The beacon grew stronger as the Rustmoth coasted into range.

  Vermond watched the derelict ship drift silently in the starlight, its hull scarred and half-lit by a dying emergency system. It wasn’t massive—no warship, no freighter. Just a mid-sized civilian craft, long out of commission.

  But it was intact.

  And something was alive inside.

  He suited up quickly. No hesitation this time. He didn’t know why, but something deep in his chest buzzed with anticipation—not fear, not excitement, but a strange mix of both.

  “Let’s see what you’re hiding,” he muttered.

  He docked the Rustmoth gently and entered through the ship’s airlock. The interior was dark, save for faint red lights pulsing along the corridor walls like a heartbeat. His boots echoed through the silence. Dust floated in the stale air.

  Vermond swept the beam of his helmet light across peeling paint and shattered panels. It didn’t feel abandoned. It felt... stalled. Like time had just stopped inside.

  The ship’s name was barely legible on the inner hull:

  The Farsight.

  He stepped carefully through a passageway, past flickering screens and frozen control panels. Half of the doors were locked down. Others had been blown open.

  No signs of struggle.

  No bodies.

  Just empty silence.

  But the signal was still strong—coming from the lower decks.

  As he descended deeper, a low noise broke the stillness.

  A whisper of static in his comms.

  Then—click.

  The overhead lights in the corridor burst on all at once, blinding him for a moment. His breath caught. He raised his tool-pistol instinctively.

  No movement. Just lights.

  “What the hell?” he muttered.

  Then he saw the trail.

  A faint smear of blood, dried and old, stretching down the hall toward a sealed door marked: Cryo Deck 2.

  His pulse quickened.

  Vermond bypassed the door’s control panel with a salvaged power spike and pried it open. The room was cold, humming with backup energy. A row of empty cryo pods lined the walls.

  All but one.

  In the center of the room, surrounded by warning lights and flickering monitors, was a cryo pod still active. The glass was half-fogged, but through the frost he saw a face.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  A girl.

  She looked his age—maybe seventeen. Long black hair fanned around her shoulders. Pale skin. Lashes still against her cheeks. Peaceful. But too still.

  The nameplate was scratched beyond reading. No ID. Just a heartbeat monitor blinking faintly on the side panel.

  Vermond stood frozen.

  He didn’t know why, but something about her unsettled him. Not in a bad way. Just... unfamiliar. Out of place. Like the galaxy had shifted, and this moment was the reason.

  Then the pod hissed.

  Steam erupted from the seams. The screen flashed:

  EMERGENCY REVIVAL SEQUENCE COMPLETE.

  “No, no, no—” Vermond stepped back, startled. He wasn’t ready for this.

  The girl gasped.

  Her chest rose violently, like someone pulled her from the bottom of the sea. She coughed hard, body trembling as the glass opened and warm air rushed in.

  Vermond rushed forward, catching her as she collapsed forward out of the pod.

  “Hey—easy. You’re alright,” he said, steadying her.

  Her eyes fluttered open—sharp, icy blue—and locked onto his.

  “Where... am I?” she whispered, voice hoarse.

  “You’re safe,” he lied. “At least, I think so.”

  She blinked slowly, still dazed. “What’s... your name?”

  “Vermond.”

  She opened her mouth to speak again, but something changed in her expression. Her eyes widened, like she saw something behind him.

  “Don’t move,” she whispered.

  Vermond turned just in time to see a shadow dart past the open door.

  He grabbed her arm. “Can you walk?”

  She nodded weakly.

  “Then let’s go. Now.”

  They ran.

  Down the corridor, past the flickering lights and groaning pipes. Something was behind them—he didn’t see it, but he felt it. Something fast. Watching.

  “Who else was on this ship?” he asked, breath ragged.

  She shook her head, confused. “I—I don’t remember. I woke up here alone... I think.”

  “You think?”

  “I don’t know!” she snapped, more scared than angry. “I don’t even know who I am!”

  Of course. Cryo sickness. Amnesia. Great.

