Scene One – The Return
The docking clamps closed around the shuttle with a metallic groan, like the station itself was weary of bearing another wound. Sparks still fizzed along the hull where the Rift's energy had licked at the plating, leaving burns that pulsed faintly as though alive. Inside, the air smelled of smoke and ozone. Maya's chest still throbbed where the Rift's voice had pressed into her heart.
No one spoke as the docking bay pressurized. The hiss of recycled oxygen filled the silence. Crew members waited on the other side of the airlock, their helmets gleaming under the stark overhead lights. Through the shuttle's viewport, Maya caught the look in their eyes—fear barely masked by protocol.
When the hatch finally opened, a wave of cold air washed in. The crew stepped back instinctively as Alexander descended first, his posture straight, his face carved from stone. He looked every inch the commander, but Maya, following close behind, could feel the faint tremor in his hand when he brushed against hers.
"Report," one of the officers demanded, though his voice wavered. His gaze darted over Alexander's scorched suit, then to Maya, lingering on the tears still staining her cheeks.
Alexander's answer was clipped. "The Rift engaged us. We repelled it—for now. Damage reports to follow. Secure the shuttle. Decontamination protocols, level three."
The officer nodded stiffly, motioning to the mechanics. Yet the crew's eyes never left them. Maya could feel it: suspicion simmering beneath the fear. Whispers followed them as they moved through the bay, words caught half-formed in the recycled air.
What happened out there?Why are they both still alive?The Rift doesn't just let go.
Maya clenched her fists. She wanted to shout at them, tell them none of this was simple, that the Rift was not a storm to be measured but something far stranger, hungrier. But she said nothing. Words would only feed their unease.
As they stepped into the quieter corridors of Aetherion Station, the lights flickered. A soft stutter, barely a second, yet Maya felt it ripple through her like a shadow brushing past her soul. She froze.
Alexander noticed too. His jaw tightened, though he didn't break stride. "It's here," he muttered under his breath, low enough for only her to hear.
Maya's stomach turned. The Rift had not been defeated—it had followed them home.
Their debriefing was merciless. The council chamber, lined with cold metal walls and a single holo-projection of the colony's dying star, felt more like a tribunal than a strategy room.
"Maya Elara," one of the senior advisors said, his voice sharp, "you claim you heard it speak?"
She sat stiffly, Alexander beside her. Her throat was raw, but she forced her voice steady. "Not just heard. Felt. It wanted…a bond. A heart. It marked me."
Gasps and murmurs rippled through the chamber. The advisor's eyes narrowed, skeptical, but also afraid. "And yet, you stand here unharmed. Why?"
Alexander spoke then, his tone like a blade. "Because I didn't let it take her. Because it was bargaining with me first."
The murmurs grew louder, darker. A councilor leaned forward, his voice accusatory. "So you admit it. You've had dealings with the Rift before. You withheld this from us."
Maya bristled. "He withheld it to protect me!"
The words escaped before she could stop them, echoing through the chamber like a confession. Silence followed. Dozens of eyes turned on her, some filled with pity, others with suspicion.
The lead advisor's voice dropped, icy and deliberate. "If the Rift has marked you, Dr. Elara, then you are a liability to this station. To all of us."
Maya's blood ran cold. "I am not your enemy."
"Neither is he," she added, nodding toward Alexander, her voice rising. "Without him, the Rift would already be inside your walls. Do you not understand? It doesn't want destruction—it wants possession. And if you turn against us now, you're giving it exactly what it craves: division."
The chamber fell into uneasy silence. No one argued, but no one agreed.
The council dismissed them soon after with vague promises of "monitoring" and "containment." Maya knew what that meant: surveillance. Distrust. Quiet talk of removal.
As the doors slid shut behind them, she exhaled shakily. "They'll never trust me again."
Alexander's voice was low, filled with a guilt that cut deeper than any councilor's suspicion. "I never should have let it mark you."
