The medbay door hissed open.
Elise stood in the threshold, plasma sidearm raised, Mira just behind her. Loro remained in the hallway, dazed, cradling his own thoughts like open wounds.
Inside the medbay: nothing.
No bodies. No patients. No sign of the knocking.
Just silence… and clean bedsheets.
Too clean.
Mira scanned the room, eyes tracing the corners, ceiling vents, scanner rigs. Everything was polished, unused. Yet the machinery was still warm.
A terminal sat beside a patient bed. Powered. Logged in.
She moved to it, tapping through the interface.
PATIENT FILE: UNMARKEDNeural Scan ActiveTransfer Progress: 78%Identity Tag: [REDACTED]
"This file's live," she muttered. "But there's no name. No date. No—"
The screen flickered.
A second file opened on its own. This one labeled:
FILE 2: DR. MIRA KHALEELStatus: PENDING EXTRACTIONMemory Sync: 3.6%
Her blood ran cold.
"Elise…" she said. "Come look at this."
But when she turned, Elise wasn't there.
No sound. No footsteps. No door hiss.
She was alone.
Mira backed up toward the medbay door. "Elise?" she called again. "Loro?"
Silence.
Her heart pounded. She tapped her comms.
[NO SIGNAL DETECTED][YOU ARE OUTSIDE NETWORK RANGE]
That's not possible. I haven't left the ship.
The lights flickered. For half a second, all the beds were full—people strapped down, eyes open, mouths screaming—then darkness again.
And then—
A voice from the intercom. Her own.
"Don't trust the next door. It isn't a door."
She froze.
"What…?"
The medbay door slid open behind her.
A figure stood in the hallway.
"Elise?" Mira asked, voice trembling.
"Yes," the figure said.
But something was wrong.
Elise's shadow stretched the wrong way.
Mira backed up.
The Elise-copy took a step forward, eyes empty, face slack—like someone wearing skin as a mask.
"Elise, tell me what we found in cargo deck four," Mira demanded.
The figure blinked slowly. "We… found hope."
Wrong answer.
Elise would have said "just crates and dust."
Mira raised her scanner and fired an EM pulse—meant to stun. The figure shimmered.
Glitched.
Flickered like static, then collapsed inward, folding into a dozen mirror-fractured versions of Elise, all twitching and laughing.
"You're not real," Mira whispered.
The mirror-Elises smiled in unison.
"And you think you are?"
The lights blew.
The room went black.
And suddenly, the voice from the terminal whispered:
"Transfer now at 5.2%."
Mira clutched her head. Pain. Memory leakage.
She remembered being five. On Mars. Holding a red balloon. But the memory was wrong—her mother's face had Elise's eyes.
Something was rewriting her.
Then—
A hand on her shoulder.
She turned, ready to strike.
But it was the real Elise.
"I found you," she said. "You wandered off."
"I didn't—" Mira's voice broke. "There was something. You were here. Then gone. Then… you came back wrong."
Elise frowned. "What are you talking about?"
Mira turned back to the console.
It was off.
Dark. Dust-covered.
No terminal. No files. No record.
Just an empty bed… and the faint sound of someone breathing in the walls.