Chapter Text
[LOG ENTRY: 2 | Traction Vessel: Daedalus]
Author: Dr. Damian Wayne - JL Search and Rescue Specialty Division
Clearance: GREEN, Personnel Reporting
Time: 0330 ST | Location: Andromeda | Orbiting Designate Object 92B-J ("Outpost Polaris")
My name is Dr. Damian Wayne-Al Ghul, log begins.
It’s been four weeks and two days since Outpost Polaris went dark.
Four weeks since the last formal contact from the previous crew- and what we’ve received since barely qualifies as communication. A single, encrypted transmission bounced back to The Tower on Earth: five letters tapped in Morse. NORET. No accompanying signal, no biometric pings. No audio, no video. Just five letters.
They looped it. Played it a hundred times over. Ran it through every cipher key in ORACLE’s database. Is it a name? An acronym? A warning?
Nothing. Just NORET.
ORACLE flagged it for priority investigation and diverted us, Traction Vessel: Daedalus, from our original course to Orion B-3. That was 31 days ago.
We arrived yesterday.
Current Manifest | Traction Vessel: Daedalus
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Dr. Damian Wayne, MD — Mission Commander
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Dr. Daniel Night — Lead Engineer and Xenomicrobiologist
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Tucker Foley — Communications Liaison/ Signal Integrity Officer
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Lt. Noelle Keen — Tactical Systems Analyst
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Dr. Avery Johansen — Med-bay/ Psychologist
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ORACLE — Integrated Ship Intelligence (degraded after last update; see Log 1 intake)
I’ll admit something here—strictly for the record: I didn’t know "xenomicrobiologist" was a real specialty. I thought it was science fiction nonsense. But Night’s credentials check out. Apparently, it's a recent branch with WE- emerging after fungal anomalies were found on the Mars dig. He’s quiet. Maybe brilliant. Also... a bit unnerving.
Tucker, on the other hand, hasn’t shut up since we disembarked.
0430 Hours: Surface Touchdown
We landed on Outpost Polaris without incident. The structure remains intact- no hull breaches, no distress beacons. Power grid is at 40% capacity. Air quality within acceptable limits, but there's something off about the environment. ORACLE flagged intermittent bio-signature anomalies but couldn’t lock anything down. She also began mislabeling crew vitals. Referred to Night as “Dr. Avery” three times before correcting herself. She hasn't done that before.
Tucker tried to contact the Watchtower relay on all standard channels, with no success. No echoing ping, no transmission relay. It's like the comms suite is eating its own signal before it leaves the atmosphere.
Dr. Johansen noted that the outpost's photometric lighting system had been overridden and manually set to permanent dim. The entire interior is seeped in a dull amber gloom. Not emergency red; not even the standard night shift lighting. Just that same dull hue everywhere. They called it "horrible monster womb-core." I don't know what that means, and I didn't ask.
No sign of the previous crew.
Recovered Data: Outpost Internal Logs
Partial recovery of local logs shows heavy corruption. Log files have been overwritten with repeating characters. A few intact fragments from Science Officer Myles K read:
"Temperature discrepancies in Bio-Lab 2; no correlation to grid draw. Danny reported organic anomalies behind paneling again. Cold. Too cold for the system parameters.”
"Crew seems distracted. Vosk keeps staring at the ceiling. Mara says she’s hearing footsteps in the crawl ducts. No one is reporting to rotation. I am not sleeping anymore."
Then, nothing.
Personal Observations
This place isn't abandoned.
It looked like a ghost town, but something is still here. There are signs; shadows under sealed doors, slow drips from the air vents. Daniel swears something brushed past his boot while inspecting a hydro-line in the dark. Johansen keeps rubbing at their temples, muttering about sound shadows, auditory hallucinations where the absence of sound somehow becomes the presence of it.
And last night, after shift rotation, I heard Tucker whispering into his comms. He was alone in the comms suite. He told me later he was just "running diagnostics."
But he said a name I don't recognize: "Phantom."
He said it like he was begging.
Log ends.
