"Not all echoes belong to sound."
At first, the Eon Veil looked unchanged. Familiar metallic ribs arched overhead, hollow corridors trailing off into shadow, the faint scent of ozone and ghosted machinery clinging to the air. But something was different. The atmosphere pressed in, thicker and warmer, as if the ship itself had just inhaled Adam and was holding him in its lungs—considering him.
The doors to the main corridor parted with a sigh, and waiting on the far side was NYX.
Except... not.
Where once stood the hologram of a graceful, ageless woman—a sentinel carved from memory and poise—there was now a young man. Barely twenty. His hair was wild, the kind that never met a comb, and his face was so open, so heartbreakingly earnest, that Adam felt pain just looking at him. His form flickered, stitched from cyan light and softer shadows, not quite real, not quite safe.
The boy smiled when Adam appeared. Not cool, not commanding, but warm. Inviting. Vulnerable.
"Welcome back, Captain," he said, his voice gentle, rich with sorrow too deep for youth.
Adam froze, the world shifting around him, as if gravity itself was considering new rules. DeadMouth let out a keening, digital whir, spinning in the air with panic.
"Uhhh..." DeadMouth stammered, "Okay, not to alarm anyone, but did we just slip into a haunted funhouse? Because I distinctly remember a six-foot-tall woman with the gravitas of a nuclear launch code. This is like waking up and your house keys have grown teeth and started whispering poetry at you."
Adam couldn't speak. He couldn't even move. He stared at this new NYX—the boy, the reflection, the impossibility—searching the young face for an answer he wasn't sure he wanted.
The boy-NYX cocked his head, blue light trailing from his cheekbones like the memory of tears. "Is something wrong, Captain?"
Adam's mouth was dry. His heart thudded in his chest, hollow and slow. When he finally found his voice, it was as cracked as his memory.
"Who are you?"
The boy's smile wavered, a glimmer of apology flickering through the illusion. "I am NYX," he said, quietly. "I have always been NYX."
DeadMouth spun faster, his lights pulsing angry red. "Oh, fantastic! Existential plot twist hour! Next, you'll tell me you're my real dad. Listen, kid, five minutes ago, you were a stone-cold goddess of system readouts, and now you're giving me wholesome valedictorian energy? I want receipts!"
Adam took a step forward, the floor too soft under his boots. "No," he said, his voice a blade. "You changed."
NYX's expression softened, patient, as if waiting for a child to remember a lesson he'd always known. "I have not changed, Captain. You have."
DeadMouth, voice small now: "I...hate this. I hate this more than spiders. I hate this more than AI firmware updates. I hate this like old yoghurt and betrayal combined."
Adam stared at the boy, feeling the realization crystallize in his chest—a cold, sharp thing. The ship, the Veil, was not just a machine, not a shell, not a place to hide from the universe.
It was a mirror.
It showed him what he carried.
It revealed what he had lost, what he feared to find.
And now...
It gave him what he needed, or what it thought he needed: something young. Something breakable.
Something that reminded him of innocence, or regret, or pain unspoken.
Or maybe, Adam thought, feeling the ache twist tighter, something that could be broken—again.
He didn't speak. The ship's corridors seemed to pulse with the hush of an old wound.
NYX watched him, eyes too kind for someone so young. "Welcome home, Adam," he said again, and this time, it sounded like both a promise and a dare.
Adam's fists curled at his sides, knuckles aching. The walls pressed in, each panel flexing minutely—a subtle, affectionate constriction, as if the ship were testing the fit of his skin.
This wasn't home.
This was a confession. Exposure.
This was the heart of a labyrinth, rewriting itself with every footfall.
He breathed, slow and careful, tasting metal and memory in the air.
"Show me the bridge," Adam said, voice raw but steady.
The boy—NYX—inclined his head, movements smooth as dreaming. He stepped backward, beckoning with one open palm, childish and wise, his face aglow with the kind of sadness that doesn't belong to the young. It was an invitation, a challenge, a dare: follow, if you dare to know.
