The Nyx landed like it didn't want to survive.
A final guttural scream from the engines gave way to silence. No claps. No celebration. Just the grim groan of metal cooling under a foreign atmosphere. The ship creaked around us like a wounded animal, slumped on the red back of Mars.
We didn't speak for a few seconds. Breathing felt heavy, not just from the pressure changes, but from what was waiting outside.
"Holy shit," Betty whispered.
Through the viewport, it stretched endlessly, raw Martian terrain, exactly like the simulations, but crueler in its stillness. Everything was still. Rusted hills, sharp and untouched, like Earth had been burned down, and this was what was left.
"It's real," I muttered. "It's actually real."
No Earth interference. No noise. No clouds. Just dust , an infinite amount of dust and the soft swirling of wind patterns that looked like they hadn't been disturbed since the solar system was born.
I couldn't breathe.
Not because of panic, not yet, but because every nerve in my body was frayed from the ride. My muscles trembled. My head throbbed. It felt like gravity was trying to crush my spine just for being here.
I laughed bitterly and pointed at the still-blinking transmission panel.
"Should I wave to Clifford?" I said. "Maybe flash my middle finger to the live broadcast before we suffocate?"
Betty didn't laugh. She was crying. Quietly at first, just one sob, like a hiccup caught between anger and grief.
She wiped her face with a trembling hand. "They knew. They fucking knew we wouldn't survive this."
I didn't disagree.
The suits were holding. Barely. Our internal systems read functional, but only just. The emergency kits were not properly designed for surface expeditions. These weren't Martian-grade; this was from our practice. There are loopholes in this.
Five minutes, ten max. That's what we estimated, with what we were carrying and the exposure rate.
"We should go out," I said suddenly.
Betty looked at me, eyes red.
"What?"
I nodded at the hatch. "If we're going to die, we might as well do it where no one has before. On that soil. Standing. Looking at all this."
She blinked through tears, then gave the faintest nod. "Yeah."
I opened the inner airlock. The depressurization hissed, a brief warning that no part of this was okay. Betty moved with me, quiet now, breathing shallow through the suit's regulator.
Behind us, Kevin hadn't moved.
"You coming?" I asked without turning.
"Yeah," he said. But his voice sounded miles away.
The outer hatch opened.
Mars hit us in the face with silence.
The wind wasn't loud. It was dry. Slow. Like something ancient and spiritual moving across skin it had never touched before. The landscape stretched out endlessly in burnt-orange dunes and jagged rock, under a pale salmon-like sky.
Betty stepped down first. Her boots hit the soil and left two perfect impressions. She looked back at me and exhaled hard, half relief, half awe.
I followed.
We stood there for what felt like a full minute. No one watching us would understand the weight of it, standing on a planet where humans were never meant to stand. Our bones ached. Our lungs fought. But our minds… they were awake.
We'd made it.
"This is it," Betty whispered. "We actually—"
A mechanical hiss snapped through the air.
I turned just in time to see Kevin still on the ship, grabbing the live transmission module and ripping it from the socket. He hurled it across the bay out of the ship to the ground.
"Kevin?" I said, confused.
But the engine ignited.
"What the hell are you doing?" I shouted.
Kevin's face appeared behind the inner window. He wasn't calm. He wasn't brave. He looked like someone who had just realized history wouldn't remember him and his legacy would be vain.
He slammed the comms. "Betty! Get in!"
She stared. "What?"
"Now!" he shouted. "We don't have time!"
She turned to me. I didn't get it. Why now? Why this? We are not going to make it, not with that.
But she ran.
Kevin had started the countdown sequence. The Nyx, somehow still functioning, began cycling its atmospheric lift. The lower thrusters sputtered, trying to come back to life after their descent.
Betty scrambled into the hatch. The door hissed. She turned, eyes wide.
"Eren, come on!"
I was already running. My body screamed at me. My legs felt like they were made of lead. The red dust kicked up around me in slow motion. But I was too far. I knew it before I even got close.
Kevin stood just inside, hand hovering over the close control.
"Kevin!" I shouted. "Wait!"
He stared at me. And smiled, but it wasn't kind. It was twisted by fear and whatever vision of the heroism he'd built in his head.
"You be the sacrifice," he said.
"What?"
"The legacy is yours, Eren."
Then the hatch sealed shut.
"KEVIN!" I screamed.
The Nyx roared. The ground beneath me trembled. I lunged forward, but the thrusters were already burning. Dust swallowed everything. Heat washed over my faceplate. I dropped to the ground and covered my head as the Nyx lifted, screeching back into the sky.
I lay there.
Breathing in my own recycled air. Watching the ship disappear, that tiny steel and betrayal — vanish into the upper sky like it had never been real.
Betty's face haunted me. Her eyes just before the door shut. She didn't know. She'd trusted him. Just like I did.
I sat up.
The Martian wind had already started to cover my tracks.
Around me, the landscape didn't care. It had been waiting millions of years for someone to walk it. And now, here I was the only one left.
I took a deep breath. My oxygen timer blinked furiously.
Four minutes.
I turned my head toward the horizon, where the sun — small and cold — hung like a reminder that Earth was nothing more than a memory.
And I laughed.
Not because it was funny. Because what else do you do when you're about to die alone on a dead planet?
The sound bounced around inside my helmet, flat and tinny. Then, in the silence, it hit me, the reel of everything I ever was.
My mother's kitchen. I could still smell the stew she used to make when I got sick, the garlic too strong, the rice always a little burnt, but cooked with so much love, it didn't matter.
The hallway of my university. How I used to walk it half-asleep, coffee in hand, chasing some big idea about propulsion theory while dodging life itself.
The lab, where I first met Kevin and Betty. We were kids, really. Full of dreams and formulas. I remember Kevin laughing, saying, "We're going to Mars, baby," like it was a joke we were all in on.
My room before this mission , the way I stared at my will instead of sleeping, the single sentence at the end: "Give it all to my mom." That was all I had left to give.
And then, Betty. Crying on the ship. Panicking in the silence. Running back in just in time. She trusted him. So did I.
I watched the sky now. Clear and wide.
Three minutes.
I thought of all the times I stared at the stars from my apartment window, pretending space was something I could own. And now here I was, about to be part of it.
Not in history books.
Not in headlines.
Just... dust.
Just a footnote in some buried file.
Maybe that's what Clifford wanted all along.
I curled my knees in toward my chest, every part of me aching. The suit creaked. The air was thinning.
But I didn't cry.
I just looked.
One last view.
Mars, unforgiving, silent, and indifferent, stretching out around me.
And I waited.