Heart pounding in her throat, Shaw's frantic scramble to get the fuck away from whatever had just invaded her space quickly resulted in a flurry of paper amongst arms and legs, the backs of her bare thighs sticking to the piano seat and sending her to ground with an almighty crash, punctuated by the offbeat tinkle of notes echoing through the baby grand's case. Fingers scratched desperately at the floor with undignified squeaks as she soon found her back pressed against the wall, wide-eyed and breathless in her panic. Her eyes remained transfixed on the monstrous alien figure as it raised a black hand to its face, and...and…

...and released the helmet covering his head.

Relief swamped her shaking body, its panic-stricken rigidity soon giving way to somewhat embarrassed calm. Damnit, she knew what Engineer helmets looked like! Was she really so traumatised by the past few days that she instinctively hit the roof every time she was woken up by anything that wasn't intimately familiar? Pushing herself to her feet, she offered him an apologetic, lopsided grin as she pushed the hair from her face with a spare hand.

He had barely flinched as she'd overreacted, though her high-pitched wail had jarred him to a halt. Lifting the separated helmet from his face, he regarded her with a startlingly blank expression, gaze lingering only briefly before he unceremoniously dropped the helmet on the deck with a metallic thunk, and shuffled past her as if in a trance.

Carefully watching him as she willed her heart to slow, she could have sworn he looked different. Though he hadn't seemed the expressive type from the outset, the look welded to his face was drawn at best, tense – but utterly exhausted. She noted, as he stepped beneath the harsh lighting only inches from his head, that his eyes seemed narrowed, almost as if swollen half-shut. Lips pressed thin and curled down at the edges, she couldn't help but feel he was restraining some sort of emotion.

Seemingly ignoring her presence, he staggered toward the bay windows at the far end of the craft, collapsing to his knees the moment he stopped as he heaved a mighty sigh.

Shaw stole a moment to tug the Vickers-sized underpants from her buttocks while he wasn't watching, quietly observing him from her safehaven beside the piano. Unmoving and apparently unaware of her presence, he continued to stare out the window in a daze as she quietly padded toward him.

Feeling somewhat awkward about simply standing and staring at him, studying him as if a mere creature, she felt the urge to say something, but as her heart rate came back under control, it became obvious that he was unlikely to hear it. Breathing measured but hoarse, he remained slumped against the thick plexiglass, braced against the cold surface with his forehead and one giant, gloved hand just below his face. Dark eyes remained transfixed on the black of night outside; yes, her earlier suspicions had been correct. They were swollen, the lids puffy around a narrowed, thousand-yard gaze.

What the hell had happened?

Thousand-yard gaze…

No.

Two-thousand-year gaze.

Of course. He wouldn't have had the foggiest how long he'd been under when they'd revived him; he'd been too distracted by the intruders, then too busy trying to pilot the vessel. From there, he'd spent the majority of the past few days aboard the lifeboat alongside her, waiting for the storm to pass. If he'd returned to his ship on his recent outing, which she guessed he had by the two mysterious oversized crates that had appeared onboard by the airlock, then it was likely he'd capitalised on his uninjured and far less dazed condition to do some poking around.

Her blood ran cold at the mere thought. They hadn't considered that when they decided to revive him either, had they? Blind curiosity had proven itself to be far more dangerous than she could ever have imagined, with yet more ripples of carnage radiating from the initial pebble-drop of damn-near spontaneous actions. The lone survivor of a two-thousand-year-old catastrophe found himself the unwilling victim of yet another facet of their poor judgement.

What the hell did they expect would happen? How had it not occurred to them that somehow, this poor damned creature would have to come to terms with the fact that he'd been dragged, kicking and screaming, into a world that was no longer his?

More than anything, she wished she could talk to him, reassure him that it would be okay, it would be okay, no matter what happened from here. She felt responsible, all of a sudden, for his welfare – what little of it there was left to speak of. She wished she could say something, anything.

The next best would have to suffice.

