The corridors had changed again.
I wasn’t sure how many times I’d circled them—once, twice, twenty—but my lungs burned as though I’d been running for hours. I forced my legs forward, boots clanging against the deck, convinced that if I just kept moving, I would find an exit, or at least something new. But every doorway led me back to the same place.
The observation bay.
Always the observation bay.
The dead star loomed through the window, vast and pitiless, its surface crusted with black ice that glimmered faintly in the void. No matter which way I turned, no matter which door I pushed through, there it was—mocking me, reminding me that I was orbiting something that had died millions of years ago, as if my fate were tethered to its cold corpse.
I tried another door. My hands shook as I pressed the panel, forcing it open. Beyond was not a corridor but a spiral stairwell plunging downward into darkness, the steps vanishing after only a few metres. A smell rose from below—metallic, damp, almost like blood. My chest tightened. I backed away.
The next door opened into another corridor, but when I walked it, the walls curled, subtly at first, then more aggressively, until I was facing the way I’d come. I pressed my forehead against the smooth surface and felt it shift, like a lung drawing breath beneath my skin.
The station was breathing.
“Stop,” I whispered, voice cracking. “Stop it.”
Something flickered at the edge of my vision.
I spun, torch beam cutting across the corridor. Nothing. Just walls, floor, ceiling. And yet, I could swear I saw figures—half-formed, jerky, the way something looks under a broken strobe. Their movements were unnatural, puppetlike, as though dragged by invisible strings.
Then came the whispers.
At first faint, just beyond hearing. Then louder, curling around me from every direction.
My name.
“Juno…”
My breath caught in my throat. The voice was mine. Not exactly—not the way I sounded in reality. Softer. Warped. A recording slowed and stretched until it became unrecognisable, yet still mine.
I pressed forward, desperate, refusing to give in to paralysis. A terminal glowed faintly ahead, embedded in the wall. The sight of technology—something solid, mechanical—was a lifeline. My fingers shook as I reached for the data core.
It vibrated beneath my gloves.
The hum was faint at first, then stronger, pulsing in rhythm with my heartbeat, then overtaking it, dictating it. I felt it in my bones, in my teeth, in the space between thoughts.
The screen flickered, static crawling across it like frost. A single line formed, words as sharp and final as a blade:
Join us… become the echo.
Panic tore through me. My chest constricted, ribs tightening as though the walls themselves had hands and were crushing me inward.
“No,” I hissed. My voice cracked. “You’re not real. You’re not—”
The walls pulsed. The hum grew louder, a throbbing pressure behind my eyes. Corridors bent and stretched like molten glass, warping into impossible angles. Memories shattered and bled together.
I was five, in my mother’s arms, lulled by a song.
I was fifteen, stumbling out of the academy’s training simulator, victorious.
I was twenty-two, failing a command exam, the shame like ice in my veins.
I was—all of them, at once.
Each memory fragmented, overlapping, distorted, pulling away from me as if someone else were rifling through the drawers of my mind. I felt the brush of other thoughts—alien, human, something in between—pressing against mine. A chorus of strangers’ lives: their fears, their regrets, their dying breaths.
The data core trembled violently in my hands. My gloves buzzed.
I snapped. My fingers found the emergency override and slammed it.
Sparks spat from the console, showering the corridor with stuttering light. Alarms shrieked, a keening metallic wail that clawed down my spine.
The echoes screamed with it.
Not in pain—not exactly—but in rage. Layered voices, dozens, hundreds, all calling my name at once, overlapping into a tidal wave:
“Join us… become the echo… JOIN US…”
The sound tore through me. I fell to my knees, palms pressed to my helmet, as though I could keep myself from splitting apart.
I could feel it happening anyway.
Pieces of me—small at first, then larger—slipping away. Memories I couldn’t hold onto. My mother’s face blurred. My first command instructor’s name vanished. The taste of my favourite meal—gone, just like that. Snatched.
The Archive was alive.
Not just alive—it was feeding.
And I was already inside it.
Gareth Ellis - Author 