The Queen of the Underverse - Chapter 2
- Donovan Evans-Foto Dono
- Jun 24
- 9 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Welcome to Chapter 2. As I write this post, I'm up to about 7,300 words of Rebecca's story, which, for some reason, I thought was pretty good. I hope you enjoy them.
Rebecca might disagree, considering where she ends up here in chapter 2. However, I've written an additional 31,990 words, and her story gets a bit rougher. I've written up to chapter 7, plotted most of chapter 8, and mapped out roughly the dark moments in the book where she will...
Ooops... Spoilers. 😜
Well, here's a spoiler: Rebecca swears a lot in this one. 🤬
Either way, I hope you'll enjoy the story of my friend Rebecca. My goal is to end telling Rebecca's story with 90,000 words. That's a lot of plot to put someone through.
Can she still be my friend after all this?
Dono
June 24th, 2025
Previously - Queen Lyra walks her garden one last time before death, just as a mysterious figure steps through the long-closed Doorwhere to Everywhere. In orbit, Commander Rebecca Lopez promises her kids she’ll be home in five days. But a micrometeoroid storm strikes, forcing her to sacrifice her own safety to save her best friend.
Ye saga continues...
Chapter 2 - Little Girl Lost
Relief washed over Rebecca as Sarah slipped into the airlock. That had a slim chance of working, and a small laugh of disbelief escaped her. Mark's reaction would likely ping-pong from anger to pride, finally landing on fear. I married an astronaut, not Lara Croft; she could practically hear him say. Still, she'd make a fantastic Lara Croft.
Houston: "Commander Lopez, are you okay? We're hearing laughter on your comms."
Rebecca smiled, recognizing Lloyd's concern. "I'm good."
Jessica's voice cut in, relieved, "Mitchel is secure. She's unconscious but breathing on her own. So, are we dead yet?"
"Not yet," Maya said. "The debris field seems to be getting louder. Commander?"
Rebecca kicked on her EMU suit—nothing. She tried SAFER—again, but there was no response.
"Houston," she said, "we have a problem. I can't get back." She could feel the photo of her family tucked inside her suit, silently accusing.
Houston: "We're looking into that, Commander."
Fuck. Rebecca's momentum was drifting her away from the ISS. She and the station moved at the same speed—about 8 km/s—but in different vectors. The EMU and backup SAFER were designed for controlled maneuvers, like bees orbiting the hive. The third backup was the tether—but only if you were already at the worksite.
She still had her tether. If she could snag the station before drifting too far—
Jessica's voice: "I'm coming out, Commander."
"No! You're not coming out," Rebecca snapped. She could feel her friend's determination over the channel, but she wasn't willing to let another crew member take the risk. "This debris field is already tearing up our suits. No one else is going out. Got it? Jess, get Sarah and Maya into the Soyuz. Get them home."
Houston: "We're not abandoning the Commander, Jessica." Lloyd didn't say it out loud, but Rebecca heard the unspoken part: Unless we have to.
Houston: "So, Jessica, please let us work the problem."
"Fine. But do it fast," Jessica said.
Rebecca said, "Houston, I've been trying to throw the tether, but so far I've sucked."
Houston: Lloyd chuckled. "Rope lessons next time. The folks down here might have a workaround." She thought she heard a muffled you're fucking kidding me before he returned. "You're not going to like it."
"I already don't like it," Rebecca muttered.
Houston: "They want you to power down everything and reboot the system."
Houston: "Commander?"
Houston: "Commander?"
"I really don't like it."
Houston: "There's more."
"Of course there is."
Houston: "You've got 10 minutes before you drift into the denser part of the micro-debris field."
"Fuck. Lloyd, if this doesn't work, download a message from my workstation and send it to my family. It's titled Ad Astra." Rebecca began unstrapping herself from the EMU and SAFER.
Houston: "Copy, Commander. Good luck, Rebecca."
Maya: "There has to be another way."
Jessica: "I'll go out there myself."
Rebecca cut in. "We're out of time. Arguing won't help. I'm going dark. I couldn't have asked for a better crew. I'll see you on the other side." I hope, she thought, as she began the fastest shutdown sequence of her life.
Technically, she didn't turn everything off—just the parts that kept her alive.
The thing is, space isn't cold. Parts are. Parts aren't. Losing power doesn't mean instant death. There's still residual air, pressure, and heat until external forces creep in. The real danger was time. Powering down and back up again wasn't quick. If the internal suit temp dropped too far, the system could fail to restart. They never trained for this scenario. Some subsystems were only ever activated from inside the ISS. She was in the dark, moving fast, trying to beat the clock.
