The starship Nightingale drifted silently through the black vastness of the Kallos Nebula, a swirling mass of cosmic dust and ghostly ion storms. Its crew of twelve had been sent to investigate a distress signal pulsing faintly from a derelict research station known as Haven-9. No transmissions had come from Haven-9 for over a decade.
Captain Lena Ortega stared at the monitor as the ship closed in. The signal was weak but persistent — a repeating loop of digital fragments interspersed with a chilling, indecipherable whispering. The voice sounded almost… alive.
“Any signs of life, Lieutenant?” she asked over comms.
“Negative, Captain. Thermal scans show no movement. The station’s power grid is barely holding on, just enough to keep life support systems flickering,” replied Lieutenant Kamal.
The Nightingale docked with Haven-9 and the crew donned their suits before boarding the shadowed corridors. Inside, the air was thick with an unnatural stillness. Walls pulsed faintly with bioluminescent veins, glowing like sick veins beneath cracked metal panels.
Dr. Emrys, the ship’s xenobiologist, stopped dead in his tracks. “This station isn’t abandoned… something’s living inside the infrastructure.”
Suddenly, the lights flickered and a whisper echoed through the halls — a chorus of fractured voices, half-human, half-mechanical.
The crew’s comm devices crackled, repeating the distress signal phrase — but the words morphed into something else, a hypnotic chant that gnawed at their minds.
Private Ryo collapsed, clutching his helmet as his vision blurred. “It’s… inside me… it’s alive…”
One by one, the crew began to change. Their bodies became hosts to an alien intelligence that thrived on fear and sound, merging flesh with the station’s organic circuitry.
Captain Ortega realized the horrifying truth: Haven-9 was a living organism, a cosmic parasite that lured explorers to feed on their sanity and flesh, converting them into echoing conduits of its will.
The last transmission from the Nightingale played on a loop in deep space, distorted and fragmented — a warning or a lure:
“You will become the voice… you will become the echo… forever trapped in the void.”