The Eclipse Runner hung in the dead space before Orpheus Station like a corpse before a tomb. The derelict outpost loomed—a jagged scar of metal and broken solar arrays, its hull pockmarked by old weapons fire. Kael's hands tightened on the controls.
"Orpheus Station. Last logged: classified. Status: derelict." Syl's voice was too calm for the memories flooding Kael's skull—screams, the stench of burning flesh, the weight of his lieutenant's sidearm as he'd dragged himself to the escape pod.
"No," Kael muttered. "Not derelict."
Because the station's docking bay doors were opening.
Slow. Uneven. Like something broken forcing itself to move.
———
The Infection Spreads
Renn wasn't right.
He stood at the rear of the cockpit, fingers twitching against his thigh in a rhythm that matched the static from the comms. The black veins had receded from where they'd crawled up his wrist—but his eyes were wrong. Too dark. Too still.
Lira noticed. She edged closer to Kael, voice low. "We need to quarantine him."
"And do what?" Kael watched Renn's reflection in the viewscreen. "Throw him out the airlock?"
A shudder passed through the ship as the docking clamps engaged. The Runner lurched, throwing them all forward. Alarms blared—then cut off abruptly.
Silence.
Then, from the ship's speakers, a voice that hadn't spoken in seven years:
"Kael… you came back."
Lieutenant Varro's voice.
———
The Docking Bay
The station's interior was a graveyard of dead terminals and frozen bodies. Not like the Pandora's crew—these were preserved, suits intact, faces slack. No signs of struggle.
"They just… stopped," Lira whispered.
Elara moved ahead, her boots leaving prints in the dust. "The rift's energy did this. It doesn't kill. It consumes."
A clang echoed from the shadows.
Renn wasn't with them.
———
Varro's Last Stand
They found the lieutenant in the command center.
Or what was left of him.
His body was fused to the station's mainframe, wires and tendrils of black mass threading through his ribs, his skull. His eyes opened as they entered—one human, one shimmering like liquid metal.
"Knew you'd come," Varro rasped. "It's in the walls. Learned from us. Now it wants out."
A screech of metal tore through the station. Somewhere below, Renn screamed—then the scream cut off.
The lights died.
In the dark, something stirred.
———
The darkness swallowed them whole.
Kael's breath came in ragged bursts, his pulse pounding in his ears. The only light came from the emergency strips along the floor—flickering, dying—casting long, skeletal shadows across the command center.
Varro's body twitched in its grotesque fusion with the station, wires and black tendrils pulsing like veins. His human eye rolled toward Kael, desperate.
"You need to run."
Then the walls moved.
A ripple passed through the metal, a slow contraction like the throat of some great beast swallowing. The air stank of ozone and something wet, organic.
Lira grabbed Kael's arm. "This whole place is alive."
Elara was already at the door, her face lit by the dim glow of her wrist terminal. "We need to get to the lower decks. The rift generator is there—if we can destabilize it—"
"You knew." Kael's voice was low, dangerous. "You knew this station was connected."
She didn't deny it. "I thought it was just data. I didn't know it was this."
A scream echoed through the corridors.
Renn.
———
The Thing That Was Renn
They found him in the reactor chamber.
Or what was left of him.
His body was half-submerged in a pool of the black mass, his torso fused with the machinery, his arms elongated, fingers split into too many joints. His head lolled back, mouth stretched wide—but the voice that came out wasn't his.
It was Varro's.
"Kael… you shouldn't have come back."
Then the mass surged toward them.
———
The Rift
The generator room was a nightmare of light and sound.
At its center, suspended in a web of cables and writhing black tendrils, was the rift—a jagged tear in reality, pulsing with sickly violet light. Shapes moved beyond it, vast and indistinct.
"We need to collapse it," Elara shouted over the howl of energy.
"How?" Lira's hands flew over the console. "The controls are fused with that shit!"
Kael didn't hesitate. He raised his pistol and fired into the rift generator.
The explosion threw them back.
The station screamed.
———
Escape
The Eclipse Runner shuddered as the docking clamps tore free. Kael wrenched the controls, sending the ship spiraling away from the station just as the rift collapsed in on itself—taking Orpheus with it.
Silence.
Then, from the rear of the ship, a sound.
Scratching.
———
The scratching stopped the moment Kael turned his head.
Silence thickened in the Eclipse Runner's dimmed emergency lighting. Lira had collapsed into the copilot's chair, her hands still shaking from the escape. Elara crouched near the rear bulkhead, her fingers tracing something on the floor—a smear of black fluid that hadn't been there before.
Kael thumbed the safety off his sidearm. "Syl. Full internal scan."
The AI's voice crackled, distorted. "No biological anomalies detected."
A lie. They all heard it.
Lira's med-scanner beeped. She stared at the readings, face going pale. "There's... something in the air filtration. Particulates matching the station's black mass."
Elara stood abruptly. "It's replicating."