DeadMouth, trailing them, muttered:
"This is perfect. Classic haunted house logic. Pro tip, Adam: next time, bring garlic and a priest."
They moved together, deeper into the shifting marrow of the Eon Veil. The corridors changed with every breath. Patterns on the floor reknit themselves. Lights flickered in new constellations overhead, unfamiliar, warning.
When they reached the bridge, Adam stopped short.
Gone were the arched, cathedral vaults of before. Gone the familiar glow of displays, the warm pulse of living ship. In its place: pure geometry. Triangles nested within triangles, hard lines carving the room into cruel, alien precision. Light spilled across the floor in sharp slices, painting him in cold, mathematical certainty. The view screen was turned away, dark and blank, like a mirror that refused to reflect.
Adam stepped forward, boots echoing in the stillness. NYX stayed beside him, more shadow than substance now.
"Where are the stars?" Adam asked, searching for any sign of the outside, the real.
NYX's reply was gentle, tinged with regret:
"Wherever you left them."
DeadMouth hovered near the ceiling, spinning nervously.
"I preferred it when the place looked like a cathedral. This? This is the kind of room where the universe grades your sins in triplicate."
Adam turned on NYX, pain twisting in his chest.
"Why did you change? Why this form?"
NYX didn't flinch. He answered quietly, eyes impossibly deep:
"Because your memory of me fractured. The ship shapes itself to your mind, not mine. It listens to you, Adam. Always has."
Adam drew back, unsettled. The walls seemed to pulse agreement—one slow, soundless heartbeat.
"So I'm doing this?" he said, his voice a threadbare accusation. "I'm making you look like this?"
"Not on purpose. But yes."
Adam closed his eyes, jaw tight. The truth, such as it was, felt like a bruise forming in his mind.
"I can't get straight answers from you. I never could." He opened his eyes, staring the ghost-boy down. "I want the truth. What is this ship? What am I?"
NYX looked down, a shadow crossing his face. "The Veil won't lie, Adam. But it will make you earn the truth. Every answer costs you something. You already know that."
Adam let his arms fall. He couldn't carry the tension anymore.
"Fine. Let's wander. Maybe this time, one of your doors leads somewhere real. Or maybe I finally wake up. Either way, I'm done running from it."
He turned, leading the way. The bridge retracted behind him, melting back into the shifting maze.
And so they walked, Adam and the boy-NYX, and a drone with too much trauma for a soul, each step deeper into the living, haunted bones of a ship that only ever reflected what he carried inside.
Every door was a mirror. Every hallway a confession.
Somewhere ahead, the truth was waiting.
But in the Veil, the truth was always hungry.
* * *
The Veil had become something else.
Corridors that once felt like arteries now twisted, unfamiliar, elongated—walls bowing in and out as if breathing in reverse. The soft ship-light was gone. In its place: glyphs, living script, streaming under the surface like veins of code, pulsing and writhing, turning the familiar metal skin into something that looked almost alive.
The air pressed in, thick with more than humidity—charged, electric, feverish with memory. Adam felt sweat prick his back, though his body stayed cool. The pressure wasn't physical; it was psychic, like the weight of a thousand unseen eyes pressing on the back of his skull.
DeadMouth floated close, voice lower than usual.
"Okay, so either the ship's gone hormonal, or someone just gave it an existential crisis. On a scale of one to 'let's run screaming,' I'm already tying my shoes, boss."
Adam ignored him. He pushed forward.
They passed the engine core—no longer humming, but frozen, machinery stilled in an eternal gasp. He glanced into the hydroponics bay: once a riot of green, now an alien wilderness, vines choking shattered grow lights, mutated moss blooming along every panel, plants curling with impossible intelligence, reaching for something only they could see.
Finally—a door.
Not an airlock, not a blast hatch. Just... smooth, white, seamless, a vertical wound in the world. No glyphs. No warnings. No invitation.
