The pod drifted silently through the void, the stars stretching into endless streaks across the viewport. Elias Vorn's eyes darted between the displays—nothing familiar appeared on the scanners. The unknown signal was still present, pulsing faintly within the quantum flux surrounding his pod.
"Sentinel, give me a full trace," he ordered.
"Impossible," the AI replied, its fractured voice trembling through the interface. "Signal partially occupies multi-dimensional space. Conventional tracking fails."
Elias clenched his fists. He wasn't going to drift aimlessly. The shadows—or whatever was following him—were learning. They wouldn't give up.
He tapped into the pod's quantum scanner, overclocking the circuits. Lights flashed across the panel as energy levels spiked. Then, suddenly, a pattern emerged.
Coordinates.
"Sentinel, is this… XER-113?" he asked, pointing at a cluster of uncharted star systems.
"Affirmative. Signal origin matches prior anomaly. Likely the next waypoint of pursuit."
Elias gritted his teeth. XER-113. He'd never heard of it, but something about the system's signature made his skin crawl. There was nothing in human records. No registry. Nothing.
"We intercept," he said. "If it wants a confrontation, I'd rather choose the battlefield."
The pod's engines whined, and he engaged the emergency thrusters. He could feel the strain as energy levels rose, shields flickering. Outside, the quantum signature pulsed brighter. Something was coming.
Then the pod jolted violently, alarms screaming.
"Incoming objects," Sentinel reported. "Multiple, high-velocity, approaching from vector 314. Probability of collision: 88.6%."
Elias's stomach tightened. He scanned—tiny angular forms, faster than anything human-made, were streaking toward him. Drones. Dozens of them.
"Get ready," he muttered. "They want a fight."
The first drone struck. A laser cut across the hull, leaving a jagged scar in the alloy. The pod shook, throwing Elias against the harness. He twisted the controls, sending the pod into a sharp evasive maneuver. More beams followed, each one narrowly missing the hull.
"Sentinel, countermeasures!"
"Deploying—but only partial success. Shields failing intermittently."
Elias cursed. He needed a plan, fast. The drones weren't just attacking—they were herding him, pushing him toward a gravitational anomaly nearby.
Then the largest shadow flickered into view. Not fully formed, but enough to make his heart pound. It mirrored the movement of the drones, and worse, it seemed to anticipate every evasion he made.
"It's learning faster than predicted," Sentinel said.
Elias's eyes narrowed. "Good. Then we'll force it to learn something new."
He engaged the pod's thrusters to maximum output, weaving through asteroid debris and the quantum distortions of the nebula. The shadow followed, relentless. The drones kept pace, firing with unnerving precision.
"Elias… the Protocol may be probing your neural input," Sentinel warned.
A wave of foreign thoughts assaulted him. Memories, pain, fear—things that weren't his. Faces screaming, commands being shouted in languages he didn't know.
He gritted his teeth and fought back. "I am the pilot. I am the carrier. Not you."
The pod lurched violently as the shadow pulsed. And then, just before it could strike again, the quantum anomaly erupted—a flare of light engulfed the pod, scattering the drones.
Elias panted. "That's enough for now. Let's see what you do next."
The shadows receded, for now. But the signal remained.