She turned sharply, grabbing his wrist before he could walk ahead. "Stop. Do not carry this like it's yours alone. It's ours. Do you hear me?"
For a moment, he looked like he might argue. But then his shoulders slumped, and the fight bled out of him. He nodded.
Later, in the small quiet of the medical wing, Maya sat on the edge of a diagnostic bed, stripped down to her undersuit. Machines hummed around her, their pale light painting her skin in ghostly hues. Alexander stood by the wall, arms crossed, watching every flicker of the monitors as though they might betray her.
The physician—a woman with tired eyes—finished her scans with a sigh. "Physically, you're stable. But there's…something unusual."
Maya's chest tightened. "Unusual how?"
The woman hesitated, then projected an image: her heart, rendered in glowing lines. Threads of light ran through it, golden filaments pulsing faintly in rhythm with her beat.
Alexander's face hardened. "Residual energy."
The physician shook her head. "It's more than residue. It's integrated. Like your body has accepted it as part of you."
Maya stared at the image, her breath caught. The Rift wasn't just haunting her. It was inside her.
The physician excused herself quietly, leaving them alone in the room.
Maya lowered her gaze to her hands. They trembled faintly in her lap. "So it's true. I'm…marked. Changed."
Alexander crossed the room in two strides. He knelt before her, his hands gently steadying hers. His voice was ragged, but steady. "Maya, look at me. Whatever it's done, whatever it wants—you're still you. It doesn't get to define you. Not unless you let it."
Her eyes filled. "But if I lose myself—if it takes me—"
"Then I'll go with you," he said, the words fierce, unflinching. "I will not leave you again. Not to this. Not to anything."
Something in her chest cracked—not with fear this time, but with the aching, impossible relief of finally being believed, of finally being chosen openly, without secrets or silence.
She leaned forward, resting her forehead against his. Her voice trembled against his skin. "Then we fight. Together."
And for the first time since the Rift had spoken, she believed they might stand a chance.
Scene Two – Anomalies
The first anomaly came quietly, almost unremarkable: a flicker of the station's time displays. A few seconds lost here and there, a jump in a chronometer that no one noticed at first. A glitch, the engineers muttered. Just interference from the shuttle's damaged systems. But by the second day, the "glitches" were no longer ignorable.
Lights flickered in patterns too deliberate to be random. Air recyclers hissed out of rhythm, their mechanical pulse irregular, almost…breathing. Doors refused to open until someone whispered the word please, and no one laughed when the sensors confirmed the command had been recognized.
Maya stood in the observatory when she noticed it herself. The great glass dome stretched above her, stars scattered across the velvet of deep space. She watched the spiral of their dying sun in the distance, its faint flares curling like a beast in slow death. But then the stars moved.
Not in the sense of cosmic drift. They shifted—whole constellations sliding an inch to the left before snapping back into place, like reality itself had twitched.
Her breath caught. "Alexander," she whispered.
He was already there beside her, gaze locked on the shifting sky. His hand brushed hers, grounding her. "It's bleeding through."
Maya turned to him sharply. "You mean the Rift—"
"Yes." His expression was grim. "When it touched you, when it touched me, it left a connection. A door. And now…it's testing the hinges."
Her stomach turned cold. "The council will blame us."
"They already do."
By the time they left the observatory, panic had begun to ripple through the station. A crewman barreled past them in the corridor, shouting about hearing his dead sister's voice whispering in the comm system. Another reported walking into the hydroponics bay and finding the plants frozen in mid-growth, vines suspended like sculptures, droplets of water hanging unmoving in the air.
It wasn't just hallucination. Maya could feel it. The Rift's residue pulsed faintly inside her, like a second heartbeat attuned to the distortions. Each time the lights flickered or a clock skipped, her chest tightened in response.
Alexander noticed. His hand brushed her back as they entered the lift, guiding her gently though his own jaw was set like stone. "You feel it, don't you?"