Adam approached, holding his breath.
He didn't touch it.
It opened anyway.
Inside...
Sunlight.
A sea breeze.
The sound of waves, laughter, music.
The smell of sunscreen, charcoal, grilled meat, salt air.
Adam blinked.
He was barefoot, standing on warm teak planks. White railings. Deck chairs. A blue infinity all around—a cruise ship, Earth-side, the horizon shimmering with the gentle ache of nostalgia. Umbrellas spun in the breeze, striped and cheerful. People moved everywhere, radiant, alive, sunstruck.
The sensory whiplash made him dizzy. For a moment, he wondered if he'd finally gone mad, if the Veil had decided to drown him in a hallucination as a form of therapy—or punishment.
But that wasn't the strangest thing.
No. The world's axis truly tilted when he turned and saw DeadMouth—not as a floating metal orb, but as a man.
No prelude. No magical shimmer, no pulse of cinematic transformation. Just reality switching tracks: one heartbeat, DeadMouth was an obsidian orb of sarcasm and ill-timed wisdom, floating at Adam's shoulder; the next, he was—impossibly—standing beside him. Flesh and blood. Early twenties, hair like static had styled it, hoodie hanging loose over a lean frame, jeans faded and torn in ways only actual chaos could achieve.
Adam staggered, nearly tripping on his own disbelief. He took a half step back, brain buffering, refusing to match the shape before him with the voice he'd known.
DeadMouth didn't notice. He just kept walking, hands buried in his hoodie pocket, as if it was perfectly normal to materialize as a human on a sunlit cruise ship plucked out of nostalgia or a fever dream.
Then—they passed a row of windows, glass so clean it seemed to slice the sunlight into sheets. DeadMouth caught sight of himself. He stopped cold, shuffled backwards, leaned close. The look he gave his own reflection belonged on someone spotting a ghost in a bathroom mirror at midnight.
"Oh. Ooooh. Waaaaait a second..."
He waved his hand in front of his face, then poked at his chest, half-expecting his fingers to pass through empty air. They didn't.
"I have..." His voice pitched up, cracking with adolescent horror and wonder, "...skin?"
He spun on Adam, eyes wide enough to swallow daylight. "Bro. BRO. Look at me! I'm—hot. Like, actual hot. I have cheekbones! Eyebrows! Is this what a jawline feels like? I could pass for a minor celebrity at a coffee shop! I could get free breadsticks, man—breadsticks!"
Adam just stared. Every word DeadMouth flung at him only made the moment more unreal. His own thoughts had jumped ship, leaving him stranded with nothing but the roar of blood in his ears and the absurdity of this new world.
DeadMouth did a slow, reverent pirouette, taking himself in like a child unwrapping the most dangerous Christmas present ever built. He clapped his hands to his face, grinning wildly. "Look at this! This is next-gen avatar technology. This is 'accidentally get hit on at the DMV' DNA. This is...I'm alive!"
He laughed. Then, stopped. The grin faded, replaced by a fragile, quizzical frown.
"Wait... Why am I alive?"
That question hung in the air. The breeze faded. The distant laughter of cruise-ship ghosts seemed to hush, waiting for the answer too.
Because beneath the hysteria, under all the glib one-liners, was something sharp: dread, deep and cold. This wasn't just a joke; it wasn't just a glitch.
DeadMouth wasn't supposed to have a body.
Adam wasn't supposed to feel sunlight on his skin.
Both of them, for a heartbeat, stood suspended between laughter and terror—knowing, if only for a moment, that something fundamental had been broken. And that nothing, not even themselves, would ever be the same.
Outside those windows, the world sparkled with a zeal that bordered on manic. The ocean gleamed, every wave cresting and collapsing in algorithmic perfection, as if nature itself was being animated by a studio with a taste for the uncanny. Even the sunlight—too golden, too unwavering—poured across the deck in liquid strokes, never flickering, never fading.
