The science officer barely slept after the disappearance; she kept imagining the burned streaks on the wall, the ragged breathing, the overturned chair, and when her cabin lights dimmed unexpectedly during the artificial night cycle, she snapped awake. Her room should have been bathed in pale blue nighttime illumination, but instead the corners were thick with shadow, unnaturally heavy, almost tactile. At first she blamed the lights, thinking it was another glitch, but then the darkness shifted subtly, a ripple against the walls, a movement without sound. Her body froze as she realized it was deliberate, a shape coalescing from the blackness, tall and thin, edges trembling like smoke suspended underwater, featureless but aware. She felt it watching her, not with eyes but with presence, an oppressive consciousness pressing at the edges of her mind. Fear gripped her chest, and instinctively she tried to slow her heartbeat, to steady her breathing, to make herself small and calm, and the shape recoiled slightly, rippling as if responding to the intensity of her emotion. It did not attack, it did not speak, it simply existed, testing her, feeling her, and then, when her panic dulled, it melted back into the wall, leaving only the unnatural darkness behind. She did not sleep again, lying rigid in her bunk, listening to the hum of the station and imagining that any shadow might conceal that living presence, always patient, always watching, waiting for the next mistake, the next heartbeat, the next moment of weakness she could not afford to give.