He doesn't know how much time has passed in this alien landscape, where the sun moves with its own ineffable rhythm, the sky is a slate of unnatural blues and greens whereupon the stars paint unknown constellations.
The only thing he knows is that there is no end to the creatures that litter this place. Featherless raptors play with him their reckless and cruel hunting game. Giant crabs threaten to tear him to shreds with hungry maws and lethal chelae. Deformed golems try to crush him from the height of their twelve-foot bodies.
How long will he be able to resist?
There's a limit to his capacity to ward off them and the madness that is seeping into his spirit. It's a slow agony.
The air on the planet is respirable, albeit it smells like sulphur and mould blended together, like Hell itself. He can scavenge meat off from the saurs and crabs he slays. There's water too, gushing from the coarse earth.
The monotony of despair shatters only when he gets a glimpse of shining metal among the litter. He runs up to it, discovering a sealed capsule with the UES Contact Light serial number etched onto it.
Stupor and hope swell in his chest.
He hesitates to open it, bound by a misplaced sense of duty that he should've forgone long ago. Then curiosity and sheer desperation have the better of him.
Inside the metal capsule lies a single, measly syringe.
He keeps it between trembling hands. Anything could be inside this glass cylinder. Poison, medicine, something else altogether. He doesn't know what he expected.
The temptation to throw it away and forget about it as soon as the glass shatters is strong. But stronger is the mad thought that for a brief moment flashes in his brain.
He doesn't have the time to process what he just conceived that a dull, stinging pain in his arm confirms it.