Silently pacing back to the piano, she retrieved the pad and pen from the floor where she'd thrown it several minutes ago, quietly tearing off the top few sheets to reveal fresh, unmarked paper, then plucked the tablet off the couch as she returned to the Engineer's side, lingering a cautious distance from him as she wondered what exactly she could say.

Hey, we revived you so far into the future that everyone you know is dead and this planet is beyond help, but hey! It'll be okay! Pressing her lips thin, she realised there was nothing she could say to make it better. She couldn't comfort him, because what had happened to him was beyond comprehension.

If there was to be any talking, she realised, it had better come from him.

Quietly stepping closer to the slumped figure, she pressed the pad against the glass a metre or so from his face. At first his trance-like state remained, though after a few drawn-out moments his gaze eventually fell to the paper in front of him. Drained and uncomprehending, his eyes appeared uncharacteristically devoid of life as they finally fell upon hers. Forcing a thin smile that felt like more of a wince, she offered him the pen as she held the pad to the glass. If he didn't want to talk, he would likely just ignore her. He seemed adept at that.

But he did, so it seemed. Just as she was about to give in and cast it all aside in favour of leaving him alone in his catatonic state, he raised his right hand from the floor and pinched at the pen. It shook in his hand as he fumbled with it, the thick gloves of his armour making it seem even more flimsy and ridiculous than it had before; pressing the tip to the pad, he focused every ounce of what remained of his strength on scrawling a short, untidy message across the page before dropping the pen to the ground and bracing against the window once more.

A quick thumb through the tablet told Elizabeth what she already knew. His message was simple and unambiguous. Two thousand years.

She'd stared at the Sumerian lexicons for long enough over the past few hours to have memorised exactly what she wanted to say; it was the only to say. Quickly scrawling a response, she slipped the pad back down by his knees before sinking to her own with a shaky sigh.

I'm sorry.

The Engineer's face crumbled, contorted with emotion as he pressed his eyes closed; one heavy, singular tear rolled down his cheek as he pressed his head back against the glass, chest quaking with silent agony as he slumped further.

With that, her own resolve collapsed; her vision flooded with fresh tears, tears of guilt as much as anguish, and despite herself her right hand caught his as it slid down the glass, curling around the back of it over his knuckles and around the edge of his palm. Thin and childlike against his huge fingers, she idly doubted he'd even feel them – she gasped when she felt him gently squeeze his fingers around hers.

He barely made a sound as he sobbed, biting back on his breath in an apparent effort to stem the tears and moderate his response, but the unstoppable shaking in his hand gave him away. Time rolled on meaninglessly before the black, starless windows he remained hunched against, oscillating through fits of silent, quaking agony and catatonic staring into the night. Don't let go, her mind repeatedly told her, no matter how much her arm had long since started to ache. Never be the first to let go when you're comforting someone.

She had no idea how long she'd knelt next to the immense creature, clinging to his fingers as he clung to the window. It could have been minutes or hours, but it didn't matter. No matter how much her back and knees disagreed with being held in this position, as horrendously awkward as her grasp was, she refused to be the one to let go. She had, however, returned to observing as she regained her composure. There was no denying he was in the throes of grief, just as there was no denying the way he was going about it; they mourn like us, they cry like us, she noted. For some reason, that realisation had stung.

At some point he had rolled back from the window, sinking back into somewhat of a hunched foetal position with his back against the couch and his head in his left hand. His right had remained clamped on hers, pinching her tiny fingers as he repositioned himself and drawing them into his palm so they were properly grasping each other in a far more comfortable hand-hold, his thumb idly stroking the back of her hand as he stared into the abyss. By now he was spent, out of tears and out of motivation to move at all; she had long since sunk to the floor too, turning to face him as he'd tugged her down, gently resting her side against the knobbled, plated surface of the armour housing his calf.

More than anything it was the burden of knowing she was a party to this nonsense that wrecked her the most. Arguably the next poor fools to have stumbled upon the planet could have been the ones to have awoken him, or he could have died peacefully in stasis in a few hundred years time; it didn't change the fact that in the here and the now, they were the ones that had caused this. They were the ones that sealed his fate, but he was the one that had to deal with the consequences.

