He woke with a dry throat and a dull ache running down his back.
The metal floor hadn't exactly been forgiving, but it was warmer here than anywhere else he'd found. His body had stopped shaking. That alone felt like a victory.
He sat up slowly, wincing as tight muscles protested.
His thoughts were clearer now. Not fully sharp, but no longer clouded by starvation and cold. He remembered everything—every corridor, every locked door, every dead screen.
And the questions were still there.
He rubbed his face with both hands.
Still no idea who had put him in that pod.
Still no idea why this facility existed—or where it even was.
But he had food. He had water. He had heat. And most importantly, he had time.
He stood.
Stretched slowly.
He didn't feel strong.
But he didn't feel like he was dying anymore either.
That would have to be enough.
He glanced around the room once more. No hidden compartments. No messages scratched into the walls. Nothing but dust, debris, and the shell of a world that didn't care he existed.
Fine.
He grabbed the metal bar and opened the door.
The hallway beyond looked the same as before—wide, empty, warm. But something had shifted.
Not in the air. Not in the walls.
In him.
He wasn't just trying to survive now.
He needed answers.
And he was ready to go find them.
The hallway stretched ahead, quiet as ever.
He moved steadily, bar in hand, sweeping his eyes across every doorframe, every panel, every shadow.
Now that his body had stopped screaming for rest, he could actually think.
Step one: find out where he was.
Step two: figure out what the hell had happened here.
He passed two sealed bulkheads and one corridor that had completely collapsed, chunks of ceiling scattered like bones.
At the third intersection, he found a new symbol etched into a doorway—sharper than the others. A triangle, inside a circle, with a line through the middle.
He paused.
Not readable. But familiar somehow.
Next to it, a label in blocky text:
"DATA HOLD — SECTOR 4C"
His heart kicked once in his chest.
Finally.
He tried the panel beside the door. No power. But the frame wasn't locked. Not fully.
He jammed the bar into the seam and twisted.
A groan of strained metal.
Then a shift.
The door scraped open half a meter—just enough.
He slipped through sideways, shoulders brushing cold alloy.
The room beyond was pitch-black.
He reached to his right, feeling along the wall.
Found a console. Dead.
He gripped the bar tighter.
There had to be something in here he could use.
Something left behind.
A record. A log.
A clue.
He stepped forward into the dark.
The room smelled like dust and dry plastic. Something chemical, too. The air was warmer than expected, stale but not suffocating.
His boots bumped against something solid—metal, waist-high.
A terminal. Another one.
He reached down and felt along the frame until his fingers brushed a recessed handle.
He pulled.
The console slid open with a soft clunk.
Inside: a dense bundle of cooling fins, cables, and power cells.
Most of them were dead.
But one—tucked low near the base—glowed faint orange.
Backup power.
He reached for it and felt a tiny jolt of static sting his palm.
Still alive.
He tapped the console's surface. Nothing happened.
He pressed harder—then held it for three seconds.
A low hum vibrated beneath his hand.
Then—
A flicker.
A strip of light blinked to life along the terminal's edge. Dim. Weak.
But enough to cast the outline of the interface in pale blue.
He leaned over it.
Text scrolled briefly, most of it corrupted. Strings of slashes and broken code.
But one line stood out:
ACCESSING LOCAL DATA LOGSTATUS: PARTIALENTRIES: 1
Just one.
He tapped the surface.
The entry opened.
A log.
Short.
Maybe a few dozen words.
But his breath caught as he read the first line:
"Evacuation incomplete. They left it behind."
He read the line twice.
Then a third time.
The log ended there. No date. No signature. No follow-up.
Just that.
They left it behind.
His stomach tightened.
He stared at the words, unmoving, as if they might change under his gaze.
Was it talking about… him?
It made sense, in a way.
The empty pod. The dead hallways. The sealed doors.
Had he been forgotten?Left behind when everyone else evacuated?
Or worse—
Had they meant to leave him?
He rubbed his temples, jaw clenched tight.
