Lan Jinyue opened his eyes to darkness.
Not totally dark; faint veins of light pulsed along the ceiling, thin and intermittent, as if the walls themselves were struggling to breathe. His body ached in every place a body could ache. Fever still lingered in him, though it had dulled into something distant, like embers smouldering beneath skin.
The air was foul. Each breath carried the tang of rust and stale metal, thick enough to taste. His throat burned when he swallowed. He turned his head slowly, the movement sending a shiver of pain through his neck.
Beneath him, the floor was cold metal plating, pitted with condensation, the moisture beading against his bare skin. Above, something hummed—a deep, resonant vibration, like the heartbeat of a sleeping beast, buried inside the ship's hollow ribs. The sound thrummed through his bones, alive in a way that made his stomach clench.
He pushed himself up on one elbow. His muscles screamed. The space around him stretched in broken geometry—walls split open, warped by time, cables hanging like dead vines. Faded symbols marked the panels, their meanings lost, the language of a civilization that had long since rotted away. The ship's interior was a carcass, a relic left to decay, yet not quite dead.
His eyes adjusted. Shadows coalesced into shapes—skeletal consoles, shattered screens half-buried in grime, a thin mist coiling near the floor, cold and chemical, rolling with each tremor of the ship. The air tasted of ozone and old blood.
Something in here was still functioning.
Jinyue's pulse spiked. He listened.
There—
A faint hiss, like steam escaping, followed by the whirring click of mechanical joints. His breath hitched. The sound came again, closer, uneven, dragging.
From between the hanging cables, a figure emerged.
It was tall, skeletal, a robot—if one could still call it that. Its frame was corroded, warped, one arm missing entirely, the other sparking at the elbow. Its single remaining eye—a cracked, yellowed lens—flickered erratically, casting sickly light across the rusted walls. The smell of burnt circuitry filled the air, sharp and acrid, like something dying.
It spoke.
A burst of static crackled from its chest, followed by distorted syllables—twisted, broken, almost like words, but wrong, as if the language had rotted alongside the machine. Jinyue stared, silent, uncomprehending. His mind raced, but his body refused to move.
The machine tilted its head. Its lens flickered, scanning him. Then, without warning, it lurched forward, each step jerky, uneven, the scrape of metal on metal echoing like nails on bone.
"Wait—" His voice was a rasp, hoarse from disuse. He tried to back away, but his body betrayed him. His legs wouldn't obey. His hands slipped on the slick metal, useless.
The robot reached him. Its clawed hand—cold, heavy, trembling with mechanical strain—latched onto his wrist. The grip was iron.
"Let go." He hissed, twisting, pulling, but his strength was gone. The fever had left him clumsy, slow. His fingers clawed at the machine's arm, but the metal didn't yield.
The robot answered with another burst of static, almost like a command. Then it began dragging him across the floor.
Jinyue's body jolted over the metal plates, the friction scraping his palms raw as he tried to resist. Panic flared in his chest, sharp and bright. He shouted—half plea, half fury—but the machine ignored him completely.
Ahead, the corridor glowed faintly, a deep orange light bleeding through the seams of a heavy door. The closer they came, the stronger the heat grew, washing over his fevered skin until sweat beaded on his forehead.
"No—" The word tore from him, weak, broken. His voice cracked, swallowed by the ship's inner rumble.
The door split open with a hiss. The light poured out, blinding.
Inside was a chamber unlike the rest—cleaner, warmer, alive. Golden filaments ran through the walls, pulsing softly like veins. At the center stood a pod, oval-shaped, filled with steam that glowed faintly from within.
The robot dragged him straight toward it.
Jinyue twisted, kicking weakly, his bare feet slipping on the wet metal."Stop! I said—stop!" The words broke into coughs. His body was too weak; each movement drained what little strength he had left.
The machine didn't respond. It lifted him with a mechanical whine, its claw pressing bruises into his arm, and lowered him into the open pod. The heat hit instantly—thick, wet, suffocating. His lungs seized from the sudden rush.
The pod began to close.
"Wait! Stop!" His fists slammed against the curved glass, weak, desperate. The sound was dull, swallowed by the hum of the machine. The pod sealed shut with a low hiss, locking him inside.
