His footsteps echoed through the narrow hall, steady but heavier than before.
Every breath pulled colder air into his lungs. Every step felt slower. His body wasn't built for this—not anymore. Not after cryosleep. Not after the cold.
But he kept moving.
The tunnel twisted downward, tracing the route the auxiliary system had mapped out for him.
No signs. No lights. Only his memory and the faint, lingering sense that the walls themselves remembered the way.
He gripped the bar tighter, using it like a walking stick when the floor sloped more steeply.
The air grew drier, tasting of metal and dust. His tongue felt thick in his mouth. His stomach cramped with emptiness.
He needed water.
Food.
Rest.
Soon.
A faint vibration ran through the floor under his boots. Barely there. Like something vast and mechanical sleeping beneath the surface.
He ignored it. For now.
Focus on the objective.
Ahead, the corridor widened into a chamber.
A larger one.
He stepped inside cautiously, boots scuffing across the cracked plates.
In the dimness, he spotted the shapes of old storage lockers along the walls—some toppled, others still standing.
Their surfaces were coated with a fine layer of grime, but one or two had lights blinking faintly at their locks.
Still powered.
Still waiting.
He exhaled a ragged breath, a flicker of hope sparking behind his exhaustion.
Maybe—just maybe—there was something left for him here.
Something he could use.
He approached the nearest locker, heart pounding harder than it should.
The panel on its front blinked weakly—yellow light, struggling to stay alive.
He wiped a sleeve across the grime and found an access pad beneath. No codes. No biometric scans. Just a simple mechanical release.
He pressed it.
The lock clicked open with a tired groan, the door sagging outward.
Inside: racks of sealed containers. Vacuum-packed. Most labeled in symbols he couldn't read—sharp angular characters, spiraling scripts.
But some were obvious.
A water flask.
A ration pack.
He grabbed them both, almost clumsy in his desperation.
He twisted open the flask and sniffed.
No odor.
He drank.
The water was cold. Stale. Metallic.
But it was water.
He drank again, slower this time, letting it coat his dry throat.
The immediate dizziness that followed nearly dropped him to his knees.
He gritted his teeth, leaned against the locker, forced himself to breathe through it.
His body had been running on fumes for too long.
Too much too fast, and it threatened to shut down.
He steadied himself, then tore open the ration pack.
Inside: a dense, gray slab.
Not appetizing. Not even recognizable as food.
But he bit into it anyway.
Chewed. Swallowed.
Calories. Sugars. Salts.
He could almost feel his body reacting, like a dying machine fed a shot of unstable fuel.
The taste was bitter. Chemical. But he didn't care.
He sat down against the locker, ration in one hand, flask in the other.
For the first time since waking, he allowed himself to close his eyes.
Just for a second.
Just to breathe.
Minutes passed.
Maybe longer.
He forced himself back to his feet, joints protesting with every movement.
The rations had helped—barely.
The thirst was dulled. The cramping in his stomach had eased. His mind cleared enough to sharpen the edges of his awareness again.
Enough to keep moving.
He searched the rest of the room.
Most of the lockers were empty—broken open, stripped bare.
But tucked into a corner, behind a pile of collapsed debris, he spotted something different.
A doorway.
Not like the others.
Wider. Reinforced. Framed by thick bands of alloy, stamped with a symbol he hadn't seen before: a ring divided into quadrants, bisected by a vertical line.
It didn't blink. Didn't hum.
No lights. No systems active.
But the frame itself looked… intact.
He approached cautiously.
No visible lock. No manual override.
Just solid metal, flush with the wall.
He ran a hand along the surface.
Rough texture. Dust embedded deep into every seam.
At shoulder height, a narrow panel sat recessed into the wall. Dark.
He tapped it with the edge of the metal bar.
Nothing.
He pressed his palm against it.
Still nothing.
He leaned closer, squinting through the dust—
And saw it.
Faint lines. Symbols.
Words, maybe.
Worn nearly to invisibility.
He brushed them clean.
What little remained read:
"Sector Primary Link—Access Restricted"
Primary.
A main sector.
Maybe a command center. Maybe something worse.
Either way—it was progress.
And he wasn't going back.
He pressed his hand against the recessed panel again.
Nothing.
He tried pushing harder. No response.
He gritted his teeth, then jammed the end of the metal bar into the thin seam between the panel and the door frame.
He pried.
The metal groaned.
He shifted his weight, putting his shoulder into it.
A faint hiss escaped the seam—like the release of ancient pressure.
He paused.
Listened.
No alarms.
No lights.
Just the sound of metal breathing around him.
He pushed harder.
The seam widened.
Millimeter by millimeter.
Suddenly—the panel snapped loose with a sharp crack, falling outward into his hands.
Inside: a mess of cables, half-burned and blackened. But behind them, deeper into the wall, a mechanical latch glinted in the dim light.
Manual override.
Primitive, but functional.
He reached in carefully, avoiding the frayed wiring.
Fingers brushing metal, he found the latch and pulled.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then—
A deep vibration ran through the floor.
A low mechanical groan filled the air, like the structure itself waking from a long sleep.
Dust shook loose from the ceiling.
Lights along the frame flickered once, struggling to ignite.
And slowly—painfully—the heavy door began to slide open.
