We Were Sent to Recover a Missing Space Ship. It is Horrifying Out Here.

Hello and welcome back to another episode by Sleepy Pasta. Before you doze off tonight, don't forget to leave a five star review and a comment where you are watching from. Let's begin. I got the call from Admiral Burgess at O300 on a Tuesday. That should have been my first warning sign right there.

Hall, she said when I picked up no pleasantries. Never were with Burgess. I need you for a recovery mission. I was already pulling on my uniform. You don't get calls from Admirals at 3:00 in the morning for routine stuff.

What's the situation? The Astrayas went dark six days ago. Last transmission came from the edge of known space. Quantum engine malfunction. They've been drifting since then.

I knew the Astrayas. Good ship. Captain Terry Crews ran a tight operation. Any recent contact? Nothing.

Complete radio silence. That part bugged me a little. Six days was a long time for total silence. Even with engine trouble, most ships could get emergency transmissions out even when everything else went to hell. I'm assembling your usual team, Burgess continued.

Richardson, Washington, Wells, Zimmerman. The cerebrous is prepped and ready. Understood. When do we now, captain? This can't wait.

The line went dead. I figured it was some kind of desperate situation. Burgess didn't pull crews out of bed for routine rescues, but six days of silence meant we were probably looking at salvage work more than rescue. That's the thing about space, doesn't give you much time to fix your mistakes. I grabbed my coffee and headed for the docking Bay.

The Cerebrous sat in berth 12, looking like every other mid range rescue vessel in the fleet. Gray hull, functional design, built for getting in and getting out fast. Nothing pretty about her, but she'd brought us home from worse situations than this. Richardson was already there, checking supply manifests. That's her.

Always ahead of schedule, always prepared. She looked up when I approached. Morning, Captain. Heard we're going hunting. Something like that.

I took a sip of coffee. Still too hot. What's our status? Medical supplies loaded, extra rations for potential survivors, Washington's running weapons checks, Henry's in the engine room, and Jenny's calibrating long range communications. Good.

That was why I liked working with this team. Nobody needed their handheld. Washington appeared from the Armory, looking like he hadn't slept much either. Captain heard this one's way out past the edge. That's right.

Any idea what we're walking into? I shrugged. Disabled ship, missing crew, probably the usual. But even as I said it, something felt off about this whole thing. Burgess had sounded different on the call, not worried, exactly, but careful, like she was picking her words.

Henry emerged from the engine Bay, wiping his hands on a rag. Everything's green down here, Captain. Though I should mention we're looking at six days minimum travel time to reach their last known position. 6 days out there. Jenny added, appearing with her communications gear.

That's further than I've been before. I've been out that far exactly once, three years ago, chasing down a research vessel that had engine trouble near a pulsar. Found them eventually, but the whole experience left me feeling like we were pushing our luck. Space gets weird when you go too far from civilization. Equipment acts up, people get nervous.

We'll manage, I said. Let's get this briefing started. We gathered in the small conference room aboard the Cerebrous. I pulled up the mission files on the main display. The Estrellas looked normal enough in the photos.

Standard exploration vessel. Crew of 12. Good safety record. Last transmission came in at 1427. Six days ago, I said Captain Crews reported quantum engine fluctuations, then complete system failure.

They were attempting emergency repairs when contact was lost. Richardson studied the star charts. That's a lot of empty space out there. Nearest support vessel would take two weeks to reach them, I continued. That's why we're going.

Washington frowned at the display. 12 crew members. How long can they survive on emergency power? Life support should hold for 10 days minimum, Henry said. Assuming no major hull breaches.

That gave us a narrow window. Four days if we were lucky. What about their distress beacon? Jenny asked. That's the strange part.

No beacon, no automated transmissions, nothing. I didn't mention that Burgess had seemed unusually concerned about that detail during our call. Most captains would activate emergency beacons even for minor problems. Cruz wasn't the type to go dark unless something serious had happened. Standard rescue protocols apply, I said.

We find them, assess the situation and get them home. Questions. Nobody had any. That was the thing about experienced crews. They knew the drill.

