn't look away from that light, that looked like his only hope.
Suddenly, an uncontrollable sleep and weakness started to take over. He fought it, but without life-saving oxygen, it was a shattered effort.
"Mother... I am sorry."
---
Cold.
Darkness.
A freezing, sharp cold biting into every piece of him.
He tried to move. Nothing. Like he was stuck, or not able to feel his body at all due to coldness.
But the cold was still there. Everywhere. Down to something that felt like his core.
Thirst.
A dry, cracking thirst. Worse than anything he'd ever known.
"I'm... still not dead yet?"
The cold and thirst felt like the end. But somehow, he was still here.
Surprisingly, it was not painful. The sensation of cold and thirst was present but not pain.
But then his emotions swelled and the pain of abandonment, the betrayal returned.
His thoughts pulled him back, to the deep, to the reason behind it all.
His family abandoned him.
His beloved moons left him for the Eighth Brother. The Blue Giant.
They threw him out as bait for Graveth... the Cosmic Horror.
"Wait. What? Who... What? What the hell is that? Who is this?"
It felt like his memories were glitching. Like it is his own and still not his own, and both were fighting inside his head.
More pieces of memory flickered, images he didn't recognize. A giant star with warmth. Rings of dust. Several Giant brothers and sisters with thousands of moons.
It felt like his head was splitting open. Like two lives were smashing into each other and fighting for space.
"I... I'm Donnes. My crew betrayed me. I was in that pod. I died. I remember dying. But I'm also... Aidoneus? The Ninth son of Oralen?"
He tried to pull both memories apart, make them separate. Tried to make sense of both of them.
He tried to breathe, but there was no breath. No lungs. Just cold.
This has to be some nightmare. Some glitch in my head. Some hallucinations. Oxygen deprivation induced hallucinations.
"I... I..."
He couldn't believe it. Couldn't even process the words.
"I... I am a... A FREAKING PLANET?!"
A planet.
Not a man. Not a creature. Not anything close.
Just a dead, broken world drifting in darkness.
The truth was dark and cold, and somehow, weirdly, a little liberating.
"So... I'm not dead? Or what?"
His biggest fear had always been dying. The idea that everything just ended. But now? He didn't feel exactly alive. Not exactly dead either.
What does this even mean?
What was he supposed to do now?
Be a planet?
Just... sit here?
That objective truth was still too big to swallow.
I'm a planet? HOW?
How could someone go from a human dying in a junk pod to this, a shattered world?
"Hello...?"
He tried to call out. Or at least, he tried to do something.
Nothing.
No voice came out. No breath. No sense of a mouth or muscles or anything close to a body.