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

Maeve sat on the floor of the memory core, breathing slowly. Her skin looked pale under the faint blue glow, but her eyes… her eyes had changed. They shimmered with a quiet, steady light. Not like they were glowing — more like they'd been opened to something ancient.

He crouched beside her. "Are you still you?"

Maeve gave him a weak smile. "Yeah. Just… more me than before."

He didn't know how to respond to that.

She looked up at the orb, now dim and still. "The ship stopped calling. It's… quiet in my head now."

She nodded. "Not control. Not full bond. Just recognition. It needed to be remembered."

They left the memory core in silence, the ship strangely calm. The red lights stopped pulsing. The air felt warmer. Almost peaceful.

As they walked the corridor, Elias kept glancing at Maeve. Not out of fear — but because something was different in her posture. She moved like someone who knew the layout of the ship by heart. Like the place itself was familiar.

She caught him looking. "I'm not a stranger here anymore."

Maeve looked down at her hands. "It should. But now I think the real fear was not knowing."

Back at the cockpit, Elias ran a system scan. The ship — The Seraphim Echo — was still too damaged to jump. Whatever it had been created for, it had drifted alone for a long, long time. But now, it had a voice again.

Maeve stood at the center console. Without touching anything, the display responded. Screens flickered. Power flowed.

"I don't think I was just meant to fly this ship," she said. "I was meant to be its anchor. It's memory."

Elias frowned. "You're saying it's alive?"

She turned to him. "No. I'm saying I was made to keep it from becoming something else."

Maeve hesitated. "Empty. Cold. Dangerous. These ships… the whole project… they were built to carry people into the deep void. Past places humans were ever meant to go. But no one knew what that kind of isolation would do to a machine."

A low beep echoed from the console. A ping.

Not from the ship this time — but from outside.

Something was nearby. Moving toward them.

Elias leaned over the panel. "It's not debris. Not a wreck. This is a working ship."

Maeve's voice turned cold. "Show me the ID code."

"It's from the same fleet," she whispered. "Another one of us."

Elias stood. "Another memory core?"

"Maybe," Maeve said. "Or maybe something worse. I'm not the only one who was put to sleep, Elias. And not all of us woke up… right."

Chapter Thirteen: The Weight of Remembering