A transmission found in the void... Commander Lopez's final words as cosmic horror consumes her consciousness. This final broadcast accompanies the abridged account of the ISS incident, capturing her last moments after the events detailed in the story. What begins as a distress call dissolves into the raw terror of one mind facing the unknowable. ⁂ Prologue: In the months before the mission, the ISS began to show signs of strain. An unexpected radiation spike had left one solar panel malfunctioning, though no flare was detected. Sensor anomalies plagued the station, with mass readings appearing where none should have existed. These glitches seemed to correlate with specific orbital coordinates, almost as though the station brushed against something vast and unseen, testing its boundaries. Harris, the most senior technician aboard, had grown increasingly uneasy, his gaze darting frequently to the monitors. On more than one occasion, Lopez caught him sketching intricate, labyrinthine patterns in his notebook. The designs made her head ache, their lines bending in ways that defied logic. Then there was the knocking. Two weeks before Reid’s fateful spacewalk, an astronaut conducting maintenance reported faint, rhythmic sounds echoing through the station’s hull. NASA dismissed it as thermal expansion, but the crew exchanged uneasy glances. “It didn’t sound like the station,” the astronaut had muttered. “It sounded like someone… something… trying to get in.” Commander Lopez reviewed the footage from the maintenance mission late one sleepless night. The recording showed nothing unusual, just the astronaut working against the backdrop of an endless void. But the static on the audio feed seemed… wrong. It pulsed rhythmically, almost like a voice trying to form words. ⁂ The ISS had never felt so still. Commander Lopez floated through the Destiny module, her breath louder than the usual mechanical hum of the station. Even the faint clicks of adjusting solar panels had ceased. The silence felt deliberate. “Where’s Reid?” she asked, her voice sharp as she drifted toward the console where Harris sat hunched. “Still out there,” Harris replied, not looking up. His tone was clipped, bordering on dismissive, but Lopez caught the tremor beneath it. “Three hours and counting.” Lopez frowned. “That’s well past protocol. Why hasn’t he checked in?” “Comms have been scrambled all morning. Solar interference, maybe,” Harris muttered, though his explanation carried no conviction. Lopez moved behind him, peering at the external camera feeds. Reid’s figure was there, clinging to the truss. His helmet tilted upward, as though he were staring at something above the station. “Reid, this is Lopez,” she said, her voice steady despite the tightness in her chest. “Report your status.” Static crackled faintly in reply. Lopez leaned closer to the console, her fingers brushing against Harris’s shoulder. “Something’s off,” Harris muttered, more to himself than her. “Pressure drop… Quest airlock. Small leak, but…” He trailed off, his brow furrowing deeply. Lopez toggled her comm again. “Reid, confirm status.” The static shifted. Then a voice came through, faint and distorted, layered with whispers that seemed to echo directly in her mind. “Saw it.” Lopez froze. The voice was Reid’s—but it wasn’t. The tone carried something beneath it, something hungrier. “Harris, lock down the airlock,” she ordered, her voice a brittle command. “It’s not responding,” Harris said, his fingers flying over the console. “I… I can’t override.” Lopez’s gut twisted as she turned back to the screen. Reid’s body had begun moving, jerking unnaturally as he crawled toward the airlock. The faint knocking sound returned, rhythmic and deliberate, resonating through the station like a dreadful pulse. The inner hatch hissed open before Lopez could react, and Reid drifted inside. His suit gleamed as if untouched by his hours outside, his visor reflecting the dim light of the module. But his posture was wrong—too stiff, too deliberate. Slowly, his helmet tilted toward her. “Reid?” she whispered, her voice cracking. Behind the visor, his face was barely visible. It looked… pressed, distorted, like flesh against rippling glass. His eyes, wide and unblinking, were pits of pure black. The air around his suit shimmered, warping as though heat waves rose from him. But within the distortion, Lopez saw glimpses of something—jagged landscapes, structures that twisted impossibly. Her stomach lurched as reality seemed to bend around him. “I saw it,” Reid said, his voice layered with a thousand whispers. “In the dark. Between the stars.” “Saw what?” Lopez demanded, backing away. Harris stood frozen behind her, his face pale and drenched in sweat. Reid didn’t answer. Instead, his head turned slowly to the viewport. Lopez followed his gaze. At first, there was nothing—just the void and the stars. But then the stars seemed to twist, folding and distorting, as though seen through a liquid lens. Something moved within the void, its form incomprehensible, vast, and ancient. It wasn’t darkness. It was absence, so profound it devoured light itself. “It’s here now,” Reid said. “It’s inside.” The station shuddered violently. Lights flickered, casting long shadows that twisted unnaturally across the walls. Harris screamed, clutching his head. “It’s everywhere!” he gasped. “In the walls! In me!” He stumbled backward, disappearing into the shadows of the module. Lopez turned back to Reid, but he wasn’t Reid anymore. She didn’t know what he was. The thing inside him turned its head again, tilting it like a predator sizing up its prey. “You brought it here,” Reid said, his tone almost serene. “You opened the way.” Lopez grabbed the nearest handhold, forcing herself to move. The module groaned around her, the walls bulging and pulsing as though alive. Objects began to drift, defying the station’s artificial gravity. She dragged herself toward the Crew Dragon docked at Harmony, the only lifeline left. ⁂ The Dragon’s thrusters fired, pushing them away from the station. Lopez’s hands trembled as she initiated the separation sequence. Through the viewport, she watched the ISS recede, its solar arrays catching the last gleam of sunlight before shadows engulfed it. Harris sat strapped in beside her, his eyes vacant, murmuring incoherently. “Look,” he whispered, pointing weakly. “The stars… they’re gone.” Lopez turned to look. The void outside seemed to grow deeper, the stars fading one by one, as though being consumed. She felt it now—a presence, vast and patient, watching them from the darkness. The comms crackled faintly. It wasn’t Reid’s voice anymore, but something older, deeper. “Space isn’t empty,” it said. “It’s filled with hunger.” Lopez’s fists clenched, her breath shallow. There was nowhere left to run. ⁂ Epilogue: Weeks later, NASA released a statement citing a catastrophic failure aboard the ISS. But whispers spread among engineers and scientists. The Dragon capsule was never recovered, nor were its crew. Months after, observatories reported a phenomenon: a perfect circle of darkness in the sky where stars had once shone. Spectral readings defied physics. Some claimed to hear a faint hum when observing it, a sound that lingered in the mind long after. And in a classified debrief, one technician swore they heard a voice on an unused channel, faint and distorted: “We never really leave.”
