Frank Siegmund wasn't the kind of man who slept lightly. In fact, aboard the station, he rarely slept at all—his body was still adjusting to the faint vibrations of the artificial gravity and the recycled air that tasted just a bit too metallic.
That night, or what the station's internal clock called 03:19 hours, he was finally asleep—curled in the corner of his bunk like a cat, his arm dangling off the edge, the flickering status light on the wall casting occasional pulses across his cheek.
Then he heard it.
A faint pitter-patter, like bare feet scampering lightly across metal flooring. Too soft to be someone's boots. Too rhythmic to be a system fault. It came from just beyond the shared quarters in the central corridor of Level 3—the communal level where all the crew were housed when they weren't working on the lower floors.
Frank's eyes opened slowly.
Pitter. Patter. Pitter. Patter.
He sat up.
The noise stopped.
For a moment, he stayed still, staring at the sealed door across from his bunk. The air was motionless. The hallway light beyond the glass panel was dim, set to the night cycle's low-power mode—cool blue tones that barely reached the floor.
Maybe someone had gone for a walk. But barefoot? At three in the morning?
Frank hadn't heard the soft thuds of feet without ceramic toed boots in ages. Sometimes he wanted to take his own shoes off and run around, but being uninsulated meant he was inviting the station to crispy fry him with a stray jolt of current.
Frank swung his legs off the bed, slid into his worn slippers, and zipped up the front of his station-issued hoodie. As the door slid open with a soft hiss, the cool air greeted him like a whisper.
Pitter-patter.
There it was again—further away now.
He stepped out into the corridor.
The hallway curved gently, like most of the station's interior architecture, with dull-gray walls lined with embedded lighting strips. Along one side were evenly spaced doors to other private quarters; the other side had storage panels, access consoles, and a few emergency lockers.
Frank followed the sound, walking softly. The further he went, the less the station felt familiar. The usual mechanical hum seemed muted. The vents weren't cycling as loudly as usual. Something in the air felt off, like the station was holding its breath.
He passed the doors to Aris's quarters, then Thomas's. No lights under the doors. No movement. The footsteps were leading him toward the unused corridor on the far end of Level 3—an unfinished section intended for crew expansion that had been locked down since construction stopped.
Pitter. Patter. Pitter.
Quieter now, but still ahead. Still moving.
Frank's breath caught in his throat. He wasn't superstitious by any means, but something about chasing barefoot steps down a half-lit corridor at 3AM on a space station hundreds of light-years from Earth felt like the beginning of every horror story he'd ever heard.
As he approached the old construction zone, the corridor lights flickered once—just a flash—and returned to normal. That part of the station had supposedly always been temperamental after the meteor strike. Nobody used it. Not even for storage.
The expansions efforts had been abandoned too, and now parts of the flimsy remains of the room lay out of the space station, just dangling in space.
He stopped at the intersection.
No movement.
Just silence.
He leaned slightly, peering into the dim tunnel beyond the security barrier that had been half-deactivated months ago. Through the half-latched gate, he saw only shadows. Piles of unused paneling leaned against the wall. A defunct terminal screen glowed faintly in sleep mode.
Frank took a step closer. Then another.
"Out for a midnight stroll, Dr. Siegmund?"
Frank flinched hard enough to nearly fall over.
He spun around to find a small, hunched figure standing behind him in the dark. The woman's white hair was tied back into a tight bun, and her face was unreadable behind her pale, wrinkled expression. Her arms were folded neatly in front of her as if she'd been standing there for hours.
"Jesus, Dr. Ingrid," Frank said, pressing a hand to his chest. "Don't sneak up on people like that. You scared the life out of me."
"I was walking," she said simply. "I could say the same about you."
Frank ran a hand through his hair, trying to shake off the unease. "Yeah. I heard... something. It sounded like footsteps. Bare feet, actually."
Dr. Ingrid's head tilted slightly. "On Level 3? Shocking that there would be people there."
"Yeah. I know it sounds dumb. But I'm telling you, it felt off. Who'd have their shoes off around here?"
The older woman looked down the corridor, then back at Frank. Her own ceramic toed shoes peaked out from below her space suit.
"You're not the first one to mention strange sounds at night," she said. "But it's usually the younger engineers. People under stress. Mind playing tricks."
Frank frowned. "No tricks. I followed it here."
She didn't argue. She didn't smile. She just watched him, eyes sharp and curious.
"You said 'younger engineers.' Who else has mentioned it?"
"A few," she said. "One from Team C last week. Said he saw someone in the shadows, but there were no logs of movement. I assumed it was exhaustion."
Frank glanced over his shoulder, into the unfinished corridor.
"I don't think this place is haunted, if that's what you're implying," he muttered.
"Neither do I," Ingrid replied calmly. "The human mind simply isn't built from this sort of isolation."
Frank sighed, rubbing his eyes. "You always know just the right thing to say to make me more paranoid."
She chuckled—dry and quiet. "You'll get used to it."
Without another word, she turned and walked away, her small frame vanishing into the low hallway lights.
Frank stood in place for a long time, listening.
No footsteps now.
Just the sound of his own breathing, and the quiet, pulsing heart of the station.