Waking up in a bed was a definite improvement over the previous day.
Not "I'm alive and thriving" improvement. More like "I'm not sleeping on a metal table beside the corpse corner" improvement.
Light from the Mess spilled into his room through the half-open door, and the fact that it was familiar made Blake's brain immediately decide this was now Normal Life Actually.
For a moment he just lay there, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember that he'd technically died.
Like… recently.
Car. Red light. Red car. Red everything. Physics. Crunch.
And yet here he was. In a surprisingly normal bed. In a surprisingly normal room. On a definitely not normal spaceship.
The human brain was an incredible machine. Give it twelve hours and a mattress and it would shrug off an interdimensional isekai death event like it was a weird weekend with bad decisions.
How quickly the human mind adjusts to strange surroundings.
He was already thinking about breakfast instead of existential dread. Evolution at its finest.
He got up, used the toilet, and stared at the shower like it owed him money.
The shower looked innocent enough—sleek metal, faint glow around the controls—but Blake was not trusting anything that might decide it needed "just a little more power" and then consume six months of emergency supply because it felt like turning warm mist into a personality.
Not until he had power up and running. Who knew what drain a simple shower might have on the emergency power?
For all he knew, starship showers were secretly miniature particle accelerators.
He could practically imagine the eulogy.
Here lies Blake Fisher.
Killed by hygiene.
Died as he lived—making terrible choices and underestimating basic household appliances.
He drank the rest of his bottled water and headed to have breakfast, his stomach growling loud enough to echo off the metal walls.
Apparently dying and resurrecting worked up an appetite.
"What to have this morning?" he asked himself with far too much optimism for a man who had two edible options and both of them tasted like disappointment.
Eggs benedict perhaps.
He pictured it—runny yolk, toasted muffin, sauce made by someone who wasn't him.
Or bacon and sausage today.
A dream. A fantasy. A lie.
You know what I really feel like? Emergency rations. Perfect.
He sighed dramatically at the universe and walked up to the food synthesizer like a condemned man approaching the gallows. The machine beeped at him with what felt like judgement.
While ordering rations and water, he pulled up the emergency power status, because apparently he enjoyed anxiety for breakfast.
The screen flickered to life, its glow washing across his face like a cosmic bank account statement.
[Emergency Power: 167 hours until depletion.]
Blake stared.
"What?" he blurted, offended. "So… 167 hours at current usage? I could sit on my ass for—"
He did the math badly in his head, panicked, did it again, got a different answer, and decided to stop doing math forever.
"That's… a lot," he concluded. "That's way more than I expected. Long enough to get comfy. Possibly long enough to go insane."
He paused, then spoke aloud because talking to himself was now officially part of his daily routine.
"And go insane while I did it. You know you couldn't cope with that level of boredom, Blakie-Boy."
He sat at a table by the door, facing away from the far corner of the Mess where the Dead Spaceman Storage Area lived.
He tried very hard not to think of it as the corpse corner.
He failed immediately.
He ate his ration bar with the enthusiasm of someone chewing on compressed cardboard while pretending it was food. Then he grabbed a couple more and another bottle of water because if there was one thing Blake had learned, it was that he was basically a magical repair smartphone with a battery life designed by a sadist.
Today's plan: explore north.
Yesterday he explored south and nearly got eaten by a door.
Today felt like a good day for new mistakes.
The passageway north was more of the same: debris, missing panels, wires hanging like the ship had been mugged and left to bleed. Emergency lights flickered like they were having an argument with reality.
The first interesting thing he found—besides closed doors—was a steel stairwell spiralling down.
It looked like the kind of stairwell serial killers used in old horror movies. The kind of stairwell that didn't lead to a basement, it led to Consequences.
He went down anyway for a quick look, because anxiety doesn't stop you from being an idiot. It just narrates it loudly while you do it.
It led to a much smaller passageway than the main corridor. Two metres by two metres, if he had to guess.
Cozy, in that coffin-like sort of way.
"Nope," Blake said immediately, turning around. "Not today. I'm not getting wedged into a murder hallway before breakfast has even settled."
