>>96024182
I wander the ship like a ghost uncertain of its own death, struggling to claw free of the cryo-fugue that clung to my thoughts like frost. My steps echo dully down corridors meant to be alive with motion, with voices, with the quiet hum of machines that never slept. But there was only silence—thick, unnatural silence.

There should have been people. There had to be people! We entered stasis in staggered shifts, a safeguard against catastrophe. But I saw no one.

Yet that was not what really gnawed at me.

The walls were wrong.

Where once there had been sterile plating, brushed chrome and clean seams, now the metal bulged with infection, weeping from rents clogged with alien bloom. Pale filaments stitched themselves along the corners, threading the hull like veins under thin skin.

And the smell, gods, the smell! Slick and cloying, like the scent of overripe fruit left to die in the sun. The fungal growth pulsed faintly, and when I looked too long, I saw it breathe,releasing faint, shimmering clouds into the air, spores drifting like embers.

So I stopped looking.

The red emergency strobes pulsed in time with the sirens, casting the world in rhythmic crimson. The floor tilted. My stomach twisted. I reached out to steady myself, and recoiled. The wall was warm. Alive, maybe.

I told myself I would not faint.

I lied.