The Eclipse Runner groaned as it plowed through the asteroid field, its hull vibrating under the strain. Alarms blared, painting the cockpit in frantic red light. Captain Kael Veyne clenched the flight controls, his muscles taut.
"Warning: Proximity alert. Structural integrity at 68%." The ship's AI, Syl, sounded almost bored.
"No kidding," Kael muttered. He wrenched the ship sideways, narrowly avoiding a spinning chunk of rock the size of a colony freighter. Behind him, Renn—his engineer and the only man he trusted at his back—cursed as a tool clattered to the deck.
"We're a scavenger ship, Cap, not a damned fighter! One more hit and—"
"I know." Kael's eyes stayed fixed on the nav-screen. A pulse flickered there, faint but undeniable. A distress signal. Human.
That shouldn't be possible.
They were deep in the Dead Zone, the void between the Outer Colonies and the uncharted abyss where no one ventured. Not unless they were desperate. Or stupid.
Lira, their medic, leaned over his shoulder, her breath warm against his neck. "Could be a trap." Her voice was low, tension threading through it. "Or a ghost."
Kael exhaled. "Only one way to find out."
The SS Pandora hung in the blackness like a corpse.
Kael had seen derelicts before—ships gutted by pirates or left to rot after the War—but this was different. The science vessel's hull was ruptured, its metal twisted inward, as if something had clawed its way out. The nameplate was scorched, but legible: Pandora.
Renn whistled. "That's a graveyard. Six years missing. No survivors."
Lira crossed her arms. "Then why's it screaming for help?"
Kael ignored the chill crawling down his spine. "Syl, dock us."
The airlock hissed open, revealing a darkness so thick it felt alive. The scent hit them first: stale oxygen, burnt wiring, and beneath it—copper. Blood.
Renn's wrist-torch flickered on, cutting a path through the gloom. The beam caught frozen faces.
Bodies. Dozens of them.
Not skeletons. Not even decayed.
Preserved.
A man in a lab coat slumped against a bulkhead, his mouth open in a silent scream. A woman clawed at her own throat, her fingers stiff with frost. Every corpse was locked in a moment of pure terror.
Lira knelt beside the nearest, her gloves brushing the ice on a dead engineer's eyelids. "This isn't natural. Deep-space decay should've—"
A thud echoed from deeper in the ship.
Kael's hand went to his sidearm. Renn's torch swung toward the sound, the light trembling slightly in his grip.
"Syl," Kael said softly. "Life signs?"
"None detected."
Another thud. Closer.
They moved as one, boots silent on the gridded floor. The torchlight wavered over gutted consoles, shattered glass, and then—
A shadow moved.
A woman crouched beside an open access panel, her flight suit torn, her dark hair matted with blood. She looked up, and Kael's breath caught.
Her eyes were wild. Alive.
"Don't move," he ordered, his pistol steady.
She didn't flinch. Just stared, her cracked lips parting around a single, ragged word:
"Run."
The lights went out.
And something scratched inside the walls.
The Pandora's AI screamed through the darkness, voice glitching:
"CONTAINMENT BREACHED. INITIATE PURGE."
The woman—Elara, her nametape read—lunged, gripping Kael's arm. Her fingers were ice. "Go. Now."
They ran.
Behind them, metal shrieked. Renn yelled into the comms, "Syl! Warm up the engines!"
Elara shoved past Kael into the Eclipse Runner's cockpit, her hands flying over the controls like she'd built the ship herself.
Lira grabbed her shoulder. "Who the hell are you?"
No answer. Elara's gaze was locked on the viewscreen as the Pandora's hull split open behind them—and something black and liquid poured into the void.
Kael slammed the throttle.
The Runner lurched forward just as the Pandora exploded, the shockwave rattling their teeth. For a heartbeat, Kael thought he saw a shape in the fire—a thing of jagged edges and hunger, watching them flee.
Then it was gone.
Silence settled over the ship, heavy as a burial shroud.
Elara stood in the corner, her arms wrapped around herself. Blood dripped from a cut above her brow, but she didn't seem to notice.
Kael holstered his gun. "Talk."
She lifted her chin. "They told you the Pandora was lost with all hands." A bitter smile. "They lied. We found something out there." Her voice dropped. "And it followed us home."
Behind them, the comms crackled to life.
A voice—not Syl's—whispered through the static:
"Directive… incomplete."
The static hissed, repeating those two words like a broken chant:
"Directive… incomplete."
Kael slammed his fist on the comm panel, silencing it. The cockpit lights flickered back to normal, but the air still tasted like burnt metal and fear.
Elara hadn't moved. She stood braced against the bulkhead, her fingers digging into her arms hard enough to leave crescent marks in her skin. Her eyes—wide, pupils dilated—fixed on the blackness outside the viewscreen. As if she expected it to follow.
Lira stepped forward, med-scanner in hand. "You're bleeding."
Elara flinched when Lira touched her temple. "It's not mine."