Back upstairs, he continued north for another ten minutes until he reached a closed hatch similar to the Engineering/Cargo Bay hatch.
Same vibe.
Same "this could absolutely kill me."
And on the east side: an identical airlock.
More symmetry. Whoever built this ship clearly loved neat geometry. Blake suspected they also labelled their socks. Probably alphabetically. Probably with a spreadsheet.
"Symmetry is a big thing round here, I guess," he muttered. "At least it makes navigation easy. Unless it's all a trap designed by a space architect with OCD and murder in their heart."
He touched the hatch controls.
The door slid into the wall instantly.
Blake jumped back so hard he nearly tripped over his own dignity.
It moved faster than expected—fast enough that Blake yelped like someone had stepped on his soul.
He stared at the now-open entrance, heart hammering.
"Almost needed to strip some new pants off a skeleton then," he wheezed. "My first freebie, eh?"
He laughed nervously, but it was genuine. Fear and comedy went hand in hand when your life was a constant string of "what the fuck" moments.
Inside was clearly the bridge.
Blake froze at the threshold like an excited kid entering a theme park that had a fifty percent chance of collapsing into the void.
Space filled the main viewing screen in front of him, curving slightly at the edges to match the ship's frame.
Stars. So many stars.
They spilled across the screen like someone had thrown glitter onto black velvet and then forgotten how to stop.
Blake just stood there, mouth slightly open, brain briefly quiet for the first time since being hit by a car and rage-resurrected into a haunted spaceship.
He'd never seen the stars like this.
Earth's atmosphere had always softened everything. Even on a clear night, it had been like watching the universe through a smudged window.
This was… raw.
It felt like seeing the cosmos for the first time. Like someone had peeled off a filter he never knew was there.
He stood there for minutes, silently, until curiosity came back and tapped him on the shoulder like an annoying friend.
"Okay," he whispered. "Yes. Pretty. Very pretty. Great. Now, where's the part where I accidentally press a button and blow up a moon?"
He finally looked around the bridge.
Four seats in front of four control panels at the north end. A pair on the west, a pair on the east. Neatly arranged—too neatly. It reminded him of classrooms where everyone pretended to know what they were doing.
And then, because the ship hated him personally, there was an identical setup on the south end too.
Double the confusion.
Symmetry again.
"Why does this bridge have… two bridges?" he muttered. "Did they build redundancy, or did the designer just really love chairs?"
In the centre sat what could only be the Captain's chair.
It looked profoundly important. The kind of seat that commanded respect and probably also commanded things like "fire lasers."
"That would be my seat," Blake whispered. "Because of course it would."
He imagined himself pressing random buttons and accidentally declaring war on a nearby nebula.
"The odds of me flying this thing by myself are somewhere between zero and none," he said, then glared at the chair like it was responsible.
He walked over and sat down.
The chair adjusted to his weight automatically.
Convenient.
Also mildly terrifying.
A holo-screen shimmered into existence in front of him, not quite like the System messages—more ship-tech, less cosmic judgement.
It showed the status of ship systems.
All of them—besides life support—were red.
A sea of red. A Christmas tree of danger.
Engines: red.
Hull integrity: red.
Communications: red.
Everything: red.
The list kept going, each category splitting into subcategories like the ship was trying to show him exactly how fucked it was in excruciating detail.
It was like scrolling through a medical report for someone who'd been hit by a planet.
Then he saw it.
A.I Assistant.
Two words, glowing with the sweet hope of not being alone.
It had no subcategories. No details. Just… A.I Assistant.
Blake swallowed.
"If I repair this and it turns out to be the reason everyone died," he whispered, "I'm going to be so pissed."
He reached out and tapped it.
[A.I Assistant malfunction. Repair? Yes / No]
Blake stared at the prompt.
He didn't know how big the repair would be. Big repairs meant big energy drain, which meant him face-planting on the bridge floor while the ship laughed.
"I better load up," he muttered.
He chugged water, ate a ration bar, and braced like he was about to run a marathon instead of press a button.
"Yes."
His hand glowed and the light poured into the holo-screen, then spread up into the ceiling above the chair like the ship was about to summon an eldritch space demon.
