The atmo-hab was growing stale, rations scraping low. Three weeks was a long time to be alone when you were used to the constant banter of crew. Arcylides leaned back on her uncomfortable chair built of equipment crates and stared into the black above Lucanis.

A moon just as abandoned as she was.

It was okay though, they'd thought she was dead. Excessive blood spatter tended to imply this.

"But they checked your pulse, right? Because people in the serials never do that. They just see bodies and start wailing, so are you sure they checked?"

Dammit. She must've been muttering to herself again, an involuntary habit she'd started to remind herself she existed. Not much else did. No bugs, no animal life, just puddles of still water, bacteria, Arcylides, and the Abyss.

Or whatever lurked inside the Abyss. She wasn't sure. They might've been one and the same. A havoc of shadows and teeth that had attacked her crew, leading to the panicked flight, the pain in her head. Whatever it was, the Abyss always mocked her when she slipped and mumbled to herself.

"Arcylides and the Abyss. Sounds like a great band name. You gonna take that home with you? Souvenir of our quality time?"

She fished a ration bar from her pocket, ripping a chunk off with her teeth. Arcylides swung her boots onto the ground, dust dissipating over the crack running under the atmo-hab. Hard blue rock broken like a zipper, only swirling fog and shadows between.

Three weeks with Arcylides and the Abyss. Three weeks of the monster that attacked her crew taunting her because she was the only one left.

"Attacked is such a harsh word. Have you seen this place? Nothing but germy water. I mean, what the hell were you testing for? Exotic plagues? I just wanted to say hello." Rubble scratched inside the depths. That thing still prowled in there, or in there was the thing. Both seemed intangible, interchangeable. A beast that crawled out of the dark, yet remained, a present physical ache, a shadow on her mind.

Arcylides crumpled the ration wrapper, hurling it into the dark. This was her universe now. A small rocky moon and this. She would've preferred the madness of true solitude.

"Talk to me, love. It's just us. The lonely souls club. Come on, we're so alike. Abandoned, left for dead, a little too deep and dangerous when people toe the edge. We're practically twins. That's why I didn't kill you, you know. I like you."

Arcylides snorted. There was nothing deep about her. In fact, her last paramour had called her shallow and narrow-minded. Only thinking about the road, about space, the stars, and infinity. Even the work hardly mattered. Testing water for the Intergalactic Hydroviability Committee. Repetitive, meaningless steps every time.

"Have a stimulating conversation, my friend. Otherwise it won't be long before your brain drops deader than this rock."

Do the work, Arcylides recited silently. Her mantra for when space travel stopped and endless testing began. Do the work and she'd be free. Back to the void where her heart rang vibrant and ephemeral as rapture.

So she had to get back, get out. Always swimming, always hungry, always fast. You're the shark of the stars, Ides. What are you doing with us minnows? Shale. Her Second said that the night before they disembarked on Lucanis, before shit hit the fan and kept hitting. He'd tipped his dropper of liquor toward her, irony puckering his mouth.

That mouth was the last she'd seen of her crew. After something crawled out of the Abyss, or the Abyss crawled out itself, and attacked. A manic shape of shadow and heartbeats loud enough to pound in Arcylides's own throat.

In that moment, Shale's mouth: Narrow, then long, going loud. It must've been loud, but all sound had stunned itself into one sustained note of chaos, chasing everything else out. The next moment, she'd woken with a hammer-splitting headache and blood everywhere. She hadn't worn her jumpsuit for days afterward, just trying to wash it out.

"Watch what you're doing, you're going to tweak your thumb off."

Arcylides dropped the utilitool. She remembered telling herself to do the work but not picking it up. Yet here she sat before her makeshift transponder, trying to assemble its guts. Trying to call for help. Lucanis orbited far from civilization, but outlying travelers weren't impossible. She'd take any chance over this hell-universe of two.

Arcylides and the Abyss.

