Faraway
Table of Contents
Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Chapter 57 Chapter 58 Chapter 59 Chapter 60 Chapter 61 Chapter 62 Chapter 63 Chapter 64 Chapter 65 Chapter 66 Chapter 67 Chapter 68 Chapter 69 Chapter 70 Chapter 71 Chapter 72 Chapter 73 Chapter 74 Chapter 75 Chapter 76 Chapter 77 Chapter 78 Chapter 79 Chapter 80 Chapter 81 Chapter 82 Chapter 83 Chapter 84 Chapter 85 Chapter 86 Chapter 87 Chapter 88 Chapter 89 Chapter 90 Chapter 91Chapter 47
Somewhere in an unknown dense, green forest is a blond man wearing doctor attire; his blue eyes and calm expression showed little interest in anything besides passing by a functioning lamppost, despite vines and vegetation nearly swallowing it whole.
He strolled through the night like a long-lost treasure, his mind occupied by the many worries swirling around in his head.
Occasionally, he would steal a glance from the random flora and fauna that surrounded him while making sure he didn't step on anything poisonous. The moon was bright, casting a silver glow above the world below.
Doctor Hansel was anything but a simple guy in a world dominated by only men after the complete extinction of all women. He is a person driven by the pursuit duty of caring for the unfortunate and those who are in need on this abandoned planet they previously called home.
From being a doctor to a humanitarian, Hansel is determined to make lives bearable in this so-called new world. However, his heart was heavy with the recent events that have unfolded from the number of patients and refugees he is getting in the hospital, as day by day, a severely injured or sick person would come by for his help.
He gladly does so without any form of compensation, believing solely in improving the lives of others based on his first principles. It is this selfless dedication and passion that have earned him the respect of his peers. But even the most selfless of people have their breaking points, and he was no exception.
So many deaths and misery around him are slowly eating away at his psyche, making him wonder if being both a doctor and a humanitarian is good for him anymore.
At least, however, he still has reason to do his job because of the past trauma he had to endure before finding this calling. It is a reminder that after losing his sister to a mysterious, world-ending catastrophic event, he decided to do right by honoring her legacy.
Hansel took in the sight around him, filled with the tranquility of his surroundings, while filling his lungs with the sweet scents of nature that surrounded him. It is a nice escape from the hustle and bustle of the busy building he worked in.
Constantly requiring the assistance of others and his fellow peers was becoming exhausting. He could hear the soft rustling of leaves and the lack of any chirping crickets in the distance, reminding him that not only have human women vanished out of trace, but also all other animals and even insects alike are not spared by it.
There were no animals or any form of insect around him. Probably due to the fact that either the Ark took them all in or cloned the surviving ones for their own selfish utopia. Either way, flora and fauna still surrounded him. Being the only remaining sign of life from long ago.
His heart sank when he couldn't believe that the only living beings remaining on Earth were humans, specifically men, when he thought about it in mid-walk. Saddened by such a reminder from long ago, he can't help but look up at the night sky and wonder if they should have gone extinct as well.
The night sky was shrouded in a silver glow, a celestial canvas painted with the twinkling stars above the dying planet. Under this ethereal beauty, the dense, green forest enveloped Doctor Hansel in a sweet embrace. A world touched by the apocalypse that once devastated it.
With the scent of nature entering his nostrils and the symphony of earthy fragrances, he leaves a subtle rustling of leaves overhead. He continued to walk, deep in thought, while all of his problems seemed to lift off his shoulders, even if only temporarily.
He felt alone, with no animals in sight or the sounds of cricking and chirping in the distance. Its a forgotten sea market of old Earth. The complete silence was deafening but somehow comforting in its emptiness. It was as if nature itself was mourning the loss of its kind.
Then an icy feeling crept into his heart, filling the void of loneliness that he was trying to escape from. "I must be going mad," he whispered to himself, shaking his head. "This is just what I do. I find solace in the quiet places, and I'm then riddled with finding answers to the silence."
Hansel sighed, looking down at his feet. A single, solitary tear trickled down his cheek. "Being a doctor is becoming tiresome for me," he admitted, his fingers in his mind.
"Maybe it is time to reevaluate my life choices and find something else worth living for." He said, finally acknowledging the truth that has been haunting him since the beginning, "maybe I should let someone else take over my duties," a possibility that he first thought of when his work became too much for him to handle.
As he continued to ponder about his life choices, a loud whirling sound emitting from the distance caught his full attention: "What is this?" He asked himself, turning his attention to the source, "a meteor?" Looking over his shoulder and stopping in his tracks, the sight of a flying object streaking through the sky was a familiar one.
It has been a common occurrence ever since the earth changed. However, it's still nice to know some things still remained after the world nearly went into the brink of extinction.
Adjusting his posture with his entire body now facing directly at the falling meteor, his eyes widen when it heats up gradually in fireball form.
"That's...unusual," he muttered, watching as it moves closer and closer to his vicinity. "In this amplitude, when a meteor becomes covered entirely in fire, it rarely survives as they are not large enough to endure the earth's atmosphere intact," his fingers traced on his chin as he contemplated amazement at the spectacle flying above him.
