Chapter 7 – The Voices in the Dark
A slow, rhythmic thud echoed through Echo-1.
Not from the engines.
Not from outside.
Not from outside.
From inside.
Elise held her breath.
The sound wasn’t random. Not metal shifting under pressure. Not the ship groaning from stress.
It was deliberate.
Someone...
Something...
Something...
Was knocking.
Noah’s voice barely rose above a whisper. “That’s coming from the airlock.”
Ren was already moving. Weapon drawn. Stance rigid. Jaw locked.
"We’re not opening it."
Elise’s pulse pounded in her ears.
She turned to the console, fingers flying over the controls.
The internal cameras flickered.
Then...static.
Her stomach twisted.
The ship’s diagnostics weren’t failing.
They were being overwritten.
Her voice was tight. “Noah. Tell me we didn’t let something in.”
Noah’s hands hovered over the system controls, fingers motionless, tense.
"We didn’t."
Then...
Another thud.
Louder. Deeper.
Like something had learned how to knock.
The sound crawled through the ship, low and hollow, sinking into Elise’s bones.
Then...
The lights shuddered.
The air thickened...charged with something unseen. The pressure shifted, like the ship had suddenly become too small, too full.
And then...
A voice.
"Elise..."
Not through the comms.
Not through the speakers.
Not through the speakers.
Inside her head.
A whisper. Curling around the edges of her thoughts, threading through her mind like something alive.
But it didn’t stop.
"Eli...sssss..."
The syllables fractured, breaking apart, reforming, like a mouth unused to speech was forcing them into shape.
"Elise... you... w—wh—wron—g..."
A static rasp, barely human. Broken. Garbled.
Her vision blurred.
And for a second...just a second...
She saw it.
A shadow at the airlock window.
A figure.
An Echo-1 spacesuit.
Helmet on.
Visor black as the void.
Watching.
Waiting.
Something about it...wrong.
Her breath hitched.
Her mind screamed at her to move, to react, to do something...
But she didn’t.
Because somewhere, deep in the pit of her gut...
She recognized it.
The way it stood.
The way it tilted its head.
The faint, familiar shape beneath the reflection of the void.
The way it tilted its head.
The faint, familiar shape beneath the reflection of the void.
No.
No, that’s impossible.
Then...
Gone.
Elise gasped, staggering back.
The air in the room felt too thin.
Noah’s hands tightened around the console. “Tell me you saw that.”
She forced herself to nod.
Ren took a slow step forward. His voice calm, but weighted.
"Whatever this is… it's already inside."
Elise didn’t argue.
Because she could still hear it.
The whisper.
The voice that shouldn’t exist.
And it wasn’t just inside the ship.
It was inside her.
Tease Echo:
The Rift had let something through.
And now, it was in her head.
And now, it was in her head.
