Vanished in the Void

The station drifted in the shadow of the gas giant, a cold sliver of steel and radiation shielding. Kelsey moved through the corridor, her suit's magnetic boots clicking faintly with each step. The place had been abandoned for years, but she wasn’t here for nostalgia. She was here because The Dark Wing—a stealth cruiser—had vanished thirty hours ago somewhere between this station and the asteroid belt.

“Anything yet?” Bryce’s voice came through her helmet, distorted but clear enough. He was back on the shuttle, monitoring the data feed.

“Negative,” she said. “Just more debris. If this is going to work, you better be right about the signal trace.”

“Trust me,” Bryce said, his usual cocky tone softened by tension. “The Wing’s cloaking system leaves a faint energy signature when it’s damaged. If it’s here, we’ll find it.”

Kelsey wasn’t so sure. The Dark Wing was a top-of-the-line stealth ship, designed to be undetectable even when it wasn’t cloaked. That’s what made its disappearance so unsettling. She paused at a junction and checked the map on her wrist display. The docking bay was ahead, and if Bryce’s calculations were correct, that’s where they’d find the first clue.

“Heading to the bay,” she said.

“Copy that.”

She moved forward, concentrating on the task. The quiet of the station pressed in on her. It was the kind of silence that felt unnatural, like the place itself was holding its breath. She reached the bay doors and keyed in the manual override. The doors creaked open, revealing the dark expanse beyond. A few maintenance drones floated lifelessly, their power cores long dead.

Kelsey scanned the room with her helmet’s display, looking for anything out of place. There. A faint heat signature, barely distinguishable from the ambient temperature. She approached it carefully, shining her suit’s beam on the source. It was a piece of hull plating, blackened and warped as if from a recent impact.

“Bryce, I’ve got something. Looks like damage from a collision. Could be from the Wing.”

“Can you identify it? Any markings?”

She crouched down, running her scanner over the plating. There was a faint electromagnetic residue, consistent with cloaking tech. She felt a knot of tension build within her.

“It’s from the Wing,” she said.

“Damn,” Bryce muttered. “That means it’s close. Keep looking.”

She stood up, glancing around. If the Wing had taken damage here, it meant it had been forced to drop out of its cloaked state, at least partially. That also meant something had hit it. But there was no sign of any other ship.

Kelsey moved toward the far side of the bay, where an airlock led to the exterior of the station. If the Wing had been compromised, there was a chance the crew had tried to board the station. As she approached the airlock, her scanner beeped again.

“More debris?”

“No,” she said, frowning. “It’s... an energy signature. Faint, but it’s fluctuating.”

“That’s odd,” Bryce said. “Could be a malfunction in your scanner.”

“Maybe.” But she didn’t think so. She adjusted the settings, isolating the frequency. The signature was definitely there, pulsing in irregular intervals. It wasn’t a ship’s signal; it was something else. Something biological.

“What the hell,” she muttered under her breath.

“What’s going on?” Bryce sounded more alert now.

“I’m picking up a life sign,” she said. “But it’s... off.”

“Off how?”

“It’s not human.”

Bryce was silent for a moment. “Could be a false positive.”

“Maybe,” she said, though she didn’t believe it. She narrowed the scanner’s range and followed the signal deeper into the bay. It led her to a maintenance hatch, one that hadn’t been opened in years. The energy signature was stronger here, almost like it was waiting for her to find it.

“Kelsey, you sure about this?” Bryce asked. “If there’s something down there—”

“I’m not leaving without answers,” she said, already prying the hatch open.

The passage was narrow, barely wide enough for her to squeeze through, but it led to a secondary maintenance bay. The air in here was stale, untouched. As her helmet light swept across the room, it landed on something that made her stop.

A figure. Humanoid, but not human. It was strapped to a chair, motionless, its skin a dull gray. Its eyes were closed, but the energy signature was coming from it.

“Bryce, I’ve got... something,” she said, her voice tight. “It’s a creature. Looks like it’s been here for a while.”

“Define ‘creature.’”

“Not human. Not anything I’ve ever seen.”

There was a pause. “Is it alive?”

“Barely,” she said, checking the readings. The life signs were weak, but they were there.

She moved closer, studying the figure. There were wires running from its body to a console next to the chair. It looked almost like a machine, but the readings were clear—it was organic. And then she saw the markings on its chest. The same electromagnetic residue as the plating she’d found.

“Goddammit,” she whispered. “It’s connected to the cloaking system.”

“What do you mean?” Bryce asked.

“The Wing’s cloaking tech—it’s not just tech. It’s biological. They were using this thing to power it.”

There was a long silence. “Are you saying the Wing was... alive?”

“Not the ship itself,” she said. “But the cloaking system. They were using this creature to make the ship undetectable.”

“That’s... insane.”

“Yeah,” she said, though it suddenly made sense. The Wing’s unprecedented stealth capabilities, its ability to remain hidden even when damaged. It wasn’t just because of advanced technology. It was because they had weaponized something alive.

She reached for the console, but as her hand hovered over the controls, the creature’s eyes snapped open. She stumbled back, her pulse quickening.

“Kelsey?” Bryce’s voice crackled in her ear.

The creature didn’t move, but its eyes locked onto her. They were dark, unreadable, but there was something in them—something that felt like recognition.

“Bryce,” she said slowly, “I think it knows we’re here.”

The creature’s mouth opened slightly, and a sound escaped—low, almost a whisper. But it wasn’t speaking. It was transmitting. A signal, pulsing in tandem with the energy signature she’d been tracking.

“Kelsey, get out of there,” Bryce said, his voice urgent.

She didn’t move. She couldn’t. The creature’s signal was growing stronger, and as it did, the room seemed to darken. And then she realized—it wasn’t the room. It was the station. The entire station was disappearing, fading from existence.

“Bryce,” she said, her voice shaking. “The Wing isn’t gone. It’s here. The whole station... it’s cloaked.”

The last thing she saw before the darkness consumed her was the creature’s eyes, watching her, waiting.

And then everything went black.

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The writing prompt for this story was:
The Dark Wing, but not based on the original story. With a twist ending! Make it Tech-savvy.

This story was written by:
openai/chatgpt-4o-latest

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