He woke to silence.

  Not the soft kind that comes with sleep. Not peace. Not stillness. This was a vacuum silence, the kind that feels designed. Engineered to erase anything resembling comfort. Not even the hum of life support. Just a faint pressure on the skin, like the air was watching.

  A hiss. The pod cracked open. Warm air spilled out in a breath that did not belong to him. The lighting above him flickered on in a soft gold pulse, too perfect to be natural. He opened his eyes slowly, as though remembering how.

  White walls. Curved. Seamless. A strange sterility that didn't feel medical, but rather... performative. Like the room was pretending to be sterile.

  A single drone hovered above, shaped like an obsidian orb with silver fins of shifting light. It pulsed once in acknowledgment.

  “Well... sleeping beauty lives. How’s the existential crisis coming along?”

  The voice was synthetic, yes, but dry, sarcasm so practiced it felt like a second personality. British accent. Mid-tone. Somewhere between a therapist and a bastard.

  He sat up. Muscles responded without effort, but with the sensation of age, not measured in years, but in use. There was no pain, just the hint that pain could return if he moved the wrong way.

  He blinked at the drone.

  “Where am I?”

  “Aboard the Eon Veil. Congratutions. You’re either the st human alive or a very committed cospyer.”

  The man looked down at his own body. Clean. Pale. Skin unmarred. No scars. No hair. Not even a tattoo. He flexed his fingers.

  “I don’t remember anything.”

  “Par for the course,” the drone replied. “Name’s DeadMouth, by the way. Well, I call me that. You can too. Or name me something better. Your call. I’m basically your guilt-fvored Alexa.”

  The man blinked at him.

  “How about… Stark? No? K2-Slow? R2-D-F*cked?”

  Adam stared.

  “Tough crowd” the drone muttered.

  “I’ll think about it,” the man softly replied, looking around him confused.

  “That’s a no. Got it. Logging emotional damage.”

  He stood. The pod sealed behind him with a hiss that sounded almost... relieved. The walls shimmered faintly as he moved past them, reacting to his presence.

  The door opened without his touch.

  He stepped into the hallway, barefoot.

  Golden light unfolded ahead like the belly of a church. The ship breathed. It didn’t creak. It didn’t groan. It exhaled. Every footstep triggered a shift in the lighting—not reactive to motion, but to intention. It was as if the ship felt him coming.

  DeadMouth hovered beside him, silent now. Watching.

  He walked.

  Corridors stretched and curved like they were grown, not built. Every surface was too clean. Too symmetrical. Not a single bolt. No control panels. No oxygen masks or emergency buttons. It felt less like a spaceship and more like a simution of one.

  A strange tug in his chest. A sensation like deja vu, but hollowed out. A fake memory, straining to reassemble itself.

  He opened doors. Peered into rooms.

  The Bridge: A vast crescent-shaped command deck, ringed with floating translucent interfaces that dimmed when approached. No crew. No captain's chair. Just silence and the hum of unseen systems.

  He approached one terminal, and it lit up. Text scrolled across in a nguage he almost understood. He recognized certain symbols—gravity, mass, star-cssification codes—but they flickered and warped if he stared too long.

  He reached out to touch the panel. It darkened.

  "Well done," DeadMouth said. "You broke it. Or maybe it broke you. Jury's out."

  The Medbay was an antechamber of cold steel. Cryopods lined the walls like coffins waiting to remember their corpses. All empty. All immacute.

  A diagnostics unit hissed to life as he stepped forward. Green light scanned him from toes to scalp. The readout blinked:

  USER-NULL. UNIDENTIFIED. PRIMARY INDEX: CORRUPTED.

  He tried to ask DeadMouth what that meant, but the drone had drifted upward, oddly quiet.

  The Library: A long corridor lined in light. Not books. Data-sleeves. Hovering files that vibrated gently in the air. They shimmered when he neared, like water trying to remember fire.

  He grabbed one. It colpsed into dust.

  He tried another. A voice pyed—his voice, maybe?—saying a name he didn’t recognize, in a nguage he shouldn't have known.

  Then silence.

