The door had closed behind him. The sound echoed up the corridor. Air brushed past his cheek. Mekcrol had turned his head towards the breeze. It was cold. A flake of snow touched his face.

‘Son.’

He turned. His mother was there, standing in an open door. Behind her, he could see white snow, and a black sky. Shapes like the stretched shadows of pylons grasped at the silver circle of a moon. Were those trees? Was that what a forest looked like?

‘Son, please…’

He looked at his mother. She was thin, almost nothing between the folds of her skin and her bones. Vomit crusted her lips and the front of her smock. Her eyes were unfocused, half-closed. She had been like that the last time he had seen her. She had died while he was on shift. When he had come back, another resident had already been allocated to her hab-unit. It had been a decade ago.

But here she was…

‘Son…’ she said, voice rattling, ‘why did you leave me alone?’

He took a step back, reached for the door back into his unit. His hand found the lock release. It opened… Night sky and a blast of ice wind. She was standing there. Frost rimed her, freezing air fogging like smoke around her, ice clogging her eyes.

‘Son…’

He ran. Doors flew open as he passed. Night and snow poured in. His mother stood behind every door, calling to him, reaching for him, her cries following him.

‘Son…

‘…Son…

‘…Son.

‘Why…

‘…did you…

‘…leave me…

‘…alone.’

He had shouted then.

‘You are gone. You are gone… Who are you?’

And the wind and rattling branches had answered.

‘We are the man beside you…’

And the doors were opening in front of him as he ran, and hands were reaching for him, grabbing at him, tearing his skin, and he was screaming, and the wind was laughing.

Sitting up on his sweat-soaked bed, the slow beat of the fan pushing warm air through the room, it still seemed very real. He reached for the flask beside the bed, fingers shaking. He took a sip of water. It tasted of dust and metal. Water rations had been halved in the last few weeks. Like the constant drone of ready-sirens, it was another needle in the flesh of life. He looked up at the shift clock above the door. He had two hours left before his first rotation of the day.

He would not go back to sleep.

He did not want to go back to sleep.