Not fully.
Just enough for a man to slip through.
He tightened his grip on the bar.
Stepped back.
Waited.
Listened.
Something in the station had stirred.
Something old.
And now it knew he was here.
He squeezed through the half-open door.
The space beyond swallowed him immediately.
Gone were the tight, narrow corridors and low ceilings.
Here, the ceiling stretched high above, lost in darkness. The walls curved gently outward, forming a wide open hall—almost cathedral-like in its dimensions.
But what struck him first wasn't the size.
It was the air.
Warm.
Not humid, not choking—just warm enough to cut through the cold still clinging to his skin and muscles.
He stopped just inside the threshold, breathing it in.
It smelled of dust, old insulation, metal.
But not death.
Not decay.
The cold edge of survival dulled slightly in his mind, replaced by something dangerously close to comfort.
He rolled his shoulders, flexed his stiff fingers.
The aches that had been building—deep in his joints, across his spine—eased by degrees.
He lowered the metal bar slightly.
For the first time since waking, he didn't feel like prey.
He stepped further inside.
The floor beneath his boots was solid metal, smooth but worn with time. Here and there, faint lines of embedded lighting flickered beneath translucent panels—fighting to stay alive on the dregs of the station's failing power.
The architecture shifted again—less brutalist, more refined. Curves instead of sharp angles.
Hallways branched off in multiple directions, leading deeper into this inner sanctum.
This wasn't maintenance infrastructure.
This was administration.
Command.
Or whatever passed for it in this place.
He glanced around.
No sounds. No voices. No movement.
But something told him he wasn't as alone here as he wanted to believe.
He moved carefully through the main hall, each step echoing softly across the vast emptiness.
The warmth made it easier to think. Easier to move.
But it also made him realize how utterly exhausted he was.
Every fiber of his body screamed for rest.
Not just sitting down.
Real rest.
Shelter.
Safety.
Even if only for an hour.
He scanned the branching corridors. Most led into darkness. Some had collapsed entirely—walls crumbled, floors cracked open like broken bone.
One caught his eye.
A side passage, narrower than the rest.
Dim lights flickered along its edges, faint but steady, leading toward a recessed alcove.
He followed.
The corridor curved sharply to the right, and then—
A door.
Smaller. Simpler. Metal frame dented with age but still intact.
Above it, faded lettering.
He wiped at it with a gloved hand.
The words were mostly gone.
But one fragment remained:
"Operations Substation — Auxiliary Command"
Command.
Or what was left of it.
He pressed his hand against the door panel.
No resistance.
It slid open with a groaning whisper.
Inside: a room no larger than a maintenance shed.
But it was enough.
A few broken chairs. A shattered console against the far wall. A locker half off its hinges. Dust everywhere.
But more importantly—
Walls. A door that closed. Shelter from the endless hallways.
He stepped inside and let the door grind shut behind him.
For the first time since waking, he allowed himself to exhale fully.
He wasn't safe.
Not really.
But for a few precious moments, he could pretend.
He set the metal bar down carefully.
First thing: the door.
He checked the panel beside it. No locking mechanism still functional—but he could wedge debris against it, slow anything that tried to force its way inside.
He dragged one of the broken chairs across the floor with a sharp screech and jammed it under the door handle.
Primitive. Inelegant.
But it was something.
He turned and surveyed the room properly now.
The shattered console was dead—no lights, no hum.
Cables spilled from its underside like torn arteries. The screens were cracked, shattered inward from some past violence.
The locker was rusted open, its contents long gone.
Just a few scraps of synthetic fabric and what looked like an old headset, snapped in half.
Nothing useful.
Nothing dangerous.
He sat down heavily against the far wall, back pressed to cold metal.
His breathing slowed.
The warmth helped.
The small space helped.
The simple physical barrier of the door helped.
But only for a moment.
Because as he sat there, eyes closed, body aching, mind drifting—
He felt it.
Not a sound.
Not a vibration.
Not even a breath of air.
Just… a pressure.
A sense that something else moved in the deep layers of the complex.
Not close.
Not immediate.
But awake.
Faint.
Patient.
Like something stirring in a dream it hadn't quite decided to leave yet.
He opened his eyes sharply.
Nothing.
Just the broken room, the silence, the dust.
But the feeling lingered.
And it told him one thing very clearly.
This place was not empty.
Not really.
He let his head fall back against the wall.
For a long moment, he just breathed.
The warmth, the shelter, the silence—fragile, temporary as they were—lulled the edges of his mind into something resembling calm.
But the questions stayed.
Gnawing.
Churning.
Where am I really?
Why was I left in that pod?
Who built this place?
He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes, trying to push the questions away.
It didn't work.
Because for all the strange architecture, the impossible technology, the overwhelming silence—
One fact stood out above all the others.
Someone had been here before him.
The footprints in the dust.
The broken systems.
The half-functional defenses.
Someone else had walked these halls.
And maybe—
He shook the thought off.
No use drowning in fear.
Not now.
He let his hands fall back to his sides, muscles too drained to hold tension anymore.
Sleep crept up on him—not as a choice, but as an inevitability.
One last thought surfaced before he surrendered to it:
Whatever waits deeper in this place…
…I need to be ready.
Darkness pulled him under.