[LOG ENTRY: 3 | Traction Vessel: Daedalus]
Author: Dr. Damian Wayne - JL Search and Rescue Specialty Division
Clearance: GREEN, Personnel Reporting
Time: 0430 ST | Location: Andromeda | Docked Aboard Designate Object 92B-J ("Outpost Polaris")
Log begins, day two on Polaris.
No bodies.
No blood.
No signs of life.
But the station smells wrong.
Not decay, not quite. Something sweet. Like caramel that's just on the edge of burning, and salt. It clings to the walls, the air, our clothes. ORACLE says there is nothing polluting the air samples, but she's wrong.
We can all smell it.
Daniel and Noelle are in disagreement about what to do next. He wants to examine the cold storage units below Medbay, citing irregular thermal data. Noelle wants to seal them. Claims the storage units are "breathing."
That's the word she used. Breathing.
Damian shut off his recorder right as Daniel swiped into the Flight Deck.
ORACLE flickered static across the corner of the viewscreen, her voice cutting out as he closed the program.
Daniel stood at the threshold, caught mid-step like he’d interrupted a confession. His hair was a tousled mess, damp from a shower. He wore his sleep shirt inside out, and still somehow managed to look irritatingly effortless.
“I’d say ‘don’t let me interrupt,’” Daniel said with a crooked grin, “but I think I just did. What's the AI have that I don't?”
Damian’s lips twitched at the corners. “She’s more coherent than you, some days.”
“Ouch.” Daniel stepped fully into the deck, letting the door hiss shut behind him. “Fair. You always this charming before 0500?”
Damian turned back to the console, adjusting a sensor input he didn’t need to touch. His olive skin was hot with a flush that had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with the way Daniel’s voice managed to wrap around the edges of him.
“Did you need something?” Damian asked, not looking up.
There was a beat of silence. Then:
“Actually… yeah. You.”
Damian looked up.
Daniel held up a datapad in mock surrender. “For a systems check. I need a second set of eyes on the power fluctuations. ORACLE’s interface is… twitchy.”
“I know. I was just reviewing that,” Damian said, standing slowly. He hated how his heart did that stutter when Daniel stepped a little too close, like Damian's personal space didn’t apply to him.
But the moment felt off. There was a shimmer to Daniel’s eyes, some refracted quality that reminded Damian too much of ice on glass. Too perfect. Too… filtered.
“How long have you been on this ship, Daniel?” Damian asked, quietly.
Daniel blinked. The smile faltered, just for a moment.
“Same as you. Since launch. Why?”
Damian studied him. For a fraction of a second, he almost asked, What’s my full name? What was the first thing I said to you when you came aboard? But the words curdled on his tongue.
Instead, he just said, “No reason. You should fix your shirt.”
Daniel looked down, then grinned. “I liked you better before coffee.”
“You don’t like me now?”
Daniel tilted his head, eyes narrowing just slightly. “Oh, I definitely like you. You just make it difficult.”
He turned, casually as ever, walking toward the aft corridor with a glance over his shoulder. “You coming, Commander, or are you going to keep whispering sweet nothings to your log recorder?”
Damian hesitated, just long enough to feel it. That chill, again. The faint scent of something cloying. Burning sugar.
Then he followed Daniel back to his private quarters.
Log Entry 3, resumed.
Personnel Update:
Tucker is no longer sleeping. Claims it's "the lighting" but I've watched the footage, he's doing something to the Comms Suite. He stares at the ceiling like he's waiting for something, then crawls under the central hub to do something to the wiring. I confronted him. He denied the earlier whispering, said he was just doing general maintenance with the hub.
He wouldn't look at me. I don't think I can trust him anymore.
Daniel spends most of his time alone now, away from—
The recording device is jarred, statement cut off. It begins again a few moments later.
Daniel spends his time in the sublevels, checking the ductwork and running biosweeps. When I checked his handheld earlier, I saw something that doesn’t make sense- bioreading logs tagged with timestamps from before we landed.
Pre-mission.
I asked him. He said it was a logging error. Shrugged like it wasn’t important. But there was something behind his eyes- an absence. Like a painting before you added finishing details.
There is a long pause before Damian continues.