By now his breathing had slowed and calmed, the tension and defeat having slowly evaporated from his slumped form, hand still gently cradling hers as his eyes remained locked, half-lidded, on the world outside. His head had rolled back to rest against the arm of the couch behind his two-thousand-year gaze, having exchanged his trance-like abyssal catatonia for a more thought-wracked, worried frown. I'll bet he feels dreadful, she mused, reflecting on how headachy, dehydrated and downright rotten she felt whenever she came unstitched. It had been bad enough the last few days; God knows she'd had a few breakdowns in that period.

Gently squeezing her fingers against his palm as she reached for the pad, discarded barely within her reach, she caught the corner of it and dragged, catching the pen along the way. The tablet came with it too. She felt him move as she twisted around, finally – reluctantly – releasing her fingers, his gaze finally falling upon her as she dragged the whole lot into her lap. Gripping the armoured gloves had left her fingers slick with sweat, and they slid against the pen as she fumbled with the tablet with her other hand. He simply watched, patiently, as she assembled a message for him. She couldn't be sure, but she had reason to believe her writing in this ancient language had become clearer and less awkward during their exchanges.

His faintly worried expression remained as he read her scrawl, remaining far more still than she could recall him being the entire time she'd been in his presence.

Would you like a shower?

Expression softening, he eased out a controlled sigh; he rubbed his face with both hands as he turned to face her, offering her a weak nod. Another similarity plausible, she thought as she stood, offering him a hand. At least he can't argue I don't have decent manners.

Without an ounce of fight left in him, the Engineer simply shadowed Shaw with a slow, plodding shuffle as she led him to the lifeboat's bathroom facility.

As preposterous as the ostentatious design had seemed to her, the showerhead suddenly seemed that much more sane when put into the context of someone damn-near ten foot tall; broad, recessed into the ceiling, its elaborate ring of nozzles had clearly been designed to imitate heavy forest rain. The more plebeian designs she was accustomed to would barely have scratched the surface with someone of the Engineer's dimensions, but at a guess, this would be passable.

Weary eyes watched her as she demonstrated the shower controls, unblinking and barely registering what he was being shown in his ruined state; his hands lagged as she handed him a fresh, fluffy blue towel, and it took a few moments of uncomfortable eye contact before he found the strength to offer a nod of understanding. She smiled as reassuringly as she could, patting the dazed creature's arm as far up as she could reach before politely making an exit and leaving him in peace, hoping he had enough left in the tank to sort the rest out himself.

Sliding the bathroom and bedroom doors closed behind her, Shaw now found herself in the company of silence once more, wondering exactly what she'd do with herself from now on given the recent turn of events. Tonight had...changed things. If anything she found herself feeling vulnerable once more, but not because of the creature's sheer power; no, it was his apparent lack of power in this given moment that had stunned her, stumbling upon the realisation that she was the one who now wielded the will to live, the instinct to survive. How badly had the Engineer's will snapped with his horrifying discovery? Would he bounce back onto his feet and soldier on, would he descend into madness? Would he, she shuddered to imagine, take the easy way out and step up to the gates himself?

Time will tell, she reminded herself. Just focus on your own survival for the time being; he'll do whatever he needs to.

But what about my answers, a voice in her head nagged. I came here for answers, and so far I've got nothing but more questions and dead bodies.

Snatching the dirty dishes from the coffee table with obvious irritation, her mind warred with itself as the familiar hiss and splatter of a shower running several rooms away echoed about the air. Goddamn you and your answers. He already told you; this is the wrong place, and he's the wrong person to be asking.

So what now then? Fuck off back to Earth and live the rest of your days in disgrace, Doctor? Her spitefulness toward herself felt as soothing as it was painful. What are you going to say about being the only survivor of a trillion-dollar failed mission?

The lower dishwasher door slammed shut, its crash echoing her contempt with the whole situation. Angry hands grabbed at the clutter across the bar, shoving smaller bowls and utensils into the open upper drawer that awaited them. Why does any of this matter, anyway? Everyone's dead, and I was wrong.

Breath hitching in her throat, she swallowed the lump that was forming in her chest. There's nothing back there. Everything's gone. Why bother?

