After

She eased herself down onto the formed plastic, her bare skin breaking out in gooseflesh. Teeth grit against the aching cold, she unfurled the body suit and found the feet. Ignoring the hiss of her partner’s own discomfit, she slid her toes inside the slippers and pulled the supple material up, slipping her arms in with practised efficiency. She stood as the suit sutured closed at the nape of her neck, attaching automatically with the sub-dermal neodymium implants. She glanced at her partner, himself standing now too.

The soft red light of the prep room always put her in mind of a womb, the carefully scrubbed purified air a further analogy of motherly protection. She watched her partner run his fingers over the Locket’s heart-shaped clear helmet, frowning as they met the magnetic catch. He caught her gaze and sighed at her outstretched hand, before relenting and handing it over.

She ran her fingers over the catch, it jittered traitorously. She passed the helmet back, making note of the fault on her wrist pad. He was looking askance when she finished.

“After,” she said.

She checked her own helmet, trusting to her fingers as she probed for microscopic breaks in the material. Slipping it on, the suffocating sensation of being sealed in such a small space. She steeled herself. The suit whirred, popping and purring contentedly as the plastic pressurised, and she breathed.

Diagnostic: Light Oxygen Containment Kit sealed. Warning: Pressure discrepancy detected, Code 3997.

The Locket assistant cut off with a jab of her wrist pad though the warnings continued to roll across the front of the heads-up display. She ignored the scrolling green characters and moved to the airlock, feeling her partner step beside her as the inner door closed behind. The room hunched over and around them, and the ground began to shake imperceptibly, as though it were a conduit for her own trepidation. The outer door hissed like the sigh of a mountain and swung ponderously out, pneumatics groaning.

She wasted no time, striding from the artificial sanctuary and into the choking green violence of mother Earth.

Alert: External CO2 levels beyond safety bounds. Alert: External temperature beyond safety bounds. Alert: Unknown biological pollutant detec-

She tore her eyes away from what little could be seen beyond the canopy, of the dust red clouds stretched on the rack of the venomous blue-yellow sky, pulled into rusted bars by the screaming hurricanes of the upper atmosphere. Tore her eyes down below the towering treetops that strained like twitching spiders for the impotent sunlight. Her eyes following the thick and twisted trunks of torment grey bark, their vines like sickened garlands hanging infirm. Eyes that threatened tears at the sight of the choking fronds and ferns of the below, mottled brown vestigial predictions of her own fate.

She felt her partners presence beside her and took a deep breath, then her first step.

Death held the air still, frightening all sound away. She felt her own noises get caught up in the trap, the crush of leaf litter sucked into the spongey humidity. She walked, her closest companion the uncomfortable rasp of her own laboured breathing. The undergrowth yielded like wet paper, but she shied away from touching the rotting mass with more of her than was necessary.

Attention: Approaching beacon 0-4, bearing 57 degrees, one hundred metres.

She spotted the beacon, pulsing calming red atop its tripod. She traversed the intervening space unconsciously, her mind on her fears. She stood before the beacon.

The equipment was a mess, beacon, scanner, storage and tripod, were encased in a thick layer of viscous mucus. The display was obscured, though it was able to successfully handshake with the Lockets assistant.

Data retrieval process prepared. Awaiting external confirmation.

She reached for the display with only a moment’s hesitation, wiping a finger across the screen and gagging with barely contained revulsion.

Warning: Biological contaminant detected-

She fought the urge to wipe her sullied finger on the leg of the suit and prodded the confirmation on the beacon display with her thumb.

-suit integrity at risk. Warning: Biological contaminant detected-

She muted the warning loop with her pinkie, endeavouring to use more force than was necessary. Her partner came close, but the file had downloaded, and a debilitating fear gripped her fluttering heart.

Attention: File Macro ecosystem collapse RE: we are screwed, acquired.

The file opened on her heads-up display and through the torrent of numbers she could see that her hypothesis had been correct.

“Well?” Her partner asked, his tinny speaker voice swallowed by the forest. She shook her head.

A frothing mist of rain began as they stood, swirling the dust into wraiths of dancing motes around them. She turned away from her partner, absently resetting the recording equipment; further data couldn’t doom them more. She saw he had begun the walk back when she looked up. The rain solidified, becoming a barrage of greasy bullets that bounced off waxy leaves in a blare of booming drums. An orchestra of percussion probing through her skull and pounding on her brain. The forest jeered as it drummed, focusing the overwhelming cacophony like a scalpel.

Warning: External PH levels dropping.

Flinching from the fluorescent screaming of the rain, she followed her partner. His formfitting Locket suit swam in and out of focus through the squall, the heart-shaped helmet sparkling with oily iridescence. The snapshot of the moment he stumbled etched itself into the stone tablet of her mind with an obsidian chisel. The dark comedy of his flailing limbs almost instantly choked out by the pale certainty of his death. The rotten matt of the forest floor embraced him, cushioning with a consuming gelatinous pull.

She rushed towards him, noting his helmet was clear of the muck that seemed to move up his arms with a mindless intelligence. He turned his head away as the magnetic catch slipped. The suit unpressurised with a feral hiss that popped the faceplate out and over on its hinge. Her partner gasped in shock and poisoned air.

Time began to falter, hobbling to an ailing crawl as his lips began to blue. Her own legs were broken elastic, betraying the horrified screaming of her mind, her clean hand pulling against the weight of truth and fate.

He’s dead, the forest consoled with the whisper caress of unnoticed underbrush. He’s dead, her frantic fingertips tapped out in melancholy code upon his helmet. He’s dead, spelled the spiderweb purple patterns of suffocation on his face as the helmet clicked shut and the suit repressurised.

Through the manic laughter of the rain as the trees shook their heads at her naïve hope, she heard his locket’s assistant.

Warning: Internal biological pollutant detected.

Attention: Anaphylaxis imminent, commencing emergency countermeasures.

Motors whirred she knew, though against the storm the sound was swallowed. The cocktail of powerful chemicals injected in multiple parts of his body caused him to jerk and spasm in the sludge, but she held his head to her chest. His movements slowed. She closed her eyes, shutting out the external storm and battling with the internal one. Shining hope and eldritch certainty clashed within her mind, striking titanic blows at her future that fractured like frail glass. The rain outside foamed into frothing scum as it died, though she didn’t notice as she rocked. Time got to its feet and slipped away unheeded, absorbed by the trees like the sound once more.

Lifetimes passed, heedless of the impending annihilation of all, seconds stretching out in search of sustenance like the roots of the trees around them. She held him close, and he breathed. The single susurration a sonnet such succour as to soothe her very soul. He lifted his head weakly and their eyes met through the plastic and tears.

She helped him to his feet, ignoring the yielding mush of decayed matter as she slipped his arm around her shoulders.

Together they trudged the treacherous path back to their doomed home. Nestled within the dying forest, on their inexorably desiccating world.