We launched an hour later. The first three days passed normally. Enough. Routine system checks. Regular communication with fleet command.

Standard deep space travel. The stars started getting sparse around Day 4, which always made people nervous. There's something about seeing empty space where you expect stars that gets under your skin. Jenny noticed it first. Long range sensors are having trouble maintaining lock on our destination coordinates.

Equipment problem? I asked Henry Rand Diagnostics. Everything's functioning normally, it's just there's not much out there to use as reference points. By day five, we were traveling through space I'd never seen before. No familiar constellations, no navigation beacons, just endless black with occasional distant stars.

The ship felt smaller somehow, more isolated. I'm getting some strange readings, Jenny said during her shift on day 6. Might be the Astrayas. I joined her at the communication station. The displays showed a faint signal, intermittent and weak.

That's them, I said, dead ahead, approximately 2,000,000 kilometers. Richardson took her position at the helm. I see them on visual. The Astrayas appeared on our main screen as a small Gray shape against the stars. No lights, no movement, just floating there like a piece of space debris.

No response to our hails, Jenny reported. Life signs inconclusive at this distance. I studied the ship through the viewfinder. It looked intact from the outside. No obvious damage, no signs of explosion or collision.

That was good news, and bad news rolled together. Good because it meant the crew might still be alive. Bad because it didn't explain why they'd gone completely silent. Take us in slow, I ordered. Standard docking approach.

Richardson guided us toward the Astrayas with the kind of Richardson guided us toward the Astrayas with the kind of skill that comes from years of practice. The docking clamps engaged with a soft thud that echoed through our hull, sealed and pressurized, Henry reported. I grabbed my gear and headed for the airlock. Richardson, Washington and Henry followed.

Jenny stated communications to monitor our progress. Remember, we don't know what we're walking into, I said as we suited up. Stay alert, stay together and report anything unusual. The docking tube extended between our ships with a series of mechanical sounds. Everything seemed normal so far.

Standard procedure, standard equipment, standard mission. Except for the complete radio silence from 12 people who should have been very happy to see us. I opened the outer airlock and stepped into the tube. The Astrayas airlock responded to our access codes without any problems. That was the first strange thing.

If they'd lost main power, the electronic locks shouldn't have worked. The inner door slid open. Emergency lighting cast everything in a dull red glow, which was normal for a ship running on backup power. The air felt warm and properly pressurized. Life support was definitely working.

Astraya's crew. This is Captain Hall of the Cerebrus. I called out. We're here to assist you. Nothing.

We moved into the main corridor. Everything looked normal, clean floors, properly functioning, displays no signs of damage or struggle. It was like the crew had just stepped out for a minute. This doesn't look like a ship in distress, Richardson said quietly. Washington had his weapon ready, though he kept it lowered.

Where is everybody? That was exactly what I was wondering. A ship this size should have had people moving around even during an emergency. At minimum, someone should have been posted near the docking Bay to meet rescue teams. Henry, what's your read on their systems?

He checked a nearby console. Main power's offline, but backup systems are running perfectly. Life support, artificial gravity, emergency lighting, all functioning normally. How long have they been running on backup power? Hard to say without accessing their main computer, but these readings suggest at least several days.

Several days of backup power with no crew activity. That didn't make sense. Even if everyone was injured or unconscious, automated systems should have been sending distress signals. We continued down the corridor toward the bridge. Our footsteps echoed in the silence, which somehow made everything feel more unsettling.

Ships weren't supposed to be this quiet. There should have been background noise from ventilation systems, equipment humming, people talking. Instead there was just our breathing and the soft sound of our boots on the deck plates, Captain Richardson said. I'm not picking up any life signs on my scanner. Equipment malfunction, negative, scanners working fine.

There's just nothing. I stopped walking. 12 people don't just disappear from a functioning spacecraft. There had to be an explanation. Medical emergency, maybe, or some kind of evacuation to a safer part of the ship, But the complete absence of any signs of human activity was starting to put me on edge.

