The words hang in the air, heavy, tempting. Rakkh doesn’t respond. His gaze is fixed on the corridor ahead, the faint lineof light still waiting there with endless patience. Leaving is an option—for now.
I look down at my hands, flexing my fingers. No tremor. No dizziness. Whatever this place is doing, it’s selective. That scares me more than if it were hurting all of us. Because it means the ship isn’t broken. It’s working.
And Tomas is just… standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. The ship hums on, indifferent. Waiting for us to decide whether the cost is acceptable.
And for the first time since we stepped inside, I realize with a sinking certainty that whatever this vessel was built to do—it was never designed to be gentle with anyone who wasn’t part of its original plan.
The four of us exchange looks, but none of us argues about moving. That, more than anything else, tells me how bad it’s getting.
Rakkh doesn’t bark orders. Travnyk doesn’t debate probabilities. Tomas doesn’t crack a joke. We simply shift. It’s decided. Quietly and instinctively. The three of us still standing move to where the light is weakest and the air feels marginally cooler.
Marginally.
Tomas pushes himself up with a soft grunt, favoring one leg. He tries to hide it. Fails.
“You good?” I ask.
“Define good,” he mutters. His pupils are a little too wide. His skin has taken on a faint sheen that isn’t sweat so much as…strain. Like his body is working overtime to compensate for something it doesn’t understand.
Rakkh places himself at Tomas’s side without comment, close enough that Tomas could lean if he needed. He doesn’t—but the option matters.
Travnyk trails his fingers along the wall as we move, careful not to linger too long in any one place. His expression has shifted from curiosity to calculation.
“This influence,” he says quietly, “is not uniform.”
“No,” I agree. “But it is growing stronger.”
The thought settles heavy in my stomach. Whatever the ship is doing—whatever system it’s running—it’s more concentrated the deeper into the ship we go. Tomas was fine until we stopped at the platform. Until we stopped to wait.
Waiting is the problem.
“You feel nothing,” Rakkh says, his voice low, meant only for my ears.
It isn’t a question. I shake my head.
“Not like he does.”
“You feel something else,” he presses.
I hesitate. Then nod.
“Pressure. Like… static before a storm. But it isn’t hurting me.”
That seems to worry him more than if it were.
Travnyk stops near a recessed section of wall I hadn’t noticed before—not a door, not a panel—just a subtle dip in the metalwhere the light barely reaches. He inhales slowly, nostrils flaring.
“The air composition is stable,” he says. “But the particulate density is elevated.”
Tomas squints. “In Common?”
“Something is present,” Travnyk says, “in trace amounts. Not enough to trigger alarms—if such systems exist—but enough to affect a smaller, less resilient body.”
I swallow. “Like humans.”
“Yes.”
Rakkh’s jaw tightens. “Remove him.”
