Chapter 6: The Hollow Silence

The air felt thick, stagnant. A heavy stillness settled over the corridors like dust, coating every surface in an unspoken warning: this place is dead.

Caleb pressed his back against the cold steel wall, forcing slow, steady breaths. His limbs ached, every muscle wound tight from the last hour of running, fighting, barely surviving. He closed his eyes for a moment, willing his heartbeat to quiet. But it didn’t. It thudded in his ears, a reminder that he was still here that they were still here. For now.

Across from him, Mira sat curled against the bulkhead, arms wrapped around her knees. Her dark hair clung to her face, damp with sweat. She wasnt crying, but her eyes had that hollow look ”like she was somewhere else, somewhere safer, somewhere that didnt exist anymore.

The station was silent. Too silent. No hum of machinery, no distant chatter of voices. Just the low creaks of metal cooling in the dark and the occasional flicker of failing emergency lights. It felt wrong, unnatural. This place had once been alive now it was a corpse.

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Mira finally spoke, her voice barely a whisper. Do you think we’re the only ones left?

Caleb didn’t answer right away. He could lie, tell her what she wanted to hear, but they were past that now. Instead, he swallowed hard and said, don’t know.

She nodded, as if that was the answer she expected.

Minutes passed. Maybe more. Time didnt move right here. It stretched and twisted, bending around the silence.

Mira let out a slow breath. keep thinking I’ll wake up.Her voice wavered. That none of this is real.

Caleb stared at the floor, at the thin lines of dried blood smeared across the metal. Some of it was theirs. Most of it wasn’t he said. “But it is.

A sound”faint, distant echoed through the corridor. Metal shifting. Something dragging.

Mira stiffened. Caleb felt it too, the way the air seemed to change, charged with something unseen. A presence.

They weren’t alone.

Slowly, Caleb reached for the knife strapped to his boot. Their last real weapon. Bullets were gone. Strength was fading. But this this they could hold onto.

Then, the sound stopped.

The silence stretched, deeper now, heavier.

And then ”too soft, too wrong came a whisper.

A voice that shouldn’t be there.

A voice from the past.

Mira’s breath caught. Caleb turned toward her, but she wasn’t looking at him anymore.

She was staring into the darkness.

And the voice her voice whispered her name back.

End of Chapter 6