I still have questions.

Goddamnit with the questions, Elizabeth! Fuming, she gripped at the counter as she lowered her head, fighting back the tears that so desperately wanted to spring forth. He can't answer them.

But...what if someone else could?

She froze mid-breath, staring in stunned silence out the windows at the far end of the room. She didn't want to go back to Earth, that much she knew. Nothing awaited her there. What if she went somewhere else?

Why not tag along with the Engin–...Za'il? This, she realised, was a thought that had been scratching at the furthest vestiges of her mind from the moment she had seen him do something other than try to kill her. The idea of returning to Earth and having to explain what had happened, in a way that wouldn't trigger a deluge of interest in this festering shitpile of a moon, and in a way that didn't completely discredit her and all the work her team had meticulously, obsessively procured over multiple years, left her stomach churning with distaste.

Besides, what did she owe? She had been laughed from one side of the planet to the other with her theories. Her one last connection to any semblance of family had gone up in flames days ago, severing once and for all any hope of a happy, quiet life in some cosy corner of the blue-and-green orb. Beyond admitting both defeat and utter confusion, what awaited her as the dust settled?

It all seemed so damned small from so far away.

Expelling a battered breath, she mused the thought of taking the lifeboat in any direction other than home. She could probably stretch the supplies for three years with just herself aboard, but it would quickly dry up in barely one if her guest hung around. His ship would have been an ideal candidate for a replacement, had it not been rendered inoperable by her own hand; besides, he would likely want to salvage it for himself and have little else to do with a creature whose species he was previously hell-bent on destroying.

Maybe we could talk about it.

Recalling the note she had begun to compose for later translation, she shuffled over to the piano and retrieved the scratchy mess; in the wake of this evening's happenings, she realised just how trite it all seemed. This would be the last thing he'd be interested in reading. Time to start again.

Time lurched on as she curled up on the couch she'd long since claimed as her own with the tablet on one thigh and the pen and pad on the other; bouncing meaninglessly between the two, she had to admit her attention was shot to pieces. Hardly a thing had made it to the page, and the tip of her finger hurt from incessantly and mindlessly scrolling up and down through the dictionary. This was about as unproductive a use of her time as she'd ever experienced; gritting her teeth, she batted the paper aside and exited the dictionary, crossing her legs as she forced herself to focus on something else instead.

By now the sky was stained in purple and red pastels, sunrise groping at the haze forming on what little of the horizon she could see past the truly immense landscape ringing the valley, igniting the snow-capped peaks and thrusting the cumuliform above them into vibrant light. The shower had been going for an inordinate length of time by now, surely something in the region of an hour; there had been little movement coming from the bathroom recently, and she pondered the validity of sauntering in there to politely check if her guest was still conscious.

Of course, the moment she clambered to her feet and stretched, the water finally trickled to nothing. A final gargle from the drain heralded the soft, distant pad of wet feet. Good, he was still alive.

Realising just how long it had been since either of them had eaten, she soon found herself pondering their next meal; whatever it was, she would probably match whatever he consumed. She was starving. Though, it was probably not a good idea to gorge oneself before stepping outside onto a hostile world for an in-depth circuit of the vessel. There was an omnipresent nag in the back of her mind, never quite letting go of the fact that not all the crew had died from blunt force trauma, fire or from being blasted to smithereens. She would need to keep her wits about her and be able to react accordingly.

The hiss of the bedroom door sliding open stole her from her thoughts; twisting on her perch on the couch, the turned to see what state the poor Engineer was in, hoping to see an at least somewhat refreshed expression on his face, hoping she wasn't going to be met with the lifeless, puffy gaze that had met her the moment he dropped his helmet and remained the entire evening as he struggled to contain his grief.