"Yes." She pressed a palm against her sternum. "It's like…it wants me to recognize it. Like it's knocking."
"Then don't answer."
The lift doors opened to chaos in the main hub. Dozens of colonists had gathered, their voices rising in a cacophony of fear. Arguments flared—accusations against Alexander, against Maya, against the council itself.
"It started when they came back!" someone shouted, pointing directly at them. "The Rift follows them!"
"She's marked," another hissed, eyes wide with terror as they fixed on Maya. "Look at her. She's not one of us anymore."
The crowd pressed closer. The air felt hot, suffocating. Maya's pulse thundered in her ears. For one fleeting, terrifying moment, she thought the Rift might seize the opening—manifest itself through their fear, rip reality wide open in the middle of the hub.
Alexander stepped forward, his voice cutting like steel. "Stand down!"
The command in his tone froze them. For all their fear, his authority still held weight. His gaze swept the crowd, hard and unyielding. "You think turning on each other will save you? The Rift feeds on division. Every shout, every accusation—you're giving it strength."
Silence stretched, trembling.
Maya swallowed, her throat raw. She forced herself to meet their eyes, even the ones filled with suspicion and hate. "I didn't ask for this. I didn't want its mark. But if it chose me, then I'll use it—not for myself, not against you, but to fight it. You can hate me, but don't mistake me for your enemy."
Her voice cracked, but she didn't look away. Slowly, some of the colonists lowered their gazes. The mutters didn't stop, but the heat of the crowd ebbed, dispersing in uneasy silence.
Later, alone in Alexander's quarters, Maya collapsed into the chair near his desk. Her body shook with adrenaline she could no longer contain.
"They'll never trust me," she whispered.
Alexander crouched in front of her, his hands steady on her knees. "Trust is fragile here. They've been living under fear for years. The Rift is just a name they can point to."
Her eyes filled. "And me. I'm the name they'll point to now."
His expression softened, the commander's mask slipping. "Then let them point. Let them put every suspicion, every whisper, on me if it means you can breathe."
She shook her head. "You can't shield me from this."
"No," he admitted quietly. "But I can stand with you in it."
For a long moment, they sat in silence. The only sound was the faint hum of the station's systems, though even that seemed…off. The pitch wavered, stretching seconds too long before snapping back.
Maya shivered. "It's worse, isn't it?"
Alexander's jaw tightened. "Yes. The Rift doesn't just want entry. It wants permanence."
Her heart pounded. "You mean…it wants to rewrite reality itself."
He met her gaze, his own haunted. "And it's starting with you."
That night, Maya dreamed. She was walking through the station's corridors, but they were empty, abandoned. Lights flickered overhead, casting shadows that stretched too far, bending at impossible angles. She heard footsteps—Alexander's, steady behind her. But when she turned, it wasn't him.
It was herself.
Another Maya, eyes glowing with golden threads like the ones pulsing in her chest. Her double smiled, but the smile was wrong—too wide, too knowing.
You're wasting time fighting me, the other whispered, voice layered with echoes of the Rift. We're the same. You just haven't accepted it yet.
Maya stumbled back. "I'm not you."
The other tilted her head. You will be. And when you are, he'll finally stop lying to you. He'll finally choose what he always wanted: power.
Before Maya could respond, the shadow surged forward, merging with her, and she woke with a scream, Alexander's arms wrapping around her trembling body.
"Maya—what is it?" he asked, his voice raw.
She clutched his shirt, gasping. "It was me. It was me, Alexander—it's inside me, and it's speaking, it's waiting. And I don't know how long I can fight it."
He held her tighter, pressing his forehead to hers. "Then I'll fight it with you. Every second. Every breath. You're not alone in this."
But deep inside, Maya felt the Rift pulse in quiet laughter, as though it had already won something neither of them could see.
