This place was almost worse than dying. The narrow hallways, once white and pristine, are now only a vague memory of clean. The rooms are overcrowded. The life support systems barely able to keep up. Oxygen is kept at the lowest possible levels, making it hard to stay awake for too long, and even harder to heal any of the cuts and scrapes that cover their bodies from the workstations. Everything was always at least slightly damp from the humid air leaking out of the aquaponics ring, the air smelled of mildew. In short, it was hell, but at least they were surviving.

Akari has been here for eight years now. He was one of the first. His parents had fought tooth and nail to get him on a ship, and now here he is, re-tightening the connections to the combustion chamber yet again, while trying to avoid singeing his arms further. His skin was pale, almost ashen, criss-crossed with scars and wounds of every shape and size. He had given up bandaging them, or covering them at all now. It took months for even a small cut to heal, so there was hardly a point in bothering anymore. His job in the hydrogen generator meant he had more marks than most. He was thin and lanky, perfect for the job. He was no older than eleven when they first sent him in. Only children were small enough to fix things in the nooks and crannies without having to shut down the entire system, and Akari had no parents present to protest. Finesse was key. One wrong move, one elbow sticking out just an inch too far, could knock something over or tweak a valve just enough in the wrong direction to get you killed. He had seen it happen.

Only a year into the job another kid had gone in. The cooling chamber needed a pressure release. She had tightened one valve, prepared to loosen another, and been hit with a high powered spray of boiling water and steam. Her face and chest were torn open. Akari had tried to get to her, but he had been too late. He carried her body out, slipping on the water and the blood crying and screaming for help because he could feel the water and steam burning his skin, her blood left burns on his arms and chest. His lungs had been singed in the incident from the steam, putting him in the infirmary for weeks. He still can't ever seem to take a full breath.

He now works as overseer for the hydrogen generators, holding his breath every time he sends another kid in. The job has gotten easier since he first started. He'd made every mistake, found every loose bolt, and covered all the sharp corners he could find. Still, these were children. Most no older than twelve. Throughout the years it seemed that their arms grew thinner, each year the cadets were a little bit smaller, no doubt due to the severe malnutrition. Kids were starting to die from their brittle bones breaking, their bodies unable to heal.

Akari winces as the bolt makes a dry squeak. The routine maintenance rounds get exhausting, but it's better to be working late than have to do emergency repairs later. He moves on to the next bolt, working in the star pattern around the output pipe connection. The intercom crackles to life. Akari freezes, awaiting whatever message the captain had. A loud whining drone begins to pulse out of the speakers. He scrambles out of the crawl space, toolbox abandoned behind him.

His heart pounds in his ears as he rushes toward the data display. A quick scan of the vitals of the generator ring reveals nothing that could cause the alarm. No leaks, electrolysis is at standard rate, and the combustion chamber is well within its heat capacity. He cards a hand through his hair, sucking a breath through his teeth. A pulsing red emergency light floods in from the hallway.

He weaves his way between the machines and the tubing branching between them, at the back of the room is the maintenance tunnel, a slim passage connecting the station's rings together. He starts to climb.

After only a couple of meters his hands are completely coated in rust. The white paint on the bars is only visible in the corners where the rungs connect to the walls. It flakes off easily, having already come off on the hands of all the workers that use these tunnels as a shortcut to their workstations. The steam from the aquaponics ring often flooded the passage, spilling into every room that was connected. Akari had considered sealing off the opening in the generator room to keep the mist from interfering with the equipment. He's glad he didn't get to it.

The sirens grow louder as he approaches the center of the ship. The familiar unease fills his stomach as the artificial gravity begins to loosen its hold on him. A few meters later and it has faded almost completely, leaving him free to propel himself down the tunnel with only minimal assistance from the rungs. His breaths are quick and shallow now, easily winded by the short journey.

With a final push he floats into a large open space, a smudged glass dome above him reveals the light glancing off of the irregular shapes of the other asteroids, most too far away to be more than an oddly shaped speck, beyond that, the stars, expanding outward forever, as far as he could see. He lets out a huff of a laugh despite himself, remembering the hours he had spent naively watching, waiting, for someone to come barreling out of that cold sea of diamonds. He wasn't sure who it would be, his parents maybe, or perhaps his aunt Crissi, anyone to take him away from here. He would dream of a cottage built on the moon, where his mom would make bread out of dust and his father would lasso comets by their tails. He had been so young.

