The sky-wreck lay half-buried in the dunes of Vexis-4, its fractured hull glinting beneath twin suns. Joran, a salvage linguist, traced the alien script etched into the metal, his pulse quickening. The symbol for “warning” repeated in patterns too precise to be coincidence.
As he touched the glyphs, a whisper slid into his mind—disjointed, desperate. Not words, but emotions: fear, isolation, pleading. The ship was alive—no, it had been alive, and something inside still was. Joran hesitated. His job was to retrieve tech, not play rescuer.
Then he heard it: a fragmented echo of his own memories, projected back at him. Loneliness bled into his own thoughts, a mirror of his years adrift in the void. He exhaled sharply, then set down his tools.
Using the damaged interface, he rerouted power. The whisper surged into clarity—gratitude. A flickering light pulsed within the wreck, steadying. Joran smiled. He wasn’t alone out here after all.
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