The team moved quickly, their boots striking the deck with controlled urgency. The weight of the Eidolon’s last message—“Stay”—hung over them like a leaden shroud. But no one spoke of it. Not yet.

Bahn kept her phaser raised, sweeping their path as they pressed forward through the dim corridors. The air felt thinner now, colder. Each breath seemed to take more effort.

“Something’s wrong with life support,” Ch’shraonness muttered, glancing at his tricorder. “CO₂ levels are fluctuating. The oxygen recirculators are cutting in and out.”

Kobai inhaled sharply, rubbing her arms. “The temperature’s dropping, too.”

Before anyone could respond, a burst of static crackled over their communicators.

Then—laughter.

Not just one voice. A chorus. Disjointed. Warped by interference.

Carter flinched. “Who the hell—?”

The laughter faded, replaced by fragments of speech.

“…no, that’s impossible, we shut it down…”

“…can’t leave, can’t leave, can’t…”

“…isn’t real, it’s just an echo…”

The voices overlapped, tangled, slipping in and out of coherence. Some were panicked. Others… calm. Detached. As if they had accepted something the away team had yet to understand.

Then, one voice cut through the chaos—clear, sharp, and right next to them.

“They can hear us.”

The comms screeched with a high-pitched whine. Everyone winced, but the sound cut off abruptly.

Silence.

Terengel gave a slow blink, his expression unreadable. “…The voices belong to the Eidolon‘s crew.”

Bahn exhaled, her stance rigid with tension. “But they aren’t here.”

Kobai turned to her. “Then where are they?”

A sudden metallic crack echoed down the hall as an overhead vent buckled. A burst of cold air whooshed out, swirling like breath from unseen lips.

Ch’shraonness checked his tricorder again, his antennae twitching. “Life support is failing shipwide.” He tapped at the interface. “It’s not a power issue—the systems are… being overridden.”

Carter frowned. “Overridden?”

By what, no one dared to ask.

Ahead of them, another vent buckled with a hollow sound. The ship breathed, its failing systems wheezing through decaying lungs.

The Eidolon was falling apart. Or waking up…

And somewhere in its depths, the voices were still whispering.

The away team pressed forward, following the dim glow of emergency lighting down the corridors. The Eidolon‘s systems continued to flicker and sputter, casting the halls in erratic flashes of red and gold. Their breath misted in the air now.

“We need to get to an intact terminal,” Ch’shraonness muttered, his voice tight with urgency. “If we don’t stabilize the environment soon, we’ll be struggling to breathe.”

“Or we need to find enviro suits,” Bahn said. “This was supposed to be an easy in and out job. Life support was fine.”

“Let’s find an access, see if we can stabilize things. If not, suits it is, but we stay together,” Ch’shraonness stressed.

The Andorian led them into an operations substation off the main corridor, a room lined with inactive monitors and dead consoles. One flickered weakly at the far end of the room. Terengel moved to it.

“Looks like this station is running on some kind of isolated power loop,” he said, fingers moving deftly over the controls. “I might be able to access another log entry.”

The screen stuttered to life, distorted text scrolling too fast to read. The interface lagged, and then—

[LOG ENTRY: Stardate 9522.6—Dr. Silas Veylan, Lead Researcher]

The image of a man appeared, his face drawn and shadowed, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. He wore a disheveled Starfleet sciences uniform, the collar gaping open, his hair unkempt. Behind him, the same etched runes they had seen before covered the walls of the Eidolon’s research lab.

Veylan exhaled, running a hand down his face. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse, frayed.

“The experiments were meant to be controlled. Predictable.”

A long pause. He swallowed.

“We weren’t just studying the anomaly. We were trying to replicate it. To create artificial wormholes—shortcuts through space, bypassing traditional subspace limitations. … but wormholes are unstable. Temporary. Every test collapsed within seconds.”

A bitter laugh.

“Until we introduced the psychic resonance amplifier.”

Kobai frowned. “Psychic resonance?”

“The idea was simple. Consciousness—our very thoughts—affect quantum states at microscopic levels. If we could amplify that effect, focus collective willpower through the right conditions, we could stabilize a wormhole without exotic matter.”

His eyes darkened.

“We succeeded. And that was the last normal day on the Eidolon.”

The screen flickered, and for a moment, the video distorted—his form stretching unnaturally before stabilizing. When he continued, his voice was quieter.

“We thought we were shaping space. But something else… was listening. Watching. Waiting.”

The team exchanged tense glances.