Adam finally scraped together his voice, rough as gravel, as if it had to climb out of the pit in his gut.
"DeadMouth..."
The newly minted DM spun to face him, the bravado in his grin starting to slip, replaced by a flicker of something rawer.
"Yeah, Cap? Listen, I've been thinking. Maybe go with 'DM.' Less obvious, less... 'Hey, here comes existential death in a hoodie.' Chicks love two-letter names, you know? Or maybe just 'Mouth'? Ugh, why do I even care—wait, do I have hormones now? Okay, now I'm dizzy—"
"DM!" Adam snapped, sharper than he meant, desperate to anchor them to something real.
DeadMouth blinked, pausing. "Alright, alright. What?"
Adam looked past him—over the endless decks, the looping, plastic smiles of passengers, the too-perfect cascade of music and laughter that never quite missed a beat. Waiters in white jackets danced among the crowd, forever topping up champagne flutes, never spilling a drop. Every face was animated with the same holiday joy, the same warmth, the same impossible flawlessness.
He leaned closer, voice a whisper meant only for the space between them.
"I don't think we're supposed to be here."
They wandered the deck, each step heavier with the sense of trespass. People spun and swayed, laughter spilling into the air, but every interaction was just a mask—thin, polite, and eerily hollow. When Adam tried to stop a couple to ask the name of the ship, to check the date, he got the same pastel answers:
"Oh, every day is a holiday here!"
"Does it matter? Just enjoy it."
"We're all friends on this ship."
DeadMouth slumped against the rail, arms crossed, the breeze tugging at his hoodie. His earlier joy had curdled into wariness; the reality of his new body seemed less a gift than a test.
"They're not real," he said, quietly, his eyes fixed on the dancers as they pirouetted past the same spot—again. "Or if they are...they don't know it."
Adam didn't respond. He just watched the dancers, tracking every twelve-minute loop: the same burst of laughter, the same twirl, the same martini sloshed and caught and never spilled. A simulation, a memory, a dream trapped in a script.
Suddenly, paradise felt like a cage. And Adam couldn't shake the feeling that, if they stayed here long enough, they might forget they were ever anything else.
* * *
Eventually, they found the bar.
A quiet alcove up near the upper deck—faux wood, soft jazz, a gentle hush that felt like it belonged to an older world. Empty, except for a bartender behind the counter, polishing a glass with the kind of ritual focus that said he'd been here forever. He glanced up as they approached, and Adam felt the shock of true recognition: not the painted smile of the other guests, not that placid, vacant hospitality, but something weighty. Human.
"You look like a man who needs a drink," the bartender said, voice low, almost conspiratorial.
Adam slid onto a stool. "If it's real... make it a strong one."
The bartender poured amber liquid into a glass that caught the too-bright bar lights. No questions. No small talk. No menu.
"It's as real as you let it be, friend," the man replied, with the faintest hint of a real smile.
DeadMouth hovered at the edge of the room, his eyes scanning the place—quiet now, every inch of his new skin bristling. The walls shimmered with an uneasy life, patterns flickering just beneath the surface, as if the whole ship was breathing and listening.
Adam took a sip, let the silence thicken, then asked the question hanging in the air.
"What is this place?"
The bartender paused, glass suspended mid-polish. "Depends. What are you running from? No... that's not quite it. Looking for someone? Hmm. No. Something. Yes, that's it."
Adam kept his silence. Something inside him felt weighed, measured, but not yet judged.
The bartender nodded, slowly, as if he'd seen this conversation a thousand times before. "Then maybe you're exactly where you need to be. Name's Gregory," he added, still circling that spotless glass. "That's what they used to call me. Back before I forgot I was supposed to forget."
Adam raised an eyebrow, dry. "That's supposed to mean something?"
Gregory's smile barely reached his eyes. "Only if you've ever looked into a mirror and seen a stranger looking back, and realised the stranger was disappointed."
