With a shimmer of blue light, the away team materialized aboard the USS Eidolon. The air was still, stale despite the ship’s reported atmospheric integrity. Dim emergency lights flickered along the corridor, casting elongated shadows that danced along the pristine, undisturbed walls.

Chief Engineer Eshass Ch’shraonness exhaled. “It shouldn’t look like this,” he muttered, running a gloved hand along the bulkhead. “Ten years adrift, and not a single sign of wear? No dust, no corrosion, nothing?” His antennae twitched in agitation.

Security Officer Hannu Bahn took point, her phaser raised as she scanned the corridor. “No movement. No bodies. No signs of what happened here.”

“Still no sign of the crew,” Lin Kobai added, glancing at her medical tricorder. The Bajoran medic frowned. “I’m picking up trace atmospheric fluctuations—carbon dioxide levels that suggest someone was breathing here recently. But no biosigns now.”

Jen Carter and Cosmo Allen, the engineering ensigns, exchanged uneasy glances before Carter pulled out her tricorder. “Minimal power readings. The main systems are barely running, just enough to maintain life support.” She hesitated. “It’s like the ship is… waiting.”

Terengel turned toward her. “An apt observation.”

A deep, distant creak echoed through the corridor. Ch’shraonness’ grip tightened on his equipment.

“Let’s keep moving. Whatever happened here, we won’t find answers standing in the dark.”

With that, the away team pressed forward, their footsteps the only sound in the silent, pristine darkness of the Eidolon.

The away team moved cautiously through the dim corridors, the emergency lights flickering in a slow, rhythmic pulse. The heartbeat of a drowsing creature.

Hannu Bahn took point, sweeping her phaser’s light across the pristine bulkheads. She stopped, swinging the light back.

“…What the hell is this?”

The others followed her gaze. At first glance, the surface looked smooth, identical to the rest of the ship—but as Bahn ran her fingers over the metal, the details became clearer.

Faint, angular etchings marred the bulkhead, barely visible beneath the dim lighting. The symbols weren’t uniform; they sprawled erratically, like something—or someone—had carved them in a frantic, desperate state. The markings extended further than the light could reach, stretching in either direction down the corridor.

Ch’shraonness crouched beside her, his gloved fingers tracing the grooves. He glanced at his tricorder, then frowned. “The markings are not in any known language.”

“It looks like a mixture of scripts. Including some that Starfleet has not yet come in contact with, but the Borg have.” Terengel shook his head. “But it makes no sense. It’s just gibberish. The writings of the mad.”

He tapped one section. “Three languages, and it appears part of a human quote. ‘To look into the abyss…’ Nietzsche, I believe. And this section is two languages, and a different handwriting. It says ‘Madness is sublime.’”

“Well, that’s not at all creepy,” Carter said.

Bahn leaned in closer, her fingers brushing against one of the deeper grooves. A shudder ran through the bulkhead beneath her touch. The emergency lights overhead flickered violently—once, twice—before stabilizing.

“…Did anyone else feel that?” Allen asked, voice tight. The ship let out a low, groaning creak, as if shifting in response.

Carter’s tricorder let out a sharp trill. “Hold on. I just picked up an energy fluctuation.”

“Source?” Ch’shraonness asked.

Carter tapped at her display. “Hard to say, Captain. It was brief. It’s gone now.”

The away team exchanged uneasy glances.

Ch’shraonness straightened. “We should get to the bridge.”

With silent agreement, the team pressed forward, but the presence of the runes lingered in their minds.

The away team reached the Eidolon’s main operations hub, a wide, circular room lined with darkened consoles. At its center, the captain’s chair sat vacant, surrounded by a sleek, lifeless bridge. The emergency lighting cast long, distorted shadows, making the edges of the space feel undefined.

Ch’shraonness moved to the bridge engineering station, his fingers dancing over the inactive console. “Power’s at minimal capacity,” he muttered. “Bringing up auxiliary systems.”