Rebecca climbed back into the EMU, reattached the SAFER, and began powering everything back on.
It took her fifteen panicked minutes to reroute systems—far longer than comfort allowed. Any longer, and the dropping temps might've iced her CO₂ scrubbers or locked the comms into a reboot loop. Her fingers, stiff with cold and adrenaline, fumbled through the restart sequence. Any slower, and she wouldn't have made it.
The radio finally clicked on.
"Rebecca? Commander?" Jessica's voice crackled through.
"Okay, comms are back," Rebecca said. "How are you three holding up?"
She heard Jessica's relief: "We're good to go, Commander. Mitchel is stable. We're aboard the Soyuz."
Maya chimed in. "You've been dark for fifteen minutes. We thought you were in the field. The lights are flickering on the—"
Silence
Rebecca looked around instinctively, then stopped—no human could spot debris traveling at orbital speeds like in the movies.
Houston: "Commander, it looks like you drifted into a gap. A smaller one's heading your way. You'll miss most of it if you move 90° Earthside. But move now."
"Copy, Houston. What about the crew and the station? Maya? Jessica?" The crew didn't answer.
Houston: "Communications inside the ISS seem down. We still have contact with the Soyuz. You're patched through using the external gain antenna. Pick up speed, Commander."
Fuck. Rebecca began maneuvering toward home. Of course, "home" was 220 miles straight down—and unreachable. It would've been a three-hour drive across the state—except space bullets were chasing her.
She killed the EMU rotation and spun to face the ISS, keeping her bearings.
A flickering arc of blue light danced along one of the ISS's trusses—a plasma discharge, probably from micro-debris impacts. EMP fallout, maybe. Rebecca watched in horror as the arcs snaked toward the Soyuz docking bay.
Houston: "Commander, it's reached—"
Silence.
"Lloyd? Houston?" Static.
"Jessica. Maya. Respond."
The comm light blinked green—transmitting—but nothing came back.
"This is Commander Lopez. I'm switching to lower-band frequencies, then cycling back up. If no contact is made, I'll return to the ISS and see... well, what I can."
She cycled through emergency bands.
A shadow passed across her visor.
She turned.
And there it was.
A door.
A massive wooden door—just floating in space, framed in jagged stone. At least four meters tall and two wide. No flicker. No glitch. It casts a shadow. Behind it, the stars warped and smeared, like light folding in on itself.
"Fuck me..." Rebecca muttered. "Houston, Jessica, Maya—hell, anyone at this point—there's a freaking door out here."
Oxygen's good—hydration's fine. I haven't pissed myself. So... Am I still sane? Did someone leave a door out here? And is that dirt?
Rebecca turned back toward the ISS and caught faint flashes of light. "ISS, you've got active discharges. You should evacuate. Now."
The Soyuz was still docked—but its lights flickered on and off. Then she noticed it was a pattern.
Morse code.
MST. GO. WAT. 4. U.
Rebecca sighed. Could she make it? Doubtful. The discharge was already crawling toward the capsule.
The ISS shimmered like a dying star, blue-white arcs rippling across its hull. A solar panel snapped free and spiraled away—spinning like a flaming scythe into the black.
Rebecca grabbed her signal light and waved. Momentum shifted her again—she bumped the door, steadying herself on its stone foot. She kept signaling.
GO. NOW. DNGR.
Over and over. Rebecca's heart was beating fast as she watched another panel snap off.
Then—a small flash. The Soyuz disengaged, backing away from the station.
Inside the capsule, the lights flashed again toward her—one final blink before Earth's curve swallowed the view.
LUV. U. FCK. DIS.
Rebecca started to laugh. Sarah must've woken up and sent that last message. She watched the Soyuz drift away, a tiny defiant spark against the void. And here she was—clinging to a door floating in space. It would've made a perfect opening to one of Mark's stories.
"Oh, Mark, you'd have loved this," she said aloud. "Our dashing space captain saves her crew during the cosmic storm, only to be lost overboard, clinging to a door, waiting for a rescue that'll never come." She kicked the door gently, then glanced at the photo of Mark and the kids. "The ending needs work. You probably would've called the ship Gigantic or something."
She ran her gloved hands along the surface of the door. It vibrated slightly at her touch, the dirt around its base shifting and settling again. The stonework framing it looked jagged, torn from a wall by some ancient, furious force. Small rocks floated near the frame. "At least they're not trying to kill me," she muttered.