This felt wrong in ways I couldn't quite identify yet. Let's check the bridge first, I said. Then we'll do a systematic search of the ship. We moved forward through corridors that should have been full of people grateful to see us. Instead we found nothing but empty spaces and the persistent feeling that we were walking into something we didn't understand.

Wells had his hands deep in the main console when I found him in the command center. Guy was good with computers, always had been since I've known him, Captain, he said without looking up. I think I found something you're going to want to hear. The command center felt bigger than it should have.

Empty chairs arranged in a semicircle around the main screen, everything clean and organized, like the crew had just stepped out for lunch. That bothered me more than if we'd found bodies. Personal logs, Wells said. His fingers moved across the interface. Captain Terry Crews, looks like he kept recording right up until the end.

I pulled up a chair next to him. The screen flickered and Cruz's face appeared. Guy looked tired, more than tired. His uniform was wrinkled and his beard needed trimming. The timestamp showed it was recorded three days ago.

Captain's log, final entry. Cruz's voice came through clear enough. I don't know if anyone will find this. I hope they don't. I hope they turn around and go home.

Wells and I exchanged looks. That wasn't how ship captains usually started their logs, crews continued. It started two weeks after we crossed into this sector. Nothing dramatic at first. Simmons mentioned seeing things.

Her sister, she said, the one who died in the mining accident five years back. Walking down Corridor Sea like she owned the place, I felt something cold settle in my stomach. Hallucinations weren't unheard of in deep space. Isolation did things to people's minds, but this felt different. Campbell started next.

My navigation officer, good man solid head on his shoulders, started claiming the stars were moving. Not the normal stellar drift you'd expect. Moving in patterns, forming shapes. He said they were spelling out warnings. The recording flickered.

Crews rubbed his eyes. By Week 3, half the crew was seeing things. Dead relatives, mostly. Some saw old friends. Henderson from engineering swore his drill Sergeant from basic training was following him around, giving him orders.

The thing is, Crews leaned closer to the camera. They all seemed so real to them. Not like dreams or stress. Hallucinations real? Wells paused the playback.

Jesus, Captain, what do you think happened to them? I didn't have an answer for that. Keep playing it. Cruz was talking again. His voice sounded more strained now.

Week 4 is when things got violent. Simmons attacked Rodriguez in the mess hall, said her sister told her he was planning to sabotage the ship. Rodriguez had never even met her sister. He'd been with us for two years. Solid record, no issues.

The camera shook. Cruz was probably holding it by hand now. Campbell started following star charts that didn't exist, taking us off course based on navigation readings that made no sense. I had to relieve him of duty. That's when he tried to break into the weapons locker.

Said the stars were angry with me for interfering. The recording cut out for a second. When it came back, Cruz looked worse. His uniform was torn at the shoulder. I'm alone now.

Had to sedate most of the crew. The ones I could catch anyway. Three of them are missing, probably hiding somewhere in the ship. They think I'm the enemy now. They think I'm not real.

Cruz stared straight into the camera. If you're watching this, turn around. Whatever's in this space, it gets into your head, makes you see things, makes you believe things that aren't true. I don't know how long I have before it gets me to. The recording ended.

Wells and I sat there for a minute. The command center felt even emptier now. That's when I made the call I probably should have made when we first boarded. I had Wells patch me through to Richardson. Lieutenant Commander, I need you and your team to do a full sweep of the living quarters, look for signs of struggle, anything that supports what we just heard.

Copy that. Captain, What are we looking for specifically? Evidence of a fight or evidence that people were fighting things that weren't there? I could hear the question in her voice, but Richardson was too professional to ask. Understood, Sir.

Beginning sweep now. Wells and I started with the personal quarters closest to the command center. First room belonged to Simmons, according to the nameplate. Door was unlocked. Inside, furniture was overturned.

The small desk chair was on its side. Papers scattered across the floor. But what got my attention was the wall next to her bunk. Scratch marks. Deep ones, like someone had been clawing at the metal with their fingernails, Captain Wells said from across the room.

Look at this. He was standing by her personal locker. The door was hanging open and everything inside had been pulled out. Clothes, personal items, photographs. But it was the photographs that made me stop.