Scene Three – The Shattered Hour
The first time it happened, Maya thought she had imagined it.
She was in the hydroponics bay, tending to a tray of seedlings that stubbornly refused to take root. The hum of grow-lamps wrapped the chamber in a constant warmth. Then—without warning—everything stopped.
The droplets of water in the air froze. The soft rustle of circulation fans silenced. Even the faint ache in her chest—the pulse of the Rift's mark—held itself suspended. The world had stilled.
And then it reversed.
The droplets moved backward, streaming up into the nozzles. Her own breath flowed the wrong way, burning her throat. She staggered, grabbing the edge of the tray, heart pounding as reality lurched like a broken pendulum.
When it snapped forward again, she collapsed to her knees, gasping. The plants were untouched. The fans hummed. It was as though nothing had happened—except her body knew otherwise. Her skin was clammy, her lungs bruised with the memory of stolen air.
"Maya?"
She turned sharply. Alexander stood at the door, his expression taut. "Did you feel it?" she asked.
He nodded slowly. "Not here. In the command hub. Systems blinked. Every monitor flashed 00:00 for three seconds."
Maya pressed her fist against her chest. "It's testing us. Testing me."
By evening, word had spread. The anomalies were no longer subtle glitches—they were time itself buckling. A technician reported watching a spilled cup shatter, then reassemble itself piece by piece before crashing to the ground again. A medic claimed she saw a patient convulse twice in the exact same sequence, movements repeated like a recording.
Fear became hysteria. Colonists whispered about the Rift clawing its way into their world, about being trapped in a loop with no escape. Some begged the council to exile Maya and Alexander, to cut away the infection before it consumed them all.
In the council chamber, Alexander stood before the leaders, his posture rigid. Maya sat to the side, the weight of a hundred stares pressing into her skin.
Councilor Daelin slammed a palm on the table. "This began when you returned. It is no coincidence."
Alexander's voice was steady steel. "Blame me if you must. But understand this: exile will not stop it. The Rift doesn't follow people—it follows opportunity. It touched us, yes, but it is already here. Removing us would only blind you to its next move."
The chamber rippled with uneasy murmurs.
Maya stood, her knees weak but her voice clear. "I can feel it. The distortions…they resonate in me. I know it sounds like madness, but maybe that means I can anticipate it, stop it. I'm not asking you to trust me—but at least let me try."
Councilor Naresh leaned forward, his gaze sharp. "And if you lose yourself to it, Maya? What then? Will you take us all with you?"
The silence that followed was unbearable. Maya's hands trembled at her sides. She wanted to scream, to promise she'd never let the Rift win—but the echo of her dream whispered otherwise.
Alexander broke the silence. "Then I'll stop her."
Maya turned sharply toward him, shock flashing in her chest. His face was unreadable, but his eyes…there was a storm there, fury at himself for even speaking the words.
The council nodded grimly. "Then so be it," Daelin said. "For now, you will both remain. But understand—our patience is measured in hours, not days."
That night, in the dim quiet of Alexander's quarters, Maya couldn't contain it any longer. She paced the room, her voice sharp with anger and fear.
"You said you'd stop me. In front of them. Do you even realize what that sounded like?"
Alexander leaned against the wall, arms crossed, gaze dark. "I said what I had to. They needed to hear that someone could control this if it spiraled."
"They needed to hear you'd kill me," she snapped.
His jaw tightened. "Don't twist my words."
"Don't twist mine!" Her chest heaved. "You think I don't know what's at stake? That I don't feel this thing clawing at me every second? I'm fighting, Alexander. I'm fighting harder than you know. And you—" her voice broke—"you made me sound like a threat to be put down."
Silence stretched. His expression cracked, pain bleeding through. Slowly, he moved to her, stopping just short of touching. "Maya…I said it because I would rather damn myself than let them turn on you. I'll shoulder their suspicion. Their hate. But if the Rift takes you—if it uses you—I'll do whatever it takes to free you. Even if it means losing you."
