The bridge wasn't a place of order anymore. It was a madhouse. The sight of that colossal, swallowing shadow on the main view screen had shattered the calm like a hammer on glass. Commander Voss, the man who was supposed to be a rock, stood frozen, his eyes wide with a terror that no drill or enemy could have prepared him for. He was a man of logic and numbers, and what he was seeing defied both.
"Full power to shields!" someone screamed, but the voice was lost in a rising chorus of panicked shouts. "Damage report! What is that thing?"
Shane felt a cold, empty feeling in his stomach. He had warned them, but it didn't matter. Knowing what was coming didn't make it any less terrifying. The void wasn't an enemy they could fight with lasers or missiles. It was a force of nature, a thing that simply was.
Suddenly, a series of alarms blared, not with the sharp, electronic tones of a system failure, but with a deep, moaning groan that sounded like a living thing in pain. The lights on the bridge flickered wildly. Consoles went dark, their screens fizzing and sparking. The Supreme itself seemed to be reacting. The floor beneath their feet began to vibrate, not from an engine, but from some deeper, organic shudder.
"Helm, report!" Voss yelled, finding his voice at last.
"No response, Commander!" a panicked crew member yelled back. "Controls are locked! We're not getting any power to the thrusters!"
Shane knew why. The Void wasn't just physical. It was a consciousness, a cosmic wave that was erasing reality. And as it got closer, it was starting to erase the rules that kept their technology working. The ship wasn't broken; it was being unmade.
That's when the screams started. Not from the bridge, but from the corridors outside. A low, terrible wail that was part human, part something else. The doors to the bridge, a thick, armored shield meant to keep out the dangers of space, began to bulge inward, the metal groaning and twisting as if it were soft clay.
"Seal the blast doors!" Voss ordered, but the command was useless. A thick, veiny growth, like some kind of monstrous root, pushed through a crack in the doorframe. It was a deep, purple-black color and pulsed with an unsettling light. The growth moved fast, spreading across the metal, pushing it apart. A section of the door bulged, then burst open with a wet, cracking sound.
More crew members, their bodies twisted and contorted, poured into the bridge. They were the afflicted. Their skin was pale and waxy, their eyes blank and glassy. Some were still recognizable, but their limbs moved with a jerky, unnatural rhythm. Their mouths were stretched into wide, silent, screaming shapes. They were not human anymore. They were puppets, their strings being pulled by some invisible, cosmic puppeteer.
The action was fast and horrifying. The security detail drew their stun guns and fired, but the shots had no effect. The twisted bodies absorbed the energy and kept coming, their movements getting faster. One of the afflicted grabbed a terrified crew member and began to pull his arm, twisting it with impossible force until the bone snapped with a sickening crunch. The scream was cut short as the attacker's hand covered his mouth, the fingers twitching like spider legs.
Shane knew he had to get out. He couldn't fight them. He wasn't a soldier. His only chance was to find Lyra. She was the only one who might be able to understand this. He squeezed between two panicked crew members and made a break for the back exit of the bridge, the one normally used for maintenance. He slid through just as one of the afflicted turned to face him, its face a horrifying mask of stretched flesh and vacant eyes.
He ran down a service tunnel, the narrow space amplifying the sounds of the chaos on the bridge. The ship's internal lighting was failing completely now. He had to use the small beam from his comms unit to find his way. The air was filled with that cloying, sweet smell again, and the low groans of the ship's living tissue. The walls of the corridor seemed to pulse with a faint, purple light, and the metal plating felt warm and soft to the touch. The Supreme was losing its fight, and the Void was remaking it in its own image.
He rounded a corner and came face-to-face with a scene from a nightmare. A group of scientists and engineers had been working in a small lab. Now, they were a single, unmoving mass. They had melted together, their bodies a horrifying blend of flesh and metal, their faces stretched in silent screams. A single, wide eye, a deep, inhuman blue, stared out from the center of the mess. It blinked slowly. Shane gagged and backed away. He had seen the cosmic, and now he was seeing its gory handiwork.
He finally reached Lyra's quarters, the door strangely untouched by the chaos. He fumbled with the control panel, his hands shaking. He had to force it open manually, the heavy door groaning as it opened a crack. He pushed it all the way open and stepped inside.
The room was dark. Lyra was there, but she wasn't on the floor or hiding. She was floating, a foot above her bed. Her eyes were closed, her body completely still. A faint, violet glow pulsed from her chest, a light so deep and strange that it didn't seem to belong to this reality. The room was filled with that same deep, unsettling silence Shane had felt in his lab, a vacuum of sound that pressed on his ears.
He took a step forward, his heart hammering. "Lyra?" he whispered, his voice cracking.
Her eyes snapped open. They weren't the soft brown he remembered. They were a solid, milky white, with no pupils or irises. A faint echo of a voice that wasn't hers spoke from her lips. "He is pleased," the voice said, and Shane knew instantly that it wasn't her speaking. "The door is open."
Shane felt a cold dread so deep it went beyond fear. He had found Lyra, but he hadn't found the key to fighting the Void. He had found the Void's key to them.