THE FIRST JOURNEY: PLANET EARTH –– MILKY WAY GALAXY.
“I’m sorry… I couldn’t give you all a better life. A life like normal children.”
Krrt… krrt krrrt.
“Run! Run as far away from here as you can! Find a new planet… You must live! You have to live!”
Krrt… krrt krrrt.
“Mom… loves you.”
SATELLITE No.1: THE NIGHTMARE
“Huff… huff… huff…”
The sound of ragged breathing echoed inside the room. The surrounding space was unnervingly silent, making Tuan acutely aware of every harsh breath forced out of his lungs. He jolted upright, his heart pounding violently as his chest clenched tight. Panic flooded his mind, leaving his entire body drenched in cold sweat. His icy fingers dug into the bedsheets, clinging to them as if grasping for something – anything – that might pull him out of the nightmare lurking in the darkness, forever waiting to drag him back into its suffocating grip.
Tuan had just awakened from a long coma. His consciousness was torn apart along the fragile boundary between dream and reality. He raised both hands to clutch his head, tears threatening to spill from his pale, ashen face. His mind replayed the dream over and over again – eyes, voices, the chaos that had unfolded – each fragment surfacing slowly before him, like a grainy black-and-white film from an ancient technological age. Frame by frame, the images carved themselves into his subconscious, forming memories that could never be erased: unbearably vivid, and unbearably painful.
His body still remembered the madness of the pain – like millions of maggots burrowing into him, tearing at his flesh one after another – only stopping when his consciousness was finally swallowed by an all-consuming darkness. A wave of goosebumps rippled across his skin, and he instinctively curled inward, wrapping his arms tightly around himself. In the midst of his trembling, the door suddenly burst open. Light from the corridor spilled in, casting the silhouette of a small, slender figure into the room. The lights flicked on at once, followed by the sharp clang of metal hitting the floor – snapping Tuan’s mind out of its haze.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Before he could fully react, the small figure rushed forward and slammed into his stomach, knocking the air out of him.
“You’re awake, Tuna! I’m so glad. You scared me so much. I thought you weren’t going to make it.” Valentina’s voice cracked as she spoke. She sniffled, her eyes already brimming with tears. “The robot guy told me you’d recovered and that you’d wake up soon, but I… I was scared. What if something had happened to you? I–”
Valentina could no longer hold back her emotions. She collapsed face-down onto the bed, wrapping her arms tightly around Tuan’s waist as she broke into uncontrollable sobs, leaving him utterly bewildered by what was happening. Memories from before the coma began to seep back into place, and his mind slowly unraveled them, like an artisan carefully stitching each thread together to reconstruct the brutal landscape of a nightmarish hell.
***
It had all begun on a fateful day.
Tuan had been resting inside a biochemical cocoon, under close observation after successfully surviving the final phase of the experiment, when – without warning – security personnel dragged him out of the tank. His body was still soaked, his mind hazy, as they hauled him away unceremoniously. Something serious had gone terribly wrong. Alarm sirens wailed, warning lights spun and flashed relentlessly, and the air was thick with tension, as if everything were on the verge of exploding.
Yet strangely enough, for reasons he could not understand, the other rooms in the male section remained sealed shut, trapping everyone inside. Only Tuan was singled out – hoisted under the arms and taken away in such an undignified manner.
They rushed through multiple layers of security doors – systems that were normally kept tightly sealed and heavily guarded – until they reached a corridor made entirely of transparent glass. Through it, Tuan saw a vast landing field filled with spacecraft of all kinds, and beyond that, a scene of utter chaos, where countless people were scrambling desperately for a chance to survive. At the end of the corridor, a spacecraft was already waiting for him.
And I know exactly what you’re thinking – but you’re not wrong.
The place where he was standing was an off-world research facility, located not on Earth, but on Mars.
The ship’s entire body was coated in a pristine white layer, resembling a gigantic milk popsicle. The coating helped reduce the absorption of solar radiation during launch, while also minimizing thermal shock to the advanced systems and machinery inside. Tuan loved ice cream – especially coconut milk popsicles – but this one looked anything but appetizing. The bow of the ship was slightly flattened, bulging outward on both sides like a frog puffing up its cheeks. Its stern was divided into four sections, each fitted with an auxiliary engine to provide additional thrust when the vessel needed to break free from orbit. The entire underside was firmly mounted onto a massive rocket, its interior packed with liquid propellant responsible for carrying the ship beyond Mars’s gravitational pull and hurling it straight into the vastness of space.