Dr. Johansen ran a psych baseline this morning on all crew. Claims we’re “holding together.” I don’t think they include themself in that.
I checked their notes, all they had written was:
“Patterns in the cold.”
“They grow when you don’t look.”
I didn't want to know, but I asked. They drew it for me on their tablet. Some kind of fractal, etched like frost across the glass. ORACLE flagged the shape as “Non-classified organic geometry.”
She tried to erase it. It reappeared. On every screen.
We pulled power to that bay.
It’s still there.
Personal remark:
I can't reach the Watchtower, even on my modded comm. I ran a full system report to make sure our vessel was still unaffected by the strangeness of Polaris, and so far we're safe. I don't know what happened to the previous crew, but it certainly wasn't natural. I must remain vigilant.
Damian exhales in a measured fashion, a self-soothing practice.
I can't wait to leave this place.
Temperatures in BioLab 2 continue to drop despite thermal regulation being offline. It’s now -11°C in an area without active cooling.
No frost forming.
No condensation.
But when we breathe in that room, the air doesn’t mist. It just vanishes.
We’re not sending any more crew down there. Not until we understand what's causing the anomalies.
I think it's time to visit Cryo.
Damian led the way down the dim hallway with Daniel and Tucker on his heels. Electric had begun to fail late last night, and the lights buzzed and waned to remind him of that. Daniel's shoulder brushed his, yet he didn't feel any warmer as they approached the door and he swiped his keycard.
It jittered and groaned as it was forced open, more like a tomb being uncovered after eons than a Cryovault meant to hold delicate specimens for study.
Inside was an empty shell. A space suit, sealed from within. No occupant. No body. But the helmet glass was scratched from the inside. Not with fingers, but teeth. And too many of them.
Inside the neck ring was a handwritten tag:
"PHANTOM."
A temperature gun crashed to the floor, slipping from Tucker's fingers as he stumbled away. Horror and fear distorted his face. Damian had barely seen him look at Daniel before he was sprinting back toward comms.
Damian felt nauseous.
Daniel didn’t react.
He just said: “We should go deeper.”
Log continues, day two on Polaris, 1300 ST.
I’ve issued a Level 3 quarantine on Sublevels B through E.
ORACLE resisted the command. She claimed Tucker was still down there.
He wasn’t.
I'm starting to doubt her.
I'm starting to doubt myself.
I don't remember the last time I slept, and I fear it's effecting my mental faculties.
I can hear something moving in the ship, but no one else will admit that they hear it too.
NORET… No Return.
I think I get it now.
Log ends.
Dim amber lights flickered overhead, throwing long shadows across tangled cables and humming consoles. The faint scent of ozone mingled with the sweet-salt tang still clinging to the walls.
Damian leaned against the cold steel frame of a deactivated bioscanner, arms crossed. He watched Daniel crouched near the bulkhead, fingers tracing a faint pattern of frost creeping beneath the panel seams.
“Do you ever sleep?” Damian asked quietly.
Daniel didn’t look up. His eyes, usually sharp and analytical, held something colder tonight- like a star that hadn't yet realized it was dead.
“I sleep when I’m dead,” Daniel replied, voice flat. “Or when the station lets me.”
Damian stepped closer, hesitating, words caught in his throat. “Look, I know what I’m about to say might sound insane given what we’re dealing with. But-”
Daniel finally met his gaze. There was a flicker, a trace of something human, though the edges of him still weren't quite right.
“You’re slipping,” Damian said carefully. “You’re not... yourself.”
Daniel pushed himself up and reached out, gently brushing a thumb against Damian’s temple- like he was smoothing away a crease.
“You think I’m not real.”
Damian didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
Daniel leaned in, and for a moment it was too much- the warmth of his breath, the grounding scent of him that was almost right. Then Daniel whispered:
“Maybe I’m not.”
Damian flinched back, barely audible: “Don’t joke.”
“Wasn’t.”
They stood there, the growing frost and viscous black forgotten behind them. Outside, down the corridor, something scraped metal against metal. A long, slow drag.
Damian swallowed the lump rising in his throat. “I’m not going to lie-” he paused, searching Daniel’s face. “I’m scared. For you. For us. For what this place is doing to you.”
