Kin moved slower now, since he was injured, moved slower through the struts and the metal and the dark.

In the Outpost, he had fallen once. He was running along a street when he had slipped and his foot had cracked like a rock on the kerb. He was sent at once to the sector infirmary and was fine and running (though less quickly and not at all on wet surfaces) within a week.

In the Outpost, one did not need to pay much heed to being hurt. Damage to your body was a minor inconvenience, some preliminary discomfort and incapability, but nothing too serious.

Out in the abyss, though, Kin soon found that things were different. Not being in top form was debilitating. If he couldn’t move fast, he couldn’t find as much food. If he didn’t find as much food, he would run out faster. Running out faster meant going out more often, which would strain and and place him at a greater risk to the threats out there.

And so on and so forth, until the whirlpool of exponentially multiplying variables sucked him in and drowned him.

Moving slow meant death.

When Kin had painstakingly maneuvered himself back into a crevice, he set about running diagnostics on his pressure pistol. He knew that the compressed gas that it used for ammunition had run out (had to find more later) but carefulness was a good trait to have. Double checking never hurt, because those creatures didn’t double check when they thought about eating you. You had to be quick where it counted.

Kin touched something cold and slimy. He turned and saw the broken top half of the Siren that had been bisected cruelly by the drone earlier. Kin was very quick in getting out. Time to find a hiding place without a corpse.

His back throbbed, his ribs throbbed, his entire body throbbed.

But if he wanted to live, he couldn’t afford to sit down. To rest. To give up.

Even if he felt like the whole abyss was pressing down inexorably on his shoulders, he had to survive.

Why?

The question surfaced randomly in his mind.

It’s dark, cold, and wet. I miss the Outpost, and its lights and warmth and people. I miss Mom--

At the thought of his mother, Kin felt a lump in his throat. He blinked quickly, preparing for the tears, but realised that his eyes were perfectly dry.

He didn’t cry. He was sure he couldn’t even if he wanted to.

Good on him anyways. If he cried he couldn’t see, if he couldn’t see he couldn’t know, if he didn’t know he couldn’t make good decisions and the crux of all his misadventures had all been bad decisions. Little mistakes. Little, innocuous things that were left without a second thought, that were taken by the abyss and festered and bloated into huge, fell things that came in the night to eat him whole.

In the abyss, everything could spell death. For even the worms in the deep hunted, and man was nothing but a scared, ignorant child who was afraid of the dark.