They were all torn in half. Every single one. Family pictures, crew photos, even a shot of what looked like her graduating class from the Academy, all torn right down the middle. She was destroying images of people, Wells said. Question is why the next room was worse.

Campbell's quarters looked like someone had tried to rearrange the furniture while blindfolded. His navigation charts were pinned to every available wall space, but they weren't standard charts. These were hand drawn, covered in symbols I didn't recognize. These don't match any star patterns. I know, Wells said, studying one of the drawings.

Look at this. He's got lines connecting stars that are light years apart. The lines formed shapes, not random ones either. They looked almost like letters, or maybe warning signs. Richardson's voice came through my calm.

Captain, you need to see the medical Bay. We found her standing next to an examination table. Restraints hung from the sides, heavy ones designed for combative patients. A cart nearby held empty sedative vials. Lots of them.

Someone was trying to keep people calm, Richardson said. Looks like they went through their entire supply of tranquilizers. I picked up one of the empty vials. Standard issue for psychological emergencies. How many crew members were on this ship?

Manifest shows 23, Wells said, checking his tablet. I counted the vials. There's enough here for twice that number. The security office was our last stop. Wells managed to access the surveillance system.

The footage from the final weeks told the story. Cruises log, it started. I watched Simmons talking to empty corridors, having full conversations with people who weren't there. Campbell standing at a viewport, pointing its stars and gesturing frantically to crew members who kept backing away from him. The worst was watching them attack each other, but not really each other.

They were swinging at empty air, cowering from invisible threats, protecting themselves from dangers that existed only in their minds, Jesus Wells said as we watched Henderson barricade himself in his quarters, piling furniture against the door. They were all living in their own separate nightmares. The final piece of footage showed crews alone in the corridor outside the command center.

He was looking over his shoulder every few steps, checking corners, moving like someone was following him. But the corridor was empty, just like it had been when we'd walked through it 20 minutes ago. The weird stuff started maybe 3 hours after we got on board. Little things at first, equipment acting up, people looking over their shoulders for no reason.

I should have paid more attention to that part. Zimmerman was the first one to say something. Found her in the communications Bay around 1400, headset on, staring at her console like it had personally offended her captain. She said when she saw me. Didn't take the headset off.

I'm picking up chatter from where? That's the problem. There shouldn't be any. She tapped her screen. All channels are clear, no active transmissions.

But I keep hearing whispers and listen for a second. Nothing but the usual ship hum. What kind of whispers? Can't make out words, just voices talking low like they don't want to be heard. She pulled the headset off and rubbed her ears.

Been going on for 20 minutes now. Equipment malfunction, maybe? Probably. She didn't sound convinced. I'll run diagnostics.

I left her to it. Figured it was stress. Long missions. Did things to people, made them hear things that weren't there. Found Richardson in Corridor Sea about an hour later.

She was standing in the middle of the hallway, turning her head left and right like she was tracking something. Lieutenant Commander, I said she jumped. Actually jumped. Sorry, Captain. Thought I saw something.

What kind of something? Movement in my peripheral vision, like someone walking parallel to me. But when I look she shrugged. Nothing there. That made two of them.

I started paying closer attention after that. The ship felt wrong. Can't explain it better than that. Everything looked normal, same Gray walls, same lighting, same recycled air smell. But something was off, like when you walk into a room and know someone's been talking about you even though they stopped when you came in.

My tablet kept glitching. Screen would flicker for no reason. Sometimes the display would scramble for a few seconds, then snap back to normal. Wells said it was probably interference from the ship's systems. Said a lot of old vessels had weird electromagnetic signatures.

But it wasn't just my tablet. Richardson's scanner kept resetting itself. Zimmerman's communications array would crackle with static at random intervals. Even the lighting seemed unstable. Fluorescent panels would dim, then brighten like the power was fluctuating.

Washington took it. The worst guy had always been solid, steady, been with me for three years, never once questioned an order or lost his cool under fire. But something about this place got to him. Started noticing it around 1600. He was checking corners that didn't need checking, walking close to walls, keeping his hand near his sidearm even though we were on a rescue mission.

