The jump was not the clean, surgical slice through reality that Leo had experienced in Syndicate vessels. Jett's method was a brute-force punch through the walls between worlds. The hangar of the Wrecking Ball groaned, the metal screaming in protest as the ship was violently shoved into the chaos of the void. Leo and Kael, standing beside the newly upgraded 'Phantom', had to brace themselves against a bulkhead to keep from being thrown across the deck.
"You get used to it!" Jett's manic voice crackled over the hangar's comm system. "Mostly! Now get up to the bridge, you two! My navigator is great at dodging asteroids, but he faints when the map starts talking back!"
The bridge of the Wrecking Ball was a chaotic symphony of cobbled-together technology. Dozens of monitors, each from a different manufacturer and era, displayed conflicting information. Wires snaked across the floor like metallic vines, and the captain's chair was a repurposed pilot's seat from a luxury yacht, complete with cup holders. Jett was strapped into it, his hands flying across a control panel with the frenetic energy of a concert pianist.
Leo stood beside him, holding the Pathfinder. The shimmering line of light projected from the device, hanging in the air above the main console, a single, clear path through the madness on the screens. Kael stood on his other side, his cybernetic arm interfaced with the ship's sensor suite, his ice-blue eyes processing the raw data with cold efficiency. They were a bizarre, dysfunctional command trio.
"The path is unstable," Kael announced, his voice flat. "It's leading us through a sector marked as 'Temporally Hazardous'. The Hermit's trail is not a safe one."
"Safe is boring!" Jett cackled, swerving the massive ship to avoid a drifting shard of a crystallized timeline. "The kid's magic compass says go this way, so we go this way!"
For hours, they followed the shimmering thread. The journey was a tense, nerve-wracking affair. Leo would call out shifts in the path, Kael would identify the corresponding environmental threats, and Jett would pilot them through with a terrifying blend of skill and sheer luck.
"The path is solidifying," Leo said finally, his voice hoarse. "It's leading to a fixed point ahead."
"I see it," Kael confirmed, his eyes narrowed. "A Syndicate waystation. A deep-void listening post. It's old, almost decommissioned."
"Maybe we can get some supplies," Jett muttered greedily. "Or a new coffee maker. Mine keeps trying to unionize."
As they drew closer, an eerie silence seemed to fall over the bridge. The station was perfectly intact, its running lights on, its communication dish aimed at a distant nebula. But there were no energy signatures. No comms traffic. No life signs.
"It's a ghost ship," Jett whispered, his usual mania replaced by a professional caution. "I've seen this before. Usually means a plague or a life-support failure."
"No," Kael said, his voice a low, chilling whisper. "It's too clean. There are no distress signals. No automated system failures. This is a Hunter's signature. Silent cleansing."
A cold dread settled in Leo's stomach. They don't leave bodies. They just leave silence.
"I'm sending in a drone," Jett announced, his fingers flying across his console. A small, beetle-like drone detached from the Wrecking Ball's hull and zipped towards the silent station.
A monitor flickered to life, showing the drone's view. It passed through the station's open hangar bay and into its corridors. Everything was pristine. Terminals were on, displaying standard diagnostic reports. A half-finished mug of synth-coffee sat on a console. In the mess hall, a game of cards was laid out on a table, as if the players had simply vanished mid-hand.
"The main log is accessible," Kael reported, his cybernetic arm pulling data from the station's systems. "The entries are normal. Patrol reports, supply requests... it all stops exactly six hours ago. The last entry is a simple 'All clear, sector quiet'."
Leo stared at the drone's feed, a growing sense of wrongness crawling up his spine. "It's a stage," he said out loud. "It's all too perfect. It's a message."
"What message?" Jett asked, his eyes glued to the screens.
"It's bait," Kael said, his eyes widening in horrified realization at the same time as Leo's.
It happened in an instant. The moment Kael said the word "bait," alarms blared across the bridge.
"Multiple contacts emerging from the void!" Jett's pilot screamed. "Massive energy signatures! They're not Syndicate!"
On the main viewscreen, the star-dusted blackness of the Crossroads began to distort. Holes appeared in reality, not clean portals, but jagged, tearing wounds. From them emerged the colossal, squid-like shapes of Reality Devourers. Not one, but a pack of them, their bodies made of pure, shimmering static, drawn from the abyss by a signal they couldn't ignore.
Kael slammed his fist on the console. "The station's final log entry! It wasn't a message! It was a frequency! A dinner bell! The Hunter didn't come here to fight us! It came here to set the table!"
The lead Devourer, the size of a small moon, turned its non-existent gaze towards the Wrecking Ball. The ship groaned as the creature's passive reality-distorting field washed over it.
"It's a trap!" Jett screamed, a sound that was a mixture of terror and exhilaration. "The Hunter herded us into a feeding ground!"
He slammed his hands on the controls. "Everybody hold on to something you're fond of!"
The Wrecking Ball's engines roared, not turning to flee, but diving, plunging down into the chaotic debris field below, the only place to hide from the monsters above. The Hunter had played its first move. And Leo and his crew had walked right into it.