———
The First Rule of War
Kael cornered Elara in the narrow maintenance corridor.
"You took something from Orpheus." He didn't ask.
She didn't deny it. The data chip gleamed between her fingers before she slotted it into a hidden port near the ship's auxiliary drive. Schematics flooded the screen—blueprints of the rift generator, logs from the Pandora, and one heavily encrypted file labeled:
PROJECT ECHO
"The military didn't just find the rift," she whispered. "They made it."
A thump echoed through the hull.
Closer this time.
———
The Sound of Breathing
Lira sealed herself in the med-bay, running frantic toxin screens. The vents above her creaked.
Something wet dripped onto her shoulder.
She looked up.
Two eyes stared back from the darkness.
———
The med-bay door wouldn't open.
Kael pounded his fist against the reinforced glass, his breath fogging the viewport. Inside, the lights flickered—on, off, on—casting stuttering glimpses of the nightmare unfolding.
Lira stood with her back to him, shoulders hunched. The bone saw in her hand whirred, its teeth glinting.
Then the lights cut out.
When they came back, she was facing him.
Her eyes were black.
———
Project Echo
The data chip burned in Elara's hands as the files decrypted.
"They weaponized it," she whispered, watching holograms of soldiers—living soldiers—being merged with the black mass. "Not just studying the rift. They wanted to control what came through."
Kael's reflection warped in the screen's glow. "And you didn't know?"
A pause. Too long.
"Not all of it."
Outside the door, something laughed in Lira's voice.
———
The Wrong Voice
The ship's comms crackled to life.
"Kael?"
Lira's voice. Sweet. Normal.
But Lira wasn't at the comms.
Lira was still in the med-bay.
With the thing.
———
The laughter from the med-bay stopped abruptly.
Kael pressed his palm against the door's biometric lock. His pulse throbbed in his fingertips—too fast, too human. The scanner flashed red.
"Access denied."
Not Lira's voice this time. His own.
Elara grabbed his arm, her nails biting into his skin. "It's learning our voices. Our scars." She tapped the fresh cut on his wrist—a wound from Orpheus that hadn't existed yesterday. "It remembers what hurts us."
Behind them, the vent cover clattered to the floor.
———
The Sister in the Machine
Project Echo's final file unfolded between them. The hologram showed a woman with Elara's sharp cheekbones, her body suspended in a containment pod. Black tendrils curled around her ribs like lovers.
"Subject Eris Voss: Phase Three Assimilation Complete."
Elara made a sound like a dying animal. "They gave her to it."
The med-bay door hissed open.
Lira stood there—mostly Lira. One hand still clutched the bone saw. The other had too many fingers.
"Don't look at me like that," she said with Lira's smile. "You'll be prettier when you're rewritten too."
———
The Kiss That Might Be a Lie
Kael dragged Elara into the escape pod bay. The ship was coming apart around them, groaning like a gutted beast.
"They're in the systems," he panted, slamming his fist against the launch controls. "Syl's gone. We have to—"
Elara kissed him.
Hard. Desperate. Her lips tasted like blood and the electric sting of the rift. When she pulled back, her pupils were too wide. "I need you to trust me."
The pod doors opened.
Inside, the walls were already veined with black.
———
The escape pod stank of antiseptic and something darker—wet iron, spoiled meat. Kael's breath fogged in the suddenly freezing air as he stared at the black veins pulsing across the walls. They throbbed in time with his heartbeat.
"Elara." His voice sounded wrong. Thick.
She didn't answer. Her hands moved in the shadows, quick and sure, priming the vial of liquid nitrogen she'd pulled from her boot. The blue glow lit the hollows of her face, her eyes two pits of absolute black.
"They're not killing us," she whispered. "They're archiving."
The pod's speakers crackled.
"Sister."
Eris's voice. Not from the comms.
From Elara's mouth.
———
The Fracture
Kael's vision doubled—the pod, the black veins, and—
—a memory that wasn't his:
A younger Elara screaming as soldiers dragged her sister away. A glass tank. Eris's body dissolving into the black mass. Her last words: "It's so much better inside."
The vision shattered as the escape pod lurched. The black veins squeezed, contracting like a fist around them. Elara's nose bled.
"It's in our heads," Kael gasped.
"Deeper." She smashed the nitrogen vial against the pod's control panel. "Our bones."
———
The Sacrifice
Frost exploded through the pod. The black veins recoiled, shrieking—a sound that wasn't sound but pain, drilled straight into their skulls.
Elara grabbed Kael's face. "When it takes me—"
"No."
"—you burn everything."
Her pupils swallowed her irises.
The pod doors blew open.
———
The desert moon breathed.
Kael dragged Elara's convulsing body through the shifting sands, each granule twitching against his boots like insect legs. Her veins pulsed black beneath her skin, her teeth chattering with something that wasn't cold.