Frankly, it was anything but; her jaw dropped below wide eyes as he shot her a brief, sheepish look before padding toward the crates he'd dragged on board. That had answered at least one of the millions of unimportant questions about his species that had rattled about in her brain from the moment she'd laid eyes on him – naked apart from a rather damp towel tied around his waist, his body was every bit as statuesque as she'd imagined it might be, details etched in translucent porcelain, smatterings of shiny white scars webbed amongst forks of dark, purple veins hiding beneath the surface. Her face flushed a deep red as he crouched down beside one of the crates, rifling through it with one hand while the other remained firmly tucked into the towel affording him his last scraps of dignity. Good girls don't stare, she scolded herself as she averted her eyes and busied herself with the tablet, forcing her mind to focus on the comparatively banal task of familiarising herself with the lifeboat's schematics.

He found what he was looking for with an irritated grunt, tugging it free in a clatter of solid matter against fabric before hurriedly marching back into the bedroom and sliding the door shut. To her credit, she had kept her eyes firmly fixed on the status report the system had burped up for the atmospheric thrusters, idly noting that several of them would require repairs before being of any use.

If she wasn't completely awake before, she was now; that had been the last thing she'd expected to see this morning, and it had left her with a hormone-fueled thu-thud of a heartbeat pounding in her chest. The embarrassed glow remained on her cheeks as she pointedly stared at the outline of the ship taking up the tablet screen, trying to cobble together a plan of attack for her external recce run. The sun's orange glow had begun to stream into the lifeboat at an exaggerated angle, illuminating the wall behind her and leaving her squinting; after breakfast, she would take advantage of the favourable weather that had finally arrived.

The Engineer finally emerged from the bedroom, properly dressed so she discovered after a hesitant glance. He lingered about the crates he'd left by the door, awkwardly shuffling from foot to foot as his gaze danced between them and the tiny Human at the other end of the vessel, before eventually making up his mind and walking back over to the couches and sinking down on the unoccupied side with a huff, his back in the sun. Casting him as much of a neutral smile as she could, aware the last thing he'd want was to be patronised, she plucked the pad from beside her, flicked the dictionary back onto the tablet screen, and set about composing a message for him.

What would you like to eat?

Though he was vastly more alert than he had been even an hour ago, there was evidently still lag in the system; he stared long and hard at the scrawl, chewing on his bottom lip for a drawn-out moment, before grasping another pen and scribbling a response. He kept it pinched between his fingers a little while longer, seemingly second-guessing himself before slipping the pad back across the table toward her.

Something salty.

She grinned as she pushed herself to her feet; she could most certainly handle a salty, hearty breakfast. Shuffling toward the bar, she tossed up her options: a proper hot breakfast with mushrooms, hash browns, sausages, poached eggs, all drowning in bacon; scrambled eggs over a thick slab of toast, also drowning in bacon; cutting straight to the chase and indulging in a pizza, drowning in both bacon and anchovies…

Her stomach gurgled, unimpressed by her indecision.

Big Breakfast it is, she grinned. Pulling the largest plate she could find out of the dishwasher and loading it into the food dispenser, she programmed it for a double serving with every extra she could think of, swiftly followed by two coffees and two glasses of orange juice. Unwilling to risk aggravating her wound by lifting too much at once, however healed it may be, she opted to carry the drinks to the table first, followed by the overflowing plate and another bottle of water; they would most certainly be needing refreshment after demolishing an excess of beans, potatoes, mushrooms, eggs, sausages, tomatoes and an obscene amount of the bacon she couldn't help but endlessly fixate on.

The Engineer hadn't noticed the arrival of food, evidently, despite the clatter of glass and cutlery. His gaze had remained outside, watching the sun slowly rise in golden tendrils over the barren landscape, toying with the wisps of dust beneath the mild breeze and painting the thin, sparse clouds with all manner of warmth. Reaching for her coffee and cradling the mug between two hands, Shaw found herself staring, too; her eyes trailed the huge, sun-soaked silhouette sitting opposite, squinting in the light as she drank in every detail afforded to her in the morning glare.

It had been a new biosuit he'd grabbed from the crate in a state of undress, she realised; the tear in the left sleeve was no more, and this one appeared half a shade darker. There were no burn marks from the foul, acidic fluids belched all over it days prior, the ribbing over his chest smoother, shinier than the previous one, fused seamlessly to his skin. After two thousand years, it must have been about time to swap it out – though the new one couldn't really have actually been new.

