Elara Nightshade
Part 1: Arrival at the End of the Line
The transport pod shuddered as it docked, a harsh metallic clang echoing through the cabin. I leaned back in my seat, eyes closed, trying to block out the throbbing pain in my temples. A week in cryosleep does things to a man’s head, especially when the destination is Epsilon Station—a place forgotten by everyone except those desperate enough to take its miserable assignments.
“Dr. Tomas Karov,” the robotic voice chirped, snapping me back to the present. I blinked, rubbing the frost from my eyelashes. “You have arrived at Epsilon Station. Please proceed to the checkpoint.”
I hauled myself up, feeling every joint creak. The cramped pod smelled of stale air and something chemical that stung my nostrils. I wasn’t here by choice. My assignment came directly from the Conglomerate Bureau of Xenotechnological Affairs. When they said jump, you didn’t ask why. You just did as you were told, especially when your options were to obey or to rot in some Conglomerate penal colony.
The airlock hissed open, revealing a corridor that looked like it had seen better decades. The lights flickered erratically, casting shadows that danced across the walls like phantoms. A low hum reverberated through the floor—an omnipresent background noise that seemed to vibrate in time with my growing unease.
A figure emerged from the shadows ahead. “Dr. Karov, I presume?” A woman in a faded uniform approached, her face weary, her eyes hollow. She extended a gloved hand. “Chief Administrator Lysa Nehrin. Welcome to Epsilon Station.”
Her grip was firm, but her eyes never quite met mine. This was a place where hope went to die, and she wore that resignation like a second skin.
“What exactly am I here for, Administrator?” I asked, following her through the winding, rust-streaked corridors.
“You’re here to solve a problem, Dr. Karov,” she replied, her voice clipped and devoid of warmth. “The Conglomerate needs answers. We’ve detected… anomalies.”
“Anomalies?” I echoed, my curiosity piqued despite myself.
Nehrin’s eyes flickered with something—fear, perhaps? Or exhaustion? “You’ll understand soon enough. For now, your orders are to report to Xenotech Lab 3.”
I watched her retreating back, her footsteps swallowed by the station’s ambient hum. The air felt heavy here, tinged with the faint scent of ozone. Epsilon Station was a relic of the early expansion era, a decaying husk orbiting a dead world on the fringe of the Scatterverse. The Conglomerate had long abandoned it as anything more than a dumping ground for problems too inconvenient to solve.
The journey to Xenotech Lab 3 took me through a maze of dilapidated passageways, where rusted support beams creaked and groaned. The lights flickered again, briefly plunging the corridor into darkness. For a heartbeat, I was alone with my thoughts—and the growing sense that I had stepped into something far more dangerous than I’d been led to believe.
Part 2: The Experiment
Xenotech Lab 3 was colder than the rest of the station, the air conditioning overcompensating for its failing systems. I shrugged deeper into my worn jacket, eyes scanning the room filled with outdated consoles and cracked screens. A single figure stood hunched over one of the workstations—a wiry man in a lab coat that looked like it hadn’t been washed in weeks.
“You’re late,” he grunted without turning around.
“Dr. Karov,” I replied, trying to mask my irritation. “I was only just informed of this assignment. And you are?”
“Dr. Benjen Marak,” he said, finally turning to face me. His eyes were bloodshot, his skin sallow. “Xenobiologist. Or at least I used to be, before this hellhole swallowed my life.” He gestured to the screens around him, each displaying erratic data streams that pulsed with a sickly green glow.
“What’s this all about?” I asked, leaning over to get a better look. The readings made no sense—energy spikes, gravitational distortions, and something else… something almost organic.
Marak sighed, rubbing a trembling hand across his stubbled chin. “It’s the Rift,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “A tear in the fabric of space-time that appeared just outside the station two months ago. It’s growing, and it’s… changing.”
“Changing how?”
“Sometimes it pulses with a strange light,” he explained. “Sometimes it emits sounds—voices, almost, like… like echoes of people who’ve been long dead.”
I stared at the data, trying to wrap my mind around it. The Conglomerate’s official line was that anomalies were to be studied and contained, but they rarely acknowledged the toll these things took on the human mind. The Rift was more than a scientific curiosity—it was a wound in the universe, one that seemed to be infected.
“And the Conglomerate’s solution?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“More data, more containment protocols, more bureaucratic bullshit,” Marak spat. “But no one’s asking the right questions, Tomas. What does it want? And why does it seem… sentient?”
Before I could respond, a klaxon blared through the station, the shrill sound rattling my teeth. Marak’s eyes widened, and he muttered a curse. “They’re activating the extraction protocol. We need to go—now!”