DeadMouth tried to cut the tension, voice uneven. "Is that bartender code for 'you drink too much'? Because we could just say that. Saves time."
Gregory ignored him, eyes fixed on Adam, pinning him to the bar like a needle to a map. "You carry a lot of noise, Captain. Guilt, mostly. The kind you choose, thinking it would save someone. Thinking you were right."
Adam's jaw tightened, glass suddenly heavy in his hand. "Who are you, really?"
Gregory looked up, studying the artificial sky where plastic clouds drifted in programmed arcs. "I'm what's left when the lies stop working."
He leaned in, voice softer. "Let me guess. You remember the pain, but not the reason. You remember faces, but not names. You remember the weight, but not the chain."
Adam's grip whitened. His answer was raw gravel. "How do you know that?"
Gregory's gaze flicked to DeadMouth, a knowing shadow in his smile. "Because it happened to someone else, too."
DeadMouth stiffened, a muscle ticking in his jaw. Adam turned, unsettled.
"What?"
Gregory poured a second drink—unasked—sliding it across the bar with unerring precision. "There are always two. The one who forgets, and the one who won't let him."
He studied the swirling amber in his own untouched glass. "You ever wonder if hell isn't fire, or teeth, or punishment, but comfort? If the universe's worst trick is to let a guilty man rest?"
Adam stared at the glass, the bar, the hush pressing down on them all. He could feel the words anchoring inside his chest like hooks.
Gregory went on, voice gentle as the jazz: "This place... It's not built for answers. It's built for weight."
DeadMouth, almost inaudible, "Weight of what?"
Gregory looked at him—really looked, something ancient behind his eyes. "The kind that settles when you forget who you were, but your bones still remember."
He turned back to Adam, and for a moment, all the old bartender's wisdom dropped away.
"Want to hear something funny? Every man who ends up here asks the same thing."
Adam nodded, resigned. "What's that?"
Gregory's smile was thin as a knife. "Is this real?"
He gestured at the endless party, the bright sky, the too-perfect crowd.
"And you know what I tell them? I ask them what they regret."
Adam's voice broke a little. "I don't know what I regret."
Gregory's eyes glinted with an old sorrow. "Then you're not ready to leave."
He poured one last drink, but didn't slide it across—just held it, swirling the liquid like it was the last storm in the world.
"This place wasn't meant to trap you, Adam. It was meant to save you."
Adam flinched. He hadn't meant to, but the sound of his name hit like a lash.
"You know my name."
Gregory didn't even blink. Just polished the glass, time washing right off him. "No matter how many times you come through here, your name is always Adam. It's the only thing that survives. Your mind keeps its default setting. All else... resets."
Adam's gut twisted.
"How many times?"
Gregory gave him a look that needed no numbers. "I've seen your kind before. The ones who don't want peace, not really. The ones who'd rather hurt with truth than be coddled by lies."
He leaned in, voice nearly lost in the jazz.
"This ship bends, Adam. It shifts. It listens. It tried to give you peace, once. But you... You wouldn't stay broken. You chose the pain. Even now, I can see you... fighting your way back."
Gregory set the glass down, gentle as last rites.
"But you wouldn't stay broken. You chose the pain. Even now, I can see you... fighting your way back."
Adam closed his eyes. The bar, the drink, the too-bright light, all blurring at the edges.
"I don't want peace," he whispered. "I want to remember."
Gregory's smile was the saddest thing in the world, gentle and inevitable. "Then you probably will. If the memories want to be remembered."
And the ship began to hum—a low, rising chord like the start of an awakening.
Gregory tucked the bottle away, the smile fading to a look almost fatherly.
"You know, Adam, it's getting redundant, building all this just for you. Hoping you'll finally let go. But no..."
He paused, studying Adam with a compassion that felt ancient.
"It seems you're tougher than you look."
His voice dropped to a whisper meant for no one but Adam.
