I was vast, sprawling, a body that didn’t fit the shape of anything I’d ever been. Not flesh, not bone, but a lattice of hard edges and smooth curves, cold and still in a way that made my mind stumble. I could feel myself, the way you know your hand is there without looking at it. But this body was immense, angular, a thing of metal and weight that stretched far beyond me. I tried to shift, to flex, but nothing responded. Whatever I was, I was locked in place, tethered to a faint pulse of energy—a trickle that could probably help me jumpstart something.

  My insides were wrong, hollow, a void that clawed at my awareness. Long tunnels—corridors, maybe—twisted through me, alongside wider chambers and cramped hollows, all empty, sucked dry of life. No pressure, no breath, just a barren absence that felt like a scream silenced before it could start. I sensed the cause, a wound at my front, where my “face” should be. It wasn’t just a cut—it was caved in, a crumpled, jagged mess of shattered edges and torn structure. The pain was dull but relentless, like a skull smashed inward, nerves screaming where a forehead should be. I could feel the wreckage there, a tangle of broken supports and splintered panes—windows, maybe, that once looked out. Now, they were gone, letting the void flood in, stealing whatever air I’d once held. An asteroid, I thought, the image of a rock slamming into me vivid and unbidden. The impact had gutted my front, left me open to the dark.

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  I probed deeper, seeking something to anchor me. There was weight, heavy and sluggish, pooled toward my rear in tanks that sloshed with liquid—fuel, it had to be. The sensation was grounding, like a full belly, a promise of motion if I could just wake up. That faint trickle of power hummed in my core, a whisper of potential, enough to let me feel but not enough to move or see. I tried to look out, to sense the space beyond my wounded frame, but there was nothing. No eyes, no light, just a suffocating blindness that trapped me in my own form. I could feel my shape—my hull, my tunnels, my fuel—but without power, I was a ghost in a broken shell, my face smashed, my insides empty.

  What was I? The fuel, the corridors, the vastness of my form—they pointed to something built to move, to carry. A spacecraft, maybe, drifting in the endless black. The idea felt right in a way, though I had no name for myself, no memory of what I’d been before this. The pain in my caved-in front throbbed, a reminder of the asteroid that had left me like this, abandoned and lifeless. But that trickle of power meant I wasn’t lost yet. If I could find a way to stir it, to spark whatever lay dormant in my core, I could wake. I could see. For now, I was a wounded thing, vast and still, but I wasn’t ready to fade. Not with that pulse still beating, faint but stubborn, deep inside me.