Commander Voss stared at the screen, at the cold, mocking message. His finger, still hovering over the button, trembled. The silence in the core control room was broken only by the low, inhuman chuckle of the Void. It wasn't a sound in the air; it was a feeling that ran through his mind, a cold, empty joy.
"Did you really think we would let you win?"
The voice, a twin of the one Shane had heard, was now a deep, rumbling presence in the very walls of the room. It was everywhere. It was the ship's new operating system.
Voss looked up, his eyes fixed on the core reactor. A massive, milky-white eye, a sickening mirror of the one on the view screen, had opened in the air above the reactor's core. It was not a projection. It was a physical thing, a cyclopean organ of pure, horrifying light. It watched him, a single, unblinking eye of a cosmic beast.
A high-pitched, metallic shriek ripped through the air, and the blast doors behind Voss began to groan, twisting open. A wave of corrupted crew members, their bodies fused with the ship's metal, poured into the room. They weren't shambling mindless husks anymore; they moved with a hungry, cunning grace. Their milky-white eyes were fixed on him, and they grinned with rows of razor-sharp teeth. They weren't just pawns; they were the Void's jubilant soldiers.
Shane felt the failure like a punch to the gut. The low thrum of the core reactor, a sound he hadn't noticed before, suddenly went silent in his mind. Then it came back, not as a machine's pulse, but as a deep, triumphant heartbeat. The Void's heartbeat. The mark on his arm flared with a burning, cold light, and the voice in his head was a chorus of cold, mocking laughter.
"You failed," the thought-voice said, laced with a new kind of contempt. "You are now trapped inside our heart. We are the machine."
Shane stumbled back, his mind reeling. The Void didn't just stop the detonation; it had taken over the core. The Supreme wasn't just a tomb anymore; it was a living, breathing part of the Void, a monster of flesh and steel, under its complete control.
He looked around the small maintenance room. The lights flickered and died completely, leaving him in darkness. The air was thick with the scent of ozone and decay, and he could feel a low thrumming under his feet. The ship was alive, and it wanted to kill him. He had to warn Voss. He had to know if he was still alive.
He turned on his comms unit again, praying for a signal. The screen was a mess of static. He was about to give up when a single word flashed on the screen: 'VOICE'. It was a voice command terminal, a last-resort link to the bridge. He had to try.
"Voss! Commander Voss, do you read me?" he yelled into the comms.
A crackle of static, and then a faint, tired voice came through. It was filled with a new, weary desperation.
"Shane? Is that you? The plan... it didn't work. It bypassed the detonation. It's inside the core. It's a… a living thing, Shane. And it's sending them to me."
"It didn't just bypass the core," Shane said, his voice a strained whisper. "It assimilated it. It's a part of the ship now. We aren't on an ark anymore, Commander. We're on a living weapon, and it's aimed right at us."
"They're coming for me," Voss said, his voice flat. "I can't fight them all. It's over."
"No!" Shane screamed into the comms. "It's not. We can't destroy the ship from the outside, but we can fight it from the inside."
A deep, bone-vibrating laugh echoed from the comms, and the Void's voice, now a booming, terrifying sound, spoke through Voss's terminal. "You are a fly in a web. You cannot fight the weaver."
"It's a connection, Shane," Voss said, his voice low and urgent, ignoring the laugh. "I saw it on the screen. It's using the ship's neural network, the bi-organic systems, to control everything. It's like a computer virus, but it's alive."
Shane felt a cold, sharp shock of understanding. That was it. The ship was a living being. The Void had simply taken it over. The only way to stop it was to sever the connection between the Void and the ship's brain, its neural network.
"Voss, you have to get to the main neural hub!" Shane yelled. "It's in the ship's brain stem, deep in the lower decks. That's where it's controlling everything. You have to destroy it."
Voss's voice was a whisper of disbelief. "That's a suicide run. No one has ever gone down there. The system is too unstable, too protected."
"That's why it's our only chance! It's our last stand! I'll go to the other access point. We'll overload it. We'll sever its connection. It's the only way to fight a mind-god with a virus!"
A chorus of terrible laughter erupted from the comms, and the Void's voice was a triumphant roar. "A foolish plan. You are trapped. The web is already woven. You will not escape."
The comms went dead. Voss was gone. The voice was now a constant, raging thunder in Shane's head. The mark on his arm was burning, and he felt a profound, chilling sense of triumph from the Void. It was celebrating. He was its prisoner. He had to move. He had to get to the neural hub. He was a scientist, not a soldier, but he was all that was left. He was the last line of defence.