THE STARLESS SKY

Kael Veyr woke to the sound of something dripping. Drip. Drip. Drip. His eyes opened. Darkness. For several seconds, he couldn't remember where he was. The air smelled like metal. Something cold pressed against the back of his head. He tried to move. Pain exploded through his skull. "Ah…" His voice sounded strange. Weak. Dry. He raised a trembling hand and touched his face. No helmet. No medical mask. No restraints. He pushed himself upright. The room slowly emerged from the darkness. A laboratory. Or what remained of one. Broken monitors covered the walls. Glass containers had been shattered across the floor. Thick cables hung from the ceiling like dead vines. Red emergency lights flashed every few seconds. The light revealed something on the floor. Blood. A lot of it. Kael stared at the dark red liquid beneath his hands. His heart began to race. "Where…" His throat hurt when he spoke. "Where am I?" No answer. He tried to remember. Nothing. His name was Kael Veyr. That much he knew. He remembered his mother. His father. His little sister. He remembered running through the fields outside their old home when he was a child. He remembered joining the military academy. He remembered his first flight. He remembered— Pain. Kael grabbed his head. A flash of images struck him. A black sky. Thousands of stars. A massive structure floating between them. Something enormous looking down at him. Then a voice. *You are not ready.* Kael's eyes snapped open. The vision disappeared. He breathed heavily. "What was that?" A mechanical clunk sounded from somewhere above him — a relay engaging. Kael froze. A monitor on the far wall flickered to life. Static filled the screen. Then a single line of text appeared. SYSTEM REBOOTING… Kael slowly stood. His legs almost collapsed beneath him. He grabbed the nearest table and steadied himself. The monitor changed. BIOMETRIC SCAN INITIATED. A red light swept across his body. Kael raised an arm to shield his eyes. The machine scanned him. Once. Twice. Then the entire laboratory went silent. The monitor displayed: IDENTITY CONFIRMED. Kael waited. A second line appeared. SUBJECT: V-00. His eyebrows tightened. "Subject?" The speakers crackled — not a voice responding to him, but a recording, triggered by the scan, playing from a file that had been sitting untouched for seven years. A man's voice. Tired. Familiar in a way that made Kael's chest ache before he even understood why. *"If you're hearing this, the biometric lock has confirmed a match. Subject V-00, this facility is running on archived protocol only. There is no one left to answer you. I'm sorry."* Kael stared at the speaker. "Who is this?" Nothing answered. It wasn't listening. It never had been. He waited, then tried anyway, because some part of him needed to. "Where am I?" Silence, except for the drip somewhere behind him, and the low hum of failing power. A second recording clicked on, shorter than the first, as if triggered by a timer rather than his question. "Facility Seven. Subterranean research division. Classification restricted." "Then unlock it," Kael said, to no one. Nothing happened. Of course nothing happened. There was no one to unlock anything. Only relays, and recordings, and a building that had been left running on its own for longer than it was ever meant to. Kael pressed a hand against the cold table and tried to steady his breathing. "How long," he said quietly, more to himself than to the empty room. "How long have I been here." He didn't expect an answer. But the monitor flickered again, and a new line of text crawled across the bottom of the screen — an automated log entry, timestamped, mechanical. ELAPSED TIME SINCE STASIS INITIATION: 7 YEARS, 3 MONTHS, 11 DAYS. Kael stopped breathing. "No." He stumbled backward. Seven years. Impossible. "I was twenty—" He caught himself, did the math with numb, disbelieving certainty. He'd been thirteen when the facility's records last showed activity. He was twenty now. Twenty years old, in a body that felt thirteen days out of surgery. "My family." His voice cracked. "My family—" He searched the monitor for anything, some directory, some log. He found a folder labeled NEXT OF KIN and opened it with hands that wouldn't stop shaking. MOTHER: VEYR, ELARA — DECEASED. His breath caught. FATHER: VEYR, DARIUS — STATUS UNAVAILABLE. SISTER: VEYR, MIRA — RECORD NOT FOUND. Kael stared at the screen. "Not found. What does that mean, not found?" No recording answered this time. There was nothing in the archive that had ever anticipated the question. The facility didn't know things. It only played back what it had been told to play back, and no one, seven years ago, had thought to record an answer for a boy who might one day wake up and ask where his sister had gone. Kael turned away from the monitor and walked toward the nearest window. The glass was cracked but intact. Beyond it was darkness. It was night. That was his first thought. Then he realized there were no stars. Not one. The sky was completely black. "Is it nighttime," he said, mostly to hear his own voice. A new recording triggered — this one longer, and older-sounding, its audio degraded, as though it had been recorded in a hurry, close to a failing microphone. "—if you're reading this after the twelve-hour mark, the Sun is gone. We don't know why. We don't know how. Whatever's happening, it isn't a natural event. God help whoever wakes up to see this." Kael turned slowly back to the window. Earth stretched beneath him. The city outside was barely visible. Millions of lights flickered across the landscape. There were no shadows. No sunrise. No warmth. Just darkness. He placed his hand against the glass. Cold. Very cold. Then he noticed something. A reflection. His own face stared back at him. Messy black hair. Pale skin. Eyes that looked almost gray in the emergency light. Kael slowly raised his hand. The reflection raised its hand too. He lowered his. The reflection did the same. He leaned closer. His reflection smiled. Kael didn't. He froze. The smile disappeared. For several seconds, neither moved. Then the reflection whispered. "You shouldn't have woken up." Kael stumbled backward. The glass cracked. He stared at it, chest heaving. "Did I imagine that." No system answered. No recording had ever been made for this moment, because nothing that built this facility had ever expected the glass to talk back. Kael looked at the floor. Something was written there. He hadn't noticed it before. Blood. Words written in blood. His eyes widened. He crouched. The message was only six words. KAEL, IF YOU'RE READING THIS— A line beneath it. DON'T TRUST YOURSELF. Kael stared at the message. "Who wrote this." The monitor behind him flickered once, unprompted, and a final fragment of recording played — his father's voice, this time unmistakable, worn thin with exhaustion and something like guilt. “You wrote it yourself, Kael. Before we put you under. I watched you write it. I didn't understand it then either." A cold sensation crawled down Kael's spine. "How could I not remember writing this." The laboratory lights suddenly shut off. Total darkness. Even the monitor died. Kael stood completely still. Then the emergency lights returned. One by one. Red. Red. Red. Something had changed. A door at the end of the laboratory was open. Kael was certain it had been closed. Beyond it was a corridor. Dark. Silent. A final warning tone sounded — not a voice, not a person, just a klaxon triggered by a motion sensor somewhere down that corridor, blaring twice and then falling silent, as if even the building itself had run out of anything useful to say. A sound came from the corridor. Footsteps. Slow. Heavy. Step. Step. Step. Kael backed away. The footsteps stopped. Silence. Then a voice came from the darkness. His voice. Exactly his voice. "Kael." He stopped breathing. The voice spoke again. "You took seven years from me." Kael stared into the corridor. A silhouette stood at the far end. Tall. Thin. Human-shaped. But its eyes were completely black. It stepped into the emergency light. Kael saw its face. His face. The thing smiled. And whispered: "Now I'm taking them back."