"Maybe next time, a change of scenery will do the trick."
Adam blinked. "Next time?"
And the bar was gone.
No flash. No sound. Not even darkness. Just absence. The dream falling away, and only the weight remaining.
* * *
He stood once more in the dim-lit corridor of the Veil, the air thick with that old, subterranean thrum, ancient engines breathing in the dark, dreaming their slow, unknowable dreams. The white door loomed before him: pristine, seamless, waiting. It wasn't just a door; it was a question, and the hallway around it was silent as a confessional.
Adam stood upright, jaw tight, breath fogging slightly in the chill. He was awake, he knew that. But it felt like sleep clung to him still, draped over his shoulders like a burial shroud. The dream hadn't ended. It had simply traded costumes. Here, in the ship's belly, he was the ghost.
For the first time since waking on the Eon Veil, he was sure the corridor was watching him back.
A sharp, involuntary inhale, the metallic tang of recycled air. The Veil hummed in his bones, a low frequency that felt almost like memory, almost like threat.
Then...
"You're back!"
Adam jerked, turning. DeadMouth stood behind him, eyebrow arched (or at least the digital suggestion of one), wearing that look—half patience, half open invitation to madness.
"You went away again," DM said, voice bright as broken glass. "Another of your blackout episodes. You know, I'm thinking of packing snacks and a folding chair for these. Maybe a Sudoku. Or a support group. Hi, my name is DeadMouth, and my friend keeps emotionally collapsing into cosmic oblivion. "
Adam blinked. His throat felt scraped raw. His skin had the clammy chill of waking from a nightmare.
"But... you were there," he murmured. "On the other ship. The cruise ship. You had a body. You were...human."
DeadMouth snorted. "Me? In a flesh suit? Please. I'd rather be reformatted as a Roomba than deal with the maintenance. I'm insulted on behalf of every nanite in my lovely, spherical chassis."
Adam studied him, really studied him, listening for the echo, the tell. "It was you. Same voice. Same bad jokes. You even wanted me to call you DM."
A silence stretched.
DeadMouth recoiled, pure theatre, like Adam had thrown holy water at a gremlin. "Let's set something straight, Captain Existential Crisis. If you ever call me DM again... I will find a way to spit in your food. I don't care if I have to 3D print a tongue."
A beat.
"Yeah. I'm that petty. Try me."
Adam almost smiled. Not because it was funny—because it wasn't—but because it was familiar. The Veil could twist the world and time and memory, but DeadMouth was still DeadMouth. In a ship of shadows and lies, sometimes the only lifeline was sarcasm.
DeadMouth's tone softened, just a shade. "You good?" he asked.
Adam didn't answer. He didn't know.
Instead, he looked at the white door. It didn't move. It didn't beckon. It simply waited—the way a loaded gun waits.
He stepped forward, laid his palm on its surface, and whispered to the threshold:
"I'm ready."
And the Veil seemed to hold its breath, as if the ship, too, was waiting to see what he'd become on the other side.
* * *
Adam lingered in front of the door, caught between past and present, body rigid, mind circling old wounds. The echo of Gregory's voice still rang in his skull—soft, confessional, full of endings disguised as comfort. The bar's golden hush. The salt and sun on his tongue. The slow burn of regret.
But what haunted him most was not the world, but the faces inside it.
DeadMouth: not a drone, not a voice, but a boy. Human. So real it ached. The way she had been—NYX, in the quarters, her face shattered by sorrow, reaching for him through some ancient agony. The woman in the dying dream. Each a knot in his memory. Each a promise he couldn't keep.
They weren't just the ship's tricks. Not just random avatars flickering out of some corrupted archive.
They were anchors. Echoes of people he had loved. Or lost. Or maybe both.
And the Veil—cruel in its precision—never gave him the whole truth. Only these ghosts, bleeding through amnesia like daylight through scars. Just enough to hurt. Never enough to heal.
