Chapter 8 – The Passenger
The sound came again.
A slow, deliberate thud.
Against the metal.
Elise held her breath.
Noah’s fingers hovered over the console. His voice was quiet, edged with something Elise had rarely heard from him...fear.
“That’s not a malfunction. That’s a knock.”
Ren was already in position. Weapon raised. Stance locked. Breathing steady.
“We don’t open it.”
Elise barely heard them.
The security monitor glitched.
Again.
Flickering. Warping. The ship’s systems weren’t just failing. They were being rewritten.
And for a fraction of a second...
Something flickered into view.
A figure.
Standing inside the airlock.
The image stuttered, broke apart...then returned.
And Elise saw enough.
A spacesuit.
One of theirs.
Noah’s breath hitched. “Who the hell is that?”
Ren’s grip tightened. “No one should be out there.”
Elise’s stomach twisted. A deep, gnawing wrongness lodged in her gut.
This wasn’t a rescue.
Then...
The airlock hissed open.
A long, slow sound.
The emergency lights dimmed.
Shadows stretched, reaching down the corridor.
And it stepped inside.
Elise’s breath stalled.
It moved too precisely.
Too measured.
Like something inside the suit was still learning how to walk.
Its visor was black.
Not reflective.
Empty.
Swallowing all light.
And the suit...
The suit was wrong.
Echo-1 standard issue.
But patched with materials that didn’t belong.
Stitched together from fragments of different times.
Elise’s pulse thundered.
And on its chest...
A mission patch.
Echo-1.
Noah exhaled sharply. “That’s… impossible.”
Elise didn’t blink.
They never sent anyone outside.
No one had left the ship.
So how was someone walking back in?
The figure took another step forward.
Then...
It spoke.
“Elise.”
The voice was wrong.
Not distant. Not garbled.
Perfect.
Exact.
Her voice.
Her blood ran cold.
Ren’s arms never wavered. “Identify yourself. Now.”
The thing tilted its head.
Watching.
Calculating.
Then...
Slowly.
It lifted its hands to its helmet.
Elise’s breath caught.
Her instincts screamed.
Stop it.
Don’t let it take the helmet off.
But...
It was too late.
The helmet came free.
And beneath it...
Was her own face.
Hollow cheeks.
Burning red eyes.
A twisted, grinning version of herself.
Staring back at her.
Then...
It spoke again.
“You never left.”
Then...
The lights died.
Darkness swallowed them whole.
Tease Echo:
She thought she had entered the Rift.
But what if she had never left?
But what if she had never left?
Continue to Journey
