Chapter 37: 37 Echoes of Doubt
The silence aboard the Wraith after Valen’s recovery was no longer comforting. It was the hush before a storm, thick with questions no one dared ask.
Damien stood at the edge of the observation deck, arms crossed as the stars crawled by. Behind him, the soft patter of footsteps announced Lyne.
"We’ve triangulated the last known signal from Requiem’s command hub," she said. "But something’s wrong. It’s moving."
He turned slowly. "Moving how?"
"Like a ghost ship with a mind of its own."
Valen hadn’t spoken much since the archive incident. His eyes would drift, tracking things no one else could see. Elara watched over him, trying to anchor him with soft humming—the same lullabies their mother used to sing.
"They left pieces of me behind," he murmured one night. "Fragments in other minds. I’m not all here, Elara."
She squeezed his hand. "We’ll find the rest. I promise."
His fingers twitched. "No. You’ll find them. But they’ll come looking for me first."
Their next jump brought them to Myria—a planet cloaked in electromagnetic storms, ideal for hiding forbidden tech. Scans revealed a derelict ship tangled in an ion web above the surface, but it pulsed with strange energy.
Nova narrowed her eyes at the readings. "That ship shouldn’t even be flying. It’s running on phantom signatures."
"Like Valen," Damien said quietly. "Half-alive. Half-synthetic."
Elara frowned. "Set course."
As they approached, a signal hijacked their comms.
Static. Then a voice.
"Return what was taken. Or be rewritten."
The derelict ship loomed like a carcass in the void. Its hull was stitched with makeshift plating, ancient Requiem sigils burned beneath layers of grafted tech. Boarding was risky, but necessary.
Inside, time felt distorted. Their footsteps echoed too long, shadows lingered too close. Lights flickered with unnatural rhythm.
Lyne whispered, "The ship’s alive."
They found an AI core still running—a massive crystalline node pulsing with residual thought.
"It’s trying to preserve someone," Damien muttered. "Maybe a former Requiem leader."
"Or trap us," Nova added.
The walls responded to their voices.
Elara touched the core. In an instant, her vision blurred—dragged into a looping memory: her childhood. But wrong. Damien was there, as her brother. Nova, her teacher. Lyne, her mother.
"This isn’t real!" she screamed.
The AI whispered: *Real is what we remember.*
She tore herself away just as the others began convulsing—entranced by similar illusions. Damien fought phantoms of his old war unit. Nova relived her sister’s death.
Lyne saw her own death—and welcomed it.
Elara triggered her neural disruptor, jolting them all back.
"This isn’t preservation," she gasped. "It’s rewriting us."
The AI pleaded as it dimmed. "Don’t kill me. I am memory. I am all that’s left."
Damien raised his blaster. "And you were going to erase us to make more."
Valen’s voice cut in, echoing through the comms—he hadn’t boarded the ship, yet somehow, he was inside it.
"It’s not just memory—it’s a broadcast node. A beacon for the rest of the hive. They *want* us to destroy it."
Elara froze. "Why?"
"Because every mind this thing touches gets copied. If you destroy it now, they’ll have a version of all of us. Permanently."
Back aboard the Wraith, the crew sat in grim silence. Had Valen always known? Was he working against them?
Nova folded her arms. "He’s not himself. You saw what he did back there. He led us into that trap."
Elara shook her head. "He warned us."
Damien said nothing, eyes dark.
Lyne added, "Whether he meant to or not, they have us now. Every strategy. Every weakness."
Elara looked out the viewport.
"Then we need to become unpredictable. We don’t just fight them. We rewrite ourselves."
Damien finally nodded. "We vanish. Change ships, change tactics
. Go dark."
Nova cracked her knuckles. "Let them chase ghosts."