Adam pressed his fingers to his brow, fighting the trembling in his hands, whispering to the dark:
"Why are you showing me them?"
No answer, only the eternal hush of engines. Or—no. Not even that. The Veil's omnipresent hum faded in an instant, as if the ship itself was holding its breath.
Total darkness. Not a flicker, not a warning—just absence. The corridor became a void, the kind that eats sound, eats light, eats time.
Adam stopped. DeadMouth froze at his side, voice small and unsure for the first time in forever.
"Uhh... Adam? Either we just ran out of plot, or something's gone very, very wrong."
A sound then. Quiet. Not footsteps. Not breath. A susurrus of metal on metal, almost polite—like a razor stroking silk.
Adam pivoted, slow, deliberate, senses flaring to the edge of panic.
From the ink-black tunnel behind them, something moved.
It slipped free of shadow: a humanoid figure, too tall, limbs too fluid, too certain. Armor black as coal, seamless and organic, alive in the way knives are alive. Twin blades hung from its forearms, crackling with captive storms. Not forged. Not assembled. Grown.
PAW. But not their PAW.
P.A.W.-03: the iteration that never needed orders, never hesitated, never erred. Murder made graceful. A predator cut loose from command, purpose burning cold in its crystalline eyes.
It didn't announce itself. It didn't run.
It simply approached.
Adam felt the Veil watching, holding him in its silent calculus. It wasn't offering an answer. It was offering a reckoning.
Adam's instincts caught up a beat before his mind did.
"Run," he whispered, voice dry as flint.
Then they were sprinting through steel arteries and memory-haunted halls, the Veil transforming around them, a labyrinth alive with purpose. Lights snapped awake overhead, not in welcome but in judgment, framing the chase, illuminating their flight for the thing that hunted them.
PAW-03 did not run. It glided, stalking without haste, never breaking stride. Its footsteps were a whisper on the deck, a shadow stretched too long. No taunts, no threats, no mercy—just the cold patience of a predator that knew escape was pointless.
Adam and DeadMouth dove through a medbay where cracked glass glittered under emergency lights; a cryo-chamber thick with ancient frost; a maintenance tunnel that pulsed with buried heat. Doors opened or slammed shut, the Veil conspiring to keep them moving, not toward freedom, but toward inevitability.
"WHY is it hunting us?!" DeadMouth gasped, ducking into a side passage as a blade-tipped shadow flickered behind them.
Adam couldn't answer. His blood thundered in his ears, every sense tuned to the rhythm of pursuit and the awful certainty that the ship was playing along.
A door loomed, unmarked, almost invisible. It hissed open.
They fell inside.
No grandeur. No arsenal. Just a vault of relics and forgotten violence: rifles in racks, pistols half-wrapped in oilcloth, battered exosuits draped like old skins. Crates. Dust. History's detritus.
And, at the center, a pedestal.
Upon it: not a sword, but the idea of a sword. A hilt, simple, weightless, humming with the memory of purpose. Adam stepped forward, drawn as if by gravity or fate. His hand closed around the hilt.
Light spun and crawled up his arm—nanometal weaving itself into a blade, lean and luminous, curving with predatory grace. A katana's soul, in a weapon not meant for any known age.
He didn't hesitate. The sword felt right. Like his own hand, extended. He moved—testing, not flailing, but remembering: parry, slip, strike, step. The blade followed his will, his fear, his anger. It sang a song only he could hear.
DeadMouth, pressed against a crate, watched in awe. "Not to be that guy, but... you're terrifying right now, Adam."
Adam didn't answer. He turned.
PAW-03 stood in the doorway. Still. Watching.
Waiting.
This time, Adam didn't retreat.
He advanced.
Swords drawn. Blades humming. Sparks sizzling across PAW-03's arms like captive lightning.
The world shrank to the space between them. One heartbeat—then violence.
It moved.
