The darkness fell like a physical weight.
So total.
So suffocating.
Like the ship itself stopped breathing.
Kael froze where he stood, plasma cutter raised, listening as the cold silence fractured into dozens of thin whispers. They slid along the metal walls, slipped through the vents, curled around him like fingers trailing across his spine.
"…Kael…"
"…Kael…"
"…Kael…"
His name, spoken in different tones some too human, some too broken, some too hollow to belong to anything that ever lived.
Ren crouched on the floor beside the shattered pod, hands clawing at his skull as if trying to shut the voices out.
"Make it stop," he choked. "God… Kael… make it stop…"
Kael stepped toward him, weapon steady. "Ren. Focus. Are there others?"
Ren shuddered violently. "Yes… in the dark… in that place we were dragged to… we heard them whispering long before we saw them…"
His voice cracked. "We weren't alone in the void."
The whispers intensified, overlapping, rising into a soft, eerie chorus. Some voices sounded identical to Ren's. Others like the missing crew. Kael heard Lt. Ilya's tone. Then Dr. Morren's. Even voices he had only heard once on the comm logs.
They mimicked too perfectly.
Like they were remembering them.
Using them.
Kael felt his grip tighten. His throat worked as he swallowed back a surge of nausea.
A metallic thud echoed from the far corner of the cryochamber. Something had dropped from the ceiling vents. Something heavy.
Kael turned sharply, cutter raised.
The red emergency lights flickered back on dim, almost blood-colored.
And Kael saw it.
The creature stood hunched near the wall, its limbs elongated, its face cracked like shattered ceramic. But now, something new clung to its back black filaments, like veins or roots, pulsating faintly as if alive.
It twitched.
Head tilting.
Eyes glowing.
Ren let out a strangled gasp. "That… that wasn't the only one…"
Kael didn't look away from the creature. "Where are the others?"
Ren's breathing hitched. "Inside the walls…"
As if answering, the vents behind Kael rattled violently.
Kael's muscles tensed. He stepped in front of Ren instinctively.
The creature across the room straightened, its limbs cracking back into alignment with sickening pops. Kael raised the cutter higher.
"Don't come closer."
The creature paused then took one slow, deliberate step forward.
Kael activated the plasma cutter fully. A brighter flame hissed at the tip. "I mean it."
Another step.
Ren crawled backward across the floor, leaving a trail of cryo-fluid. "Kael… don't let it touch you…"
Kael didn't plan on it.
The creature took a third step and then moved.
It didn't run. It didn't sprint.
It simply appeared in front of him, faster than the flicker of the emergency lights.
Kael swung the cutter.
A spray of molten metal burst as he sliced across its shoulder. The creature recoiled, shrieking not in sound, but in a vibrating pulse that rattled Kael's teeth.
Behind him, the vents exploded outward.
Two more shapes dropped from the ceiling, landing on hands and feet like broken animals. Their eyes glowed, their movements jerky and wrong.
Kael backed toward Ren, keeping all three in sight.
"AI," he hissed. "I need emergency flood-light now."
The speakers crackled.
"…attempting…"
The creatures twitched in unison, like puppets pulled by the same invisible strings. One tilted its head a full ninety degrees, bones cracking audibly.
The first creature hissed and all three rushed forward.
Kael didn't think. He grabbed Ren by the arm and dragged him toward the door.
The creatures hit the ground where they had been standing a heartbeat ago, claws slicing the metal floor and sending sparks flying.
The emergency flood-lights blasted on.
A harsh white beam exploded across the room.
All three creatures shrieked as their bodies convulsed violently. Their skin or whatever passed for skin blistered under the light, their limbs spasming as if the brightness burned them.
Kael didn't waste a second. He yanked Ren through the door.
"AI seal the cryochamber!"
The heavy doors slammed shut behind them.
A violent impact hit the other side instantly.
Then another.
Claws screeching across metal.
Ren collapsed against the opposite wall, panting, trembling uncontrollably. Kael stood over him, chest heaving, cutter still humming.
The metal door dented outward with each strike.
Ren lifted his head slowly. "Kael… they aren't just creatures. They're"
The echo of another impact drowned his voice out.
Kael knelt in front of him. "Say it."
Ren's glowing eyes met his. Pain. Terror. A strange flicker of something else something he was fighting inside himself.
"They're what's left of us," Ren whispered. "The crew."
Kael felt a cold numbness spread through his limbs. "Impossible."
But Ren shook his head weakly. "When we disappeared… they dragged us somewhere… a place without light… where time didn't move. They tore pieces of us apart. Put others back in."
His breath hitched.
"We became something else… or something else tried to become us."
Another strike boomed against the door.
Kael lowered his voice. "Ren… what did they want with you?"
Ren's hands shook against the floor. "To bring one of them aboard. To use a living body as a conduit. A vessel."
Another impact.
Kael's blood ran cold. "Ren… did they use you?''
Ren closed his eyes.
"…yes."
The metal door behind them buckled inward.
Kael stood, cutter raised.
He looked down at Ren the friend he once trusted with his life. The man who died saving him. The man who was now half-alive, half-something else.
"Ren," Kael said quietly, "are you still you?"
Ren hesitated.
His eyes flickered white, then human, then white again.
"I don't know."
The cryochamber door split open behind them.
Kael pulled Ren to his feet.
The whispers poured into the hallway.
And Kael realized something with a certainty that made his stomach drop
Whatever followed them from that void wasn't just here to destroy.
It wanted to come back.
Through Ren.
Through the ship.
Through him.