Sarge. I said when I caught him peering around a door frame for the third time in 5 minutes. What's the situation? Not sure, captain. His voice was tight.

Something's not right about this place. How so? The crew, where are they? He gestured down the empty corridor. Ship this size should have at least 40 people on board.

We've been here 4 hours, haven't seen a single person. That's why we're here, to find them. Maybe. He looked at me like he was trying to decide something. Or maybe they're here, just not showing themselves.

I didn't like where that was going. Explain. Think about it. We board their ship. No distress calls, no signs of struggle, no bodies.

But all the systems are running fine. Life support, artificial gravity, everything working perfectly. He paused. What if they're watching us? From where?

I don't know. Ventilation shafts, service tunnels, could be anywhere. That's when I should have pulled him off duty, Should have seen the signs. Guy was spiraling and I was too focused on the mission to stop it. By 1800, Washington was convinced we weren't alone, Not in a good way.

They're disguised, he told me when I found him standing guard outside the mess hall, wearing our faces, acting like our crew. Sarge. That's. Think about it, Captain. How do we know we're still us?

How do we know they haven't already replaced some of us? His hand was definitely on his weapon now. I kept my voice calm. Because we're talking right now. You know me.

Do I? He studied my face like he was looking for cracks in a mask. You sound like Captain Hall, but so would an imposter. That's when I called. Wells figured if Washington was going to have a breakdown, better to have someone else around, someone he trusted.

Big mistake. Wells showed up 5 minutes later, tool kit in hand, asking what needed fixing. Normal engineer response. Practical, helpful. Washington took one look at him and drew his sidearm.

That's not Wells, he said. Sarge put the weapon down. Look at his eyes, Captain. That's not human. That's one of them.

Wells froze. Smart guy knew not to make sudden movements when someone was pointing a gun at him. Washington, it's me, Henry. We served together on the Meridian. The real Wells would know.

I hate being called by my last name. Washington's voice was getting higher. You always called me Chris. Always. Wells blinked.

Chris, I Wrong answer. That's when I moved. Should have talked him down more, should have taken more time. But Washington's finger was on the trigger and Wells was 3 feet away and I couldn't let him shoot. An innocent man grabbed Washington's wrist, tried to push the gun away from Wells.

Washington was stronger than I expected. Fought back. We struggled for maybe 10 seconds. The weapon discharged. Single shot, point blank range.

Wells dropped like someone cut his strings. Washington stared at the body, then at me. You made me do that, he said. You made me kill the imposter. That was Wells, Sarge.

That was our engineer. No. He shook his head. No, that was one of them. Had to be, the real Wells would have remembered.

I knelt next to the body, checked for a pulse I knew wouldn't be there. Wells's eyes were open, staring at nothing, Toolkit scattered across the floor, wrench by his left hand. Richardson and Zimmerman found us 5 minutes later, took one look at the scene, and I watched something break in both of them.

What happened? Richardson asked. I told them, tried to explain. Washington kept insisting Wells had been replaced, that I'd helped him eliminate a threat, that we needed to check the rest of the crew for signs of infiltration. The rest of the crew is US, Zimmerman said.

There's nobody else on this ship that we know of, Washington said. After that, everything fell apart fast. Richardson wouldn't turn her back on anyone. Zimmerman stopped using her headset all together, said the whispers were getting louder. Washington kept talking about imposters and body snatchers and alien infiltration.

And me. I was starting to understand something I didn't want to understand. This wasn't space. Not the kind we knew, anyway. We'd followed that distress signal past the edge of everything familiar, and whatever we'd found out here operated by different rules.

Rules that human minds weren't built to handle. The whispers Zimmerman heard weren't equipment failure. The shadows Richardson saw weren't hallucinations. The way the ship felt wrong, the way our equipment kept glitching, the way Washington's paranoia had escalated beyond anything rational. We were breaking down, all of us.

Whatever this place was, it was unraveling our minds piece by piece, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do to stop it. Wells was dead because I tried to save him from a man who couldn't tell reality from delusion anymore. And looking at my remaining crew, I realized we were all heading in the same direction.

