Counselor Marin decided to dim the lights in the sickbay for Jorath’s comfort, but even the faint glow felt too bright.

Jorath sat cross-legged on a large diagnostic bed, back straight, his eyes closed, his hands resting, palms facing up on his knees, a posture that usually helped him control his empathic abilities. A small display monitor at the foot of the bed traced the erratic rise and fall of his neural activity, spiking in places that shouldn’t be registering activity at all. Marin sat nearby, arms folded, silent. He learned a long time ago to stop asking questions and start listening.

As a Halkan, Marin was an extreme pacifist, following his cultural doctrine of total peace. Even so, he was almost driven to violence watching the horrors the Cardassian soldiers inflicted upon Jorath several months ago. He knew his friend and colleague had not fully come to terms with the brutality he suffered, nor the emotional weight of the loss of so many friends and crew members. For him to now be overwhelmed with whatever was affecting his emotional control made Marin’s heart weep.

He had sat in sickbay reading a fascinating journal from the Mazarite Psychological Commission for the past several hours, and Jorath had not uttered a word. He did look up and offer a small smile as Marin first entered, so he hoped his presence alone might bring the young Deltan some comfort.

“I feel it,” Jorath whispered. “It’s not here, but it’s aware.”

Marin stood and walked over to the side of the bio bed. “Do you know what it is?”

Jorath shook his hairless head, slowly. “No. Yes. It’s not a lifeform. It doesn’t have thoughts. Its… hunger. It sees our emotions… through memory. Like ripples in water, but we’re the ripples. It can feel us.”

His breathing grew shallow, and a faint tremor appeared in both of his hands as they rested on his knees. “It tasted the pain… so much pain. It reveled in it. From the research team. From the Vaadwaur. And now…”

A sudden convulsion overtook him; he clutched his chest and screamed. The raw surge of fear and agony slammed into his mind and body. It wasn’t his pain, but the cumulative pain of thousands… millions.

Monitors shrieked as reading spiked about safe levels as Jorath slumped down into the bed. Marin quickly administered a sedative, voice calm but urgent as he called for assistance.

Jorath’s lips moved once more before unconsciousness took him, barely a whisper.

“It sees me.”

_____________________________________

All was quiet on the bridge. Not the efficient, focused silence of a ship in routine operations. This was a strange quiet, like everyone was holding their breath, even the Vallejo herself.

Captain Day Renora stood, her hands clasped behind her back, eyes fixed on the main viewscreen. Nerathis IV hung in space ahead of them, washed in a dull lavender hue from the nearby McAllister Nebula’s outer halo effect. In different circumstances, it would be beautiful. Just ahead and port was the Vaadwaur scout ship. She could see it plain as day, but their sensors were showing no readings. No movement, energy signals, or response from the away team. Mehta had signaled that the Ponderosa had landed; at least they were still in comm contact. The quiet wasn’t reassuring, it was suffocating.

“Status on the away teams?” she asked without turning.

Lieutenant Asha Kellan, manning the ops station, didn’t even glance up. Everyone was focused on getting their teams back safe and sound. “Still no response from Loran’s team. The surface team is en route to the dig site. Atmospheric scattering is growing worse, though. There’s… noise creeping into the signal. But it’s not random.”

Day turned slowly. “Explain.”

Kellan frowned. “We’re getting telemetry from the surface… scan packets, terrain data… but we’re receiving the same segments more than once. Some with timestamp anomalies. Milliseconds ahead of the ship’s internal chronometer. It’s like…”

She hesitated, her fingers twitching over the console. “Like it’s sending us data from a future scan. As if we’ve already been there.”

“Predictive modeling?” Day asked.

“No, these match real telemetry formats. Sensor signals are consistent with our own systems. Too clean to be a guess. But they shouldn’t exist.”

From the engineering station at the rear starboard of the bridge, Lieutenant Vex looked up, her mop of short emerald hair bouncing. “Captain, I’m seeing something in the diagnostic queue. Tactical systems initialized a low-level calibration cycle… three times.”

“Captain, that wasn’t me,” Rax added from the tactical station.

Day raised her eyebrow. “Who authorized it?”

“No one,” Vex replied. “It originated in the core subroutine stack. But the authorization is tagged to your command interface.”

“I didn’t touch that panel,” Day said.

