“And so we’re the last ones left,” Richard commented.

They stood at the window, watching the departing vessel do the space equivalent of a three-point turn.  Looking out only made Richard feel sick, due to the continuous circular motion of the station.  Stepping away and looking down the corridor behind them, he said, “So, what now, Mr. Igorevich?”

“We ‘vait.”

Richard let his frustration loose in the form of a quiet sigh, the Russian was never one for many words.  Though it could have been that he didn’t know very many to begin with.  Leskov Igorevich stalked off down the hall, peering into each room as he went.  Richard, still at a loss of what to do, followed suit, going down another hall.  

The space station they were on was over fifty years old, it was a miracle it was still in orbit, but its miracle was running out.  The station- whether Richard or Leskov felt it or not- was fast descending towards Earth’s surface.  It would only be a few hours until it hit, and they were there to make sure nothing valuable was left behind.  They were the third team to do this, it was rather redundant, and they had just watched the second leave.  

As far as Richard knew, this was the first implementation of a centrifugal force gravity generator.  That was a plus to the mission, gravity, most of the 0thers they had done didn’t have that in the package.  Continuing on his little quest he looked into the first room he came across, it had nothing but boxes in it, and they were empty at that.  

“What a waste of time,” he muttered.

With a huff, he left the room and walked to the next.  There he found some broken lab equipment from the early two-thousands, while once valuable, the average person could afford something better than that.  For about thirty minutes he traveled door-to-door, finding nothing but junk.  Until he had made a complete circle of the station.

“...Great, now where’s Igorevich…”, he said to himself. 

Then the lights flickered.  Richard’s eyes darted up toward the ceiling and then at a window, and saw that they were making hasty progress toward the atmosphere.  He glanced back at the way Leskov had gone and he took off, needing to find him before the station caught on fire.  

“Leskov!” he shouted, “Leskov where are you, we need to go!”

Robert got no answer other than the sound of his footsteps.  He continued down his path, his head sweeping side to side as he ran.  Eventually he slowed his pace to a brisk walk and continued to occasionally shout the Russian’s name.

His ears pricked at this moment, for they heard… something.  It was a grinding, shrill sound that made Richard involuntarily move to cover his ears.  Said sound was coming from seemingly everywhere around him, from the pipes, the walls, the vents, the ceiling; nowhere was without the sound.  It echoed in the chamber that was his mind and never left.  It reverberated in his thoughts and sent a vibration throughout his body.

Richard staggered to his left, almost hitting his head on a nearby pipe.  Then he staggered to his right, managing to stop in the middle of the corridor.  

With a grunt he took a few steps forward, and through tremendous effort, he began walking with an increased gait.  Soon the sound went away and he was left with the natural quiet of his brain.

“What in God’s name was that?”, he asked of noone in particular.

Richard kept moving, allowing himself some down time.  Then his eyes had found a shadow that shouldn’t have been there.  He ignored it, not letting it distract him.  Looking into each room he saw no sign of Leskov.  Richard began wondering if he had left without him.

He stopped, and pulled out his radio from his utility belt.

“This is Weber to Igorevich, over.”, he spoke into the receiver.

“Igo-... -er... -ver.”, came the crackled response.

Richard whacked the radio a couple times before asking Leskov to repeat himself.  Unfortunately, he got an even more corrupted response.  He grunted, put the radio away, and started walking to where their shuttle was waiting.  While walking, Richard heard a noise behind him, ever so slowly getting closer to him.  He ignored it, assuming that it was coming from outside the station, perhaps from the many loose things being lost in the downward acceleration.  

Even as he thought that, he got a primordial sense of fear, from something behind him,  and he knew it to be the noise near him.  The faster Richard walked the more frightened he became, and the more frightened he became, the faster he walked.  Soon enough he was sprinting, shouting incoherently as he did.  

Richard didn’t care where he was going, as long as he was going away from it.  He turned the corner and forgot where he was going, his intense fear catapulting him somewhere.  Sailing past where he should have gone, Richard instead went to a closed off section of the station.

He slowly became aware of the incredible stinging in his side, and the shortness of his breath.  His heart was beating faster than a mice’s.  Then the foot he could no longer feel hit something poking out from the wall.  Richard tripped over and flipped onto his backside, he would have laid there, but his adrenalin was still pumping.  He flipped himself over, his legs scrambled against the hard, slick floor.  Once they got traction, he zoomed off like a jet. 

What Richard didn’t see, however, was that there was a wall in front of him.  He ran right into it, his face bouncing off it with a crack.  He stared at it and slowly straightened his body.  He still felt the presence behind him, and he haltingly began to turn around.  His eyes flicked to the side and he almost got all the way around when there was an ear-splitting sound, and the wall behind him ripped apart, sucking him out of the station and into the Earth’s atmosphere, where he tumbled and rumbled and fell all the way down.