Part 3: The Rift’s Call
We raced through the station, the corridors trembling as if the structure itself were in pain. The Rift had grown unstable, its energy bleeding into the station’s systems, causing power surges that flickered the lights on and off like the dying gasps of a star.
“What’s the extraction protocol?” I shouted over the din.
“They want to harvest its energy,” Marak replied, his voice ragged. “They think it’s a resource—a potential weapon. But they don’t understand it! They’re playing with forces beyond their comprehension.”
The control room was in chaos. Technicians shouted over each other, screens flashed red, and Administrator Nehrin stood at the center, barking orders into her comms. Her eyes narrowed when she saw us.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “This area is restricted.”
“Shut it down, Lysa!” Marak yelled, pushing past her to access the main console. “You don’t know what you’re tampering with!”
“It’s not your call, Dr. Marak,” Nehrin said icily. “The Conglomerate has given explicit orders.”
“This isn’t about orders!” I cut in, stepping forward. “This is about survival. If you try to extract energy from that Rift, you could destabilize the entire sector.”
Nehrin’s eyes flickered with doubt, but the weight of Conglomerate authority held her like a vise. “We don’t have a choice,” she said, more to herself than to us. “The higher-ups are demanding results.”
I looked at Marak, who was frantically typing commands into the console. “What happens if they activate the extraction?” I asked.
He paused, his fingers hovering over the keys. “Best case? The station’s systems overload, and we’re stranded. Worst case?” He turned to me, his eyes haunted. “The Rift consumes us all.”
The air around us crackled with energy, the temperature dropping sharply. I could feel the hairs on my arms stand on end, my breath turning to mist. And then I heard it—a whisper, faint at first, but growing louder. Voices, layered on top of each other, speaking in a language that wasn’t meant for human ears.
“Can you hear them?” Marak asked, his eyes wide with something like terror. “It’s the station’s crew, Tomas. Voices from beyond. It’s… it’s them.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, my stomach knotting.
Marak’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I think… I think the Rift is alive. And it’s hungry.”
Part 4: Sacrifices
“Stop the extraction!” I shouted to Nehrin, lunging toward the console. But it was too late. The technicians had already initiated the sequence. The Rift pulsed, a sickly green light spilling through the viewports, flooding the room with its unnatural glow.
The screams started almost immediately. Technicians clutched their heads, collapsing to the floor as if their minds had been torn apart. Marak was on his knees, sobbing incoherently. The Rift’s light seemed to reach out, tendrils of energy curling through the air like the limbs of some unspeakable beast.
“This is madness!” I yelled, slamming my fist on the console. “Shut it down, Lysa!”
For a moment, Nehrin hesitated, her face pale and drawn. Then, with a trembling hand, she reached for the emergency shutdown. But the console sparked, sending her reeling back. The Rift was feeding, drawing power from the station itself.
“We have to sever the connection manually,” Marak gasped, dragging himself to his feet. “The reactor core—if we overload it, we can collapse the Rift.”
“That’s a suicide mission,” I said, the reality sinking in.
He looked at me, eyes filled with a desperate, haunted resolve. “Better that than let it devour everything.”
Together, we raced to the reactor core. The air was thick with static, the lights flickering wildly. The station groaned like a dying beast, metal creaking and buckling under the strain. I could feel the Rift’s presence growing stronger, like a pressure inside my skull.
“This is it,” Marak said, placing his trembling hands on the reactor controls. “You can still run, Tomas.”
I shook my head. “No point. We’re already dead.”
With a final, defiant shout, Marak triggered the overload. The reactor roared to life, energy surging into the Rift. For a moment, everything was blinding light, a sensation of being torn apart and remade. And then, silence.
Part 5: Echoes in the Dark
I don’t know how long I was unconscious. When I opened my eyes, the station was silent, the air thick with the smell of ozone. Marak was gone, his body reduced to ash. Nehrin’s lifeless eyes stared up at the ceiling, her face frozen in an expression of horror.
The Rift had vanished, leaving only darkness in its wake.
I stumbled through the station, the oppressive silence broken only by the echoes of my footsteps. I was alone now, the last living soul on a station that had been devoured by its own ambition. The Conglomerate would never know the truth of what happened here. And even if they did, they wouldn’t care.
As I stood before the viewport, staring into the vast emptiness of space, I couldn’t help but wonder—had we ever truly been in control? Or had we merely been dancing to the tune of something far older, far hungrier, than we could ever understand?
The stars blinked indifferently, their light cold and distant. In the end, the universe remained as it always had been—unfathomable, uncaring, and impossibly vast.
And we, just dust on the wind.
The End
Endless Horizons 