  They reached the airlock. Vermond slammed the seal open and dragged her into the Rustmoth. The doors slammed shut behind them. He didn’t wait to undock.

  As the Rustmoth peeled away from the derelict, Vermond stared through the rear camera feed.

  Nothing followed.

  But something had been there.

  Later, in the dim light of the medbay, the girl sat on the edge of the bunk, shivering under a blanket.

  Vermond handed her a flask of water and crouched beside her.

  “You got a name?”

  She stared at him, a long pause hanging between them.

  Then, finally: “Kiana. I think it’s Kiana.”

  Vermond nodded slowly, his heart still racing.

  “Alright, Kiana. You’re safe now.”

  But deep down, he knew they were both lying.

  The Rustmoth cruised through the silent stretch of black, stars glinting like cold fire through the cockpit windows. Vermond sat alone at the helm, his eyes drifting between Kiana’s reflection in the glass and the small device he had pulled from her cryo pod: a cracked data chip, half-corroded, its serial code scrubbed clean.

  He had scanned it three times.

  No results.

  No origin trace. No logs. Just static and a scrambled encryption code he’d never seen before. Whatever was on that chip—it didn’t want to be found.

  Behind him, Kiana slept fitfully in the medbay. Her breathing was shallow. Sweat beaded on her forehead.

  She had been slipping in and out of consciousness ever since they left the ghost ship.

  And every time she woke, she asked the same question:

  “Do you hear it too?”

  The next morning, Vermond sat with the chip hooked up to the Rustmoth’s decryption core. The screen blinked, scanned, blinked again.

  Then stopped.

  A message flickered across the display:

  “Eyes are watching.”

  Vermond blinked. “What the hell...?”

  He leaned closer. But the message was gone.

  Replaced by a long string of garbled characters.

  He slammed a fist against the console, frustrated—but before he could move, the ship’s lights dimmed. The engine hiccuped.

  “Not now,” he growled.

  Suddenly, a high-pitched ping rang out from the proximity scanner. Then another. And another.

  “Come on...”

  Vermond rushed to the cockpit.

  The scanner lit up with four red blips.

  Ships.

  Small ones. Fast. No transponder codes. No comms.

  Pirates.

  “Of course,” Vermond muttered. “Why wouldn’t this day get worse?”

  He dropped into the pilot seat and flipped the engine core from drift to burst. The Rustmoth groaned under the pressure, but she jumped forward into a narrow flight path between two asteroid clusters.

  The red blips followed.

  Laser fire burst across the rear sensors, sizzling past the engines.

  He jerked the controls to the left, swerving the ship through a field of broken debris—old mining rigs, shattered solar panels, the skeleton of some long-dead colony ship.

  “Hang on, girl,” he whispered to the ship. “You’ve got one more good run in you.”

  The pirates gained ground.

  One of them fired a harpoon shot—thunk—it slammed into the hull. Warning lights screamed.

  Vermond pulled hard on the manual throttle, spinning the Rustmoth between two jagged rocks, then angled upward—straight toward a dense cloud of electromagnetic dust.

  The pirates hesitated.

  Vermond didn’t.

  Inside the cloud, everything went dark.

  Comms jammed. Sensors scrambled.

  But the pirates didn’t follow.

  They vanished from the scanner.

  The ship coasted in eerie silence.

  Vermond finally exhaled, resting his head on the controls.

  Then—a faint voice crackled through the ship’s internal speakers.

  “…Vermond…”

  His heart jumped.

  He slowly turned toward the medbay.

  Kiana stood there.

  Eyes wide. Pale. Shaking.

  “You heard it,” she whispered.

  “What… what did you say?”

  “I didn’t. It did.”

  She stepped forward slowly, pressing a hand to the cold wall of the ship.

  “It’s calling again.”

  Vermond moved closer, unsettled. “What’s calling?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But it knows you. It knew we’d meet.”

  A silence settled between them.

  Then—ping.

  The data chip sparked.

  The screen beside them lit up one last time with a message neither of them expected:

  “VERMOND. SHE IS NOT WHAT SHE SEEMS.”