The real story begins almost...four, five years ago? Ugh, I've lost track of time. That's what happens when you reach my age. I'm pretty sure it was 6, however, counting the year I was on Mars for, so I'm going to roll with it.

Six years ago, I was a botanist with a great (sometimes rather annoying) crew named Ares III, the third group of astronauts named after a proposal for an unmanned spacecraft back in the 2000's, made up of me, my Commander and our geologist, Melissa Lewis, my closet (yes, like actual closet, nobody knew.) boyfriend, Major (at the time, he isn't anymore) Rick Martinez (I call him 'Ricky' to piss him off).

There was also our pilot, Beth Johanssen (nee Beck, she goes by that now), our systems operator, Dr. Chris Beck (the unformentioned nee), flight surgeon, and Dr. Alex Vogel, our navigator and chemist, to round it out. (I guess he goes by Herr Vogel now, I could be wrong. Him and his wife just had their 4th baby, a boy.)

Anyway, all the trouble started while we were collecting samples and doing our duties for the sol (I would have said day, but Mars days are known as Sol's, so I'll stick with that). At the time, most of us were outside, while Johanssen and Beck were inside, Beck testing samples, Johanssen doing her job.

Sol #18, Acidalia Planitia, 2015

"All right, team -" I heard Commander Lewis speak from my com radio. I felt we had to keep them on because we needed to hear eachother, though at the time, I also thought we could at least turn them off in the HAB as we were only a foot away from eachother half the time, but decided against it. "- stay in sight of each other. Let's make NASA proud today."

"How it's looking over there, Watney?" Rick asked, a worried in his voice plainly heard over the com. I knew he couldn't help it. Ever since I came of the Hermes ship for the start of the mission, I had been rather sick. Some days, it got so bad I even had to run to the toilet to vomit. I assumed Commander Louis that I was alright, luckily, I didn't want to cancel the ground mission just because of a stomach bug.

I responded after a moment. "Well, you'll be happy to hear that in Grid Section 14-28, the particles were predominantly course, but in 29, they're much finer and they should be ideal for chem analysis."

"Oh, wow. Did everybody hear that? Mark just discovered dirt." Rick geered back, worried tone masked over to me and everyone else with a smirk in his tone as he laughed. "Should we alert the media?"

"Sorry, what are you doing today, Martinez?" I called back, a smirk of my own in place. "Making sure the MAV is still upright?"

"I'd like you to know that visual inspection of the equipment is imperative to mission success." I chuckled at the frown I heard as he went on. "I also would like to report that the MAV is still upright."

I heard an exasperated sigh come from the left part of my com before Commander Lewis spoke up. "Watney, you keep leaving your channel open, which leads to Martinez responding, which leads to all of us listening, which leads to me, being very annoyed."

"Roger that." I said, rolling my eyes out of view before speaking again. "Martinez, the captain would like you to please, shut your smart mouth."

I heard laughter from Martinez, a goal of mine I usually filled every day, before I overheard Beck speaking via the com from inside the HAB. "We'd prefer to use a different objective to describe Martinez's mouth." I laughed at Beck's sentence. It was true, Rick was smart, no word of a lie, but myself and I think everyone else could think of other words. Me mostly, however, since on Hermes unknown to everyone else, we'd shared a bed several times.

"Oh, did Beck just insult me?" Martinez questioned jokingly to me. "Dr. Beck and yes." I chuckled back. "I'm happy to turn the radios off from here, Commander." Johanssen chimed in. Party pooper. "Just say the word."

"Wait, Johanssen." I butted in. "Constant communication is the hallmark of -" "Shut 'em off." I heard Commander Lewis interrupt before my radio started beeping and hissed to a stop. "No. No. Excuse me!"

Anyway, afterwards, because I was now forced to go back to work, when I saw my surroundings darken. 'Must be almost time to go inside…' I thought to myself. However, when Vogel came to fetch me, I had no idea what was coming. I was the last one inside the HAB after I'd hung up my space suit to hear what the Commander was saying. "1,200 kilometers in diameter, bearing 24.41 degrees."