The console flickered to life with a low hum, but instead of the usual Starfleet interface, the display sputtered, glitched, and filled with fragmented code. Blocks of unreadable text, interspersed with strings of recognizable but distorted Starfleet commands.

Carter adjusted her tricorder, linking it to the interface. “I’m detecting multiple layers of data corruption. This isn’t just file degradation over time—something altered the system.”

“Sabotage?” Bahn asked, keeping her stance tense, eyes scanning the darkness beyond the bridge.

Terengel tilted his head, his ocular implant flickering as he interfaced with the ship’s damaged database. “Negative. This was not deliberate destruction per se,” he said. “The system seems… overwritten. As if something else is using the ship’s data for unintended purposes.

A faint, static-laced sound crackled from the console nearest to Allen.

“What the hells!” The young man leapt back from the console, eyes wide in the gloom.

They all covered their ears as a screech like tortured soul of the Eidolon itself tore through the bridge.

The console sputtered, then stabilized, displaying an audio log. A partial degradation was evident; the timestamp indicated ten years prior—the day the Eidolon vanished. A voice filled the room, warped by interference.

 “…unusual readings from the anomaly… expanding beyond projections… can’t shut it down… it’s—”

Static swallowed the rest.

The away team exchanged glances. Another log auto-played. This time, the voice was sharper, frantic.

 “—not alone. We’re not—”

The recording cut off abruptly. The console screen jittered and flashed a final warning before shutting down entirely.

[SYSTEM ERROR. DATA CORRUPTED.]

The ship creaked again, louder this time. Somewhere deeper in the Eidolon, came a baritone rumble.

“…Did anyone else hear that?” Kobai whispered.

Ch’shraonness exhaled, his antennae twitching. “We need full access to the logs. If the mainframe is compromised, we must access the auxiliary storage in the data core.

With no other choice, the team pressed on, the fragmented voices of the past lingering in the silence behind them. The air felt different now. Thicker. Heavier. The Eidolon‘s silence was no longer just eerie—it was oppressive, as if the ship itself was listening. Watching.

A faint sound drifted through the corridor, almost imperceptible. It wasn’t the groaning metal or the distant echoes of their own movement.

It was whispering.

Gewai Devore froze mid-step, his pulse quickening. The others heard it too—soft, unintelligible murmurs threading through the stale air. Not coming from their comms. Not from the ship’s damaged systems.

They came from nowhere. And everywhere.

Bahn’s grip on her phaser tightened. “That’s it. Now the ghost ship is whispering.”

The whispers faded as quickly as they had begun. Silence once again stretched between them like a held breath.

Sarrik’s voice crackled through their comms. “Report.”

“We’re proceeding,” Ch’shraonness responded. The Andorian hesitated before adding, “There’s… something strange about this ship, Captain.”

“Strange how, Mr Ch’shraonness?” Sarrik asked. Ch’shraonness explained the weird writing scratched into the walls and the distorted data and logs.

“I wish we had some inkling of what they were working on, Captain. What these experiments involved.”

“So do I. Quick as you can, Mr. Ch’shraonness. Find what you can and let’s get you back home.”

“Yessir.” Ch’shraonness turned to the group as the connection broke. “Carter, Kobai and Bahn, you’re with me to Engineering. Allen- you, Devore and Sinclair go with Terengel to the data core.”

Devore moved with his assigned team down one of the dim corridors, his steps echoing. Every shadow seemed to stretch too far. Every breath sounded too loud.

Then he heard it.

His own name.

A whisper, just behind him. “Devore.”

He spun around, heart hammering against his ribs. The hallway was empty. The others were several paces ahead, unaware.

“…Hello?” His voice stuttered out, almost a whisper itself.

Silence.

The whisper had been close. Too close. Right at his ear. A chill crawled down his spine. They weren’t alone in this corridor.

He just couldn’t see what was with them.