“Mr. Mercer. Step inside.”The door to Integration Suite 4 was already open when Alex arrived, and the two security officers flanking it were not the gentle, unhurried presence he’d grown used to aboard this ship. Their hands rested on their belts in a way that made the gesture feel less like habit and more like readiness, and neither of them met his eyes as he approached, which somehow unsettled him more than open hostility would have.“I got a summons,” Alex said carefully. “For a session.”“You’ll be debriefed inside,” the nearer officer said, voice flat, professional. “Please don’t make this more complicated than it needs to be.”Alex stepped through, and the door sealed behind him with a heavier sound than he remembered it making before, more final, the kind of sound a door makes when it isn’t expected to open again soon.Dr. Reyes was already seated inside, though not in the patient’s chair, off to one side, at a small console he hadn’t noticed on his first visit, her face pale,

“The door’s unlocked, Mr. Mercer. You’re free to go.”Alex looked up from the edge of the bed to find Captain Voss standing in the doorway, alone this time, no security officers flanking her. She looked no less tired than she had the day before, but something in her posture had shifted, less urgency, more resignation.“Just like that?”“Not just like that. But yes, you’re being released.” She stepped inside, arms crossed. “AURA has completed her assessment. She’s confirmed you pose no immediate threat to this vessel or its crew. That’s sufficient grounds to lift your detainment.”“What about the rest of it? Why my file doesn’t connect to anything. Why I don’t match any of the five thousand slots.”“Unresolved.” Voss said it flatly, without apology. “AURA has told me she requires more time to determine the cause. I don’t like that answer, Mr. Mercer, but it’s the one I have, and I’ve learned not to push her past the point where she stops giving me useful information altogether.”Alex

“I need you to look at something.”Kai’s voice was low and urgent.He pulled Alex into the same maintenance alcove they had used before, then glanced twice down the corridor before finally speaking again.“What is it?”Kai held out his tablet, angling the screen away from the corridor.“This is a photo from the crew archive. Sector Nine housing block. A community event, eight months ago.” He hesitated. “I pulled it because I remembered being there.”Alex looked at the photograph.A crowd filled the frame. People stood shoulder to shoulder, arms around one another, wearing the easy, unguarded expressions of people who had been drinking and had no idea they were being photographed for posterity.Kai stood near the center, laughing at something outside the frame.“I don’t see anything unusual.”“Look to my left.”Kai pointed toward a narrow gap in the crowd.Two people stood slightly farther apart than everyone else, leaving an oddly precise space between them.“As if something used to b

“Three more since yesterday.”Priya slid a data pad across the workbench toward Alex and Kai, her voice tight, controlled in the specific way of someone holding herself together through procedure alone.“Three?” Kai’s face had gone pale. “In one day?”“Cross-referenced against yesterday’s crew manifest and this morning’s. Three names present yesterday, absent today, no departure logged, no medical transfer, nothing.” Priya tapped the screen. “I built a tracking method last night. Compare manifests day over day, flag any name that vanishes without a corresponding exit record. It’s crude, but it’s fast.”Alex studied the three names, none of them familiar to him, and felt something heavier settle into his chest with each one, not personal grief, exactly, since he’d never known any of them, but a grief adjacent to it, mourning people he could no longer even properly picture.“This is accelerating,” he said quietly.“It’s not just accelerating. It’s compounding.” Priya pulled up a second

“Report to your nearest checkpoint. Do not gather in crowds. This is a temporary system anomaly and will be resolved shortly.”The announcement echoed through the mess hall’s speakers, Captain Voss’s voice stretched thin over the recording, and Alex watched the crowd’s reaction split instantly, some people obeying, filing out in nervous clusters, others staying rooted exactly where they stood, tablets still out, still scrolling through records that refused to confirm what their own memories insisted was true.“That’s not going to work,” Priya said quietly, watching the scene. “You can’t tell people to stay calm about their own families disappearing. Calm isn’t a policy decision.”“She has to say something,” Kai said. “Even if it’s not enough.”They found themselves swept along with the crowd being funneled toward the plaza, security officers positioned at intervals now, more visible than Alex had ever seen them, faces carefully neutral in a way that did nothing to disguise the tension