Shit, a storm and a big one by the looks of the data NASA sent. "That's tracking right towards us." Johanssen spoke up as the Commander started speaking again. "Based on current escalation, estimated force of 8, 600 newtons."

"What's the abort force?" I asked. We had work to finish her for a while, I mean, Sol 18 into 31 wasn't bad, but we still had a lot to finish down here before going back up to Hermes. "7,500." Beck piped up from behind the group crowded around the computer.

"Anything more than that and the MAV could tip." I heard Rick over the radio. I almost felt worried that he was out there with all that equipment that the winds caused by the storm could topple over and kill him, but this was his job, he'd trained for this, so I let it go.

"Do we scrub?" Vogel asked from beside my Commander, he was standing on her left, I was standing on her right, Beck was behind her, Johanssen in front. "Begin abort procedure." Commander Lewis nodded, but then Vogel spoke again. "We are estimating with a margin of error. We could wait it out."

"Let's wait it out." I agreed with Vogel. We'd had storms before, maybe not this bad, but we'd waited them out. It wasn't so bad, a lot of noise and the generator in the HAB flickered on and off sometimes, but that was about all the problems. "Let's wait it out."

Everyone including my commander looked at me before she looked back down and everyone looked at her, including myself. "Commander?" Johanssen gently probed, blinking at her as she looked up. Finally after some silence, she spoke. "Prep emergency departure." She called out as she started to walk away. I wasn't happy with this development at all. "Commander?"

"We're scrubbed. That's an order." She called back before I could protest. Damn her.

Unhappily, I started to get my shit together everyone started to prepare to go back to Hermes, putting my suit and falling in line with the rest of the crew as we were led to the airlock by Commander Lewis.

"Visibility is almost zero." Lewis finally spoke as I closed the airlock behind me to allow us to leave though the on in front. "Anyone gets lost, hone in on my sult's telemetry." Lewis pressed a few buttons and the oxygen drained out of the airlock with a hiss before she called out. "You ready?"

"Ready." We called out as she turned the value, exposing us to the storm outside. Just as she opened it, a large gust of strong wind knocked her down as she held onto the door, pinning her to the ground and us to the walls or at least, it felt that way.

"Commander, are you okay?" I called out over by now turned on com.

"I'm okay." She responded by, sounding pained. Hopefully, it was just bruising or the small shock from how strong the storm was. She had taken quite a fall after all.

Whoever was in front of me, possibly Vogel or Beck, helped the Commander to her feet and we pushed though, getting out of the airlock and into the storm. Little did we know what was going to happen once we left that door and started toward the MAV.

The wind howled like a thousand military whistles as I locked the airlock back up as I was last in line. Martinez had been in the military before coming here, so I was a little versed in their actions from what he told me, also from my training in the Peace Corps.

Anyway, I finally managed to turn the valve and stagger away with the helmet lights on like the others towards the MAV, not able to see them very well in the swirling around us, but still, I tried to keep up.

"Commander, - " I heard my super secret boyfriend over the line as we trudged through the storm, barely able to hear him. "- we're at 10 degrees, and the MAV is gonna tip at 12.3."

Well, shit, we most likely wouldn't make it before it tripped over by the looks of it. Looking around however in the flashes of lighting, I got an idea. "Hey! We might be able to keep the MAV from tipping!"

"How?" Commander Lewis called out as loud as she could over the com.

"Use the cables from the comms mast as guy-lines, anchor it with the Rover's." I called back.

Just before we could put our plan into action, I heard a metal bang before I got a blow to the stomach out of nowhere. Something had hit me and I'd gone flying. I screamed as loud as I could, but it wasn't enough. Then, I felt myself hit the ground and something scream out that wasn't me, or so I think, before a white hot pain coursed through me.

The pain was so intense that I couldn't keep conscious. After that, it went black.