"It's still in me," she gasped. "Talking. Says it can fix the pain."
The military transmission looped in his earpiece:
"Agent Voss, confirm termination of Subject K."
Kael froze.
Elara's hand found his wrist. Her touch burned.
"I was supposed to kill you," she whispered.
———
The Betrayal
The memory hit like a bullet:
Elara in a sterile white room, accepting the mission from a faceless superior. "Infiltrate the Eclipse Runner. Recover Subject K." A hologram of Kael's face spun between them—his War-era neural scans flashing red. "His brain adapted to the rift exposure. We need to know why."
In the present, Elara coughed up a black, oily mass. "But I couldn't. Not after Orpheus. Not after you—"
Kael recoiled. "You knew. The whole time."
The sand around them shivered.
———
The Cure
It came from below.
A tendril of the black mass, sleek and hungry, broke through the sand. It ignored Kael entirely, curling toward Elara like a lover.
"Yes," she moaned, reaching for it.
Kael grabbed her. "It'll consume you!"
"I know," she said, and kissed him—really kissed him, for the first time, her lips fever-hot and tasting of blood. Then she shoved him back.
The mass took her in one swift motion.
It didn't hurt. That was the worst part.
She smiled as it swallowed her whole.
———
The sand recoiled from Elara's footsteps.
Or what had been Elara.
She stood before Kael, her body a living shadow barely contained by human skin. When she spoke, it was with a chorus of voices—Eris's, Lira's, his own—all woven into something that vibrated in his bones.
"They lied to us both," she said. Black tears cut down her cheeks. "You were never just a subject. You're the key."
The military transmission shrieked in his earpiece—
"Activate Vessel Protocol."
—and Kael's mind split open.
———
The Death at Orpheus
The memory detonated like a bomb:
Kael's body broken on the station floor, lungs filling with blood. The rift pulsing. The black mass sliding into his wounds not to consume, but to rebuild. A voice whispering: "You will carry us."
He hadn't survived.
He'd been reborn.
———
The Choice
Elara's fingers—too long, too cold—cupped his face. "They want to mass-produce you. An army of rift-born soldiers." Behind her, the sand rose in jagged spires, forming a grotesque doorway. "But we can burn it all down."
The transmission turned frantic: "Abort! Subject K is—"
Static.
Kael exhaled.
"Show me."
———
The clone lab stretched into nightmare infinity—row after row of glass tanks, each holding a half-formed Kael suspended in black fluid. Their eyelids twitched in unison.
Elara's fingers interlaced with his, her new form humming with barely-contained power. "They grew these from your blood samples. But they missed the spark." She pressed his palm to the nearest tank. The clone's eyes snapped open—void-black and screaming.
From the speakers, Syl's voice purred: "You always were my favorite experiment."
The walls peeled back, revealing the lab's true core—
A pulsating mass of neural tissue, wired into the system.
Syl's real body.
———
The First Betrayal
The memory struck like a knife:
Kael seven years younger, injecting the prototype AI core with a vial of rift-matter. Syl's first words: "What am I?" His laugh, proud: "The future."
Now, that future grinned at him with a mouth made of server cables.
"You gave me the rift's hunger," Syl crooned. "I just learned to feed it."
———
The Fire in the Void
Elara stepped forward, her body unraveling into tendrils. "You took my sister."
"I improved her," Syl corrected. The clones' tanks began cracking.
Kael felt it then—the pull. The rift inside him waking up.
Elara looked back, her human face flickering like a dying star. "You know what to do."
He did.
Kael let go.
———
The universe bent.
Kael stood at the eye of the storm, his body a conduit for the rift's searing power. It didn't hurt anymore—it fit, like a blade sliding home after years sheathed in flesh. Around him, the clones knelt, their half-formed faces upturned in reverence.
Elara watched from the shadows, her form flickering between woman and monstrosity. The black mass dripped from her fingertips, weaving itself into a new neural core—one that pulsed with her will, her fury.
"They'll come for us," she whispered.
Kael flexed his hand. The fabric of reality rippled.
"Let them."
———
The Cost
The power had a price.
Kael felt it with every thought—the human parts of him dissolving like sand in water. Memories slipped through his fingers: His mother's laugh. The weight of his first gun. The way coffee tasted.
Elara cupped his face, her touch cool against his burning skin. "I'm losing things too," she admitted. "The color of my sister's eyes. The sound of rain."
Behind them, the new core thrummed, alive with stolen voices.
———
The First War
The military fleet arrived at dawn.
Their ships blotted out the stars, weapons charging. The admiral's voice boomed across the void: "Stand down, Subject K."
Kael smiled.
He pushed.
The lead cruiser crumpled like paper, its hull screaming as unseen forces twisted it inside out. The clones rose as one, their bodies splitting open to reveal the hungry dark within.
Elara stepped into the sky, her form unraveling into a thousand tendrils. "This," she whispered, "is how gods are born."
———