Just a matter of time. The visions got worse when I tried to focus on the navigation console. I mean, they've been bad before, but now it was like someone had cranked up the volume on crazy and broken off the knob. The moment I put my hands on the controls, everything went sideways. The console looked normal at first.

Standard interface, blue displays, navigation grid showing our position relative to, well, nothing really. We were still in that dead zone where the star charts just kind of gave up and shrugged. Then the numbers started crawling. Not moving, crawling like little black insects spelling out coordinates that made no sense. I blinked hard and they were normal again for about 3 seconds.

Richardson, I called out. I need you on the secondary controls. She was already moving. Had to give her credit. Woman didn't waste time asking questions when things got weird.

Just did the job. Copy that, Captain. But when she reached for her station, I saw her hands freeze about 6 inches from the panel. Her face went pale. What is it?

The console? Her voice came out flat. Careful, it's not, it doesn't look right. I glanced over. Looked fine to me.

Standard interface, same blue displays. What do you see? Flesh. She swallowed hard. It's all flesh, like someone skinned something and wrapped it around the controls.

Great, just great. Can you still operate it? She nodded slowly, reached out again. Her hands were shaking, but she made contact, started working through the navigation protocols. I figured we had maybe 10 minutes before one of us completely lost it.

Wells. I shouted toward the engineering station. I need everything you've got on the drive systems. No response. I turned around.

Wells was pressed against the far wall, staring at something I couldn't see. His face was white, breathing fast. Wells. He jerked, looked at me like he'd forgotten I was there. Captain, the walls there.

He pressed his back harder against the bulkhead. They're moving in. I looked around the command center, same size as always, maybe 20 feet across. Standard layout, nothing moving anywhere. But Wells was backing toward the center of the room, like something was chasing him.

How close are they? Maybe 10 feet on all sides. He was breathing through his mouth now, quick shallow breaths getting closer. This was bad, really bad, but I needed him functional for another few minutes. Wells, listen to me, I need you to tell me about the navigation system, can you do that?

He nodded, still watching the walls that weren't moving. Standard quantum drive should be able to plot a course back to mapped space if we can get a bearing on the Altair system. Good, that's good, keep talking. I turned back to the navigation console, started entering coordinates for our home sector. The numbers kept shifting under my fingers.

Sometimes they looked like coordinates. Sometimes they looked like dates. Sometimes they look like names. Christian Washington appeared next to me. I knew he wasn't real.

Had to be a hallucination. Guy had been dead for two months, died under my command when I made a bad call about a boarding action. But he looked solid, real, still wearing his sergeant's uniform, still had that disappointed expression he'd worn when the blast took him. This is your fault, he said. I kept working on the navigation console.

Didn't look at him. You got us all killed. The coordinates were starting to make sense. I could see a path back to Known Space. It'd take maybe six hours if the drive held together.

Look at me, Captain. I didn't look. More voices behind me. Richardson was arguing with someone I couldn't see. Wells was describing how the walls were getting closer.

Zimmerman's voice from the communications Bay, but she was talking to people who weren't there. Christian moved closer. I could smell the burned metal scent that had followed him around after the blast. You left me behind. You were already dead.

I kept my voice low, didn't want the others to hear me talking to ghosts. Were you sure about that? That stopped me, because honestly, I hadn't been sure. There'd been a moment when I could have gone back for him, could have tried, but I'd made the call to evacuate instead. The navigation console started bleeding.

Not like, metaphorically, actual blood red stuff dripping from the controls onto my hands. I could smell it, metallic, warm. Richardson made a sound like she was going to be sick. Captain, the controls are. They're pulsing like a heartbeat.

I wiped the blood off my hands and kept working, because what else was I going to do? We needed to get out of here. The course was plotted. All I had to do was engage the drive and hope it worked. But the corridor behind me had changed.

When I glanced back, it stretched on forever. Zimmerman was at the far end, maybe a quarter mile away, still talking into her headset. Wells was somewhere in between, still pressed against a wall that was apparently closing in on him. Time felt weird, too, like we'd been working for hours, or maybe just minutes.

