Veins of Silver
When surveyor Talia Renn's shuttle docks at Helion Relay Station after six weeks in a transit coffin, the pressure seal is the first wrong thing. The gravity is off. The silence is worse. Administrator Valek greets her with a face that does not match the briefing file. Captain Idris Halvern's crew moves like people remembering how bodies work. Silver veins trace beneath their skin in patterns that pulse faintly when they think no one is looking. Elara Sint refuses to meet Talia's eyes. Sable Okoro speaks in riddles. And everywhere, threaded through journals, station logs, audio recordings, and the hum of the relay itself, Grace Silverveil is present. Not as a person. As something the station remembers. The Confessor watches from the shadows of the observation gantry. Mori Castellan warns Talia to stop asking questions. Yuen Marrick trades glances she cannot decode. Corporate administrators transmit demands from beyond the void, but their voices fracture against the silver-veined silence of the corridors. Talia came to Helion Relay to survey what the Validarren crew had extracted from the asteroid belt. Instead she is reading the personal logs of a woman who may no longer exist, decoding transmissions from an AI that should not be conscious, and watching the transformation spread through every crew member she passes in the gantries. The marked are changing faster now. The engineers who remember how to fix the station are fewer each shift. And Talia is beginning to hear Grace Silverveil speak her name in the static between her own heartbeats. She can finish the survey, file her report, and leave before the veins reach her. Or she can stay, and learn what Silverveil discovered in the relay before it consumes them all.