CHAPTER 3 — “The Corridor That Rewrote Itself”
1260 Words
Riven didn’t go back to his quarters.
After what they saw—the shadow on the diagnostic wall, the corrupted frame, the camera adjusting itself like it was being watched from the wrong angle—sleep felt like an impossible luxury. Calyx was the one who suggested they “stay somewhere public.” Riven suspected it was less about safety and more about not wanting to be alone with the silence.
Silence had become dangerous.
They sat in the auxiliary monitoring lounge, a small room tucked beside the main hub, lit by soft blue floor strips and a ceiling display showing looping starfield screensavers. The kind of peaceful aesthetic the architects designed because they’d never actually lived on the station.
Riven kept checking his wristband. No pulses. No spikes. Nothing.
Calyx watched him. “You’re waiting for it.”
“I’m waiting for honesty.”
“You’re not going to get that from the station.”
Riven looked up. “That’s the problem.”
A faint hum buzzed through the vents overhead. Calyx immediately tensed, but Riven shook his head.
“Normal airflow,” he said. “Trust me. That one is real.”
Calyx relaxed—barely. “I don’t like that we have to distinguish.”
“Welcome to my world,” Riven muttered.
They sat in a long, quiet stretch. The kind where thoughts grow sharp.
Calyx broke it first. “What do you think it wants?”
Riven blinked. “What what wants?”
“The anomaly.”
Riven hesitated. No one had asked that before. Not Command. Not his team. Not even himself.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know if it wants something. But I know it’s not random. It moves with intention.”
Calyx frowned. “Signals don’t have intention.”
“This one does.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I felt it looking at the camera. And because the system tried too hard to hide it.”
Calyx opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again. That alone told Riven this situation had already crossed the threshold of “explainable.”
The ceiling display flickered.
Just once.
A single star in the screensaver blinked out of existence.
Riven stiffened.
Calyx noticed too. “Did you—?”
“Yes.”
The star reappeared a second later, but in the wrong coordinate. Just slightly. Just enough.
Riven whispered, “Calyx, that screen isn’t tied to anything. It’s a closed loop animation. It shouldn’t be able to—”
The display flickered again.
This time, a diagonal line cut through the starfield—just a flash, like someone dragging a finger across wet paint.
Calyx stood. “That’s not possible.”
“No,” Riven said quietly. “But it’s happening.”
And then the lights died.
All at once.
The hum of the air system stopped mid-breath.
The background vibration of the station floor vanished.
Every holo-display collapsed into darkness.
Calyx’s hand shot to where his sidearm would have been.
Riven inhaled sharply—but heard nothing.
No pulse.
No anomaly.
No mechanical movement.
Just pure silence.
“Systems don’t go dark like this,” Calyx whispered. “Not unless—”
A faint glow appeared across the far wall.
Riven turned.
The glow wasn’t from a screen.
It wasn’t a reflection.
It was letters, drawn in thin streaks of light across the wall surface—like someone writing through the metal with a fingertip made of static.
Calyx grabbed Riven’s arm. “Back up. Slowly.”
Riven obeyed—but didn’t look away.
The letters formed one at a time:
UN————
RECORDED————
PASSAGE
Riven’s breath hitched. “Passage…? Passage to where?”
Calyx shook his head. “No. Not a place.”
“A what then?”
“Something passed through,” Calyx said quietly. “And the system didn’t record it.”
Before Riven could respond, the lights snapped back on.
Hard.
Brutal.
Too bright.
The starfield returned to its looping animation, flawless once more.
The wall was clean.
No glowing text.
Not even a scorch mark.
Calyx whispered, “Riven… did that just—?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t the system log the blackout?”
“Because the system didn’t want us to see what happened during it.”
They shared a look that felt heavier than words.
Then Riven noticed something.
The room felt… wrong.
Subtle. But wrong.
He scanned the lounge, heartbeat rising. The seating arrangement—the small cluster of chairs—wasn’t the same. The orientation was rotated. Not much. Maybe twenty degrees.
It looked intentional, like someone rearranging furniture for comfort.
Or for access.
“Calyx,” Riven said softly, “this room wasn’t like this.”
Calyx looked around. “What do you mean?”
“The chairs. They moved.”
Calyx raised an eyebrow. “You think someone came in and redecorated during the blackout?”
“No,” Riven said. “I think something moved through here. And the objects displaced around it.”
Calyx’s jaw tightened. “You’re saying it has mass.”
Riven didn’t answer.
Because the dust patterns on the floor confirmed it.
There was a faint curved trail—subtle, but visible—where something large had brushed the ground. And in the center of that curve was a small metallic indentation.
Riven knelt, tracing the edge with his fingertip.
A perfectly circular mark.
Deep enough to press metal.
Too deep for a human footstep.
Calyx stared. “Is that… a footprint?”
“Not unless a person weighs five hundred kilos,” Riven said.
Calyx exhaled. “And Command wonders why I’m not sleeping.”
Riven stood. “We need to check the corridor.”
Calyx nodded without hesitation.
Outside, the hallway was quiet. Too quiet.
The overhead lights buzzed faintly, but the sound felt slightly out of tune.
Riven stepped toward Camera 8.
It was pointed in a new angle.
Not downward. Not sideways.
Backward.
As if trying to look behind itself.
Calyx whispered, “That’s not calibration.”
“No,” Riven murmured. “It’s fear.”
Calyx stared. “What?”
“Think about it. The system hides anomalies. But the anomaly isn’t hiding from the system anymore.”
Calyx swallowed. “You’re saying it’s watching back.”
Riven nodded once.
Calyx looked at the camera again.
Something was reflected in its lens.
He took a slow step forward. Riven followed his gaze.
A smudge.
A blur.
A tall, elongated shape—not in the corridor but in the reflection, standing behind them.
Riven spun around—
Nothing.
Calyx stepped back, heart pounding hard enough to shake through his voice.
“Riven… it was right there.”
Riven stared at the reflection again.
The shape was gone.
But the lens was still trembling—ever so slightly—as if something had been leaning against it moments before.
A new line of green text blinked onto the panel:
CAMERA INPUT INTERRUPTED.
RECALIBRATING.
Riven whispered, “Calyx… something touched the camera.”
“Riven,” Calyx said, voice low, “something was standing behind us.”
They both inhaled.
Slow.
Unsteady.
Then, from deep within the ventilation system above them—
a soft, deliberate knock.
One.
Two.
Three.
A pattern.
Not random.
Almost… a greeting.
Calyx whispered, “Tell me that was normal airflow.”
Riven didn’t move.
“No,” he said.
“It wasn’t.”
- Writer