The message felt cold. Impersonal. Like a decision made without emotion.
"They left it behind."
Not "him." Not "a person."
It.
He stood there, heart beating louder than it should've in the quiet room.
And yet… something didn't fit.
Why log it at all?Why store this one sentence on a backup system?
Why leave it here, half-buried?
Unless it wasn't about him.
Unless "it" was something else entirely.
Something still hidden deeper in the station.
He stared at the screen a little longer.
The cursor blinked.
Waiting.
He closed the panel without another word.
And walked out of the room.
He stepped back into the hallway, eyes scanning left and right.
The log kept echoing in his mind.They left it behind.
He couldn't shake the feeling that it was about him. That somewhere, in the blank space of his forgotten past, someone had decided to seal the doors and walk away.
But even that didn't answer the biggest question:
Why?
He followed the corridor deeper into the facility. The warmth held steady, but the lights began to change—fewer ceiling strips, more embedded floor guides, glowing faintly beneath cracked plates.
This part of the station felt… newer.
Or at least less abandoned.
The walls were cleaner. No exposed wiring. No broken tiles.
And then, around a bend, he saw it.
A large frame embedded into the wall. Taller than him. Smooth surface, matte-black, surrounded by softly glowing arcs. Unlike the other consoles, this one wasn't dead.
It was dormant.
Waiting.
No buttons. No keyboard. No touch panel.
Just a circular imprint at chest height, pulsing with faint white light.
He stepped closer.
No label.
No instructions.
The design didn't match anything he'd seen so far in the complex.
It didn't even look like human engineering.
He reached out slowly.
But stopped just short of touching it.
Something about it made the hairs on his arms rise.
He didn't know what it was.
But whatever this thing controlled—whatever system it was tied into—
It hadn't been meant for him.
He hesitated.
Just a breath.
Then another.
The pulsing ring in the center of the frame continued to glow, patient and indifferent.
He'd come this far. Every locked door, every dead screen, every scrap of data—it all pointed deeper. Closer.
And this… this didn't look like a door.
It looked like a gateway.
He clenched the bar in one hand and raised the other slowly.
Fingers hovered over the glowing imprint.
Still no alarms. No warnings. No guidance.
He exhaled.
Then pressed his palm to the light.
A pulse.
Not heat. Not force. Just a sensation—like static running across his skin, through his fingers, and into his arm.
The frame vibrated faintly.
Lines of light crawled outward from the imprint, tracing ancient circuits across the wall, forming a slow, circular pattern. For a moment, he thought it might be projecting something.
Then the light faded.
Silence.
No display. No message. Nothing.
Just that pulse—now gone.
He pulled his hand away, heart pounding harder than he liked.
The console was still dark.
But the ring… no longer pulsed.
Whatever it was…
It had recognized him.
And now it was awake.
He stood in front of the frame a moment longer, waiting for something more to happen.
Nothing did.
No screens. No voice. No messages.
Just the faint hum of power lingering in the air.
He turned away, eyes narrowing.
Further down the corridor, a thin line of light had appeared along the floor—barely visible, but distinct. Like a trail.
It hadn't been there before.
He followed it.
The lights pulsed slowly as he moved, guiding him through a narrow access tunnel that curved inward. The walls here were tighter, smoother. Almost clinical in design. Like maintenance corridors in a high-security sector.
No labels.
No sound.
Just the trail.
After two turns and a short descent, the tunnel opened into a circular chamber. Not large—but different.
Clean.
Quiet.
And lit.
A single console sat at the center, raised from the floor, its surface glowing in soft blue tones. It was shaped like a hemisphere, smooth and seamless, with a hollow ring above it suspended in midair—some kind of projection system, dormant for now.
He approached cautiously.
Then froze.
A line of text appeared on the console.
White. Crisp. Centered.
"User recognized."
Another line followed.
"Connection stabilized."
And finally—
"Do you wish to initiate first contact?"
His hand hovered over the surface.
Who was he about to talk to?