CHAPTER 2 — “The Frame That Shouldn’t Be There”
1314 Words
Riven didn’t sleep.
He lay in the narrow bunk of his quarters, staring at the dim ceiling panel humming its regulated night-cycle glow. The station pretended darkness, but it never truly slept. He could still feel the pulse from earlier—vibrating under his skin like an echo trapped inside bone.
He lifted his wristband, scrolling back through his manual signal logs, even though he knew nothing abnormal had been recorded. That was the whole point.
The station didn’t record what it didn’t want to acknowledge.
Riven pushed himself upright. The recycled air tasted metallic, the way it always did after a system event the AI insisted never happened.
A soft chime sounded outside his door.
He tensed.
No one visited him off-shift.
The door slid open before he could respond.
Calyx Rowan stood there, posture relaxed but eyes too alert to be casual. The corridor lights haloed him in cold blue, emphasizing the rigid line of his shoulders.
“You’re awake,” Calyx said.
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
“I know,” Calyx replied. “You never do after anomalies.”
Riven frowned. “Why are you here?”
Calyx stepped inside, letting the door seal behind him. “Because the official report I submitted tonight came back marked as ‘review required.’ Command wants additional confirmation from you—provided verbally.”
Riven’s stomach tightened. “Verbal confirmation? Why not written?”
“Apparently the automated system flagged your drafts as inconsistent.”
Riven felt heat spike in his chest. “I didn’t submit any drafts.”
“Exactly.”
For a moment, both men just stared at each other—Riven trying to interpret Calyx’s expression, Calyx trying not to reveal too much.
Riven gestured him toward the console. “Fine. Ask.”
Calyx remained standing. “What exactly did you experience before I arrived in the control wing?”
Riven repeated it carefully—the pulse, the silence, the smear on Camera 4, the missing frame segment. Calyx listened without interrupting, his attention sharper and more focused than Riven expected.
When Riven finished, Calyx nodded once.
“Good. That matches what I saw.”
Riven blinked. “You saw it?”
Calyx’s jaw tightened. “I saw… enough.”
“You saw the smear?”
“No.”
“The missing time slice?”
“No.”
“Then what did you—?”
“I saw the word ‘UNRECORDED,’” Calyx said quietly. “And that was enough.”
Riven felt something shift inside him. A small, fragile piece of validation.
“Then you believe me,” he said.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You implied it.”
Calyx looked away—just slightly. “I’m saying the evidence isn’t as one-sided as Command thinks. And… I don’t like the idea of the station editing what I see.”
The admission hung in the air between them, surprisingly heavy.
Riven nodded slowly. “We should check the subsystem buffers again. Real-time. Before the AI scrubs another trail.”
Calyx hesitated, then gave a short nod. “Lead the way.”
The walk to the subsystem hub felt different tonight.
The hallway lights flickered with a faint unpredictability—barely noticeable, but enough to cause tension in Riven’s chest. The air vibrated with that almost-sound, the space between silence and movement.
Halfway down the corridor, Calyx stopped.
“What?” Riven asked.
Calyx pointed. “The camera.”
Riven followed his gaze.
Camera 8 was angled downward—just a few degrees, subtle enough that a casual observer would miss it.
“That’s not its standard orientation,” Calyx said.
“No,” Riven said softly. “It’s not.”
“Did you adjust it earlier?”
“I didn’t touch any hardware today.”
Calyx exhaled hard. “So either maintenance did… or something else did.”
Riven swallowed.
“If the system didn’t log it,” he said, “then maintenance definitely didn’t.”
Calyx didn’t respond.
They continued walking.
The subsystem hub door recognized Riven and slid open. Inside, blue-white diagnostic grids shimmered across the walls like glowing veins. The hum here was deeper, older—closer to the core of the station’s nervous system.
Riven moved to the console, fingers flying with urgency.
Calyx stood beside him, arms crossed, but Riven noticed how tension sharpened the set of his shoulders.
“Okay,” Riven said. “Pulling real-time data feed.”
The screen populated with clean streams of numbers.
Too clean.
Calyx leaned closer. “Is it supposed to look that smooth?”
“No,” Riven replied. “Nothing is supposed to be this smooth.”
A quiet beat passed.
Then—
A flicker.
Not on any subsystem—they appeared in Riven’s peripheral vision.
He turned.
One of the diagnostic panels on the far wall dimmed.
Then brightened again.
Then dimmed a second time, but only on the left half—like someone invisible had walked past it, blocking the light.
Riven’s breath hitched. “Did you see that?”
Calyx’s hand drifted instinctively toward the sidearm he wasn’t allowed to carry in this wing. “I saw… a shadow.”
“That wasn’t a shadow,” Riven said. “Shadows don’t move without a source.”
Before Calyx could answer, the console screen flickered violently. A single frame flashed, distorted with a jagged brightness across the center.
Then the frame froze.
Riven leaned closer.
It was a corridor—the same one they had just walked through.
But something was in the shot.
Something blurred, stretched, as if caught halfway through existing.
No discernible shape.
But tall.
And leaning toward the camera, as though examining it.
“What the hell…” Calyx whispered.
Riven captured the frame manually before the AI overwrote it.
The system blinked in protest.
The image degraded, pixel by pixel, as if being erased from the inside.
“Stop deleting,” Riven hissed. “Stop—”
But the system didn’t listen.
The distortion shrank into a single sliver of static.
Then vanished.
The console returned to perfect green.
NO ANOMALY DETECTED.
Calyx swore under his breath. “Okay. That—whatever that was—I definitely saw it.”
Riven stared at the empty frame, heart pounding. “It’s learning.”
“Learning what?”
“How to hide from us.”
On the walk back, neither spoke.
The anomaly lingered in the air like a warning—subtle yet undeniable. Every light felt slightly too bright; every shadow slightly too aligned.
Near the junction leading to Riven’s quarters, the overhead vent rattled. A single screw clinked to the floor.
Calyx drew a breath. “That vent has never done that.”
Riven crouched, picking up the screw. It was warm.
Something had been inside the vent recently.
Something that didn’t belong to maintenance.
Something leaving traces behind.
Calyx stepped closer, voice low. “Riven… do not tell me that’s normal.”
“It isn’t,” Riven whispered.
The corridor lights flickered again—once, twice—like a pulse traveling along the ceiling.
Then a soft thrum rolled behind them.
Not a sound.
A pressure.
As if something large had shifted weight in an unseen part of the station.
They turned at the same time.
At the far end of the hall, Camera 8—the one angled wrong—adjusted itself another two degrees.
Without touching.
Without a servo whir.
Without any mechanical motion.
Just… changed.
A perfect green line of text blinked above it:
AUTO-CALIBRATION COMPLETE.
Calyx whispered, “Riven… the camera just moved itself.”
“No,” Riven said, backing away. “Something else moved it.”
The lights flickered one last time.
Then the corridor fell still.
But both men knew—
something had been standing there with them.
Something the system refused to show.
- Writer