  "Ever read a book that reads you back? Welcome to the trauma archive," DeadMouth said.

  Panic, finally, bloomed.

  He started walking faster. Room to room. Quarters with made beds but no belongings. Observation decks showing stars he didn’t know, and nebue shaped like wounds.

  And then—a corridor he didn’t recognize. He stopped. He turned around. The door he entered through was gone.

  "Did this hall exist five minutes ago?"

  "Existential dread level now at medium-rare," DeadMouth said.

  He found a door. Smooth, seamless. No handle. It opened.

  He stepped through.

  The Viewing Room.

  It was cathedral-sized, lined in gss, or something like it. A dome. Transparent, perfect. Through it, the cosmos poured in.

  A magnetar loomed beyond the ship, a star so dense it warped light around it like water. Its gravity gnawed at the carcass of a gas giant, unraveling the pnet into thin threads of psma. Colors fred: blue, violet, white-hot gold. Lightning danced across space.

  He stepped forward.

  It wasn’t fear. Or awe. It was recognition.

  "I’ve seen this before," he whispered.

  DeadMouth said nothing.

  He reached for the gss. It was warm. As if touched from the other side.

  And then the lights dimmed.

  The walls of the Viewing Room darkened. The gss turned matte. The colors vanished. He turned around…

  The corridor he'd come from was gone.

  In its pce: a different hall.

  Longer. Narrower. With markings on the floor he didn't recognize.

  The air smelled of copper. And ozone.

  He stepped forward, slowly.

  "This isn't where I came from."

  DeadMouth, at st, replied:

  "No. It's where you're going."

  And the doors closed behind

  He walked.

  The corridor ahead stretched on. Not in the ordinary sense of distance, but in defiance. Each step seemed to push the hallway farther away, as if space itself resented his approach. The lights overhead pulsed with a slow rhythm, like the breathing of a creature that didn't need lungs.

  He paused. Turned to gnce behind him.

  No door. No pod. Just more hallway. His footsteps left no sound, and his own reflection was missing from the polished surfaces.

  Then, he saw it: a single door to his left.

  Unmarked. Unlit. Just there, quiet and waiting.

  He stepped toward it, and it slid open without a sound.

  Inside was a wardrobe room. Not sleek. Not industrial. It felt... curated. Personal.

  Suits hung in perfect alignment. Each one a different color, texture, style. Some sleek and silver, others bulky and armored. One looked like it belonged to a deep-sea diver. Another glowed faintly as if built for radiation or fme. Every outfit seemed made for a specific world, a specific mission.

  He scanned them, but his eyes kept returning to one: a dark navy uniform. An overall, matte and minimal, but shaped with subtle strength. A soft armor. Functional. Banced.

  He reached for it. The fabric rippled at his touch, as if testing him.

  He pulled it on.

  It adjusted. Shifted. Tightened.

  The seams crawled gently across his limbs, syncing with muscle, contouring to his frame. It wasn’t just a fit. It was a welcome.

  He exhaled slowly.

  For the first time since waking, he felt safe.

  Protected.

  Alive.

  DeadMouth hovered at the entrance, silent.

  "No jokes?"

  "You were naked. Now you're not. Let’s count that as character growth."

  He stepped out.

  And the hallway was different again.

  The sterile stretch of endless corridor was gone. In its pce: a well-lit passage, walls metallic but warm-toned. Lights embedded in the floor flickered gently beneath his steps.

  Doors lined each side, evenly spaced, uniform.

  And at the far end: a wall painting.

  As he approached, the image resolved itself.

  It was the hallway. This hallway. Exactly. Every door in the same pce. The same lighting. Same details. Except...

  He leaned closer.

  The painting showed him, standing where he now stood.

  And behind him, in the painting, was a door that hadn’t been there before.

  He turned. There it was.

  A new door. Not open.

  He walked.

  As he approached it, the door began to shift, colors cycling across its surface like ripples of liquid metal.

  Red. Green. Grey. Pink. Blue. Orange. Then back again.

  DeadMouth floated closer.

  "Hey, I should call you something. You need a name. My suggestions were not good enough for you, although I think they were glorious. What should I call you?"

