"Memory is the first wound."
He woke to silence.
Not the gentle kind that follows sleep, not peace, not stillness. This was vacuum silence—deliberate, engineered, the sort that erases any trace of comfort. Not even the hum of life support. Just a faint pressure on his skin, as if the very air was watching.
A hiss. The pod cracked open. Warm air spilled out—a borrowed breath, not his own. Above, the lighting flickered on: soft gold, too perfect to be natural. He opened his eyes slowly, as though remembering how.
White walls. Curved. Seamless. Not medical, not exactly—sterility as performance, not necessity. The room pretended at purity, like a stage set for some mythic rebirth.
A single drone hovered overhead—an obsidian orb ringed with silver fins of shifting light. It pulsed once, an acknowledgement or a warning.
"Well... Sleeping Beauty lives. How's the existential crisis coming along?"
The voice was synthetic, British-accented, mid-tone, the kind of dry sarcasm that comes with a second, sharper personality. Somewhere between a therapist and a bastard.
He sat up. Muscles responded easily, but with the memory of age, not years, but usage. No pain, just the promise of pain if he moved wrong.
He blinked at the drone.
"Where am I?"
"Aboard the Eon Veil. Congratulations. You're either the last human alive or a very committed cosplayer."
He looked down: clean, pale, unmarred skin. No scars. No hair. No tattoos. Fingers flexed—new, but not unfamiliar.
"I don't remember anything."
"Par for the course," the drone replied. "Name's DeadMouth, by the way. At least, that's what I call myself. You can too, or come up with something better. I'm basically your guilt-flavored Alexa."
He blinked again, slowly.
"Do you have a name? You know, something I can yell when I'm having an existential meltdown or a stabilizer blows? Stark? No? K2-Slow? R2-D-F*cked?"
He just stared, silence stretching.
"Tough crowd," DeadMouth muttered. "I'll log the emotional damage."
The man managed, softly, "I'll think about it," scanning the chamber's seamless strangeness.
The pod sealed behind him with a hiss that sounded almost... relieved. The walls shimmered faintly as he passed, reacting—not to motion, but to intention. The door unfolded without a touch.
He stepped out, barefoot.
Golden light unfurled ahead, cathedral-deep, the ship's belly breathing him in. It didn't creak or groan. It exhaled. Every footstep shifted the lighting—not to his movement, but to his will, as if the ship felt him coming and chose to let him pass.
DeadMouth hovered at his shoulder now, silent, eyes watching—maybe curious, maybe worried, maybe both.
He walked on, into the impossible day.
* * *
Corridors stretched and curved—grown, not built, like veins inside some ancient, dreaming creature. Every surface was too clean, too precise, symmetry so perfect it became unsettling. No bolts, no rivets, no control panels. No oxygen masks. No fire extinguishers, no signs of emergency. It felt less like a spaceship, more like a simulation's idea of one. A memory of a ship, not the thing itself.
A strange tug in his chest, persistent as a skipped heartbeat. Déjà vu, hollowed out. A memory trying, and failing, to piece itself back together.
He wandered, opening doors. Peering into rooms designed for lives that hadn't happened.
The Bridge, a vast, crescent-shaped command deck. Floating translucent interfaces hung in the air, waiting, dimming when he approached, as if embarrassed to be seen. No crew. No captain's chair. Just that pulsing hush, the hum of machinery behind the walls, alive but unwelcoming.
He approached one terminal. It blinked to life. Lines of text scrolled in a language he almost understood:
Gravity. Mass. Star-classification codes.
But the symbols flickered and warped if he stared too long, meaning slipping sideways, like words in a dream.
He reached out to touch the panel. It darkened, swallowing itself.
"Well done," DeadMouth said from behind. "You broke it. Or maybe it broke you. Jury's out."
The Medbay was cold steel. Cryopods lining the walls, coffins with no memories, waiting to remember their dead. All empty. All immaculate. A diagnostics unit hissed alive as he stepped closer, scanning him in a pillar of green light. The readout blinked:
USER-NULL. UNIDENTIFIED. PRIMARY INDEX: CORRUPTED.
