The following days blurred together as they tried to make sense of what had happened. The Vigilant was in critical condition, its systems slowly failing one by one. With every passing hour, the ship felt more and more like a tomb.
They scoured the ship for any remaining power sources, trying to get a better understanding of the damage done to the core. What they discovered was chilling. While the core had indeed been destroyed, something had escaped—something had made its way into the very foundation of the ship.
Kaelen and Mira combed through the data logs, trying to find a clue, some shred of information that might explain the signal's origin. There were no records of any strange transmissions, no warnings, nothing that might have prepared them for the horror they had encountered.
"The signal," Kaelen said, his voice trembling as he studied the data, "it wasn't just a message. It was… a lifeform. An entity. And it's still here."
Mira shivered, her eyes wide. "You think it's inside the ship now? Like… infecting it?"
"I think it's inside us," Kaelen whispered, his eyes dark. "And we don't know how to stop it."
The whispers had grown louder over the past few days, slipping into his thoughts when he least expected it. We are everywhere. You are ours.
But it wasn't just in Kaelen anymore. He could see it in Mira's eyes, too. The way she flinched when the whispers started. The way Laz's movements had become more erratic, as though he were struggling to keep control of his body. The entity had spread through them all. Slowly, surely. It was like an infection.
"We need to act," Mira said, her voice tight. "We can't just wait for it to consume us. We need to find a way to fight back."
But Kaelen didn't know how. The entity was like a shadow, slipping through their defenses, too elusive to capture. Every time they tried to sever the connection, it came back stronger, more insistent.
And the more time they spent on the ship, the more the walls seemed to bend and shift, warping as though the ship itself was alive, infected by the same darkness that now lived inside them.
They were running out of time. The ship was dying. And the entity was only getting stronger.