Blake felt the energy drain start immediately.
Not like tired. Like… hollowed out. Like someone had unplugged his soul from the wall.
At sixty seconds, he ate another ration bar with the desperation of a starving raccoon.
At two minutes, he ate the last bar he had with him.
He was now powered entirely by compressed nutritional sadness and spite.
At three minutes, he was one second away from bolting out of the bridge screaming when the glow finally ceased.
Blake sagged in the chair, lightheaded, eyes watering from sheer stress—
A voice spoke.
"Greetings, Captain. I am your A.I Assistant. You may address me as Aubrey."
Blake froze.
The voice was calm, crisp, and had the unmistakable accent of an English butler who had seen unspeakable things and judged all of them.
It sounded like J.A.R.V.I.S if J.A.R.V.I.S had survived a hundred years alone and developed opinions.
Blake instantly decided he liked this AI.
"Hello," Blake said, voice cracking slightly. "Aubrey. Hi. I'm Blake Fisher. My title is Repairman. I got transported here from another place at my death. I arrived in a stasis tube."
He went with honesty because lying to a superintelligent computer felt like the kind of thing that ended with him being "politely" introduced to an airlock.
There was a pause.
Then Aubrey replied, warm and professional in a way that made Blake want to cry for reasons he refused to examine.
"Thank you, Mr Fisher. If you are indeed a transmigrated individual with a Repair skill, I will endeavour to make myself available to your needs. My first suggestion is that, since we are currently running on emergency power, I transfer myself to my more power-efficient remote unit."
Blake blinked.
"That sounds… sensible."
"Shocking, I know. It's almost as if I am designed for this."
Blake snorted despite himself.
The right arm of the captain's chair opened, and a small earpiece rose up from inside it.
It looked like alien Bluetooth.
"Please use the remote for further communication. Try not to eat it. Humans do that."
The chair closed again like it was washing its hands of responsibility.
The bridge went quiet.
Blake stared at the earpiece.
"Okay," he said slowly. "Next step is I push creepy random alien AI tech into my ear."
"Correct. In fairness, it is only creepy because you lack context and are primed for disaster."
"Also because I died yesterday," Blake snapped.
"Yes. That can make one a touch jumpy."
Blake sighed.
He hooked it over his ear.
It fit snugly, like it was custom-made for him, which honestly made it worse.
Then Aubrey's voice appeared inside his head with crystal clarity.
Blake flinched so hard he nearly launched himself out of the chair.
"Oh JESUS—"
"I am not Jesus. However, I appreciate your enthusiasm."
"You're in my head," Blake whispered.
"I am in your ear. Your head is simply where your consciousness happens to reside. It's a design choice. Questionable, but yours."
Blake rubbed his face.
"Okay. Great. Excellent. I'm going to pretend this is normal."
"We can proceed with my recommendations for bringing the ship to a functional condition. If you are sufficiently satisfied with the fit of my remote unit, Sir."
"It fits," Blake said. "It's great. It's perfect. It's not whispering threats. Yet."
"Give me time."
Blake stood up and started walking back toward the Mess, because he needed food, water, and the comforting knowledge that the skeletons still couldn't get up and chase him.
"First plan is returning to the synthesizer," Blake said. "My repair skill works off my energy levels in some way. I need food to recharge."
"Very well. Your explanation does answer some anomalous readings I am getting from your body."
Blake stopped mid-step.
"Anomalous readings."
"Yes. Mainly concerning what you refer to as 'energy,' which is… alarmingly low."
"Great," Blake muttered. "Even the AI thinks I need a snack."
"You do. Would you like me to display your energy level?"
"Yes," Blake said immediately. "That's actually useful."
Blake expected a holo-screen. Maybe a pop-up. Something reasonable.
Instead a number simply appeared in the top-right of his vision.
10%.
Blake stared at it.
"…That's better than I expected."
"It is not. It is merely not catastrophic."
"Thanks for the confidence."
"You are welcome."
Blake started walking again, because stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant spiralling.
