Thunder rolled across the sky like distant artillery. Rain hammered the tin roof of the small orphanage on the edge of the city.
Inside a cardboard box lined with a filthy, sodden towel, a newborn slept through the storm — tiny fists curled near his face, unaware that the two shadows standing over him felt nothing at all.
The woman didn't hesitate. She looked down at the infant the way someone might glance at a leaking bag of trash they were about to drop in the bin. No tremor in her fingers. No second thought. She simply adjusted the edge of the blanket so it covered his face a little more — not out of care, but so no one would see his features if they found him too soon.
Her husband didn't even glance back. He lit a cigarette with the same hand that had carried the box here, inhaled once, and flicked ash onto the wet concrete. "Let's go," he said, voice flat. "It's done."
They walked away under the same umbrella, footsteps unhurried, already talking about where to eat after this inconvenience was behind them. They disappeared into the dark without a single backward look — not because it hurt too much, but because there was nothing to hurt.
Nineteen years later "Lin Yun. Final systems check, please."
The voice came from the control room, calm and professional.
Lin Yun floated in zero gravity, already strapped into the EVA suit, staring through the visor at the endless black beyond the shuttle window. Earth was a glowing crescent in the distance — beautiful, indifferent, the same way it had always been.
"Communications array repair mission. All green," he answered quietly.
Voice steady. Always steady. Behind the glass, the mission controller hesitated just a fraction of a second longer than protocol required.
"...You good, Yun?"
Lin Yun's lips curved — not quite a smile.
"Never better."
He had spent his entire life turning garbage into something useful.
Thrown-away baby → orphanage mattress on the floor → top of every exam he ever took → scholarship → university at fourteen → NASA by nineteen.
Every step felt like spitting in the face of that rainy night nineteen years ago.
He pushed off gently, gliding toward the airlock.
The shuttle's interior lights dimmed as the final countdown began.
T-10… 9… 8…
Lin Yun closed his eyes for just a moment.
Not to pray. Not to remember. Just to feel it — the vibration rising through the seat, the machine waking up around him, the moment when everything he had built with his own hands would finally leave the planet that never wanted him.
3… 2… 1…
Liftoff.
The acceleration pressed him deep into the seat. G-forces stacked like bricks on his chest. And then — sudden, clean silence.
Space.
He exhaled slowly, watching stars that didn't twinkle.
And then the proximity alarm screamed.
Red warning lights flooded the cockpit.
ANOMALY DETECTED — UNCHARTED GRAVITATIONAL DISTURBANCE On the main screen: a perfect circle of pure black. No light. No reflection. Just… absence.
It hadn't been there thirty seconds ago.
Lin Yun's hand moved on instinct toward the abort sequence — too late. The shuttle lurched violently.
Metal groaned. Warning klaxons overlapped into white noise. Reality itself seemed to stretch and tear.
"Mayday! Houston, this is Shuttle Endeavour — I've got an unknown spatial anomaly dead ahead! Visual confirmation of—!"
Static ate the rest of his words.
The wormhole swallowed them whole.
For one endless heartbeat, Lin Yun felt like he was falling in every direction at once. Then — nothing.
Darkness.
When awareness returned, it came slowly, like surfacing from deep water. First: the smell of wet earth and pine. Then: pain. Sharp in his ribs, dull in his skull. Then: birdsong. Too loud. Too alive.
Lin Yun opened his eyes.
He was lying on his back in a small clearing. Sunlight filtered through leaves the color of jade and emerald and colors he didn't have names for. The air tasted sweet. Too clean. Too rich with oxygen.
His EVA suit was cracked in several places, helmet shattered, but somehow — impossibly — he was breathing.
He stared up at a sky that held two suns.
One pale gold. One small and angry red.
Slowly, very slowly, Lin Yun started laughing — a dry, broken sound. "Of course," he whispered to the alien sky. "Of course the universe would throw me away twice."
He closed his eyes again. Just for a moment.
Then he pushed himself up — ribs screaming — and looked around at the impossible forest that should not exist.
Whatever this place was…
…it had just gained a new resident.
And Lin Yun had never been very good at staying discarded