It also became apparent, in the sun's light, that he'd peeled off a significant portion of the goo from his head before exiting the bedroom. The majority of the left side of his face was now unmarred, fresh skin appearing smooth and shiny. Small patches remained along the worst of the burns, clearly still doing work; it left her wondering when she could do the same with her own damage, and whether she would truly be left with equally as undamaged flesh after all was said and done.

Stealing a moment to take a swig of her coffee, Shaw wondered just what was going through his head. What sort of world had left him behind as aeons spooled by? What was left of it beyond this wasteland? Who had missed him, mourned him? Did he have a family that had waited and waited, never knowing if he had perished during whatever the hell had happened here – or had they assumed him dead from the start? Was there anything left for him now?

No longer focused on the what, it was the who that captivated her. Beyond a nameless, contextless alien – so easy to regard as a god or a higher being – here sat a person, a man, whose future had been snatched from him. As much as his kind had clearly consented to being stored in stasis, apparently on a regular enough basis if they dressed equipped for it as he had, it was unlikely they thought about scenarios like this an awful lot when climbing in and succumbing to the machine. Or perhaps they did, hoping against hope the roll of the die paid off, that fortune favoured them this time, disregarding the unthinkable and doggedly focusing on the task at hand.

Perhaps he was thinking about this right now.

She could only imagine how easy it was to be swallowed whole by grief in this kind of cataclysm. She'd repeatedly toed that line in her own current situation, maintaining a tenuous grasp on her sanity with constant distractions, a litany of tasks to complete, and an endless fascination with the one other survivor of this whole ordeal.

Idle hands are the Devil's workbench, she quietly mused as he continued to stare into the abyss. You've benefitted from constant distractions. So will he.

Shaw cleared her throat. "Za'il, breakfast's getting cold."

His gaze snapped to her at the sound of his name, at first uncomprehending; watching with vague bemusement as she placed her coffee down and stabbed several mushrooms onto a fork, he eventually expelled a sigh and followed suit. Good, at least he's getting some nutrition into him.

Unsurprisingly, it seemed the shoe was on the other foot this morning. A far cry from his attack on the spaghetti she'd first presented – had it been days ago? – he seemed to be content hesitantly picking at it, favouring the hash browns and beans while Elizabeth set about destroying the bacon and eggs with the fervour of a starved wolf. Unashamedly scoffing, eating more than her fair share, she had cleared half the plate, sucked down her coffee, and drained her orange juice before he'd made much of a dent. Even as she ate her fill, disguising a contented belch as best she could behind both hands, he'd made little progress. It occurred to her that it was probable he simply didn't like it. She'd seen him devour three quarters of the first meal they'd shared and make short work of the porridge the following day. Was it worth fetching either of those instead, just in case? It was worth trying, at any rate–

He had met her gaze, clearly sensing her concern. His features softened for a moment as he leaned down to jot a note on the pad for her before gingerly taking one last sip of coffee and slumping back against the couch with a long sigh as his eyes trailed back outside.

Translating seemed to be getting somewhat easier, though it still took a frustratingly long time to make sense of the smallest of phrases.

It's fine, I'm just not very hungry.

She nodded, exhaling softly as she regarded the cooling meal, then the immense body hunched on the edge of the couch. Fair enough. I'd feel the same in your shoes, mate.

It looked as though it would actually be a great day for weather, by what she'd seen on this hellish rock so far; the wind was minimal and the sun had stayed out, casting aside its golden sheen as it rose higher in the sky. It would be relatively easy to spot anything amiss in these conditions, she considered; such was true of both mechanical failure and potential uninvited guests. After a few more minutes spent digesting, she would set about exploring the hull, she decided – note down any obvious failures, see how viable repairs were, and work it all out from there. After that she would shower and climb into bed, and reward herself with the first proper sleep she'd had in...God, how long had it been? Too long, that was for sure. Before setting the wheels of escape in motion, she owed herself some good, solid, quality rest.