Kellan turned slowly in her chair to face Day. “Captain… our internal logs show that command was scheduled. Manually entered. Seventeen minutes ago.”

Day didn’t respond.

A soft chime echoed across the bridge as the lights dimmed. Then again… and again.

“Environmental lighting adjustment just registered again,” Vex said. “We dropped 20% illumination shipwide.

“Power fluctuation? What keeps causing this?” Day asked.

“No, it was a commanded action,” Vex answered. “Executed from environmental control console B on deck four. But no one is stationed at that console.”

The gravity plating beneath them hummed just a little louder. Maybe it had been louder, and they were only just hearing it.

The bridge comm system chirped.

“Marin to Bridge.”

Day tapped her combadge. “Go ahead.”

Silence

She tried again. “Bridge to Sickbay. Marin, respond.”

Kellan looked over, piercing green eyes wide. “Internal comms are clear. It’s not system failure.”

Day straightened. “Then why the hell isn’t anyone answering?”

_____________________________________

The deck plating shuddered beneath Lieutenant Geral Loran’s boots.

Not violently, just enough to make his balance falter, enough to feel like something had exhaled beneath him. The emergency lights continued their slow, rhythmic pulse. Red… Black… Red… Black…

No matter how many times it happened, that flicker between sight and shadow made him want to scream.

He didn’t.

Not yet.

The away team was moving fast, half-running through the central corridor of the derelict Vaadwaur scout ship. The air smelled of copper, burnt ozone, and fear. Behind him, Lieutenant Bjornsen panted, still clutching his tricorder. Nurse Torel was sobbing again. Lieutenant Amir had taken the lead, phaser drawn, muttering a near-constant stream of Orion expletives.

“Ilias, try again!” Loran shouted.

Amir tapped his badge. “Amir to Vallejo… emergency extraction, four to beam out!”

Static.

“Anari! We’re requesting immediate extraction! We’re under…”

A screech of feedback tore through the comms channel, and then…

Laughing. Soft, quiet laughing.

Everyone stopped. No one spoke.

Amir looked down at his combadge like it had bitten him. Torel let out a strangled sound as she pressed her hands to the sides of her head.

Loran spun back to the corridor behind them. The lights pulsed again, and for a brief second, the corridor looked different. Bulkheads twisted at impossible angles. The walls were closer together. Something moved just out of sight, staying in the shadows.

He raised his phaser. “Keep moving, now.”

The team sprinted down the hallway back to their designated beam-out point. But the corridor was longer than it was before. This was the way they had come; the ship was too small to have taken a wrong turn.

Torel stumbled. Amir caught her, dragged her back to her feet.

Bjornsen had fallen behind.

“Keep going!” Loran barked.

Behind them, a soft scraping noise began. Metal on metal. Fingernails. Or claws. Or something else entirely.

Bjornsen turned to look.

He screamed.

Loran didn’t hesitate. He turned, vaulted over a loose conduit, and grabbed him under one arm. Bjornsen was convulsing… eyes wide, mouth frothing, limbs jerking. His tricorder clattered to the deck.

Something was in his head. Loran could feel it like static in the air.

“Ivar! Move, move!” he yelled, half-carrying, half-dragging the young officer.

They just had to reach the pattern enhancers they left at the beam-in site. Then, the Vallejo could get them back. Just a little further ahead.

The team finally reached the junction and turned into the small alcove they had arrived in.

There were no pattern enhancers…

The alcove was empty. Bare deck. Bare wall. No equipment. No trace.

Loran skidded to a stop, nearly dropping Bjornsen. “No… no, no, this is the place. This is the same corridor. This is where we came in.”

Torel backed into the wall, hands still pressed to her ears, eyes wild. “It moved them. It moved them!”

Amir’s hands were shaking as he tapped his badge. “Amir to Vallejo, emergency evac… pattern enhancers compromised. Do you read? Do you read?”

Silence.

Loran looked at him, breathing hard. “Options?”

“Bridge is sealed, engines are dead, and I’m not waiting for whatever this is, zol er krenken un gedenken. We find a shuttle. Or an escape pod. Whatever’s intact.”

Loran nodded, getting Bjornsen back to his feet. “Aft launch bays. If anything’s left flyable, it’s there.”

They moved. Fast. Desperate.

Behind them, in the place where the beam-in alcove had been, the walls began to melt. Slowly… like wax under a candle.

And something stepped through.