Before Andy even had a chance to regret his actions, he heard and felt the explosion. Andy was forced to the ground by the initial concussive force, But it did not end there. He was suddenly lifted up and corkscrewed inches above the surface of the ground as he was dragged along.

He suddenly lurched upwards and then spun over once more and was dragged across the hard surface of the planet. Between the panic, the frantic scuffle and array of alarms and warnings going off, it was hard for him to string even two thoughts together.

He caught a glimpse of fire and a trail of twisting smoke as he was bounced around like a rag doll. The tank! It was acting as a bloody flaming thruster! He slammed into a cliff face, hard, before being dragged along once more and passing a magma stream way too close for comfort!

Andy remembered the menu had been left on the toggle for the waste tank's external valve. He twisted his arm over and quickly hit the activate button to toggle the valve closed again.

His motion suddenly arrested, while he was a meter off the ground and he plummeted back down, hitting the ground with a thud. Gravity on Vorea was only slightly weaker than earth as far as he could tell.

Andy groaned in pain. Everything hurt. A glance at his health bar showed fourteen percent and still dropping from hydration loss. Fuck.

The waste tank problem seemed to have been solved for now, but the alarm going off showed a whole new class of problem:

“Warning suit breach!”

Fuck me!

Andy panicked and checked himself. Eventually he found a tear in his suit near his right hip and quickly tried to hold it closed, doubting how effective that would be.

“Warning toxins detected!”

His health ticked down to twelve percent already, way faster than the rate from the loss of hydration. Fuck.

He quickly opted to vent his suit once more and then cover the breach again.

“Warning toxins detected!”

Fuck. FUCK!

It wasn’t enough. Looking at the situation: the venting, holding the breach closed and continuous flow of O2 to the waste tank that he had previously set up and was still active, all that, it wasn’t enough to keep the toxins low enough to prevent health loss.

Toxins from the atmosphere were still getting into his suit. The temperature wasn’t heavily affected though, so not too much was getting in. He still quickly increased the flow rate to the waste tank to limit any further problems though.

But he needed to deal with this issue somehow. Normally in movies a breach in your suit meant a loss of pressure and oxygen, but that wasn’t happening here. Instead toxins were bleeding into the suit.

Andy remembered that the external atmospheric pressure was 150kpa and inside the suit was only 50kpa. That's why the toxins were flowing into his suit. If he adjusted his suits internal pressure closer to 150kpa, it should help prevent this.

Another thought occurred to him. If his suit pressure was higher, then O2 would flow out through the breach instead, but every time he had ‘vented’ O2 into the atmosphere, it had ignited. So why, when the atmosphere was leaking into his O2 filled suit and not igniting? Was the blend of gasses too different that way around? Or was it just a quirky game mechanic?

“Warning toxins detected!”

His health was down to eleven percent. He needed to act.

He couldn’t take the chance. He would have to keep the pressure internally lower than the atmosphere, he couldn’t risk O2 flowing out and igniting next to a breach in his suit. Andy raised the setting to 140kpa. That should slow down the toxins entering the suit. He also increased the waste tank’s flow rate to try and further reduce this.

After a while, the warning was still present for the toxins, but his health drop rate seemed to slow down. He was now sitting at ten percent health. And still holding his side closed as much as he can.

Fuck. So much effort and he was still probably going to die.

Andy could barely summon the will to move. This was just total bullshit. Could whichever divine force ruled over existence seriously not give him a fucking break!

Andy sighed, but aborted it mid way. Was he lost? No. No. He could still remember which way he was going based on the position of the sun that was getting close to setting.

A sharp light reflection caught Andy’s eye in the distance. What was that?

Hope barely springed forth from his gut, but he tried to temper it as much as he could as he rushed over in that direction. The universe in general was not known for being on his side after all.

Upon getting close enough to see what it was, Andy had mixed feelings about it.

It was another player.

A dead player.

The player's suit was torn to shreds and stained with blood, he also had an assortment of items scattered across the ground near it.

Andy however did not have the space right now to sort out his emotions about this. He needed to act.

He unclipped a roll of duct tape off a toolbelt the dead player was wearing. And tried to use it on the tear in his suit. His fingers could not really peel the duct tape open though, while stuck inside his suit. However, when he held the duct tape in hand, his hud showed information about it:

“Duct tape (100%): Used to repair suit damage. Equip in hand and hold against the target area.”

Andy tried that, held it against the tear and immediately a patch of duct tape covered the tear automatically. The duct tape now read: “Duct tape (66%)”. It would seem despite the visceral reality this game confronted him with, it was still in many ways game-like.

The toxin warning in the suit actually disappeared for the first time soon after and the warning in the hud about ‘Major suit breach’, changed over to be ‘Minor suit breach’. Andy decided to keep the suit at its current settings as he didn’t want to risk making the situation any worse, now that it was sort of stable.

Andy searched the body and found a ‘water bottle (40%)’ and ‘energy bar (50%)’. He also took the dead players tool belt to help carry stuff. It had an assortment of clamps and large pockets on it for holding stuff.

His health was down to eight percent. He needed to drink this water, but given how low his health was, he doubted he would survive opening his helmet long enough to drink it. That was assuming he could even survive such a thing at full health, which he had his doubts about anyway.

He felt like crying tears of frustration. So fucking close! It’s right there in my fucking hand! He tried to hold it up to his mouth in frustration, despite the fact that the hud clearly stated you had to do that with an open helmet. Of course nothing happened as expected.

