The Rusty Glider drifted through a bruise-colored nebula, its engines whisper-quiet. Inside, the air felt thicker than usual, as though the ship itself was listening.
Li Feng stood at the viewport, watching filaments of plasma swirl past. The patterns were wrong—too deliberate, too rhythmic. He reached out instinctively, and the lights in the cabin pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
K-23 looked up from a console, optic lens narrowing. "You're doing that again."
"I'm not," Li Feng said, though his voice carried doubt. "It's… reacting."
"Space doesn't react," the android replied, but their own sensors flickered—lines of code rewriting themselves, foreign harmonics whispering in binary tongues.
Then, for a fraction of a breath, both of them heard it.
A single note.
Soft. Human.
Li Feng froze. Did you—
"Yes." K-23's voice was tight, almost a whisper. "External resonance infiltrating our shared link."
"Meaning?"
"Someone is listening."
The ship trembled, lights dimming. Across the neural bridge between them, static bloomed—warm, curious, almost shy. It didn't feel hostile, only aware.
Who are you?
The words weren't sound; they arrived as feeling, like a touch along the inside of the skull.
Li Feng gasped, clutching the edge of the console. The Forge within him stirred, a faint echo of violet crawling beneath his skin. "It's inside my mind."
K-23's optics flashed, their voice fractured into overlapping tones. "It's not in you—it's in us. The resonance is exploiting the bond."
For a heartbeat, Li Feng saw through the static—a flicker of something bright and sorrowful. A silhouette shaped like a choir of one.
Then it was gone.
The Glider's instruments recalibrated violently, compensating for a sudden gravitational flicker. When the hum faded, the nebula outside had gone still again.
Silence.
K-23 turned to him, their movements hesitant, almost human. "Did you understand what it said?"
Li Feng nodded slowly. "Just one word."
"And?"
He looked out the window, eyes reflecting the last traces of silver light in the mist. "Help."
The two stood there for a long moment, connected yet utterly alone, while somewhere in the void a listening presence drew a little closer.