2025-09-27 15:20:41The medley of the Nomad was a cathedral of glass and steel. Transparent walls shimmered with faint energy fields, keeping the air sterile, while consoles hummed in rhythm with the ship’s core. Rows of diagnostic pods lined the room, their interiors glowing faint blue.
Tim sat on one of the exam tables, trying not to look as uneasy as he felt. The artifact’s faint pulse echoed in his chest like a second heartbeat, and every time Elara passed her scanner over him, it flared in response.
“Relax,” Elara said, not looking up. Her voice was calm, but her eyes were sharp as the device in her hand painted glowing lines across Tim’s torso. “The more tense you are, the harder it is to get a clean read.”
“Sorry,” Tim muttered. “It’s not every day you get told you’re carrying a piece of alien history.”
Jax sat slouched in the corner chair, arms folded. “I told you, you’ve got terrible luck.”
“Not helping,” Tim shot back.
Elara’s scanner beeped. A projection burst to life above Tim: an outline of his body, veins and organs glowing in shifting hues. But in the center of his chest was a swirling knot of blue light, branching outward in fine, lightning-like strands.
Tim’s stomach dropped. “That’s… me?”
Elara nodded. “That’s you. And that—” she zoomed the projection in on the knot “—isn’t supposed to be there.”
The artifact pulsed, as though offended. Tim flinched, pressing a hand to his sternum. “It’s alive.”
“Not alive,” Elara corrected softly. “Integrated. It’s rewriting you at a cellular level.”
Jax sat forward, unease breaking through his usual sarcasm. “Rewriting? Like—making him into what?”
Elara hesitated. “That’s the question. Your blood is carrying traces of energy I’ve only ever read about in classified files. It’s not just keeping you alive—it’s adapting you. Strengthening you.” Her voice dropped. “Or preparing you.”
“Preparing me for what?” Tim demanded.
Before Elara could answer, the door slid open. Captain Rhys entered, his presence filling the room. Behind him came a wiry figure in a grease-stained jacket, goggles perched on his forehead—the ship’s engineer, judging by the smell of oil and sparks that followed him.
“Report,” Rhys said.
Elara straightened. “The artifact is bound to him on a fundamental level. Separation is impossible without killing him.”
The engineer whistled low. “Lucky kid. Most folks who touch relics like that get fried into ash.”
Tim scowled. “Yeah, I feel real lucky.”
Rhys ignored the sarcasm. His gaze bore into Tim. “The Syndicate will come. They won’t stop until they have you. And they won’t care who they kill in the process.”
“Then throw me out the nearest airlock,” Tim snapped, anger boiling through his fear. “I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want any of it.”
The room went quiet.
Finally, Jax stood and clapped a hand on Tim’s shoulder. “Too late for that, mate. You’re stuck with us now.” His tone was lighter, but his grip was firm.
Elara studied Tim again, her voice lower, more personal. “You’re not just a target, Tim. You’re connected to something old. Something that’s been waiting.”
The artifact throbbed in his chest like a drumbeat. Waiting.
Tim shivered.
Rhys turned on his heel, already heading for the door. “Get some rest. Tomorrow, we plot our next move. If the Syndicate wants war, they’ll get it—but we’ll need to know exactly what our ‘scavenger’ can do.”
The door hissed shut behind him, leaving Tim with Elara’s scans still glowing in the air.
He stared at the light inside his chest, the alien knot twisting like a storm beneath his skin.
Not a scavenger anymore.
Something else. Something dangerous.
And deep down, he wondered if the artifact wasn’t just protecting him—
but using him.
