Chapter 1 

Ella

Every time I walk past the Black Box Room, my pulse kicks up like I’ve got a short in my chest. Doesn’t matter how many times I see those magnetic locks gleaming cold and blue, or how many shifts I drag myself past that steel-black hatch—it still gets to me. That door hides the singularity drive. The singularity drive. The reason I signed a fifty-seven-page contract and left everything I ever knew behind for a bunk on the Seeker.

Most people avoid this corridor like it’s haunted. Me? I slow my step. Linger. My boots scrape the metal floor just a little louder, just a little slower. I imagine what it would feel like—just for a second—to lay my hand against the casing inside. To feel the hum of compacted infinity vibrating through the titanium. To be part of something bigger than food rations and loose coupling seals.

I work in maintenance. Which is Alliance code for nobody gives a damn what you think. I’m not an engineer. Not a physicist. Definitely not some white-lab-coated genius with a triple doctorate and a name that gets spoken in hushed tones on military channels. I'm just the girl with a plasma welder and a toolkit that's seen more grease than glory. I learned the trade stripping derelicts with Clint Rogers on the Outer Rim, not in some sterile Alliance academy. You pick up habits in that life. Still, I see things. I hear things. And lately? Things don’t sound good.

There’s tension in the lab. Not the normal kind, either. This isn’t just “oops, we misplaced a decimal point.” This is raised voices behind closed doors. Redacted reports that come across my console with half the data missing. Static on secure comms that shouldn’t have static. I've started logging things—just little notes at first. Fluctuation patterns. Error codes that repeat like someone's trying to hide a loop. Stuff nobody’s asking questions about… except me.

“Ella,” Marla warns me tonight as I crawl out from under a faulty coolant pump. She’s got her arms folded across her chest and a frown that’s starting to be permanent. “You keep sniffin’ around the drive logs like that, you’re gonna end up spaced. Or worse—promoted to janitorial.”

I grin up at her, face smeared in something that might be hydraulic fluid or might be three-day-old synthcoffee sludge. “If I get promoted, does that mean I don’t have to fix your dispenser when it starts shitting out gelatinous cubes again?”

She snorts, but it’s tight. “Don’t joke. You think the brass won’t notice another access ping in the system logs?”

“They’re too busy arguing about whether the containment field’s stable enough to run a diagnostic,” I mutter, more to myself than to her. But her eyes narrow.

“What do you know, El?”

“Nothing,” I say quickly. I wipe my hands on a rag that used to be white. “Just a feeling.”

Marla doesn’t push. But she doesn’t let it go, either.

The shift drags. A junction box shorts out on deck six, which means two hours rerouting energy through backup relays just to keep the gravity consistent in the midship quarters. I fix it on muscle memory, brain elsewhere, eyes on the clock.

When my shift ends, I don’t head back to bunk. Instead, I take the long way—again—past the Black Box Room.

I stop. Just a second. The hallway is empty. The security cams pan left. Right. Then pause. I take a breath, fingers hovering over my wrist pad. I’m not supposed to, but I can spoof a routine maintenance ping through the auxiliary power grid. Just long enough to flicker the lights. Just long enough to trip a low-level diagnostic query. It’s harmless. A whisper of a whisper.

Click. I reroute power from a backup station. Just a little. My screen pulses once, then stabilizes. The lights dim. Just for a second. Like the ship’s holding its breath.

I pull the logs. I see it—deep inside the code. Something’s off. Containment parameters oscillating beyond standard deviation. The drive should be offline. Cold. But there’s heat data. Charge levels. Core spin readings that shouldn't be active.

Someone’s running something they shouldn’t.

My heart lurches when the lights snap back on too fast. I undo the reroute. Scrub the log. Wipe the trace. Triple-check that no ping went to command. My hands shake.

Breathe, Ella.

Back in the dorm, I peel out of my coveralls and flop onto the lower bunk. Marla’s not back yet. The overhead bulb buzzes like a gnat with a grudge. I stare at the ceiling. The ship groans around me—not unusual, not new. But I can’t stop hearing it differently now.

Someone’s playing with forces we don’t understand.

And I’m the only one paying attention.