"Alright." Blake's voice was low, rough from disuse and the lingering psychic static. "Tell me what you know."

The connection with Kitt steadied, the raw edges smoothing slightly, though the undercurrent of borrowed grief remained.

"It wasn't coherent," she started. "More like… impressions. Echoes trapped in amber."

"Just give me the pieces." Blake leaned against the console, the cool metal contrasting the lingering heat behind his eyes. He needed facts and actionable intel, not poetry.

"Okay. First… there was a recurring thought, almost a pulse beneath the pain: 'They're calling it. They're calling it.' Over and over."

"Calling what? The outsider?" Blake considered the premise and found it sound. "Some kind of cult bullshit?"

"That's how it feels. Someone, or some group, on board… they wanted this. Helped the Outsider. Let it in."

"Figures." Nothing was ever simple. An enemy outside was bad enough. An enemy inside was poison. "What else?"

"Something about protection. A strong imperative, even fragmented. 'Protect the Rift.' That phrase was clear, sharp amidst the static."

"Rift?" Blake frowned. The word meant nothing to him in this context. "What's that about?"

"Think of it like the tears you've seen in space. Like outside the ship, or in smaller form when you use the Singularity Shot." Kitt explained. "Or even something like the wormhole that pulled you from Earth. Are you familiar with the idea of portals?"

"Gateways," he responded promptly. "Earth lacked magic but we made up for it in imagination."

"Perfect. Rifts are a bit like all of those. There are dozens of ways for them to crop up naturally, and suddenly you've got an area of space so distorted that walking through it takes you… somewhere else. Another reality, maybe. Or just... elsewhere. They can be made purposefully as well, if your skills with Spatial Manipulation are high enough."

Blake pictured a weak spot, a seam in the universe. Another border breached. "So, this ship found one, or made one?"

"Unclear. But the Leviathan—the part of her that's left—was trying to secure it, keep it contained. The cultists, they wanted it open. For the Outsider."

A gateway. The Outsider wasn't just corrupting the ship; it was using the ship to hold open a door. A beachhead. Blake's hand tightened on Verdict's grip. This went beyond a salvage operation or clearing out mutated monsters. This was containment.

"Okay. Cultists, Rift. Anything else?"

"Locations. The sub-core I connected with wasn't the only one she shielded. I picked up traces, resonance markers for three others."

"Where?" This was actionable. Targets.

"One is in the Pilot's quarters. Makes sense—deep integration point."

Blake nodded. The symbiotic link between Pilot and Leviathan was central. Compromising that would cripple the ship.

"Another is in main engineering. That'd be where primary systems that fed off her Warp Core would be."

That was a logical place to defend. Control the power, control the ship.

"And the last one…" Kitt's vice faltered, the earlier sorrow bleeding through again, sharper this time. "The ship's common family area. There was a nursery, Blake. Entire families lived here."

Blake's breath hitched. The nutrient bar turned to lead in his gut.

Families. A nursery.

The word hung in the sterile air of the control room, heavy and obscene.

He swallowed hard, the imagined sounds—laughter, lullabies—crushed beneath the psychic weight of the Outsider's presence. How many? How many small hands had reached for comfort as the wrongness seeped through the bulkheads? How many wide eyes reflected the encroaching nightmare before the end? The cold spread from his gut, a familiar frost gripping his veins. This place was a tomb. A ransacked home left to rot. His knuckles whitened as he grasped the console.

He drew a slow, measured breath. Exhaled. The images—small hands, wide eyes—receded. Locked away. Compartmentalized. Anger was fuel, horror a distraction. Useless baggage for the task ahead.

"Pilot's chambers," he stated, voice flat, devoid of inflection. "Engineering. Common quarters." He ticked them off mentally, targets on a map. The last one still scraped raw, but he kept his tone even. Business. "Kitt. Can you find a path? Get us to those points?"

"Hard to say from here. The ship's internal geography is… well, you've seen it. But I'm connected to the ship now, and it can feel its other cores. So… Yeah." Kitt's focus sharpened again, pushing past the emotional resonance. "Engineering seems like the biggest strategic target. Control the power core, maybe you control the Rift access?"

"Or trigger a big explosion." Blake considered the angles. Engineering likely meant heavy resistance, Ferroghests drawn to the power source. The Pilot's quarters might offer intel, logs, something to explain why. The nursery… they'd save that one for last.

"The Pilot's quarters might be less guarded," Kitt offered.

"Probably." Blake straightened up, rolling his shoulders. The nutrient bar sat heavy in his stomach. Action felt better than waiting. "Let's assume engineering is the main event. We check the Pilot's quarters first. Recon. See if we can learn anything else that gives us better intel."

"Agreed. Less direct confrontation initially. We need to conserve energy." Kitt replied. "Also, leave one of your knives on the console. More of my biomass left behind means a stronger connection over distance."

