𝑷𝒐𝒍𝒖𝒔 - 𝑨𝒏 𝑨𝒎𝒐𝒏𝒈 𝑼𝒔 𝑺𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚

•{𝟏𝟐}•

I know what it feels like, to be all alone

It's painful and empty when left on your own

You feel like you're falling, you're drowning in fear

You scream and you're crying, but no one can hear

It eats you away 'till your tears turn to dust

Your heart weighs of stone and of hollow and rust

Your step's falling short and it shatters like glass,

A feeling of dread that has yet to pass

I know what it feels like, abandoned, afraid

The daylight is fleeting, your hope starts to fade

So if you should find me, as I'm on my own

I beg you, don't leave me, don't leave me alone

Trust

Day 76

1900 hours

Communications

One, two, three, and- BEEP. The small device beeped, alerting me of the now restored wifi. I flip the lever and turn around, startled by a sudden siren. The led lights flash red in unison with the blaring alarm, and the ground beneath me shakes slightly, rocking back and forth. Instinctually, I grab the table, stabling myself and taking a few deep breaths to calm down. I close my eyes, trying to remember my research, and then, in a horrible realization, it hits me, like a wall of bricks.

Polus' core is extremely unstable, a molten ball of scalding lava. The earthquakes experienced here were strong enough to tilt the axis of the planet, several times. The original team had built in seismic stabilizers, radioactive machines that adjusted the seismic activity at the threat of a quake, a common occurrence. But never had the alarm sounded, the fateful whining giving only one message: Something had gone wrong. Whether the incoming quake was too strong to stabilize, something in the machinery broke, or any other possible unsolvable problem, the alarm would blare.

The team, of course, had built in a backup, just in case. If the problem was that the seismic waves were too big to handle, two of the crew could activate a 'Plan B' by scanning their fingerprints. If I could just make it to the station, just left of the dropship, and Tubbo managed to do the same, we could make it. I had to try.

First, I checked the main computer. My fingers tapped the desk restlessly as the files loaded, trying to track the incoming quake. My heart dropped into my stomach, nausea overtaking my throat at the results. The epicenter lied just 80 miles north of the outpost. Remembering my training, I knew the fastest waves, called P waves, were about to come racing towards the outpost at four miles a second. The most destructive waves, the S waves, were next, only a few minutes later. The seismometer tracks the incoming waves rapidly, and I hold my breath as the numbers climb. 5, 6, 7, 7.5, finally it rests at 8.9.