The chronometer said 1423, but that couldn't be right. Richardson, you ready? Ready, Captain. Her voice sounded normal, professional, but when I looked at her she was gripping her station like it was trying to buck her off. On my Mark 321 engage, the drive kicked in.

For a second everything went white. Pure, clean white. No visions, no voices, no blood on the controls. Then we were moving. The journey back felt like it took forever, and also like it happened in seconds.

Time kept jumping around. One moment we've been travelling for 20 minutes, the next moment it was 4 hours later and I was standing in a different part of the ship. Christian kept showing up. Sometimes he'd be sitting in his old chair in the mess hall, sometimes he'd be walking next to me in the corridors, always with that same disappointed look.

You could have saved all of us, he said during one of these visits. I saved who I could, did you? I started seeing the other ones too, the crew members we'd lost on the Estrellas. They'd gather in groups and whisper about me point when they thought I wasn't looking. The corridors kept changing.

Sometimes they'd be normal ship corridors, sometimes they'd stretch on for miles. Once I walked for what felt like an hour and ended up back where I started. Wells found me during one of these walks. Captain, he said. How long have we been travelling?

I checked the chronometer. About 3 hours. He frowned. That doesn't match my readings. I've got us at 7 hours and change.

Zimmerman's voice came over the calm captain to the bridge. We've got something on sensors. But when I got to the bridge, Zimmerman wasn't there, just Richardson, still gripping her station, still seeing flesh where there should have been metal. What's our position? Hard to say.

The readings keep changing. She wiped sweat from her forehead. But I think we're close to the border. I could feel it, too. Something was different.

The air felt less heavy. The walls looked more solid. The voices were getting quieter. Christian appeared one more time as we approach the boundary. He looked sad now instead of angry.

You did what you could, he said. That was it. He was gone. The transition happened all at once. One second we were in that twisted space where nothing made sense.

The next second we were back in normal space and everything just stopped. The visions cut off like someone had flipped a switch. The blood disappeared from the navigation console. Richardson Station looked like metal again. Wells stepped away from the wall that had been closing in on him.

The chronometer read 1547. We've been gone for about an hour and a half. Zimmerman's voice came over the calm, clear normal. Captain, I'm reading the Cerebrous on long range sensors. They're holding position at the boundary.

I slumped against the navigation console. Everything felt real again, solid. The numbers on the display were just numbers set course for the Cerebrous, I told Richardson. I Captain the docking procedure took about 20 minutes. Normal time, real time.

I could feel the difference. Admiral Burgess was waiting for us in the docking Bay. She looked older than I remembered. Tired report, she said when I stepped off the transport. The Astrayas is a total loss.

Crew presumed dead. The ship is compromised. She nodded. Contaminated. Something like that.

I handed her my personal log recorder. Everything's in there. But Admiral, that ship needs to stay right where it is. No salvage operations, no rescue missions. Nothing.

Understood. Richardson, Wells, and Zimmerman filed past us. They looked normal again. Tired, but normal, like they just finished a long shift. Instead of fighting off visions of impossible things, we left the Astrius exactly where we found it.

Sent out a navigation warning to mark it as a hazard to shipping. Anyone who saw that beacon would know to stay away. I hope that'd be enough. The flight back to headquarters took six hours. Six hours of sitting in silence while my crew tried not to look at each other.

Richardson kept checking her hands, looking at them like she wasn't sure they were real. Well. Stared out the viewport at nothing. Zimmerman hadn't said a word since we'd left the Astrayas. I should have been thinking about what to tell Burgess, how to explain what we'd seen out there.

Instead I kept seeing Washington's face, that look he'd had right before he tried to kill me. Guy thought I was some kind of monster. Really believed it. The docking Bay at headquarters looked exactly the same as when we'd left. Gray metal walls, standard lighting, people going about their normal jobs like the universe made sense.

Funny how normal things can feel completely wrong when you've been somewhere they shouldn't exist. I went straight to Burgess's office. Didn't even stop to shower or change uniforms. Figured she'd want to hear this while it was fresh in my head. Paul, she said when I walked in.