She still didn't understand those films where astronauts went mad from solitude. She'd tried explaining it to Mark more than once. She'd even recorded it—again—hoping Lloyd had remembered to download it.
The message echoed in her head:
"Hey Mark, if you're hearing this, something went wrong. I know we've talked about this before, but I haven't changed. I told you how I watched Dad and Grandpa fade—how their light dimmed, especially Grandpa, year after year. You know that's not how I want to go.
"Still, death will find us with or without our permission. If I have a say, I want to pass knowing I said what mattered and that I loved you. That I tried to leave something good behind.
"And besides—how could I go crazy out here? Have you seen the view?" She pointed the camera up toward the ISS's cupola window, which was perfectly framed by the glowing core of the Milky Way.
"If I have any say in it, I'll fight tooth and nail to find my way back. But if I don't... remember that I loved you. And forgive me for not making it home."
Rebecca paused, her breath catching as her fingers brushed against the thin edge of the family photo in her flight suit's chest pocket. It was still there—creased, laminated, perfectly intact—Mark and the kids standing on a beach from two summers ago. Sarah was gap-toothed and beaming; Paul had seaweed in his hair; Mark was calm and steady with one arm wrapped around them all. He had winked at her when she took the photo.
She touched the photo gently, her movement small but deliberate. "You better be behaving," she whispered with a smile. The fear in her gut softened. For a moment, she felt tethered.
In the vast, broken silence of space, surrounded by arcs of plasma and drifting stone, that single photo was the most human thing she had.
She recorded a message like this with every mission, but always deleted it afterward. Mark knew. She'd told him so he wouldn't be blindsided if things went "pear-shaped."
After Paul was born, they agreed—this would be her last mission. She promised.
Now, staring at the ruin of the ISS and the impossible door, she whispered, "So Mark... I hope you forgive me for breaking that promise. Lloyd should have the message. But if anyone finds me... I'll leave what record I can."
She turned toward the station. Parts were shearing off—panels spinning away, sparks cracking through empty space.
"Of course it is..." she muttered. At least her crew got away.
She turned back to the door.
"So... NASA." She thought about the Chinese station also in orbit. They had a crew up here, too. "Tiangong, if you're listening. I'm in Low Earth Orbit. And there's a door. A wooden one. Framed in stone. At least four meters tall. No, I haven't taken off my gloves to touch it. You can send your fancy ships to do that. My suit is taking readings of it, so be good and share what you find. At least let my sacrifice have some meaning."
She sighed.
"Where the fuck did you come from?" she asked it softly. "It's like someone ripped you out of a medieval castle. There's debris everywhere—and I'd bet credits to coffee those micrometeoroids came from you."
She pressed her palms to the surface. "Nope. Not a hallucination."
Then it vibrated.
Knock-knock.
Knock-knock.
...Knock-knock-knock.
Her head snapped forward. Helmet against the door. She listened.
Knock-knock.
Knock-knock.
...Knock-knock-knock.
It was real.
"Someone's knocking…" she whispered.
And the rhythm clicked.
"Shave and a haircut…" she muttered.
She floated around to the back. Nothing. She reached forward again and placed her hand on the door.
Knock-knock.
Knock-knock.
...Knock-knock-knock.
The doorknob turned slightly—but didn't open. A key was in the lock.
"Of course there's a key," she said. "Because doors in space should be locked." She shook her head at the incredulity,
With a deep breath, she turned it. Felt the tumblers shift. Carefully, she pocketed the key in one of her suit's tool compartments.
Then she reached for the knob—smooth from age and use. She hesitated.
"Mark... I hope this one has a happy ending."
She opened it.
And stepped through.
She stood in a garden bathed in magenta-orange light. The air shimmered like warm honey.
In the center, a woman turned to face her, draped in robes that sparkled like starlight. Her skin was light blue, and her eyes were ruby red. Auburn hair whipped in the breeze, catching the dying light like strands of flame.
The air rushed past Rebecca—through her—and out the still-open door.
And in the quiet swirl of dust and impossibility, she whispered:
"Yeah, Mark... definitely not in Kansas anymore."
---To be continued
Next Time on The Queen of the Underverse…
Pulled from one world into another, Rebecca finds herself in a place where nothing makes sense—gravity shifts, voices speak in riddles, and the rules of reality feel rewritten. As she navigates this surreal new landscape, she must decide what to believe and whom to trust.
© 2025 Donnavon Evans
June 24, 2025
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