He tried to ask DeadMouth what that meant, but the drone had drifted upward, strangely quiet. Shadows lengthened along the ceiling. The medbay's glassy walls showed only his reflection, warped and uncertain.
The Library was a corridor lined with liquid light. No books. Data-sleeves, hovering and gently spinning, shimmering as he neared, like water trying to remember fire, like memory trying to recall its own birth. He reached for one. It collapsed into dust, gone before he could feel its weight. He tried another. A voice played—a fragment, a shiver—his voice, maybe?
Speaking a name he didn't know, in a language that shouldn't have belonged to him.
Then nothing. A silence so dense it felt like drowning.
"Ever read a book that reads you back?" DeadMouth said, dry as a sun-bleached bone. "Welcome to the trauma archive."
And with that, the panic finally bloomed—wide and bright, a flower fed on loss, rootless, uncontainable.
He stumbled back, clutching his chest, his own breath suddenly unfamiliar, as if the ship, the light, the drone, and the corridors were all conspiring to rewrite him, one empty room at a time.
He walked faster now. Room to room, quarters with made beds but no belongings. Observation decks opened onto stars he didn't recognize, nebulae twisted into shapes that suggested wounds more than wonders.
He turned a corner. The hallway was unfamiliar. He glanced back. No door, no sign of where he'd come from.
"Did this hall exist five minutes ago?" he muttered.
"Existential dread now at medium-rare," DeadMouth quipped.
He found a door. No handle, no seam, just a surface that parted as he approached.
He stepped inside.
A viewing dome—cathedral-sized, lined in glass. Space spilled in, silent and overwhelming. Beyond the ship, a magnetar bent the light, shredding a gas giant into bright ribbons. Lightning flickered across the void, blue and gold and white, dancing on the edges of physics.
He moved closer, hand on the glass. It was warm—impossibly, as if someone else was already there.
"I've seen this before," he whispered.
DeadMouth, for once, said nothing.
The lights faded. The glass dimmed. When he turned, the corridor behind was gone—replaced by a different hall, longer, narrow, lines he didn't recognize etched in the floor. The air was sharp with copper and ozone.
He kept walking.
"This isn't where I came from."
DeadMouth floated at his shoulder. "No. It's where you're going."
Doors shut behind.
He walked.
The hallway stretched, not by distance, but by defiance. Each step pulled the corridor further away. The lights pulsed overhead, slow as a heartbeat.
He paused. Glanced back.
No door. Just more hallway. His reflection was gone from the steel.
A door appeared on his left. No markings, just the hush of something waiting.
He stepped through.
Inside: a wardrobe, curated, not industrial. Suits aligned—sleek, armored, glowing, each one meant for a world he couldn't remember. Deep-sea, radiation, desert, flame. His eyes kept drifting to a navy overall: matte, minimal, built for movement.
He touched it. The fabric shifted, adjusted, wrapped him in. The seams crawled into place—no resistance, just a fit. Not protection, exactly. Permission.
For the first time, he could breathe.
DeadMouth hovered at the entrance, silent.
"No jokes?"
"You were naked. Now you're not. We call that character development."
He smiled. Stepped out.
Now the hallway was warm-lit, metallic, doors aligned. Lights flickered beneath his feet. At the far end—a painting. As he approached, the image resolved. The same hall, same doors, same lighting, but in the painting he was there, standing where he stood.
Behind him, in the painting, was a door that hadn't been there before.
He turned. There it was.
The new door cycled colors, liquid across the surface. Red, green, grey, blue, orange, again.
DeadMouth edged closer.
"You need a name, by the way. My suggestions are genius, but you seem picky."
He paused. "Just call me... Adam."
The name lingered. The door cycled, blue, faster, then slower.
He reached out, touched it...
And the world turned white.
* * *
For a moment, only whiteness. Then shadow, then shape.
He was sitting.
A table. A chair. Light—cold, unblinking—in his face.
He tried to speak. His lips moved, but the air was thick, as if packed with invisible cloth. No DeadMouth. No ship's hum. Just him, and a pane of dark glass. Mirror or window? He couldn't tell. He felt watched. Or maybe it was worse—maybe there was nothing at all.
The questions came, no voice attached.