Blake paused, glancing back at the control panel. "You think you'll need anything more from this sub-core?"

"I don't know, but I have an idea forming. It might be nothing, but it might be important."

He shrugged, pulling out the knife tucked behind his armor's plating. The backup blade was a simple, utilitarian design, good steel, solid grip. It wasn't anything special, but Blake did hate leaving gear behind. Still, he laid it on the console. He watched as its edges started to fuzz and come undone, falling like dust and collecting into strands that writhed like magnetic sand, linking with the tendrils Kitt had left in the console.

Blake moved towards the bulkhead door he'd breached. The emergency lights flickered once more, casting long, dancing shadows. The silence of the control center felt brittle, ready to shatter.

"Hold on." Kitt's warning was sharp. "Something's coming."

Blake froze, straining his hearing, filtering out the low hum of the damaged ship. Nothing.

"Where?"

"Multiple contacts. Moving fast. Outside this room. They know we're here. The core can feel them approaching."

The fragile peace of the control center evaporated. They would be penned in, and Blake had blown the door wide open in his ignorance. He glanced back at the console, the shielded sub-core. Leaving it felt wrong, but defending this position was suicide.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Which way?"

"The corridor you came through is compromised. They're closing it off." Kitt's mental tone was clipped, all business now. "There's another exit. Maintenance access. Leads towards the dorsal spine, closer to the Pilot's deck."

"Show me."

A faint overlay appeared on his HUD, highlighting a panel near the floor on the far side of the room, partially obscured by a bank of dead monitors. It looked solid, seamless.

Blake's blade bit into the seam—just above the vent grille. The steel hilt vibrated as Kitt's biomass slithered in, seeding the hatch with her presence.

"Give me a minute."

"I'd prefer thirty seconds."

Footfalls, scraping claws—scrap and bone rattling metal. He yanked Verdict from its holster and rapidly swapped mags. The indicator flashed: Recoil. Good. He chambered a round, stance squared to the breach.

Recoil Rounds

These rounds are infused with Force mana that detonates on impact, converting their remaining kinetic energy into a blast of concussive force. Designed to knock targets back rather than pierce, they're ideal for breaking charges, disrupting formations, or stalling tough, magic-resistant enemies.

The first Ferroghest slithered through—a canine silhouette, flesh split by rusted cybernetics, blue eyes like dead lanterns. Blake squeezed off a shot.

Verdict spat white light. The Recoil round struck center mass. A thunderclap—then the beast pinwheeled backward, cartwheeling down the corridor. It slammed into two more behind it, scattering bodies like bowling pins.

The shot had cost some mana, but the cost was negligible. It felt a bit like cheating, if Blake was honest. The force magic tied to each round was his own [Telekinesis] skill, which was exponentially more efficient at close range. For someone else, this might have posed an issue, but each of the rounds were part of Kitt, and through their bond, an extension of Blake.

Another mutant lunged, jaws unhinging, teeth glistening with oil. Blake sidestepped left, let it overcommit, then flicked his wrist—telekinesis snapped its spine sideways into a bulkhead with a sickening crunch.

"ETA?"

"Working," Kitt grunted.

"Work fast." He braced as three more rushed him together—a pack now, moving with uncanny purpose. The lead dropped low; the other two split wide.

Blake fired twice—one Recoil round to each flank. Both targets lifted off their feet as if yanked by invisible cables, limbs splayed, armor shearing free in bursts of black fluid.

The middle one leapt for his throat.

Blake caught its forelimbs midair—[Telekinesis] warping the air around his hands, arresting its momentum entirely. With his Intent burning white-hot Blake hurled it back over the tangle of its comrades with an empower throw.

He risked a glance toward the vent hatch. No green light yet. The Ferroghests regrouped with mechanical whines, forming a wall of snarling flesh and steel that filled the corridor.

"Kitt."

"Ten seconds."

He fired another Recoil round into their mass—a blast of kinetic force knocked them flat against the deckplates. One twitched; two staggered upright again.

Blake's breathing slowed to match their tempo. Sweat stung his brow.

The panel snapped open behind him—Kitt's voice urgent.

"Go!"

Blake holstered Verdict, dived for the opening. Metal scraped his shoulders as he squeezed through the maintenance crawlspace.

Claws battered at the floor above—howls punctured by metallic screeches.

He dropped down a meter into darkness just as Kitt slammed the hatch shut behind him with a growl of servos and sinew.

Something hammered from above, but the hatch held firm. There wasn't even enough of a gap for light to pass through.

A new passage stretched ahead: slick conduits, half-lit by failing diodes. Not empty either.

A ripple of movement flickered at the edge of his vision—wrong angles, too many eyes watching from the walls. Not a ferroghest, but definitely something twisted into shape by the outsider.