Now he scans the heavens for a sign, something to indicate why the sirens are suddenly awoken. He tries in vain to rip its meaning from his memory, the last time he had sat in a safety hearing was years ago. Eight years was a hell of a long time out here.

It hits him like a punch to the gut.

"Ha! You'll never hear this one, and if you do, well, there's not much we can do." The instructor had leaned back with a cynical laugh, "This is the evacuation alarm, annoying innit?"

A flash of color illuminates his peripheral, a red streak tears its way through the dark, growing in size and intensity. Akari's heart feels as though it's stuttering, a shock tracing his bones and settling in his legs almost painfully. For a moment he can do nothing more than observe helplessly, his body having not yet caught up with his mind. He's thrown back into the panic he had felt so long ago, the first time he had seen something like this. It had come during a meteor shower, on the only clear night in years, ripping into the atmosphere with a sound like the anguished scream of a dying god. His mother had clutched him to her chest and run, eventually passing him off to his father in the chaos. A few hours later he was out of Earth's atmosphere. Alone.

He's torn back to the moment with a strangled cry, his arm shooting out to grasp the guide rails that cover the walls of the room. With a tug he launches himself back down the tunnel he had come from, sending a final glance back at the red missile, which grew ever larger.

He soon realizes his mistake. In his panic he had forgotten that the gravity would only increase as he fell. His speed begins to increase, the familiar lurch in his stomach emerging as he plummets. His hand wraps around a rung, yanking him to a stop and swinging his body around to collide with the ladder. A pop in his chest, followed shortly by a flash of pain has him gasping for air as he continues his descent, gritting his teeth as he jostles his injury. He takes the rungs two at a time, slipping every so often on the slick metal, coated in mist and rust.

His feet collide with the floor of the dormitory ring as he falls the last few feet. The sirens are barely audible over the pounding of his pulse, he starts running. Each step elicits a hiss of pain as the motion tugs on what he can only assume is a broken rib. He keeps going regardless, gaining speed as he careens around a corner, dodging a few officers who walk leisurely, unaware of what was about to happen. They call threats after him, but their words fall on deaf ears.

Akari makes a sharp turn into a dilapidated wing of the hallway. The walls are coated in filth, mold crawling up from the floor and blotching the paint like bruises. At the end is the teleporter, a machine that has been out of commision for at least ten years now. Akari starts the launch sequence, punching in the commands on the control panel protruding from the wall. Over the years he had made it his job to know all the workings of the space station, from the centripetal gravity generator to the laundry machines. He knew every exit, every room, and every nook and cranny. Through the glass in the far wall he watches as one of only three escape pods detaches. They were only accessible through the officers quarters, a setup that had originally been made to prevent the pods from being stolen, but now only guaranteed that the rest of the space station would die.

The doors of the teleportation chamber slide open, grinding against their inner mechanisms from disuse and age. Doubts nag at the back of Akari's mind. At this point the machine is unpredictable at best, deadly at worst. He shrugs to himself. It doesn't matter how badly the machine fails at this point, it's this, or certain death. He steps over the threshold.

He's suddenly thrown against the back wall, his head colliding with a crack, static and stars filling his vision. The screech of metal being torn apart thunders through the space station as the missile connects with the hull. Through a haze of pulsing confusion Akari manages to select a random preset destination and press enter on the glowing screen embedded in the wall. The doors begin to slide shut as the lights flicker in the hall. The noise is muffled just slightly, and he can hear a female announcers voice over the cacophony of destruction raining just outside the door.

"Initiating command in T minus five seconds."

Akari's vision begins to fade, he reaches a heavy hand to the back of his skull.

"Five."

It comes away bloody. He stares down at the color, engrossed by the sight.

"Four."

The world grows dark, his bloodied fingers fading from view.

"Three."

Everything feels muffled and warm. He barely notices the cold of the floor on his back.

"Two."

His limbs grow numb as he is swallowed by unconsciousness.

"One."