Veylan leaned closer to the screen, his voice a whisper now, as if afraid to be overheard.

“I don’t know if we opened something. Or if something… opened us.”

The log cut out, the screen flashing:

[DATA CORRUPTED.]

Silence clung to the room, thick and suffocating. No one spoke at first. Then, Terengel finally murmured, “They did not simply observe the anomaly. They invited it in.”

Carter exhaled sharply. “And now we’re standing inside their mistake.”

A deep groan echoed through the ship, vibrating through the deck. The walls seemed to shudder around them.

And then, from the darkened corridor behind them—

A soft, rasping inhale.

The low, rasping sound echoed through the corridor, a sound not meant for human ears—deep, hollow, and wrong. The away team tensed, weapons raised, but when they turned, the passageway behind them was empty.

Only the flickering lights and the stale, thin air pressing down on them.

“Did—” Carter started, her voice unsteady, “Did anyone else…”

The engineer’s voice cut off‌. She stiffened. Beside her, Allen had gone rigid, too. Both stared wide-eyed at something only they could see. 

Carter staggered backward, breath hitching in her throat. Her tricorder slipped from her grasp, clattering to the floor.

Allen’s mouth opened in a silent scream. His fingers clawed at his uniform, his whole body shaking as he stared at the emptiness in front of him.

“No… no, no, no—”

Then they both collapsed, convulsing. 

Kobai dropped to her knees, running her tricorder over them, then administering hypospray injections in quick succession. The convulsions stopped, leaving both crewmen unconscious but stable.

“Elevated heart rate, massive neurological activity spikes. It’s like something is attacking their minds,” Kobai said.

Carter’s eyes fluttered open. Her breath came in short, panicked gasps. She pushed up to a sitting position, hugging her knees to her chest.

“There’s so much blood…” she whispered. “Bodies…”

Allen sucked in a sharp breath, coming awake abruptly. He sat up too, head shaking in frantic denial. “It’s everywhere,” he wailed. “The walls—oh God, they’re screaming—”

The team exchanged glances. There was no blood. No screaming. No bodies. Nothing except the pristine, undisturbed corridors of the Eidolon.

“Carter. Allen.” Bahn’s voice was firm, authoritative, anchoring. “There’s nothing there. You’re hallucinating.”

Carter let out a strangled sob. “But it’s so real.”

Allen clutched at his head. “We—we see them. The crew. The ones who—who—” He gagged, his breath hitching violently.

Then, in perfect unison, both of them snapped their heads toward the corridor behind the team—the same corridor where the whisper had come from moments ago.

Blood drained from their faces. Wide blood-shot eyes stared into the darkness.

“It’s still here,” Allen choked out.

Carter’s voice was ‌a whisper. “…It’s watching us.”

The ship shuddered. The lights flickered again, plunging them into a brief, suffocating darkness.

And in that instant, something moved.

The lights began their wild flickering again, strobing flashes of gold and red across the corridor. Carter and Allen were on their feet again, breath shallow and hitching like rabbits being stalked by a hunting hawk. Still caught up in the horrors their minds had conjured, they broke and ran, fleeing down the corridor. 

“Stop!” Ch’Shraonness said. The others chased after the two engineers as they careened through the hallways. They skidded to an abrupt stop as an emergency bulkhead slammed down between them, severing Allen from the group and nearly crushing Carter.

Carter yelped as the others yanked her back. It snapped her out of the mindless panic and she pounded on the door, calling Allen’s name. 

“Systems are locked!” Ch’shraonness growled, trying to force a bypass at the nearby wall access. “I can’t override it!”

________________

The sound of the bulkhead tore Allen out of his panic as well. He turned with the sinking realisation that he was now alone. The lights flickered and died.

“No, no, no…” he whimpered, hands trembling as he reached for his communicator. “Allen to away team—”

Static.

His breath came in short, panicked bursts. His heartbeat roared in his ears. The corridor was pitch-black now. The kind of darkness that felt solid, pressing against his skin. Cave dark.

Then—

The lights flickered.

And someone was there.

A figure stood at the far end of the passage, barely more than a faint silhouette against the deeper inkiness.

Too tall. Too thin. 

Allen’s breath hitched. He fumbled for his phaser, his fingers numb, his body rigid with terror.

“Who’s there?” His voice whispered out.

The figure didn’t respond. 

Then—

It took a step forward.

The lights cut ‌out again and something rushed at him, the sound of many feet loping down the corridor.

Allen screamed.