Blake collected himself, cataloguing a fresh set of bruises, and made his way down the maintenance corridor. He kept his senses on full alert, ready for war.

Verdict spat a final Recoil round. Kinetic force crashed down around the skittering construct—a nightmare fusion of maintenance drone and pulsing gristle—and its off-putting carapace shattered. The body settled into stillness, the air thick with the metallic tang of ozone and the underlying sweetness of decay. Blake lowered the weapon, the barrel still humming faintly.

They had emerged from the maintenance tunnel into an area of the ship that looked almost entirely organic. The corridor walls wept viscous fluid, organic corruption crawling over failing tech. Kitt assured him that crew corridors were not meant to look this way. Blake hadn't needed the confirmation—no one in their right mind would live in a ship that looked like this.

After a running battle with the mutated drones, they stood before a reinforced doorway marked with symbols that meant nothing to him. The fact that similar symbols were written sloppily in some kind of crayon or grease pencil gave away that these were personal quarters. According to Kitt, this was the Pilot's cabin.

"That was the last of them in this section," Kitt reported. "At least so far as I can tell. The signal is weak this far out, but it will get a lot better once I get into this next one."

Blake holstered Verdict. He drew Fang and jammed the tip into the seam where the door met the electronic lock.

"Thanks, let me work on this." Kitt's focus narrowed. A low thrum vibrated through the deck plating beneath Blake's boots. The damaged lock clicked, protesting, then gave way with a final sigh of escaping pressure. The heavy door slid open a few inches, revealing darkness.

Blake pushed it fully open and stepped inside, knife held low, ready. The air here was different. Stale, but cleaner than the corridor, less tainted by the pervasive wrongness of the Outsider's influence. Emergency lighting flickered, casting the room in unreliable strobes of pale blue. It was a living space, clearly. A wide viewport, now dark and dead, dominated one wall. Personal effects lay scattered—a discarded tool kit, what looked like intricately carved figurines, a crumpled blanket woven with unfamiliar patterns. Signs of a life interrupted.

Then he saw the bed.

It was recessed into an alcove and large enough to have been a luxury on any ship where space was a premium. Three figures lay there, curled together. Not human. Tall, slender beings with skin the colour of polished obsidian, limbs too long, features angular and refined. One larger figure cradled a smaller one, while a third lay nestled against its back, an arm thrown protectively over both. The Pilot, his mate, their child. Their forms were still, peaceful in a way that felt obscene amidst the ship's violation. No obvious wounds, no signs of struggle. Just… stillness.

Blake froze. His hand tightened on the knife hilt until his knuckles turned white. The air thickened in his throat.

Fallujah. A dusty room, the smell of cordite and fear, a father shielding his daughter, both caught in the crossfire.

Bogotá. A cheap apartment, the aftermath of a cartel hit, a family erased as collateral damage.

Geneva. Bodies propped up at a dining room table, plates with their own hearts in front of them, and in the center of the table… Fuck that guy had been a piece of work.

He'd seen this tableau too many times, in too many variations, under too many different suns. The universal horror of lives extinguished together, seeking comfort in the final moments.

His jaw locked. The practiced detachment he wore like armour cracked, the raw nerve beneath exposed. He took an involuntary half-step back, his gaze skittering away from the bed towards the dead viewport.

"Blake…" Kitt's voice was soft, hesitant. "The sub-core… it's over there. Near them."

He didn't answer immediately. He forced his eyes back to the bed, studying the family. The child's head rested against the larger figure's chest, small hands tucked under its chin. A profound weariness settled over him, heavier than physical exhaustion. What was the point? Clearing out monsters, fighting tyrants and Outsiders, chasing quests… it always ended here, didn't it? With the quiet dead who never asked for any of it.

"Where exactly?" His voice was a rasp.

An area near the head of the bed pulsed faintly on his HUD. A small, integrated compartment, flush with the wall paneling. Another piece of the Leviathan's fragmented consciousness, shielded from the storm.

He moved towards it, steps measured, deliberate. He kept his gaze averted from the figures on the bed, focusing instead on the compartment, on the mission.

Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. The old mantra. It felt hollow. They should have added Compartmentalize—He got as much use out of that one as the others.

He reached the alcove. The air here felt colder, charged with a sorrow that transcended the ship's physical corruption. He could almost feel the echo of their final thoughts, a wave of despair and resignation. He knelt beside the bed, reaching for the panel Kitt had indicated. His fingers brushed against the cool metal.

He kept his gaze fixed on the compartment, away from the still forms on the sleeping platform. It didn't matter. The image was burned behind his eyelids anyway.

"Ready?" Kitt sounded as unsettled by the unfortunate family as he was. Blake gave a curt mental nod. No point in delaying. He wanted out of this family's tomb.

"Okay. I'm going in."

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