My lungs feel gritty. I coulda made a freaking sandcastle out of the grime that coated my mouth.  Stupid dead planets.

I don't really know why I'm here.  One minute in a lab, next minute BAM, a desert.  And not just a desert.  A desert in the middle of a freaking sandstorm.  Nothing's in the way of the wind, it just comes barreling through with no resistance, carrying a beachful of sand with it.  

The ground is a maze of spiderweb cracks.  It must have been a million years since rain last fell.  Not even a hint of green.  Just shades of red and brown.  I think maybe there are mountains in the distance, blobs of darker red against the red sand swirling in the sky, but a lot of good they do me here.

Something snaps under my feet.  A solitary branch laying a ways away from some shriveled up bush.  The crack would have echoed in the silence if there had been a damn thing for the sound to echo off of.  But there was something satisfying in it.  Primal.  I stomp over to the bush, flexing my fingers for a minute before reaching down to rip up the bush, its dry roots releasing the sand far too easily.  Chunks of dusty red dirt fall as I tear it in two, then four, then a million little pieces. I pretend each branch is the neck of the lab tech who'd pushed that blasted button.  Goddamned newbie. Send me to a dead planet.  Again.

Bits of twigs join the whirl of sand, cutting at my skin with little nicks, the blood drying up in the heat almost before I even notice them.  Before too long, there's nothing left to tear.  I feel a little better.

Lifting my eyes back to the horizon, I'm mildly surprised to see that one of the mountains is closer than I'd thought.  And getting closer.  And it appears to have grown some appendages.  And a freaking tail.

Maybe not so dead of a planet after all.