Chapter 1.
The man had eight and a half minutes left to live.
The man didn't know this.
The man wandered silently through the undergrowth. A small smile played across his face as he caught a glimpse of his prey, darting through the bushes towards a pile of rocks near an opening in the rough cliff face. It doesn't stand a chance he thought, raising the gun up to his eye, ready to pull the trigger. He crept forward, keeping low beneath the dark trees that towered above him; they were tall and mysterious and something was wrong. The abnormality of it was almost unnoticeable, except for the nagging feeling that something was missing. It should have struck him, but it didn't. It was the birds. There was no birdsong, no rustling of leaves as they moved through the floppy leaves that were so high above him, even though he should have been able to hear them. If he had thought about it, he would have realised that he hadn't seen a bird in all the time that he had been on this planet, not one. Back home there were hundreds, flocking to any sign of food that they could find. But he didn't notice, and that was to be his undoing; he was too focused on this petty prey to realise that he was a long, long way from home. He didn't notice the way the forest darkened slightly, or the way every other living creature seemed to hold its breath, or the slight drop of temperature as he began to pull the trigger. He did, however, notice the snap behind him, he wheeled round, slightly too late...
Then nothing. The creatures returned back to their daily routines and the temperature rose once again. All that was left was a rifle and a small, silver cufflink.