The meteor was becoming larger than anything he had seen before. The sheer size of it was astounding, and it seemed to grow in his vision as it drew nearer.
"Wait, this is not right!?"
Shock overturned any fixed sense of wonder he had. "It's too big or small to be a simple meteor," he mumbled to himself, squinting against the light. Feeling something intuitively in his stomach, he knew that this was not natural. "This... this isn't a meteoroid!" Flabbergasted by the sight, Hansel was able to get a clear shot of it.
It is a spaceship falling down at immense speed, the sight of which made him immediately believe that he was witnessing a miracle before horror came to mind when the thing immediately hit the ground ten kilometers away from him, where his entire surroundings would shake violently if there were a were a large earthquake happening.
The sound of impact was deafening as a mushroom cloud began to billow above the treeline. "What in the name of God?" Whatever that ship is, it almost caused a nuclear bomb, judging from how he had to brace himself for the immense shockwave that almost pulled him away from the air itself.
Alarmed and intrigued, his first thought after adjusting himself was the idea of survivors that had inhabitanted the mysterious space vessel. "It's impossible," he says, shaking his own head in dismay. "From that speed alone, it is impossible for anyone to survive from the inside."
Either the crew disintegrated into ashes or were burned in crisps, cooked alive from the intense heat of reentry. The thought of it greatly brought him in anguish at how much suffering
must have been endured during the whole event.
His curiosity was piqued, however, in the left-overs of the crash. Despite knowing he will encounter grizzly sight not in the faint of heart, there is still likely something worth checking out when this is his opportunity to find something new and different in the world.
He couldn't help himself from being drawn to the site. "I need to see for myself," he said, making his way towards the direction of the crash with anticipation building up inside him like a floodgate waiting to burst open.
He kept reminding himself that it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to explore something unknown and unpredictable, especially when it was a morbid field of wreckage lying not too far from his peaceful sanctuary.
And so Hansel trudged bravely with firm determination in his eyes, ready to face the unknown and accepting the horrors that would lie before him if he chose to accept this decision. In which case, he already did for the sake of his own desire to see what had happened after it had crashed.
"I hope it's not too gruesome," he admitted, admitting his worries even though he had already witnessed some deliberating wounds from his patients before, "but this is different. This is an entirely different matter altogether," he muttered under his breath, swallowing hard.
His heart now pounding at what he will discover once he gets closer to the scene, as many things flash through his mind, from the sight of burnt corpses to the possibility of finding survivors. Although the latter is impossible to be true,
After he walked and walked, catching his breath once in a while, Hansel eventually came across the site. As expected, there was lots of debris and junk in front of the 32-meter-wide crater that the ship had anchored into the ground.
The smell of scorched metal, burnt vegetation, and the distinct odor of ozone filled the air, a reminder of the extreme heat that had occurred just moments ago. It's a sight of destruction and devastation that he has seen once before in his life, having grown accustomed to it.
He step foot on the crater, where the deep hole is barely deep at any way, only to come across a twisted piece of metal that must have been part of the spaceship's hull.
It was still warm to the touch, the heat lingering even after the impact. "This finding is too good to be true," he whispered, his hands tracing over the jagged edges, feeling the sparks of electricity through the metal as the sparks danced between his fingers before being naturally absorbed into his skin for later use.
"Hm?"
Noticing something odd from the corner of his right eye, Hansel turned to face the source of his curiosity, spotting a bunch of metal junk piled up on something. Walking towards the pile, he finally caught a glimpse of visible human feet emerging from the covered mass of metal.
"What?!"
He was surprised, more so from the fact he is seeing freshly uncooked skin from someone who should be burned into smithereens or at least look like a cooked pig meant to be eaten for dinner by wild animals.
Without thinking clearly, he used all of his strength by pulling the mysterious person from the rubble, grabbing both of the survivor's ankles before swiftly yanking him out of the metal prison, only to reveal a young man who was unconscious, his body covered in a thin layer of grime from the crash site, but seemingly unharmed and naked altogether, which greatly astonished him.
"This... is borderline impossible," he repeated, his eyes widening as he surveyed the young man's state of health from head to toe. "It can't be possible," disbelief evident in his voice.
"How is this man not dead yet?"
Hansel said in flabbergasted confusion, all common sense flying out of the window as his mind struggled to find a logical explanation for the impossible he had just witnessed.
He glanced around warily, half expecting to see something, anything, to give him an excuse for this person's survival. "I must be dreaming," he muttered, shaking his head. The sight of the young man, as if left untouched by the harrowing journey, seemed to mock the very laws of physics and common sense.
Making sure if what he was seeing was correct, he knelt beside the unconsciousness person before grabbing the young man's wrist, placing his own two fingers at the pulse to see if what he believed was true, in which case it turned out to be correct after feeling the beating or throbbing sensation of the veins underneath the man's wrist.
"So it's true," he said in complete surprise, standing up from his spot before taking a step back from the amount of disbelief he was currently feeling at the moment. He carefully examined his body for any further signs of injury.
"I need to get him somewhere safe."
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