“You’re not dead. That’s already better than most people’s first day back.”Alex turned to find a man leaning against the doorway of the medical bay, early thirties maybe, tool belt slung low on his hips, a grin that looked like it got used often. “Sorry?”“Kai Bellows. Maintenance, same crew you’re assigned to.” He stuck out a hand. “Dr. Reyes radioed ahead, said you were up and asking questions. Figured I’d come walk you through your first shift back before you wandered off and electrocuted yourself trying to remember which wire goes where.”Alex shook his hand, and something about the gesture ordinary, easy, a stranger’s hand in his felt like the first solid thing he’d touched since waking up. “I don’t remember much of anything, if I’m honest.”“Nobody does, first week out of transit. I didn’t remember my own last name for two days.” Kai said it like a joke, but something in his eyes suggested it wasn’t entirely one. “It comes back. Mostly.”“Mostly?”“Some stuff just doesn’t. My

“That panel’s wrong.”Alex said it before he’d fully decided to, staring at the relay housing in Sector Nine, a routine check he and Kai had run a dozen times without incident, the kind of task that had become almost meditative in its familiarity.“Wrong how?” Kai crouched beside him, following his gaze.“The serial plate. It says this unit was installed eleven months ago.” Alex tapped the small metal tag bolted to the casing. “I could swear I’ve serviced this exact panel before. Not one like it. This one. There’s a dent in the corner casing I recognize, right there, shaped almost like a fingerprint.”“Maybe. Maybe you worked an identical unit somewhere else on the ship. They’re not unique, Alex. We’ve got hundreds of these things, same manufacturer, same batch, probably came off the same assembly run before the ship ever launched.”“Maybe.” Alex ran his thumb along the dent anyway, some part of him certain, in a way he couldn’t justify with anything as solid as evidence, that certain

“Mercer. Bridge deck. Now, if you don’t mind.”The voice came through the corridor speaker before Alex had even left Integration Suite 4, and Dr. Reyes, beside him, went very still, her hand freezing halfway to closing her tablet case.“That’s not standard follow-up,” she said, mostly to herself.“Should I be worried?”“I don’t know.” She said it plainly, which somehow worried him more than reassurance would have. “That’s the captain’s personal channel, not the medical relay. I wasn’t told to expect this, and I’m usually told to expect everything that happens to my patients within the hour.”Alex found the bridge deck for the first time since waking, a wide, curved room lined with windows onto the artificial sky, banks of quiet, glowing consoles arranged in careful rows, crew stationed at half of them without so much as glancing up as he entered. At the center of it stood a woman with her arms crossed, studying a readout that clearly displeased her.“Captain Voss,” Alex said. “You wa

“Run.”The word came out of Alex’s own mouth before he was fully awake, and he sat up gasping, sheets tangled around his legs, heart slamming against his ribs like it was trying to escape a room too small for it.The dream was already dissolving, the way they always did, but this one left more behind than usual, a corridor, red light strobing, the specific, unmistakable smell of ozone and scorched metal, a taste in the back of his throat that felt disturbingly like blood. A name, half-formed, gone before he could hold the shape of it.He sat in the dark for a long time, waiting for his pulse to settle, and it didn’t, not really, not the way it usually did after these dreams.He didn’t call Dr. Reyes. He’d learned, these past weeks, that calling her only produced the same gentle, reasonable explanation delivered in the same gentle, reasonable voice, and he found he no longer had the patience for it tonight.Instead he got up, dressed, and walked.The corridors at this hour were nearly

“You look like you didn’t sleep at all.”Kai fell into step beside him at the mess hall entrance, tray already in hand, studying Alex’s face with open concern, the easy morning cheerfulness he usually wore noticeably absent.“I didn’t.”“Another dream?”“Something else.” Alex glanced around the crowded hall, lowered his voice. “Can we talk somewhere quieter?”Kai’s easy expression faded slightly, replaced by something more guarded. “That bad?”“I don’t know what it was. I need you to help me figure it out.”They found an empty maintenance alcove two corridors over, the same kind of unremarkable space that had become, these past weeks, where the real conversations happened aboard this ship.“There’s a door,” Alex said, once they were settled. “Sublevel access, unmarked, past the residential decks. It’s supposed to be storage. Last night it unlocked itself while I was standing in front of it.”Kai went very still. “Unlocked itself.”“Dr. Reyes was with me. She said doors on this ship do