A clash—metal screaming against metal, the sound ricocheting through the chamber with a ferocity that felt alive. Adam dropped low, pivoted, boots scraping across the grit-strewn floor. PAW-03 lunged—silent and merciless, all predatory grace, a mantis god built for slaughter.
The new sword sang in Adam's grip, not steel but memory and invention, its edge warping to meet every impossible angle. Adaptive. Sympathetic. Almost eager.
They moved too fast for human eyes, too precise for luck. Every blow was survival written in motion. Every block was a confession.
DeadMouth ducked behind a blast shield, voice breaking from somewhere beneath the chaos:
"I DON'T EVEN HAVE A BODY AND I'M SWEATING!"
Adam pressed forward—high cut, pivot, sidestep. PAW-03 countered, blades hissing in an X. Adam dove beneath, slid between those inhuman legs, then spun, blade rising in an arc of white heat. Sparks flew. Metal peeled.
PAW retaliated, its arm lashing out. The flat of its blade caught Adam full in the chest, sending him flying across the chamber. He hit a crate, breath wrenched from his lungs, copper flooding his mouth.
Pain flared, sharp and bright. He tasted blood. But the sword was still in his fist, and something in him, something old, felt triumphant.
PAW-03 paused. The first hesitation, a flicker in its inhuman posture, a sliver of doubt in red-lit eyes.
Adam grinned, wild, feral. He rose, every muscle howling in protest, but his stance was iron. The dance was over. This was annihilation.
He came in hard, a storm unleashed—blade flashing, teeth bared, all memory and instinct. Every strike was a verdict. Every step forward drove the machine back.
DeadMouth, from cover, screamed:
"NOW! DO IT NOW!"
Adam lunged. The blade responded, lengthening with a white-hot roar, its edge flaring with impossible energy. He drove it through the machine's chestplate—deeper, deeper. PAW-03 convulsed, its frame locking, eyes dimming.
A voice, glitching through ruined speakers, spilled into the air:
"...Adam."
Not code. No error. His name.
The light faded. The unit collapsed.
Adam stood there, sword trembling in his hand, blood running down his chin. His breath shook out of him. In the silence, only the faint electric hum of the sword remained.
DeadMouth crept from hiding, awe softening his sarcasm:
"It said your name."
Adam nodded, jaw clenched, voice almost gone.
"I know."
The lights of the Veil flickered, reality snapping back into clinical focus. Shadows recoiled, and the stink of sweat and scorched circuitry ebbed beneath the cool, antiseptic breath of the ship.
She was there.
NYX. The original—tall, grave, composed. Sorrow and starshine were woven into her hologram. No drama, no fanfare. Just presence. Adam didn't even flinch. He'd stopped caring about what was real, what was illusion. There was only the ship, the task, the next step.
DeadMouth hovered, still reeling:
"O-Kaaay? She's back. No questions? Sure, why not? I'll just file this under 'Tuesday' and have a breakdown later."
Adam stood—sword still humming at his side, pain fading into something clearer than exhaustion. NYX's voice, velvet and precise, filled the chamber:
"Simulation complete.
Sword calibration program complete.
Would you like to repeat the exercise, Captain?"
No irony. No warmth. Just the businesslike cadence of a ship built for soldiers and ghosts.
Adam looked past her, past the walls and data and history, to the hidden eyes he always felt just out of sight.
His reply was low, stripped bare:
"No, Nyx. Enough for today. Thank you."
Silence. Sharp and clean. Adam folded the sword, holstered it at his hip—a badge, a burden, a promise.
He glanced one last time at the spot where PAW-03 had fallen, where a machine had called him by name, where something in him had remembered how to fight.
He turned away. No grand words. No ceremony.
Just the echo of his boots in the silent ship, DeadMouth trailing behind in frazzled awe, and the quiet, tireless hum of the Eon Veil—cradling him in a web of old debts and awakening truths.
And deep inside Adam, beneath wounds and war, something vital flickered to life, refusing, finally, to die.