Light flooded his vision, golden and blinding. The heat climbed higher, wrapping him in its suffocating grip. He gasped, beating against the barrier, but the air thickened until even movement felt heavy.
His heart thundered. Fear clawed through the fever's haze.
Then the warmth deepened—past pain, past awareness—until it felt like the air itself was pressing into him, pulling at his consciousness, dragging him under.
His hands slipped from the glass.
Lan Jinyue's body went slack.
The last sound he heard before darkness took him was the soft hum of the ship's ancient heartbeat, steady and alive, as if the machine had claimed him.
******
At first, there was nothing.
Then…sound.
A low vibration, steady and rhythmic, pulsing through his bones like a second heartbeat. It wrapped around him, muffled and slow, and for a moment, he thought he was underwater, suspended in some dreamless deep. His mind drifted, untethered, half-memories, half-hallucinations, flashes of light and shadow, too bright, too close.
A boardroom table, reflected in polished glass. The soft shimmer of a wine cup, poisoned and gleaming. A hand, pale and trembling, pouring death with a smile. His wife's voice, smooth as silk, drawn across skin: "You always did prefer your papers over me,"
Then the light shifted, and her face melted into something else, unfamiliar, alien, dead, eyes burning gold.
The hum deepened.
It filled his chest, pressed against his ribs, until he couldn't tell where his own pulse ended and the ship's began. Warmth spread through him, slow and methodical, crawling into his limbs, seeping into his bones. The ache in his ankle dulled, and the sharp sting of his scraped palms softened. Something inside the pod hissed quietly, like a deep exhale.
He should have felt comfort.
He didn't.
The light changed, gold bled into white, then dimmed to a soft amber glow. The fever haze in his mind thinned, enough for thought to return, heavy and disoriented.
His fingers twitched first. Then his legs. His body was slick with moisture; his skin still burned faintly where the heat had seeped too deep. He drew a shaky breath. The air was thick, but no longer choking.
I'm still alive.
His eyes opened fully.
And he realised the glow had faded. The chamber was dim now, shadows crawling along the curved walls. The hum had softened into a steady throb, somewhere deep below the floor.
He was lying in the same pod, its interior fogged with thin mist. The glass above him was half-opaque, smeared with condensation. Slowly, he pushed himself up.
His body resisted, muscles weak, but functional. He flexed his ankle, expecting pain
Nothing.
He stared.
The swelling was gone. The bruises had faded. Even the cuts on his palms were smooth, healed, as if they'd never been. He touched his leg, prodding the skin where the sprain had throbbed—no tenderness, no ache. Just… wholeness.
His breath hitched.
What the hell…?
The fever still lingered, a dull ember in his veins, but the weakness, the bone-deep exhaustion, was gone.
The pod hissed beneath his palms, responding to his movement. He froze. The sound deepened, mechanical locks releasing one after another. The pod began to open.
Jinyue's heart leapt into his throat.
Steam poured out, curling around him as the top split open with a low hiss. The light beyond was dim and cold, the air laced with the same scent of rust and ozone. He didn't wait for the lid to rise completely. He shoved it upward with both hands and stumbled out, his feet landing hard on the slick metal floor.
The chamber looked different from above, wider than he remembered, filled with the faint silhouettes of machines embedded in the walls. The same pulsing lines of gold light flickered intermittently, as if the ship were struggling to stay awake.
His first instinct was to leave.
Every cell in his body screamed to run.
He didn't know what this place was, or what it wanted, but he had no intention of finding out. He turned toward the corridor, legs unsteady but moving, breath shallow from the chill…
Then
He stopped.
A shadow moved near the doorway.
The damaged robot stood there, framed by the dull glow of the corridor. Its rusted body leaned slightly to one side, sparks twitching along the broken joints of its arm. The single functioning eye, glowing a steady, eerie yellow, locked onto him.
It didn't move.
It just stared.
Jinyue's pulse hammered. His throat went dry. The silence between them stretched, thin as wire, taut as a snapped bowstring.
He took one step backwards.
His tail, which had been coiled loosely around his waist, straightened and bristled, the fur standing on end like a cat's before a strike. A low, warning growl vibrated in his chest. It shocked him, undeniably, the voice came from him, at the same time, it was not his own. It sounded something primal, something from the body he'd inherited.
The robot's eye flickered, once, as if in acknowledgement.
Then it took a step forward.