Same tone as always. How'd it go? I sat down across from her desk. Standard military furniture, everything. Regulation.

We found the Estrellas. Good. Where's Captain Cruz and his crew? Dead. I pulled out my data pad, started scrolling to the report, and I drafted on the flight back.

All of them been dead for weeks, probably. She leaned back in her chair. What happened out there? That was the question, wasn't it? What happened?

How do you explain something that doesn't make sense to people who expect things to make sense? The region contains phenomena that destroy human sanity, I continued. Direct exposure to realities the mind can't comprehend. We lost. Sergeant Washington nearly lost my whole team.

I handed her the data pad. She took it but didn't look at it yet. Kept her eyes on me. Explain that, she said. So I did.

Told her about the corridors that changed when you weren't looking, about the impossible spaces inside the ship, how the crew had seen things that weren't there until they couldn't tell what was real anymore. Reality became unstable out there, I said. The hallucinations weren't just in their heads. They were complete, perfect, convincing enough that Washington attacked me because he genuinely believed I was something else.

She listened without interrupting. Burgess was good that way, let you get the whole story out before she started asking questions. The original crew experienced complete psychological breakdown, I continued. That's what killed them. Not equipment failure, not some external threat.

Their own minds turned against them. I thought about Cruz's logs, the way his handwriting had deteriorated, how he'd started seeing things that made him question everything he knew about reality. If we'd stayed aboard the Astrayas, we would have ended up the same way, I said. Dead or completely insane. Maybe both.

Burgess finally looked down at the data pad, started scrolling through my report. I'd been thorough. It detailed every strange thing we'd encountered, every moment when reality had seemed to slip sideways. You're saying the space itself is dangerous, she said. That's exactly what I'm saying.

Something out there warps perception, makes you see things that aren't there, or maybe makes things be there that shouldn't be. I don't know the difference anymore. That was the truth. After six hours of thinking about it, I still couldn't figure out what we'd actually experienced versus what the region had made us think we'd experienced.

The phenomena affected my entire team, I said. Richardson, Wells, Zimmerman, all of them started showing signs of psychological distress, paranoia, confusion. If we'd stayed longer, they would have broken down completely. I watched her read through the technical details, the sensor readings that didn't make sense, the environmental data that contradicted itself, the way our equipment had registered things that couldn't exist.

Your recommendation? She asked. She set down the data pad, looked at me for a long moment. You lost a good man out there, she said. Yeah.

I thought about Washington again, how he'd been a solid soldier right up until the moment he tried to put a knife in my chest. He deserved better than what happened to him. The weight of it hit me then really hit me. I'd brought 5 people out there and only four had come back.

Washington was dead because I'd made the decision to board that ship. The surviving team members are going to need counseling, I said. What they saw out there, what they experienced, that doesn't just go away. Burgess nodded. I'll arrange for psychological evaluation and treatment.

Good. Because they're carrying scars from this, all of them. And I don't think those scars are going away anytime soon. I thought about Richardson checking her hands, Wells staring at nothing. Zimmerman's silence.

They've been exposed to something human minds weren't designed to handle. The mission ended with a clear warning. I said there are places out there where human minds aren't meant to go. Regions where the universe works differently, where reality itself becomes unstable. I stood up, felt tired in a way that sleep wouldn't fix.

We found the Astrayas. We know what happened to Cruz and his crew, and we know enough to make sure it doesn't happen to anyone else. Burgess picked up the data pad again. I'll review your full report, make recommendations to command, make sure they understand I said that sector is off limits, not just dangerous, lethal in ways we don't have words for.

She looked up at me. Understood, Captain. I walked toward the door, stopped before I reached it. Admiral, the things we saw out there, the way reality broke down. I've been in space for 20 years, seen a lot of strange stuff.

This was different. Different how this felt. Like we'd gone somewhere we weren't supposed to be, somewhere the universe doesn't work the way it should. Like we'd crossed a line that was never meant to be crossed. I left her office and walked down the corridor toward the crew quarters.

The walls looked solid, the lighting was consistent. Everything followed the rules of normal reality. But I kept checking over my shoulder anyway just to make sure.