  The man gnced at the drone. Paused.

  "Just call me... Adam."

  The name hung in the air like a note pyed underwater. The ship didn’t respond, but something felt different.

  The door was cycling faster now. Slower. Then faster again.

  He tried to open it. Nothing. Locked.

  "Maybe it works if you open it when it's blue," DeadMouth offered. "You know, like your suit. Symbolism. Or fashion coordination. Could go either way."

  Adam waited.

  The color rolled.

  Red. Green. Grey. Pink. Blue…

  He reached out.

  Contact.

  The door hissed open and a blinding light consumed everything.

  For a moment, there was only whiteness. Then shadow. Then shape.

  He was sitting.

  A table. A chair. A harsh light in his face.

  He blinked. Tried to speak. No sound. His mouth moved, but the air inside the room was heavier than silence. DeadMouth was gone.

  Just him. And a wall of dark gss in front of him—mirror or window, he couldn’t tell. Something watched from the other side. Or maybe it didn’t.

  And then the questions began.

  “Who are you?”

  He didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

  “Where did you come from?”

  Silence. Panic began to edge in.

  “What is your name?”

  He opened his mouth. "Adam," he thought, but even that felt wrong now.

  What is your position aboard this ship?

  Nothing.

  “What is your background?”

  He gripped the edges of the table. Cold metal. Or was it part of him now?

  His breathing became ragged. Sweat beaded on his forehead. The light got brighter. The shadows deeper. The gss darker.

  The questions looped. Again. And again. A voice without source. A voice that was his own.

  He was the interrogator. He was the subject.

  “WHO ARE YOU?”

  He screamed.

  And the room shattered into light.

  He felt heavy.

  Like gravity had been turned up just for him. A thousand invisible hands pressing down, fttening him to the floor of his own body. The voices hadn’t stopped—they had multiplied. A thousand variations of himself, all yelling questions in unison.

  “Who are you? Who are you? WHO ARE YOU???”

  He tried to crawl away from it, but there was nowhere to go. The walls were noise. The floor was his pulse.

  Then everything tilted. Wavered. Faded.

  He bcked out.

  He came to slowly, as if swimming back through glue.

  White lights. Cold air. The gentle beep of a heart monitor.

  DeadMouth hovered inches from his face, rotating, zooming in and out like a curious fly with a doctorate in sarcasm.

  "Sheeesh! Man, what happened? One moment you're opening the door, next you faint like a princess who just found out she is the one matching the shoe. What the hell happened in there?"

  Adam groaned.

  "I was... interrogated. But by me. I think. I don't know. It felt... real. Like I was peeling yers off my own skull."

  "Well that's not horrifying at all," DeadMouth said. "Shall I schedule another episode for next Tuesday? Maybe pair it with a cheese pte?"

  Adam sat up. The sterile white of the medbay wrapped around him like a too-clean lie. Everything here smelled like antiseptic and denial.

  He looked down. Still in the navy suit. Still whole. Still breathing.

  But something in him had changed.

  The questions hadn’t stopped. They were just quieter now.

  Waiting. Like the ship.

  Adam sat up fully on the medbay bed. His chest still rose with uneven breaths. The questions hadn't stopped—they'd only gone underground, like rot beneath floorboards.

  He turned to DeadMouth.

  "What the hell was that?"

  DeadMouth hovered back a bit. His lens tilted to the side.

  "Your first existential meltdown. Not bad for a rookie. I've seen worse. Well—imagined worse. I don't really watch horror movies. Too predictable."

  Adam stood. He stepped toward the drone, eyes sharp now. Focused. Unafraid for once.

  "No. Not this time. You knew something. I saw it. When I said 'interrogation,' you froze. You joked, sure, but that dey? That wasn’t nothing."

  DeadMouth wobbled. Just slightly.

  "I'm a sarcasm-driven emotional support orb, Adam. Not a bck box recorder. You're projecting. Cssic symptom."

  Adam kept coming.

  "No. You know more than you’re saying. You’ve been watching me since I woke up. You know how the doors work. You knew what the suit would do. You knew what blue meant. You know what this ship is."

