Hero.

Rhys was the hero every callow youth wanted desperately to be. The schedule of his staggeringly precious life contained no battles with dragons, no overthrowing of vicious or magical warlords.
In order to save his world, all he had to do was exist, and all would change.
He was a beacon of order in a realm of chaos. His calling was simple, his purpose sedentary in all of its glory.
The only issue was the he kept trying to kill himself.
He stood as he always did on Monday mornings, perched precariously on the tower's edge, calling out his threats of self-harm.
When you heal the universe simply by existing, it's hard to get noticed.

Cherish.

The bodies rolled as beads of water, staining long trails of  scarlet on the hilltop grass.
Once human, once defined by the life that consumed and controlled their every twitch, every cough, every chuckle.
From the helicopter's window, the genocide looked an awful lot like nature.
Forms tumbling down the hill, falling from the cliff's edge, and disappearing into the cavern. The watcher couldn't hear over the sounds of the helicopter blades, but he knew the sound of the moment.
Silence, save for the dull thud of skin against turf, tossing and tossing,
and then the silence of space and velocity.

carcinos.

A dissolved relationship is like a terminal disease.
After the initial shock, you're fine for about two weeks.
Everything's fine. You're fine. They're fine. And you're more than happy to be alone.
Third week, and suddenly, you feel it.
That nagging, awful, malevolent force within you that starts small and grows with an ugly perseverance.
Guilt and loneliness, remorse and anger can be as internally devastating as any tumor, and gradually, you realize.
Five weeks in, and Emery is sitting on the edge of his bed in the dark,
sensing the void,
and wondering how the hell things got this bad.

Orb.Deb.

OrbDeb is a term that refers to 'Orbital Debris'.
OrbDebs litter the atmosphere and outer spans of Eros, too insignificant to bother with, but dangerous enough to prove troublesome.
Picture a Titan-Class-XE155, priming to trek through the outermost reaches, only to suck in the discarded skeleton of a 612-RekRakShuttle through its atmo-intakes.
Instant ignition, irreparable damage, crew-loss of 28%.

OrbDeb is lethal filth, toxic rubbish.

Murderous trash.

OrbDeb also happens to be exactly what Echo Telvanni and her crew called Argus when she found him lying face down and legally dead in the club's to-be-launched refuse zone.
And so the story began.

Prelude.

The interstate-neighboring towns are lifeless.
Vexx, Jericho, and I are hopping from car to car, traveling South the once-highway.
I try not to notice the smell seeping from certain vehicles when we're forced to stop for surveillance.
Jericho looks up from his scope for the fiftieth time and shrugs.
"No infected. I guess there's some sort of military base here."
"Hmm," Vexx grunts. "Wren, check the map, see if they sided before the Outbreak."
I glance over the paper. "It says 'Red'."
Vexx would have sworn if a bullet didn't at that moment zip over my head and through his neck.

Main.

And blood's gushing from Vexx's neck in an unreal geyser so shocking that I don't clap my hands over it right away. The dark red burst floods through the spaces between my fingers, looking nothing at all like corn syrup.
Jericho's already gone, not-quite-sharp-enough eyes peeled for the sniper.
"Wren," Vexx mumbles, fingers just barely touching my elbow, "it hurts-"
"Don't talk." I press harder. "Carotid's grazed."
"Well then you have to."
I stare at him. "What?"
"Tell me something."
"What??"
"Anything. Tell me-" The blood makes another surge out. Vexx grits his teeth. "Tell me a story."
And I did.

mumble.

Geronimo Gerakidawn was the most feared and revered bounty hunter in the seven systems.
He began most interactions by whipping out a concealed blaster and ended said interactions with two blasts from aforementioned blasting-object.
In fact, all of Geronimo’s interactions ended with either bloodshed or a granted reward; after years of hunting, Geronimo had become immensly lonely.
“HeyHow’reYouDoin'?” He mumbled one day, while leveling a turbo-shot-moltbullet-launcher at a lowlife’s head.
“What?”
“JustTryin'Smalltalk,Y’know.” He shrugged.
“I’d do better if you’d point that gun somewhere-”
Two blasts. Thud.
“Moltbullet-launcher.” Gerakidawn mumbled again, reloading the weapon. “ButNiceTalkin'toYou.”

[Behold. The kind of nonsense I write when I am really really REALLY tired.]