Signals in the Dark
The door behind them groaned under pressure.
Something was trying to break through.
Not brute force—but probing, adapting.
The crew stood in a dimly lit corridor, emergency lights from their suits casting ghostly shadows on the walls. The glyphs lining the metal pulsed faintly, reacting to their presence. Pryce crouched beside a console embedded in the wall, her brow furrowed in concentration.
"We can't go back the way we came," she said quietly. "The station's architecture has shifted. It's folding corridors behind us."
"Folding them?" Ibarra echoed. "You mean it's—what—building a maze?"
"No," she said. "It's sealing us in. Herding us."
---
A Fracture in the Core
Deeper within the station, unseen by the crew, the ancient core shifted. Its rhythmic pulses became sharper—less organic, more deliberate.
Something had stirred within the structure.
And something else was waking with it.
A fractured section of the station flickered online. Lights surged to life in areas untouched for millennia. In one chamber, blackened consoles came alive with streaming data. On their displays: a silhouette of the Event Horizon, surrounded by pulsing rings of energy.
It was being scanned.
Logged.
Measured.
---
Elite Shadows
In the black silence of space, a ship without lights moved through the void like a phantom. The UED stealth cruiser Black Sable was a vessel known only to Kain's inner circle. Its hull was designed for absorption—not just of energy, but of presence. It didn't exist on any official manifest. It didn't need to.
Inside, Captain Keira Solen, commander of Kain's elite strike division—Section Gray—watched as distorted readings of the alien station streamed across her console.
"So the ghost ship found something," she murmured.
Her second-in-command, a tall man with surgical implants along his neck, gave a humorless smile. "And it seems Kain wants it silenced."
"He wants it controlled," Solen corrected. "Failing that, yes—silenced."
Orders were already coded into her ship's systems.
Intercept.
Eliminate.
Recover the station if possible.
Destroy it if not.
---
The Maze and the Memory
Back in the station, the Event Horizon crew reached a wide chamber—a circular room with hundreds of nodes along the walls. In the center stood a glass-like column, encasing what looked like a human silhouette.
Except it wasn't human. Not anymore.
Pryce approached cautiously. "Captain… this isn't a console. It's a vault."
Inside the crystalline chamber was a preserved figure—tall, armored in strange composite plating, clearly humanoid, but wrong. Its limbs bent slightly too far. Its head was sleek and crown-like. Where its eyes should have been were recesses filled with dark, humming crystal.
"This isn't part of the station," she said, voice hushed. "This… this is what they sealed away."
The glyphs on the walls flared to life in waves, forming sentences.
> "Failing containment protocol."
"Bioweapon sequence compromised."
"Engagement threshold exceeded."
Then, another pulse.
Not from the walls.
From the figure.
---
The Awakening
With a hiss of pressure and light, the stasis column cracked.
Vance stepped back. "Everyone down!"
The chamber exploded in flashing light as the stasis field ruptured.
The vault burst apart, shards of transparent alloy flying across the room.
And the creature inside moved.
Slowly. Elegantly.
It didn't attack. Not yet.
But it looked at them. Through them.
And somewhere deeper in the ship, the Event Horizon itself reacted—its hull shimmering, its systems momentarily desynchronized, as if it had just recognized something.
Pryce stepped forward, voice trembling. "Captain, I don't think it's hostile."
"It just cracked open a thousand-year-old vault like an egg," Cormac growled. "Hostile's a good bet."
But the figure raised its hand and touched the wall.
Instantly, the glyphs changed.
> "No longer alone."
"The cycle repeats."
"We must flee before the Final Return."
Vance stepped forward. "Translate that again."
Pryce swallowed. "I don't think it's talking to us. I think it's remembering."
---
Earth: The Fire of Public Opinion
On Earth, the Legacies made their boldest move yet.
In a live broadcast viewed by billions, Rhys-Kingsley and Duval appeared together in the shimmering light of the Celestial Forum. The air behind them was filled with holoscreens of recent conflicts, fleet movements, and scenes of chaos across the colonies.
Rhys-Kingsley's voice was confident, calm. "The UED claims unity, but it governs through fear. Admiral Kain has begun deploying elite kill teams. Civil war is no longer a threat—it's begun."
Duval stepped beside him, her tone sharp. "We have the resources. The allies. The experience. If the UED will not protect the people, then we will."
The media spun instantly. Protests surged on Mars. The Luna stock exchange dipped. Across the colonies, support for independence ticked upward.
---
The Shadow Closes
On the edge of the system, the Black Sable engaged silent protocols.
They had arrived.
Solen stood at the viewport, watching the ancient station rotate slowly against the darkness.
"Prep the drop teams," she said. "We go in quiet. We come out with answers."
Her second-in-command adjusted his visor. "And if they resist?"
Solen's voice was ice. "Then the galaxy gets a very clear message—Kain does not tolerate rivals."
---