Daniel’s lips quirked, almost a smile. “You always did have a soft spot for broken things.”
“Maybe,” Damian said, stepping even closer. “But maybe I just see something worth saving.”
For a long moment, they stood there, the hum of failing machinery filling the silence.
Then Daniel reached out, fingers brushing the side of Damian’s jaw- gentle, tentative, human.
“And if I’m beyond saving?” he whispered.
Damian’s breath caught.
“Then I guess,” he said, voice low, “I’ll have to save you anyway.”
The lights flickered again.
And Damian didn’t look away from Daniel- even when the sound came again. Even when the air grew colder.
Because he wasn’t sure if turning his back on Daniel was any safer than facing what was crawling behind the walls.
Before Daniel could respond, the ship’s alarm klaxon shattered the quiet, harsh and urgent.
Red emergency lights flooded the room, casting everything in hellish hues. The walls vibrated faintly beneath their feet.
“Containment breach!” ORACLE’s voice cut through the chaos. “Sector B-4 integrity compromised. Unknown entity detected. Recommend immediate lockdown.”
Daniel’s eyes snapped wide open, the cold glaze replaced by sharp, raw fear. “That’s the cold storage level,” he said, voice tight.
Damian grabbed Daniel’s arm. “We need to move—now.”
They sprinted down the corridor, lights popping behind them. Ahead, a faint, wet scraping echoed through the ventilation shafts.
From the shadows, a guttural growl rumbled low and close.
Damian’s breath hitched.
Something was hunting them.
Behind them, the heavy clang of a sealed bulkhead echoed, locking the crew in with whatever had just awakened.
The low hum of consoles and static-laced radio chatter was Tucker’s only company. The amber glow of his monitors cast ghostly reflections in his glasses. His fingers hovered over the keys, but his mind was elsewhere. He was so close to figuring it all out, he just knew it.
He had managed to pull a code from the corrupted remains of the previous crew's black box: USOA IPHD TEED PTCE PTLD.
He hadn't been able to crack it yet.
His comms headset crackled, a faint whisper barely caught in the static. He froze.
“Hello?” he whispered into the empty room.
Nothing.
Then, a soft tap, tap, tap, like fingernails against glass behind him. Slow and measured.
Tucker spun around.
The comms suite was empty.
His breath caught, heart pounding. The room felt smaller, shadows pooling in corners where none should be. The temperature was steadily dropping and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled.
He tried the frequency again, voice shaky. “Foley to Commander Wayne. Status check. Please respond.”
No reply.
Fingers trembling, Tucker tapped the keys faster, scanning for interference. Suddenly, the monitors flickered, and a distorted face flashed on the screen — half-familiar, half-wrong, Danny's eyes were empty, his smile too wide.
Then static.
He yanked off the headset.
Don’t let it get inside your head, he told himself.
But deep down, he knew.
It already has.
Tucker pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, hard. His glasses catching in his twists before he let them drop back onto his nose, his fingers flew over the keypad as he scrambled to override the silent comms. The distorted face on the monitor had vanished, but the cold dread hadn’t.
“Comms to all decks! Comms to all decks!” His voice cut through the static, raw and urgent. “We’ve got a containment breach. Something’s loose down in the cold storage bays. It’s hunting us!”
He glanced anxiously at the blinking lights, no response. ORACLE only marked three mapped biosignatures on the map, and Tucker's stomach roiled. Where were Keen and Johansen?
“Tucker, status,” came a voice crackling weakly over the intercom. It was Damian’s voice.
“Medbay’s locked down and Cold Storage is wide-fucking-open. I’m trying to override, but something’s jamming it. We need to regroup ASAP!” Tucker’s words rushed out, panic bleeding through his usual confidence.
“Keep trying. We’ll find you,” Damian replied. The line went dead.
Tucker’s eyes darted to the viewport. Shadows shifted outside the ship’s hull, shapes flickering just beyond the glass. His skin prickled.
“This isn’t just a breach,” he muttered to himself. "We're being herded."
He activated the emergency beacon, trying to calm his shaking hands.
Just stay alive for a little longer.