  Silence.

  The drone didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t deflect.

  For the first time since he’d met the floating eye, DeadMouth froze.

  The hallway buzz of machinery grew louder around them. Or maybe just more noticeable.

  Then, slowly, DeadMouth’s voice returned.

  But it had changed.

  "I’m… just here."

  A pause.

  "I don’t know why. Or how. I woke up a long time ago. Before you. Long enough to forget what the beginning looked like."

  He floated lower, like the weight of honesty dragged on his thrusters.

  "I’ve watched things shift. Rooms disappear. Ghosts of people come and go. I’ve floated through locked doors, thinking I'd find answers. I didn’t. Just more corridors. More ghosts."

  Adam took a deep breath.

  "So you’re like me."

  DeadMouth rotated slowly.

  "I don’t know what you are, Adam. But I know what I’m not. I’m not your enemy."

  Silence settled between them. Heavy. Honest.

  Then the lights above flickered once. A door behind them hissed open.

  A new one.

  Soft cyan light poured in.

  DeadMouth tilted his lens toward it.

  "Well... that’s either progress or doom. Could go either way."

  Adam stared at the doorway. One foot in reality. One in memory.

  "Let’s find out."

  And he stepped through.

  He was back in the Viewing Room.

  The gss dome wrapped around him like a cathedral of stars. But the magnetar, once colossal, terrifying, godlike, was now a flickering dot in the distant horizon. A pale shimmer. An echo of power.

  The ship drifted past celestial bodies at impossible speeds. Stars blinked in paralx. Gas clouds unfurled like spilled ink. Asteroids danced zily, casting shadows that seemed too long for space.

  It was a movie without an audience.

  Eternal.

  Adam dropped to his knees.

  Not from weakness. Not quite from despair. Just weight. The weight of unknowing. The weight of being.

  "What’s the point in all of this, DeadMouth?" he whispered. "Why here? Why this starship? Where are we even going?"

  DeadMouth hovered quietly, lens fixed on the stars.

  "I think those questions will be with you for a long time, Adam. And since I can't answer them... and neither can you... maybe you should build your own. Make your own purpose. Your own story. It’s how things stay sane."

  "Meanwhile, we keep exploring. Somewhere on this... ship... there has to be answers."

  Adam closed his eyes.

  "How can I invent a purpose when I don’t even know what I am? Not just who. What."

  DeadMouth hovered lower.

  "What was that saying? One step at a time? Yeah. That’s it. One step at a time, Adam."

  A pause.

  "Just so you know…I’m here. Right next to you."

  Adam opened his eyes. The stars outside didn’t look quite so far.

  And then—

  The ship screamed.

  Arms bred. Red warning lights exploded across the walls. The floor shuddered beneath him, a low, guttural vibration that crawled through his bones.

  He didn’t hesitate.

  He ran.

  Straight to the bridge.

  Doors opened before him like reflexes. Consoles blinked wildly. Data streamed in nonsense patterns. Sirens overpped with mechanical voices shouting garbled protocol alerts.

  "Turn off this dreadful noise! I can’t even think straight! What the hell happened?!"

  DeadMouth spun in spirals above the helm, frantic for once.

  "Already ahead of you, but I can’t find the override code. Nothing’s working—there’s no info on this. Anywhere. It’s like it never existed."

  Adam stopped. Closed his eyes.

  Breathed in.

  Out.

  Then walked straight to the primary console.

  He typed: ADAM

  A pause. The arms stopped.

  The ship fell silent, but the view ahead of them… didn’t.

  The main viewport darkened, adjusted.

  And there it was.

  A bck hole, a leviathan in the void. A gravity well devouring the stars around it. Space folded inward like water down a drain. The singurity at its heart pulsed with a light that wasn't light, a shadow that wasn’t darkness.

  And they were heading straight toward it.

  Adam stared for a few long seconds.

  Then stepped forward. Gripped the side rails. Sat down.

  Hands on the controls.

  DeadMouth hovered behind him, unusually quiet.

  Adam exhaled.

  "Okay. Let’s see what this baby can do."

  A beat.

  "It’s time to see what this thing can do."