"So," Blake said, forcing himself into practicality, "what happened to the ship? What killed everyone?"
He really, really hoped it wasn't a virus still floating around.
Or worse.
A rogue AI.
Aubrey paused.
"Massive solar flare. Quite the surprise. Certainly for me. Had I not been shut down for a rare high-level diagnostic, I could have offered greater warning. Without a bridge crew present, all automated systems could do was attempt to shield the ship as best it could. That was just over one hundred years ago."
Blake exhaled. Hard.
"A solar flare," he repeated. "Okay. Terrifying, but not contagious."
"Correct. You may cease imagining invisible space germs crawling into your pores."
"I wasn't—"
"You were."
Blake swallowed, shivering despite himself.
A hundred years. Alone. Dead crew. Silent ship.
"Poor bastards," he muttered.
He reached the Mess, grabbed more ration bars and water, and stuffed them into his pockets like a doomsday-prepper raccoon preparing for the apocalypse.
"What were your suggestions?" Blake asked. "I have System quests telling me to repair the main reactor core."
Aubrey made a sound that was, somehow, the audio equivalent of an eye-roll.
"I have limited confirmed information about individuals such as yourself. Mostly rumour and legend. One in several trillion with unexplainable abilities."
Blake paused mid-pocket-stuffing.
"I'm… a legend."
"You are. An extremely underwhelming one at present. However, yes. On this, though, the System and I agree. Power must be restored."
"Fantastic," Blake muttered. "I'm not just dead, I'm rare."
"You are a collectable. Try not to get scratched."
Blake shoved another bar into his pocket out of spite.
"Do you have a diagnostic of what the failure to the reactor core might be?" he asked. "Given the solar flare."
"Most likely the reactor core was not sealed via reactor shields. Physical shutters used in precisely such circumstances."
Blake stopped.
"So… someone screwed up."
"Yes. In what you might call 'a career-ending way.'"
Blake pulled on the pressure suit again, because he wasn't walking toward Engineering without armour. Not after yesterday's repeated attempts by doors to murder him.
"Anything you can tell me about the suit?" he asked while checking seals with the intensity of a man who had learned the hard way.
"Certainly. The suit has a reel of spider-wire. Anchor points are available on either side of the Engineering/Cargo Bay hatch. This model of EVA suit is rugged and durable if maintained well. In your case, maintenance is not an issue, as you may choose to forgo the lengthy inspection process in favour of a simple repair."
"Love that," Blake said. "I'm basically a walking warranty."
"An aggressive warranty. EVA manoeuvre attachments were available in the ship's inventory before the flare. Hardware malfunctions between Engineering and the bridge prevent manual closing of pressure doors."
Blake grimaced.
"And the solution?"
"When you open the Engineering/Cargo Bay hatch, an emergency pressure door will descend, sealing the main passageway approximately ten metres from the hatch. Once the hatch closes, or the breach is sealed and air pressure equalises, the pressure door will open automatically."
Blake nodded.
"Okay. So if I can't fix it in one go, I have to come back and do the whole death treadmill again."
"Correct. Try not to die during your repeated death treadmill."
"Thanks," Blake said. "That's really helpful."
"I know. It's why I'm charming."
Blake glanced at his vision.
[Repairman Skill Level: 1 — 80%]
He blinked.
"Wow," he muttered. "The AI repair gave me over twenty percent."
"You are welcome. I am apparently worth experience points. That's not ominous at all."
Blake reached the Engineering/Cargo Bay hatch and unwound spider-wire from the reel at the small of his back.
He checked the anchor points first—because he was anxious, not stupid—and clipped the line in.
The wire was impossibly thin and somehow gleamed faintly, like it was proud of itself.
"The reel will prevent you being pulled out of the breach. It will automatically brake when sudden unwind pressure is exerted."
Reassuring. Sort of.
Unless "sudden unwind pressure" meant "something big enough to yeet you into space."
Blake swallowed.
"Okay," he said, voice tight. "Let's get this hatch open."
He pressed the hatch sensor and waited for it to activate.
The door hummed, clicked, and began to open—slowly revealing whatever nightmare waited beyond.