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Chapter 25: The Voice Between Worlds
The sound of Korr’s distorted voice still lingered in the air, crackling faintly through the intercom before fading into a silence that felt alive.Elara stood frozen. Her pulse thundered in her ears, her mind racing faster than she could breathe.Then she turned toward Tim.“What did you just say?”Tim didn’t answer immediately. His eyes stayed fixed on the console, the faint blue veins pulsing beneath his skin like lightning trapped under glass.“Tim,” she repeated, sharper this time. “You said that voice was Korr. That can’t be right.”He looked up slowly, his expression unreadable. “It’s him, Elara. I’d know that frequency anywhere.”Jax swore under his breath. “That’s impossible. Korr was on the Omen’s Reach. That ship’s been offline since—”“Since we blew it out of orbit,” Elara finished. Her voice was steady, but her hands trembled. “You told me there was nothing left of him.”“I thought there wasn’t,” Tim said quietly. “But he’s alive. Or something wearing his voice is.”Elara
Chapter 24: After the Light
Silence.Not the clean, peaceful kind that follows sleep, but a thick, humming stillness that pressed against the skin.Elara blinked, vision blurred by the ghost of the light that had swallowed everything. Her ears rang; her body felt weightless, as if gravity itself were reconsidering its duty.The deck beneath her tilted once, then steadied. The faint red of emergency lights flickered back to life, staining the corridors in crimson haze.“Tim?” Her voice cracked.No answer.She pushed herself upright, pain blooming across her shoulder. Every console around the bridge had gone dark; holographic panels hung frozen mid-display. A curl of smoke drifted from a ruptured conduit.Then she saw him.Tim lay a few meters away, motionless, his skin faintly luminous in the dark. The glow wasn’t like before—no longer confined to his veins but radiating through the air around him, a soft aura that bent the light itself.Elara crawled to him, heart hammering. “Tim! Wake up—come on!”Her fingers b
Chapter 23: The convergence
The hum of The Horizon’s Edge had changed.It was subtle — barely noticeable at first — but Elara heard it. She had spent enough years aboard this ship to know every sound it made, every vibration in its bones.Now, the rhythm was wrong.She stood in the control room, surrounded by flickering consoles. Systems glitched in and out, lights dimming, then flaring again in patterns that made no technical sense.“Diagnostics are looping,” Jax muttered, hammering commands into the main terminal. “It’s like the ship’s rewriting its own code.”Elara frowned. “Run a full system lockout. Power down the secondary grid.”“Already did. Twice. It reboots before I can—”A sharp crack split the air as one of the holoscreens overloaded, sending a cascade of sparks across the floor.Jax cursed and ducked back. “That’s new.”Elara stared at the display — symbols were burning across it now, faint glowing sigils that pulsed in perfect sync with the ship’s hum. They weren’t any language she knew.“What the
Chapter 22: The Fracture Within
The hum of The Horizon’s Edge was softer now — almost soothing, like a lullaby sung to a restless child. But beneath that calm, Elara felt something shifting, an unease that clung to the air.Days had passed since the encounter at the Rift. The bruises on the ship had begun to fade, but not the ones it left on her crew.Especially not on Tim.He had stopped sleeping, though he insisted he did. His hands trembled when he thought no one was watching, and the faint blue light beneath his skin had grown brighter, threading up his veins like living circuitry.At first, Elara told herself it was just residual energy. Trauma. Something that would fade with rest. But deep down, she knew better. The Rift had not just touched him — it had rewritten him.---She found him in the cargo bay, shirt half undone, sweat glistening along his shoulders as he struggled to lift a containment crate that should’ve weighed half a ton. The crate hovered, then dropped with a metallic thud that echoed through t
Chapter 21: The Shadow that Watches
The command bridge of The Omen’s Reach was a cathedral of steel and silence.No voices rose above the low hum of power coursing through its walls. No footsteps echoed on the obsidian floor without permission.Here, every breath belonged to Varyn Korr.He stood at the center dais, his uniform immaculate, his face carved in cold precision. Around him, the Rift’s holographic projection spun like a ghostly storm — its luminous core throbbing in slow, steady rhythm.Korr’s gaze was fixed on it. There was reverence in his stillness, but also calculation — the kind of measured obsession only a man who had seen gods die could carry.“The connection remains faint,” said Drav, his tone cautious. “But stable. Whatever link the boy shares with the artifact, it’s… self-sustaining.”Korr tilted his head slightly. “Self-sustaining,” he echoed. “Like a pulse.”Drav hesitated. “A pulse implies something alive, sir.”Korr turned slowly toward him, his eyes pale and unreadable. “Exactly.”He descended f
Chapter 20: Echos of Light
Silence settled across The Horizon’s Edge like dust after a storm.The hum of the ship’s engines was the only constant sound — a low, steady heartbeat in the void.Kael stood by the forward viewport, hands clasped behind his back. Beyond the reinforced glass stretched a blackness so deep it seemed to swallow the stars. He had seen war, mutinies, and the Syndicate’s cruelty — but this, this quiet aftermath, felt far heavier.Elara’s reflection joined his in the glass. She’d changed out of her bloodstained uniform, but exhaustion still clung to her like a shadow. “He’s stable,” she said softly. “Vitals are normalizing. Neural patterns… not so much.”Kael didn’t look at her. “He’s connected to that thing now.”She nodded. “In ways we can’t measure.”For a moment, neither spoke. The hum of distant machinery filled the space where words should have been. Finally, Elara broke the silence. “You think we did the right thing — saving him?”Kael exhaled slowly. “Right stopped mattering the mome
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