They say it’s wormhole navigation research. I think it’s just another kind of burial.
There’s a girl across the hall from me—Callix. At least, that’s what they call her. She doesn’t talk much, but she’s fast in zero-G drills. Lithe. Precise.
One night, during mess, she slides me an extra ration bar and says, “You got the stare.”
I blink at her. “What stare?”
“The kind ghosts have. The kind that says you’ve already left but your body’s too stubborn to quit.”
I want to laugh. I want to tell her she’s right.
But I just nod and chew the protein bar until it turns to paste in my mouth.
The worst part isn’t the silence.
It’s the memories.
They don’t fade. They loop.
Her porch light. The way her breath hitched when I touched her neck. The sound she made when she was half-asleep and still reached for me. The way she looked at me in the sim room before everything went to hell.
I hate her for what she did.
And I miss her with a hunger that borders on madness.
That’s the real curse of space. It isolates you so thoroughly that every thought gets amplified. No distractions. No voices. Just the same flash reel playing in your head until you can’t tell if it’s memory or hallucination.
She thought she was saving me.
But she didn’t ask if I wanted saving.
She didn’t trust me with the truth.
So now I’m out here. In the dark. Drifting through classified airlocks and blood-pressure trials.
And I don’t even know why.
New orders hit the bunk console.
We’re rerouting to Sector Theta-Four. No details. Just coordinates and an upload packet labeledNav Drift Compensation Protocol 47.
Sounds like suicide.
I confirm receipt.
I don’t ask questions.
Just strap in.
Just fly.
After the jump, there’s a moment.
A half-breath where the fabric of space ripples wrong. Like something slithering behind your eyes. Every console flickers.My gut flips. The nav systems spit out five different trajectories and then go silent.
But we make it.
Somehow.
