OLADOKUN_EMMANUEL

In the far future, space is cold, empty, and full of forgotten things.

Elias Thorne is a space scavenger—he travels alone, picking through old wrecks and broken stations. One day, he finds a ship floating near a dead star, where no one should be. Inside, there’s a woman in cryo-sleep. Her name is Maeve Calder, and she’s been missing for 50 years.

She wakes up with no memory of what happened.
The ship’s data is gone.
And something feels... off.

As Elias and Maeve try to figure out what happened, they start to grow close. But strange things start happening—time doesn’t feel right, and they keep hearing things in the ship. Maybe they’re not alone after all.

Now Elias has to choose—leave Maeve behind and save himself, or stay and face whatever’s out there with her. Even if it means they both get lost in the void.

Pulse In The Void

The door to the lower deck hadn't opened in days.

Not since Elias first restored basic power. The ship had sealed it automatically—system lockdown, maybe. Or something worse.

Now, as he and Maeve stood in front of it, the panel blinked green.

Elias glanced at her. "We don't have to go down."

They both knew it. The whispers. The flickering lights. The figure Elias had seen—Maeve had seen it too, or thought she had. And now the door had opened itself.

Elias pulled his sidearm from the locker. A small energy pistol. Barely useful, but comforting in the way that carrying a flashlight in the dark is comforting.

The door creaked as it opened, metal grinding against metal like teeth.

More like static. Like the air wasn't fully air anymore. Elias's flashlight caught glimpses of equipment half-melted into the floor. Some doors were fused shut. Others hung open like yawning mouths.

Maeve walked slightly ahead, her eyes darting. "This place," she whispered. "It feels like… something happened here. Like the ship remembers."

Elias approached it. The screen blinked once, then displayed a message:

CRYO-UNIT 7: ACCIDENT — 47 YEARS AGO

WARNING: OBSERVATION LOOP DETECTED

USER: CALDER, M. — STATUS: UNKNOWN

Maeve stared at it, face pale. "That's me."

He turned to her. "What's an observation loop?"

"I don't know." She looked like she was trying to force something back into her head. "I was part of an experiment, I think. They said… we were watching for something. Monitoring deep space anomalies. Time distortions. But the mission was scrubbed."

She shook her head. "I don't know. I don't remember anything after the blackout."

He felt something cold slip down his spine.

Maeve backed away from the console.

They didn't speak much on the way back up.

The ship felt colder now. Like something knew they had seen too much. Every panel hummed like a heartbeat. The walls felt closer. More awake.

Back in the control bay, Elias sat in silence, trying to process what he'd read. A loop. Time distortion. Experiment.

Maeve sat across from him, curled up on the bench. "What if I was never supposed to wake up?" she asked softly. "What if I'm not supposed to be real anymore?"

"You're real to me," Elias said without thinking.

It slipped out, raw and too fast. But she didn't laugh or flinch. She just looked at him. Eyes wide. Vulnerable. Human.

They sat in that fragile silence for a long time.

But with a sound that didn't belong. A low hum, rising slowly, like a machine starting to breathe. Lights dimmed. The stars outside shifted, just slightly. The dead star pulsed, once.

Chapter Five - Below The Pulse