A severely depressed new rescue manages to slip away from hir therapists. They'd tampered with an airlock, about to harm themselves, but Jay quickly knocked them out, to get them back to their therapists. -- Anon Guest
[AN: If you're feeling like life is not worth it, please get help as I'd much prefer you'd keep existing. The world will not be as good without you]
Being sick was the worst. Mak could feel the costs piling up. The meals. The medicine. The increasing time spent in idleness. The habitat. The people here kept telling hir that ze deserved all those things... but ze hadn't done anything useful in days.
There was no way in the grace of the saints that ze would be able to pay hir debt.
Mak crept away from the wards in the middle of the night, seeking any kind of escape. Sick. Worthless. Useless. Unprofitable. A drain on the company resources. There was only one thing it was right and proper to do. Terminate the problem as soon as possible.
The airlocks were easy to find. Unguarded ones were less easy to find. So, too, was a way to bust one open enough for hir purpose. Mak bloodied hir fingers twiddling about enough to force the first side open.
Ze could see darkness through the window on the other door.
So close to peace.
Mak remembered mumbling a prayer of gratitude as ze took the first step to the end of hir pains. Then ze woke up in an intensive care drawer, staring at the Please Wait screen. Listening to the calming meditative music designed to prevent panic.
Mak panicked anyway. This was going to cost so much!
The drawer opened, and ze faced an otherwise unassuming fellow human with a peculiar look in his eyes. Part fury, partly haunted, part... broken.
They said, "I know how you feel. I've been where you are. It's not as terrible as you're afraid it is. This place is nothing like where you came from."
Something about them made hir say, "Please don't hurt me?"
"Never," said the stranger, and Mak could believe it. "I don't hurt people who are already hurt. I'm gonna go hurt the people who hurt you. Much better target. But I want you to promise me something, okay?"
"Okay?"
"Promise me... you're going to live. In return, I promise you... it's going to be amazing."
[Photo by Sebastian Kanczok on Unsplash]
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