When her crew reached help, they'd send someone back to sterilize the site. So if her transponder failed, they'd find her then.

"Unless they declare this a hazard zone. You know, the kind no one goes back to."

"They'll come back," Arcylides growled, not speaking to the fear but as a wall against it.

"See, I knew you'd talk to me eventually."

"Shut up!" She launched upward, trembling with a heady concoction of rage and lonely fear. "They'll come back and they'll purge your murdering pestilence from this hell-moon."

"Is that a spot of blood you missed on your sleeve there? Looks like your purging isn't really up to par."

Arcylides roared and the terrible silence of Lucanis roared back. Her heart thundered in the bleakness. She couldn't be trapped here. If she was going to die, it'd be among the stars.

Darkness wasn't supposed to be filled with monsters. It was supposed to be full of light.

She stumbled away from her shoddy transponder, reaching for the crates. Anything to support her. Anything to lean and despair against. But despair struck first, before she was ready. Her unsteady steps knocked the fallen utilitool.

It rolled, bumped, skittered.

Dropping right into the fissure.

"That's too bad," said the Abyss. "Guess you'll have to come visit me now."

"No," breathed Arcylides, stumbling right to the edge. "No, no, no." Because if the Abyss was right, if her crew did mark this a hazard zone, building that transponder was the only way anyone would know she was here. And she couldn't do it without the utilitool.

Okay, she told herself, don't think, just do the work. Go down, come up, get back to space.

The atmo-hab didn't extend beneath the ground, so Arcylides dug out her hab-suit. The bit on the chest with her name had been ripped off in the attack, but she'd patched it since. Next, the cable. She looped it out around her waist and the crates. Then she returned to the edge and looked down.

The Abyss looked back. Shadows and fog and temptation.

Arcylides lowered herself in. Darkness came fast, and her hab-suit's headlamp didn't help. Just made the darkness opaque, made the fog rear up. The Abyss said nothing as she crawled down its throat, nothing as her cable ran out.

Only water beading on the walls made sound, sliding slow and irregular.

It had to bottom out somewhere. The opening had slivered above, and the drips now sounded like they were hitting a larger deposit below. Rancid and wet. Maybe from mineral build up.

The echo of water didn't seem that distant. If she wanted off this moon, she'd have to risk it. Securing herself against the wall, Arcylides worked the knots of the cable loose.

Now untied, she shimmied down until the rock grew slick, the fog thin, and her toes found ground only inches away. The smell worsened exponentially, sick and dizzying in her lungs. Arcylides choked and swept the palm-light on her glove around. Fog eddied away, revealing a section of uneven ground.

Enough to show her utilitool rolled against a disembodied arm.

Arcylides exhaled a shriek. She windmilled as her heel caught stone and she slumped against the wall in another surge of fog. The eddies and whorls cleared, unveiling the truth of the smell.

Bodies.

Souring under the sly drip of water and the prevalence of smug silence.

"You bastard!" Arcylides shouted. "You—you killed them. Succoring Saints, that's my crew." They'd never left. At least most of them. Shale, she realized as she traversed the open burial ground, skin coated in prickles of dread and anticipation. Shale was missing, and the ship was still gone, so he must've escaped.

The Abyss smirked silently. She felt it close, toying, gloating, waiting for—what was that? Arcylides drifted, trance-like, toward one of the bodies. She couldn't tell who it was. What was left in the hab-suit suggested small stature, but it could've been multiple people still. Their hand clutched the only bit of identifying evidence, and it wasn't theirs.

Arcylides unfurled the three-week death grip, unfurled the fabric within until it lay limp and obvious on her palm. Her name, ripped from her jumpsuit, like memories ripped from her head. Her jumpsuit hadn't been torn in the attack, and her crew hadn't left her for dead.

They'd run from her.

The continuing silence said it all: She was alone, and the only monster in this hellscape was herself.

Arcylides the Abyss.