Calm down. Just calm the fuck down. Take a deep breath of toxic fumes.

After forcing himself to calm down. Andy continued to look around. This guy was out in the middle of nowhere. He had to have come from somewhere, right? Andy spotted what looked like some kind of hand held drill nearby on the ground. It too had apparently been shredded. That was definitely a point of concern for later, not now though.

Looking around further, Andy spotted it. A vehicle! Sticking out from behind a steep hill. That must be what the player arrived in. Judging by the broken drill he was probably out here mining resources or something.

Andy rushed over to the vehicle, that on closer inspection was some kind of personal carrier rover thing. It apparently had also seen better days. The vehicle was banged up, had a multitude of scratches on it and had apparently crashed into a cliff face. But not so badly though. It was also entirely missing a wheel. Just what hell went down here exactly?

Andy rushed over to the vehicle and climbed in the open driver seat door. It looked like it still had power, so he flipped on what looked like the main power switch, and everything lit up. Andy found the controls for the menu and began to navigate it as quickly as he could.

Seven percent health left.

He found what he was looking for, it was possible to vent the atmosphere of the vehicle when the doors are all closed and then pump oxygen into it from the vehicle's personal O2 tank. He would have an environment he could take his helmet off in!

Andy closed the door and began the depressurisation sequence. He heard the hissing sound of the atmosphere being ejected slowly and watched his hud report the external pressure dropping. As the atmosphere started thinning he could no longer hear the sound of the process, the gas in the air no longer pressurized enough to properly carry sound waves anymore.

And then at the 23kpa mark, the fucking lights went out.

Andy sat there in stunned silence for a moment. The atmosphere was holding at a steady 23kpa, but depressurisation had stopped. He fiddled with the controls, but everything was dead. Well almost everything.

There was a flashing battery symbol. The fucking rover ran on battery power! He had a feeling this was going to be a theme with this game.

What now though? He was almost certain the remaining 23kpa of toxic atmosphere was enough to kill him even if he added a lot of O2 to the mix. Especially with his now six percent health. And even if it would work, the unpowered rover was not going to be pumping O2 from it’s reserves without power.

Fuck. Again, so close.

The rover had three battery slots all of which were located on the inside of the cab. Currently only one slot was occupied, by a very dead battery.

He could abort the process, go outside and see if the dead player had a battery on him. His suit was likely powered by one, but the chance it would also be dead were way, way high as far as he was concerned. Opening the door now would mean abandoning what little progress he had made in venting. And if the player's battery was dead, then it would all be over.

FUCK! He really felt like smashing something in frustration.

Andy could see the sun was finally setting outside. To think he somehow made it through the scorching heat alive only to end up about to die here like this. Such bullshit.

Five percent health.

Fuck! Aaaaaarrrghh!

He did actually smash the dashboard a few times in frustration.

Andy let out a resigned sigh as he stared at the blinking battery icon.

Wait!

He had a battery. It was in his own backpack, powering his suit!

This seemed like an insanely risky plan, but it was all he had. Andy navigated the menu with practised ease and activated the battery release. His suit went dark and a battery holder slid open on the right side of his backpack. He leaned over and retrieved it.

The temperature inside his suit started to rapidly climb. He didn’t have the hud telling him this anymore, since that was now offline, but he could feel it.

Andy quickly replaced the battery in the rover with his own. He didn’t want to risk accidentally charging the rover's existing battery while doing this by putting them in together, assuming that was actually possible at any rate. He activated the rover once more. It worked!

The depressurisation continued. Andy said a silent prayer for it to hurry the fuck up, it was getting realy hot in his suit.

Once it got below 1kpa, he wondered why the duct tape hadn’t ripped off his suit from the pressure difference yet. He had after all forgotten his suit's internal pressure at 140kpa. That was a lot compared to a vacuum after all. Guess the game's version of duct tape is pretty sturdy stuff.

Finally the cab was in a vacuum state. He did not care to question how it managed to get there so easily, just chalking it up to ‘game logic’, but he wasn’t going to complain. The temperature in his suit had stopped increasing now, but it was still really uncomfortable.

Andy activated the valve on the rover’s O2 tank. His health was down to four percent.

“Error: O2 valve not responding”

No, no, no, no, no, no!

This wasn’t happening!. He tried it again. It must have been damaged with the rest of the rover.

Andy quickly pulled up a diagram, the O2 tank was located at the rear of the vehicle. He had no way of reaching it to even take a look.

Fuck! Again! Fuck!

Even if he opened his helmet right now, he was certain the vacuum state of the cab would do enough damage to kill him on his measly five percent health.

Think. Think. He needed cabin pressure.

Andy snatched his battery back from the rover and put it back in his backpack, powering his suit once more. He then did the thing that so far had caused him nothing but trouble. Only this time it would save his life one final time and without any explosions.

He opened the external valve of his O2 tank. He braced himself from the force of the ejecting gas, but it soon normalized and he quickly sealed the valve once the external pressure was up to 40kpa. He had done it, the cabin pressure was workable!

But his O2 tank was really close to empty now.

Andy nervously toggled the lock on his helmet and opened the visor.

He had done it. He quickly brought the water bottle up to his mouth and held it there.

Hydration 98%

Water bottle (0%)

Health 4% (+)