"I'm evacuating right now." My voice wavered.
"Confirmed... we'll have a towline ready for you." he replied quickly.
"Copy that, moving towards the airlock now." I confirmed.
I broke into the fastest run I could in my suit. I ran past the bodies of a group of men, their eyes still bulging.
A couple engaged in a last kiss before their deaths, a man in his last death scream against a door before death.
All had succumbed to the whim of time. Or the other life sign. Whatever it was.
I reached the airlock.
"I'm entering the airlock now," I said hastily.
"Copy that, towline firing now."
In the distance I saw a thin line begin to snake its way towards me. After a minute or two the line attatched itself to the hull of the station.
I floated towards the towline and grabbed it. "I'M ON!" I yelled.
The towline detatched and began to pull me towrds the ship.
It suddenly stopped.
"What's wrong?" I asked impatiently.
My only reply was static.
"Wha-"
"Mill-er, wh-at is you-r bus-iness he-re?" a electronic voice sounded through my speakers.
"I-"
The station exploded.
**********
In all the infinite depths of space I never thought that I would find my self adrift, tethered to a derelict hunk of metal orbiting a black hole on the very edge of known space.
The space station blocked my view of the sun for the time being, it's massive silhouette shrouding me in the same darkness that the majority of the universe now shared.
"Mil__r, _epo_ ple_se" crackled the radio.
I activated my comms equipment.
"George? Is that you?!" I screamed into the mike.
No reply.
I tried again. "George reel me in... REEL ME IN!"
"Mill__ _lea__ respo_d... Our int__fer___e has kn___ed t__ station into the __ll of ___ bl_ck ___e. T__ wi_ch is m_lfu_ncti__ing."
Thats when the station rotated and I caught a glimpse at the event horizon. Miniscule clouds of gas still fell beyond the saving point where gravity becomes so strong that not even light cannot escape.
Right where I was headed.
YOU ARE READING
Afterglow
Ficção CientíficaAt the end of the universe all is not well. Food is scarce and there are very few habitable locations left in the known universe. The last remenants of humanity live aboard UTOPIA STATIONS, their last hope. When Lieutenant Miller is tasked to discov...