Her throat tightened, eyes stinging. "You don't get to decide that."
"No," he whispered, voice hoarse. "But I have to be ready."
For a long moment, neither spoke. The Rift's mark pulsed in her chest, warm and taunting. She hated it, hated that it came between them even in their most fragile moments. But when Alexander reached for her hand, she let him take it, because as much as his words hurt, his presence was the only anchor she had left.
The second anomaly struck without warning.
They were walking the corridor toward the med-bay when the lights shattered—literally shattered—bursting in showers of glass that froze midair. Sparks froze mid-spray. Sound dulled into silence.
Maya felt it instantly: the pull of the Rift bending the moment. She reached for Alexander, but he was already blurred, his movements jerky, repeating—like a recording skipping backward and forward.
"No," she gasped. "Not him. Not him."
The world around her fractured into mirrors of itself, overlapping realities stacked like panes of glass. Colonists flickered in and out of existence, their screams looped and reversed, eyes wide in terror as they relived seconds over and over.
And then—silence. Everything gone.
Maya stood alone in the corridor. Empty. Lifeless.
A voice spoke behind her. You see it now, don't you?
She turned—and saw herself again. The other Maya, golden veins glowing beneath her skin, eyes lit like burning stars.
Time is clay in our hands, the double whispered. And you waste it clinging to him. He will betray you again, like he always has. But with me—you'll never be left behind. You'll never be powerless.
Maya's pulse thundered. "You're not me. You're a shadow."
The double smiled. And shadows always outlast the light.
The corridor snapped back into place—Alexander grabbing her shoulders, his face white with fear. "Maya! Talk to me—what happened?"
She stared at him, heart breaking with the weight of her silence. Because how could she tell him the truth—that the Rift's voice sounded more and more like her own?
Scene Four – When the Clock Breaks
The alarms began at 0300 hours.
Maya woke to the shriek of klaxons and the frantic voice of the comm system. "Critical anomaly in Sector Twelve. All personnel evacuate immediately."
She bolted upright, heart hammering. Across the room, Alexander was already strapping on his uniform, his expression carved from stone.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Sector Twelve's research wing. Time collapse." His eyes flicked toward her, and though his face was calm, she saw the fear beneath. "Stay close to me."
The corridors throbbed with red light as they ran. Colonists stumbled past, clutching children, dragging carts of emergency supplies. Some moved too slowly, as if caught in invisible syrup; others blurred, their gestures repeating twice before settling forward.
By the time they reached Sector Twelve, the air itself shimmered.
The walls flickered between intact and fractured—one moment solid steel, the next warped as though a hand had bent reality like foil. Sparks from damaged conduits froze midair, then rained again, then reversed. The ground quaked with the pressure of two timelines colliding.
"Maya," Alexander said sharply, grabbing her wrist as she started forward. "You can't."
She looked past him—saw people trapped inside the distortion. A technician clawing at the air as her body looped the same three seconds. A child clutching a broken toy, falling and rising again, never breaking free.
Her chest constricted. "They'll die."
Alexander's grip tightened. "If you go in, it'll take you too."
Her mark pulsed, hot and hungry. She remembered the double's words. Time is clay in our hands.
"No," Maya whispered. "It's calling me. I can stop it."
Before he could hold her back, she tore free and ran into the storm.
The first step was agony.
Her body lurched as seconds folded, stretched, then snapped back. Her vision fractured into overlapping layers: her arm moving three times at once, her breath caught in broken rhythms. It felt like drowning in time itself.
"Maya!" Alexander's voice, distorted, repeating. He couldn't follow—not without being shredded by the collapse.
She pushed forward anyway, teeth clenched against the pain. The child was closest. She reached for him, and as her fingers brushed his, she felt the Rift surge inside her, golden veins blazing under her skin.
The loop resisted—time tugging at her, trying to drag the boy back into his endless fall.