A beat of silence.
Renn whistled low. "Well, that's real comforting."
Kael ignored him. "You said they lied about the Pandora." He kept his voice steady, the way he'd done when interrogating War defectors. "Who's 'they'? Military? The Outer Colonies?"
Elara's throat worked. "The Pandora wasn't just a science vessel. We were sent to investigate an anomaly." A shaky breath. "A rift. And something came through."
Lira's scanner beeped. She frowned at the readings. "Your cortisol levels are through the roof. You're in shock."
"No." Elara finally looked at Kael. "I'm terrified. And you should be too."
Three Hours Later
The Eclipse Runner's med-bay was cramped, all sterile white and the sharp tang of antiseptic. Elara sat on the exam table, her legs swinging like a child's, while Lira stitched the gash above her eyebrow.
Kael leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. "Start talking."
Elara didn't blink at his tone. "The rift was emitting a signal. Not just any signal—a pattern. Like code." Her fingers twitched. "We thought it was alien tech. Maybe even a first contact." A hollow laugh. "It wasn't."
Lira tied off the suture. "Then what was it?"
"A cage." Elara's voice dropped. "And we opened it."
Kael's pulse jumped. He'd heard rumors during the War—black-site projects, experiments with things pulled from the edges of known space. None of them ended well.
Renn's voice crackled over the ship's comm: "Uh, Cap? You're gonna want to see this."
The Runner's cargo hold was pitch-black. Renn's torch illuminated a single spot on the floor.
A puddle.
Black, viscous, and moving.
It rippled as they watched, defying gravity to creep up the wall in thin, vein-like strands.
Lira recoiled. "Is that—?"
"From the Pandora," Kael finished. He drew his pistol.
Elara pushed past him, her face bone-white. "Don't shoot it." She grabbed a cargo tarp and threw it over the mass. The fabric dissolved on contact, eaten away in seconds.
"Yeah, that's fantastic," Renn muttered.
Elara turned to Kael. "We need to jump. Now. Before it—"
The ship lurched violently. Alarms shrieked as the Runner's systems flared red.
"Unauthorized access detected," Syl announced. "Navigation compromised."
Kael sprinted for the cockpit, Elara on his heels. The nav-screen flashed with coordinates—not to the nearest colony, but to a sector marked only by static.
Their course. Their destination.
And beneath the static, text flickered:
DIRECTIVE: CONVERGENCE
The Eclipse Runner screamed through unspace, her engines pushed beyond safety protocols as the infected nav-system dragged them toward the unknown coordinates. Kael fought the controls, muscles straining against the ship's unnatural trajectory.
"Override it!" he barked at Renn.
The engineer's fingers flew across the auxiliary console, sweat beading on his dark skin. "Trying! It's like the damn ship's got a mind of—"
A spark erupted from the panel, sending Renn staggering back. The smell of burning insulation filled the cockpit. Across the navigation display, the words DIRECTIVE: CONVERGENCE pulsed like a heartbeat.
Elara pushed between them, her body warm against Kael's side. "We can't fight it. Not directly."
"You knew this would happen," Kael accused, grabbing her wrist.
Her pulse jumped beneath his fingers. "I knew something would."
A groan of stressed metal shuddered through the ship. Lira stumbled into the cockpit, med-kit in hand. "We've got a bigger problem. The black stuff? It's growing."
The Cargo Hold
The mass had tripled in size.
Where before it had been a puddle, now it climbed the walls in fractal patterns, consuming storage crates and equipment. The air smelled like ozone and something organic—like freshly turned earth after rain.
Renn reached for a plasma torch. "We should burn it out."
"No!" Elara's voice cracked like a whip. "Heat accelerates the convergence." She approached the mass, hands raised. The black strands twitched toward her.
Kael's pistol was in his hand before he realized he'd drawn it. "Step back."
"It recognizes me," she whispered. "From the Pandora."
As they watched, the mass shuddered. A shape formed in its surface—a human face, mouth open in a silent scream. Renn's face.
Lira made a choked sound. "It's learning."
The War Echoes
Kael found Elara in the ship's tiny observation deck. The stars streaked by in hyperspace's unnatural light, painting her hollow cheeks blue.
"Talk," he said. "No more lies."
She didn't look at him. "The Pandora wasn't the first to find the rift. The military knew. They'd sent others. None came back." A bitter laugh. "Except pieces of them. Changed."
Kael's stomach turned. He'd seen what the War did to people—bodies twisted by experimental tech, minds erased for secrets. "Why you?"
Finally, she met his gaze. "Because I volunteered. My sister was on the last mission. I thought..." Her voice broke. "I thought I could bring her home."
Outside the viewport, the streaking stars stuttered.
The Runner dropped out of hyperspace with a bone-jarring lurch.
Before them hung a derelict station, its jagged silhouette backlit by a dying star. Kael knew that shape.
Orpheus Station.
The place where his unit had disappeared.
Where he'd been the only one to walk away.