I don’t know how long I was on the floor.
Time here stretches like old wires—thin, frayed, ready to snap. At some point, I pushed myself up, but my legs felt borrowed, as though I were operating them through water. My breathing was uneven, sharp in my ears, yet I couldn’t hear its echo. The sound went nowhere. It was swallowed.
The corridor ahead wasn’t the one I remembered.
The walls were darker now, ribbed with lines of dim light that pulsed in slow, nauseating rhythm. I reached out to steady myself and felt a subtle vibration beneath the surface—like something alive just under the metal, pressing back.
“Not real,” I whispered, though I no longer trusted the words. “This isn’t real.”
The floor beneath me shuddered in response.
I moved anyway.
Every door I passed was slightly ajar, each one breathing out faint, stale air as though exhaling in disappointment. I didn’t look inside. I couldn’t risk seeing… anything. Each shadow already felt deliberate. Each corner watched me.
Then I heard footsteps behind me.
Too soft. Too familiar.
I turned—slowly, unwillingly.
Nobody was there.
But I saw myself.
Not a reflection. Not a hallucination. Me. Standing at the far end of the corridor, head slightly tilted, lips parted as if about to speak. Her, my, eyes were wrong. Too dark. Too calm. I blinked and she was gone, leaving only the hum swelling in the walls.
I backed away, pulse hammering. My torchbeam stuttered once, twice, then steadied. My hands were shaking violently now.
I came to another terminal set into the wall, its screen dead. I dropped to one knee and forced the casing open, wires sparking faintly. I needed something—logs, schematics, emergency access… anything to prove this station still followed rules, still obeyed physics, still had edges.
I bypassed the primary relay. A few lines of corrupted data fizzled across the screen, then stabilised—barely.
__CORE ACCESS: PARTIAL
USER: REYES, JUNO
STATUS: ECHO_PENDING
MEMORY INTEGRATION: 37%
IDENTITY STABILITY: DEGRADING
WOULD YOU LIKE TO CONTINUE?
My stomach lurched.
I tried to exit the process. The command didn’t register.
I tried again.
The prompt changed.
INTEGRATION IS NOT A REQUEST.
THE ARCHIVE WELCOMES YOU.
Something flickered across the screen. Faces, dozens of them, layered like reflections in fractured glass. Some I recognised from briefings, some from news reports, some I knew from childhood.
People who were missing. People declared dead. People who had come here.
I pushed away from the terminal so hard I nearly fell.
The walls around me pulsed again. Slow, heavy, like a heartbeat.
I turned and ran.
The corridor twisted beneath my feet, the floor sloping downward, though my eyes insisted it was flat. I stumbled more than once. Every time I put my hand out to catch myself, the walls were softer than metal should be. Warmer.
I don’t know when I started crying. The tears blurred my visor, streaked across the inside of my helmet. I wiped them away with the back of my glove, breath hitching.
Something whispered again.
Not ahead. Not behind.
Inside.
We’re almost together.
I bit down on a scream. I wasn’t sure it would leave my throat even if I tried. They ate sound. I knew that now. I’d felt it pulled from me before it formed.
Around the next bend, the corridor split in two. Left: a narrow passage sloping upward. Right: a low arch, suffocatingly dark, its ceiling brushing the top of my helmet.
Neither looked safe. Neither looked real.
A shadow moved in the right passage. Jerky, insect-like, dragging somehow. I didn’t wait to see more. I bolted left, heart exploding in my chest.
My footsteps made no sound.
I don’t remember when the lights failed. One blink, then another, then only the rhythmic pulse from beneath the walls guided me forward. It matched the thud in my sternum. No, not matched. Controlled. I tried to slow my breathing. My heart sped up in defiance, then slowed against my will. Panic rose like a wave.
I turned another corner, and something new froze me in place.
A door.
Not like the others. This one was dented, the frame twisted, the label across it half-burned but still legible.
MEDLAB-3: ISOLATION UNIT
My throat was suddenly dry. I had seen the layout of this sector before deployment. This room shouldn’t be here. Not on this deck. Not near the observation bay. Not anywhere in this loop I was trapped in.
But it was.
I stepped forward.
The door slid open with a wet, dragging sound.
The room beyond was dark except for one flickering overhead panel. Equipment lay scattered—carts overturned, medical tools rusting with something too dark to be old blood. The air stank of ozone and something organic. Something rotten.
I should have turned back.
But then I saw movement at the far end of the room.
Not shadows. Not hallucination.
A figure, seated on the edge of an exam bed, head bowed. Shoulders heaving with slow, deliberate breaths. A drip line dangled from their arm, though no machine remained to feed it.
As I stepped inside, the door sealed shut behind me with a hiss that sounded almost like satisfaction.
My voice was barely a rasp. “Who’s there?”
The figure raised its head.
And I recognised my own eyes.
Gareth Ellis - Author 