The Last Transmission

The distress beacon pulsed in the black void, a desperate heartbeat lost among the stars. Commander Alex Carter stared at the flickering console aboard the Erebus, his hands tightening into fists. The message had been looping for hours.

“This is Dr. Evelyn Sharpe of the Odyssey. We are not alone. Do not respond. Do not come looking for us.”

Alex exhaled sharply.

“Captain, it’s a ghost signal,” said Lieutenant Vega, the ship’s communications officer. “The Odyssey vanished six years ago. No way this is live.”

“Then why is it transmitting now?” Alex asked.

Vega hesitated. “I—I don’t know.”

“Captain, this is a bad idea,” interjected Chief Engineer Patel. “If that ship was lost, maybe it was for a reason.”

Alex knew she was right. Ships didn’t just disappear without a trace. But Evelyn Sharpe had been more than a scientist—she had been his friend.

“Set course for the signal,” Alex ordered.

Vega and Patel exchanged a look but obeyed. The Erebus adjusted its trajectory, engines humming as it slipped into sublight speed.

Two hours later, the Odyssey emerged from the darkness, a monolithic silhouette against the pale glow of a dying star.

Alex swallowed hard. The ship was intact but… wrong. Its hull was riddled with dark, vein-like structures that pulsed faintly, as though the ship itself were alive.

“Life signs?” Alex asked.

“Faint,” Vega replied. “But there’s something else. A… frequency. Low, almost imperceptible. It’s like the ship is humming.”

Patel shivered. “I hate this already.”

Alex donned his helmet and secured his plasma cutter. “We’re boarding.”

The airlock hissed as the team stepped into the Odyssey. The corridors were bathed in dim, red emergency lights. It smelled… wrong. Stale, metallic, with an underlying sweetness that sent a chill up Alex’s spine.

A console flickered to life as they passed. Evelyn’s face appeared on the cracked screen, her eyes sunken, her expression hollow.

“If you’re seeing this… it’s already too late. The Signal doesn’t just transmit. It infects.”

Alex’s blood ran cold. “Evelyn?”

The recording continued.

“We thought it was just data. But it’s alive. A pattern so complex, it rewrites the mind. The crew… they’re gone. Absorbed. And I’m next.”

A metallic clang echoed down the corridor.

Vega spun around. “What was that?”

A figure emerged from the shadows. Human-shaped, but wrong. Evelyn. Her body twitched unnaturally, her veins glowing with the same eerie luminescence as the ship.

“Alex,” she said, her voice layered with static. “You shouldn’t have come.”

Alex raised his weapon. “Evelyn?”

She stepped forward, her limbs moving like a marionette on broken strings. “It speaks through me now. And soon, through you.”

The walls pulsed. The ship was alive. No—not alive. Infected.

“Run!” Patel shouted.

The team bolted back toward the airlock, but the doors slammed shut. The walls rippled, reshaping themselves.

“You can’t leave,” Evelyn whispered. “It needs you.”

Alex aimed his plasma cutter. “Override—code 99-Delta!”

The system beeped in protest, then the doors hissed open. They scrambled inside, slamming the manual release. The Erebus tore away from the Odyssey just as the corrupted ship began to shift, its form twisting into something unrecognizable.

As they fled, the distress signal pulsed again.

“This is Dr. Evelyn Sharpe of the Odyssey… We are not alone. Do not respond. Do not come looking for us.”

Alex closed his eyes.

They never should have.