Who are you?
No answer. His throat locked. Air tasted wrong.
Where did you come from?
His hands curled on the table. Cold metal bit his palms. He tried to remember his own name.
What is your position aboard this ship?
His chest tightened. He tried to answer—nothing. Only the sound of blood in his ears.
What is your background?
The questions circled, faster now. His vision blurred at the edges. Light sharpened, shadows deepened, the glass turned black.
Who are you?
His mouth worked. "Adam," he thought, but the word splintered, thin as a whisper in a storm.
Who are you?
Again. And again. The questions stacked, looped, pressed from every angle. He squeezed his eyes shut. The table felt welded to his skin. Sweat stung his eyes; breath came in short bursts. The voice was his own now—accusing, desperate.
Who are you?
He screamed.
Light fractured—soundless, absolute.
Gravity collapsed him, the weight doubling, tripling, pinning him in place. He felt himself sinking, skin to steel, pulse to metal. The voices multiplied, shouting, whispering, hissing:
Who are you?
Who are you?
WHO ARE YOU?
He tried to crawl away, but the room closed in. The walls pulsed with noise, the floor drummed with his heartbeat.
Everything tilted. The world flickered, flickered, gone.
Darkness took him.
* * *
He surfaced, slow and thick, as if fighting through glue.
Lights. Cold. The beep of a monitor.
DeadMouth hovered inches from his face, lens dialed in close.
"Sheesh. One minute you're opening a door, next you faint like a princess at a paternity test. What gives?"
Adam groaned. His chest ached, his breath ragged. The medbay's white light felt like a slap.
"I was... interrogated. By myself, I think. It felt real. Like peeling off my own skin."
DeadMouth's lens irised, flickering with a smirk. "That's not horrifying at all. Should I schedule you a follow-up with a cheese plate, or just let you improvise next time?"
Adam sat up. Still in the navy suit, still on the ship. The questions hadn't left. They'd just gone quiet, lurking like mold behind the walls.
He looked DeadMouth in the eye. "You knew something. When I said 'interrogation,' you froze. Don't lie."
DeadMouth stilled, the hum of his rotors dropping.
"I'm just here, Adam. Woke up before you did. Long enough to forget how it started. I've seen rooms change, people vanish, corridors go nowhere. I float. I watch."
Adam steadied his breath. "So you're like me."
"I don't know what you are," DeadMouth said, voice soft as feedback. "But I know I'm not your enemy."
Silence. Heavy, but honest.
A door hissed open—cyan light poured in.
DeadMouth nodded toward it. "Progress or doom. My money's on both."
Adam stood, body humming with tension, and stepped through.
Back in the Viewing Room: the glass dome, the scatter of stars. The magnetar was a ghost on the horizon, barely a flicker. The ship slid through the void, past gas clouds that inked and twisted, asteroids drifting in slow orbits.
Adam dropped to his knees—not out of weakness, but weight.
"What's the point?" he muttered. "Why this ship? Where are we going?"
DeadMouth hovered beside him. "No idea. That's above my pay grade. Maybe you should make your own point. It's what I do."
Adam pressed his palms to the floor. "How do I invent purpose when I don't even know what I am?"
DeadMouth circled lower. "One step at a time. That's the trick."
A beat. "I'm here. For whatever that's worth."
The stars outside didn't seem so distant.
Then the ship screamed.
Alarms blared, lights snapped red. The floor bucked, the air vibrated in Adam's teeth.
He ran for the bridge. Doors opened ahead, consoles howled static, data gibbered on every screen.
"Kill this noise!" he shouted.
DeadMouth spiraled overhead. "Working on it! No override, no code—this isn't in the manual!"
Adam gripped the console. Closed his eyes. Breathed.
He typed: ADAM
Everything stopped. Silence dropped like a stone.
The viewport shimmered, adjusted.
A black hole bloomed ahead, devouring the cosmos, light bending into oblivion. The ship slid toward it.
Adam stepped forward, hands on the rail. DeadMouth watched, for once, without a quip.
"Okay," Adam said, voice thin, steady. "Let's see what this thing can do."
He sat. The ship waited.
He took the wheel.