"No," Maya hissed. "Not this one. Not today."
She pulled, not with muscle but with something deeper. The Rift flared through her veins, and reality snapped. The boy tumbled forward into her arms, solid and real, his sob shaking her chest.
One saved.
The others still screamed, trapped in endless loops.
The Rift's voice curled through her mind. Take them all. Bend it. You are strong enough. Stronger than him. Stronger than anyone.
Maya staggered toward the technician. Her legs moved like stone, but the Rift lifted her, carried her. With each pull, more golden light crawled across her skin. She touched the woman's hand, yanked—and the loop shattered, the technician collapsing into sobs.
Another freed.
Another surge of power.
And with it came a terrible clarity: this wasn't resistance. This wasn't healing. This was control. She wasn't saving them from the Rift—she was overwriting reality with her will.
The realization chilled her—but the screams around her burned worse.
She pressed on. One by one, she pulled them free. Every rescue left her veins brighter, her breath heavier, her heart echoing with the Rift's pulse. When she stumbled back toward the edge of the storm, cradling the boy, Alexander was there, eyes wide, hands trembling as he pulled her and the survivors out.
The distortion behind them collapsed with a soundless implosion. For a heartbeat, the corridor was silent. Then the freed colonists wept, clung to one another, alive.
But every gaze turned toward Maya. Toward the glowing lines beneath her skin.
Fear. Awe. Suspicion.
Alexander's jaw tightened, but his arm slid firmly around her, shielding her from their stares. "She saved you," he said flatly. "Remember that before you speak."
Later, when the survivors were tended to and the council dismissed them, Maya stood alone with Alexander in the observation deck. The station rotated slowly, stars spilling endless light through the viewport.
Her hands still shook. Her veins still shimmered faintly, no matter how she rubbed her skin.
"They saw," she whispered.
"I know."
"They'll never trust me now."
Alexander stepped closer, his hand brushing hers. "They don't have to. I trust you."
Her throat tightened. She wanted to believe him—but her reflection in the viewport looked too much like the shadow she had seen before.
"I used it," she admitted. "Not just felt it. I pulled time apart with my hands. It didn't resist me, Alexander—it obeyed. What if…" She swallowed. "What if that means I'm already gone?"
He turned her to face him, his eyes burning with fierce certainty. "Listen to me. You are not the Rift. You're Maya. The woman who fights even when she's terrified. The woman who risked everything for strangers today. That power doesn't define you—you define it."
Her chest ached. His words were fire and comfort both, but the memory of golden veins haunted her.
She leaned into him, pressing her forehead against his. For a moment, the chaos and fear faded, replaced only by his steady presence.
But when she closed her eyes, the Rift's voice whispered still: Shadows always outlast the light.
Scene Five – The Fracture
The council chamber was colder than the vacuum outside.
Maya sat in the center ring, a circle of light pinning her like prey beneath a hunter's gaze. Around her, councilors whispered from their high seats, their voices sharp as knives. The survivors she had saved filled the gallery, their eyes a mix of gratitude and fear. Gratitude for their lives, fear for the way she had glowed like something not human.
Alexander stood just behind her, hands clasped behind his back, posture rigid. His presence was a shield—but even he could not block the weight of so many stares.
"She wielded it," Councilor Dren said at last, his voice low and dangerous. "Not contained it. Not resisted it. Wielded it. How do we know she has not already been compromised by the Rift?"
"She saved twelve lives," Alexander shot back. His voice cut through the chamber like steel. "Would you rather she had done nothing?"
"Perhaps doing nothing would have been safer for the rest of us." Dren's gaze slid to Maya. "We've seen this before, Commander Kael. Power like this does not remain loyal to flesh. It corrupts. It consumes."
