YOU SUFFOCATED

The colonist who sealed Habitat 4's breach with such practiced calm did not die from carelessness — not exactly. The patch kit was found, the sealant applied, the whistle silenced. In those first minutes, the work was good. But something shifted when the storm rolled in, something older and less trained than the hands that had pressed the polymer disc flat against the hull. With six hours of oxygen on the clock and two clear paths forward — the amber recycler, the silent comms channel — the colonist ran for the airlock instead. Not once, but twice. The first sprint was impulse; the second was something worse, a mind in freefall reaching for open sky on a planet that has no open sky to give. Eight minutes of suit-up time. Zero visibility outside. Mission control never raised. The recycler never serviced. Every second spent in that brushed aluminum coffin was a second the remaining air grew thinner inside the hab.

They found the colonist on the deck near the equipment locker, not far from where the patch kit had been retrieved with such steadiness. The oxygen recycler's amber light was still blinking. The comms console showed no outgoing transmissions. The habitat integrity held — the patch had done its job perfectly, and the walls stood sound around a person who had run out of air inside them. Rescue arrived thirty-one hours later to a hab that had never called for help, serviced by a recycler that had never been fixed, attended by a suit that had never been worn.

The storm had passed by then, and the porthole looked out on a clean, rust-colored horizon that offered nothing.