Za'il had clearly skipped straight to the latter, having rolled to the side and collapsed in an undignified heap on the couch. With his head propped against the folded duvet and his feet hanging awkwardly over the end, he seemed to have found a way to be at least somewhat comfortable in an environment built for people half his size. Strangely, he didn't seem to mind the sun in his face, though at its present angle it was quite well filtered through the thick plexiglass. Blatantly staring once more as his own gaze fell upon the abyss beyond the roof, she finally noticed a detail she'd been missing all this time; his eyes weren't black, they were blue. Even in direct sunlight his pupils were far larger than those of any Human, but they had contracted enough to show the deep blue of his irises, which were large enough that they filled the majority of each eye. As strange as it was, she felt almost like she knew him a little better for having observed that.

By the time she was sure her breakfast wasn't going to repeat on her, the Engineer had long since given up on wakefulness and was snoring softly; she quietly hoped he wasn't anything like herself, susceptible to vivid dreams that tangled reality with terror as her mind decompressed, analysing and defragmenting events both recent and historical. It didn't take a lot of imagination to fill in the gaps – he certainly had plenty of fuel for nightmares. There was no envy of his position here.

Boots all but silent against the cold sheen of the deck, she stepped past the crates cluttering the airlock tunnel and activated the panel housing the vessel's supply of pressure suits. For once grateful for Weyland's indulgent ways, in this case engineered redundancy, she noted there were six suits behind the panel; there were likely more elsewhere, even if only half would fit her. Kicking off her boots, she dragged the nearest, smallest suit from its hanger and began wrestling it on.

A distant pang thumped at her abdomen as she recalled the last time she'd yanked the zipper on one of these suits; she had barely staggered out of the surgery unit, full of staples and agony, drenched in sweat and blood, and merely sealing the suit had just about resulted in her collapsing in a heap. How she'd remained on her feet was still somewhat of a mystery. It was relief upon relief that the twinge she felt this time was negligible, likely muscle memory at best. There was nothing pleasant about staggering around in such a state of half-dead disrepair.

Plopping the helmet on her shoulders and sealing it against her suit, she quietly paced back to the coffee table to retrieve the tablet beside the sleeping giant and pulled up the advanced schematics diagrams as she headed back toward the airlock. Half an hour was all she would sink into the first loop, she reasoned, knowing she could spend hours out there and leave overwhelmed by the enormity of the task ahead. Besides, the less she was exposed to the dangers likely still out there…

No weapons, her own voice from days ago echoed in the back of her skull. Oh, that had gone well, hadn't it? So much for an innocent archaeology-themed exploration – though, in hindsight, she had been blind to the fact that this was not Earth, and they could never have guaranteed there were no dangers awaiting them. It had been one of many critical mistakes, she realised; now that they were down to one singular survivor, it was time to stop making so many damned mistakes.

Gritting her teeth with overwhelming distaste, she freed one of the flamethrower units from its hanger and reluctantly slung its strap over her shoulder. She wouldn't use it, she knew she wouldn't use it, unless, unless…

Nothing will be out and about in such sunny weather, she reassured herself. And if there is, I'll just deliver a warning shot, fend it off.

A gentle, warm breeze greeted her gloved fingers as the airlock hissed open in front of her. The sun's warmth toyed with the suit's thick lining as it cast the valley beyond in white light, inviting as it was foreboding in its drama, an unsettling blend of the alien and the familiar. She realised it had been days since she'd been outside; at the very least, it would be a refreshing change from the sterility of the lifeboat.

You've got a job to do, Doctor, her mind chided. Get it over and done with, there's a warm bed waiting for you after this.

Sucking in a breath, she stepped out of the airlock. Booted feet unsettled the dust-smattered landscape as they landed, the wind carrying the fine, brown powder away from the lifeboat and toward the looming wreck dominating the valley beyond.

Here goes nothing.

Author's Note:

I've waited quite a while to write this chapter, and at this point I'm not quite convinced I've handled it right. Maybe I'll rewrite it later. Meh.

There's quite a lot of setup for future stories happening here, and I promise there will be several!

Also, thank you everyone for your kind reviews. This is the fuel that keeps the fire burning, and I don't recall it burning quite so strong since...ever. You're making me quite productive!