Maya clenched her fists, nails biting her palms. "You think I wanted this?" Her voice trembled but did not break. "You think I asked to feel it crawling under my skin? I fought it every step of the way. And when I couldn't fight anymore, I used it—for them." She pointed toward the survivors. "Do you want to look them in the eyes and tell them I should have let them die?"
A murmur rippled through the gallery. The child she had saved clung to his mother's arm, eyes wide but unwavering on Maya.
For a heartbeat, silence held.
Then Councilor Rhee, softer but no less sharp, said: "The question is not gratitude, Doctor Elara. It is trust. If this Rift is inside you, how long until it demands more? Until you stop pulling people out of time and start pulling them into it? Can you swear to us you will never falter?"
The chamber blurred. Maya wanted to say yes. Wanted to promise, to swear, to be the unshakable scientist she had once been. But the memory of golden light beneath her skin, the rush of power obeying her will, the whisper that had slid through her mind—Shadows always outlast the light—it all coiled like a serpent around her throat.
She could not lie.
"I can't," she whispered.
Gasps broke like waves.
Alexander stepped forward instantly, his voice thunderous. "Then trust me. I will watch her. If she falters, if the Rift takes her, I will end it. But until then, she is not our enemy—she is our only chance. You saw what happened in Sector Twelve. This is only the beginning."
The words silenced the chamber. But they did not erase the fear.
The council recessed. The gallery emptied. Maya rose on unsteady legs, Alexander's steady hand at her back as he guided her out.
They did not speak until they reached the quiet of her quarters. The door sealed behind them with a hiss.
Maya sank onto the edge of the bed, burying her face in her hands. Her veins still glimmered faintly, no matter how she tried to will it away.
"They're right," she said. "I can't promise I'll always fight it. I felt it, Alexander. I liked it. For a moment, it wasn't terror—it was freedom. I bent time like it was nothing. And what scares me most…" She lifted her head, eyes burning. "What scares me most is that it didn't feel wrong."
Alexander knelt before her, his hands braced against hers. His eyes, dark and steady, refused to waver.
"What scares me," he said quietly, "is that you think that makes you less human. Maya, I've seen men intoxicated by far less—power, rank, war. They reveled in it. You? You're terrified. That's not corruption. That's conscience."
She wanted to believe him. Needed to. But the mark burned on her skin, pulsing like a second heartbeat.
Before she could answer, the lights flickered. Once. Twice. Then the room darkened.
Her vision blurred. Her ears filled with a low hum, vibrating through her bones.
The Rift's voice spilled into her mind like oil. They fear you. They will never accept you. But I do. You saved them because you embraced me. Imagine what else we could save. Entire worlds. Stars. Him.
The shadows deepened until she stood not in her quarters but in the void again—the same endless dark where she had first met the double.
And there she was, waiting: her reflection, carved from darkness and gold.
"You saw it," the double said softly. "How easy it was. How natural. You are not fighting me, Maya. You are becoming me."
Maya staggered back. "No."
"Why deny it? With me, you can protect them all. Protect him. Without me, you will fail them. Fail him. And when the time comes, you will stand by his grave again—this time forever."
The shadows closed in, choking her breath. She clawed at the darkness, desperate for air, for light, for anything.
Then warmth cut through—a hand gripping hers.
"Maya." Alexander's voice, firm and real. Not the Rift. Him.
She gasped, tearing free of the vision, collapsing against him as the room snapped back into focus. The lights steadied. The hum receded.
He held her, arms iron around her trembling body. "What did you see?"
Her voice broke as she whispered: "It showed me a future without you."
His silence stretched, heavy and unspoken.
Finally, he pressed his forehead against hers. "Then we'll fight to make sure it never happens."
But his voice trembled, just enough for her to hear the doubt buried beneath the vow.
Outside their quarters, the whispers spread.
Some colonists called her savior. Others, curse.
And in the shadows of the station, the Rift's anomalies spread further—lights flickering, clocks skipping, shadows moving against the grain of time.
The fracture had begun.