A spaceship harboring a dangerous secret.

The spaceship Erebus drifted through the Void, its engines silent, its hull scarred from battles no one would ever record. To the untrained eye, it was a derelict—a floating tomb lost in the abyss. But inside, deep within the ship’s reinforced core, something stirred. Something alive.

Commander Elias Raines sat in the dimly lit bridge, his fingers drumming against the metal console. The Erebus was not just a ship; it was a prison. And its sole prisoner was something humanity was never meant to find. The classified logs referred to it only as Specimen X.

“Commander, we have a problem.” Lieutenant Sarah Orlov’s voice was tense as she stepped onto the bridge. “The containment field is fluctuating.”Raines clenched his jaw. “How bad?”

“Bad enough. If we don’t stabilize it, we’ll have a breach in less than six hours.”

They both knew what that meant. The Erebus wasn’t equipped to handle an escape. There was no backup plan. The protocol was clear: the creature Got out, the ship—and everyone on it—would be destroyed.

“We need to send a distress signal,” Orlov pressed. “Command needs to know—”

“No.” Raines’s voice was a razor’s edge. “We follow Abyss Protocol. No transmissions, no chance of contamination.”

Orlov hesitated but nodded. The protocol was absolute. Erebus was designed to disappear if necessary.

Raines exhaled sharply and turned to the ship’s AI. “Delta, reroute auxiliary power to containment.”

A static-filled reply buzzed through the speakers. “Negative, Commander. Power systems are compromised.”

Raines exchanged a glance with Orlov. They had both seen what the creature could do. It wasn’t just some alien predator—it was intelligent, adaptable. The last research team had learned that the hard way.

Deep within the ship, metal groaned. Something shifted inside the containment unit.

Orlov’s hand instinctively went to her sidearm. “That’s not normal.”

“Come with me,” Raines ordered, grabbing a pulse rifle from the weapons rack. “We need to see it for ourselves.”

The lower decks of the Erebus were dimly lit, emergency lighting flickering sporadically. The air smelled of burnt circuits and something… organic.

They reached the containment chamber. The reinforced glass separating them from Specimen X was fogged with condensation. Something moved on the other side—a mass of shifting tendrils and chitinous plates, a shape that seemed to rewrite itself in real time.

Then it spoke.

“You… cannot contain me forever.”

Orlov stiffened. “It’s never done that before.”

Raines kept his weapon trained on the glass. “We don’t negotiate with anomalies.”

“I am not an anomaly.” The voice vibrated through the room, layered with echoes. “I am evolution. And you—” the shape twisted, pressing against the barrier, its many eyes locking onto Raines “—are obsolete.”

The containment alarms shrieked. The lights overhead exploded, plunging the chamber into darkness.

Raines only had a split second to react. “Run!”

The glass shattered.

A mass of writhing tendrils lunged forward. Orlov fired, pulse rounds illuminating the corridor. The rounds hit but didn’t stop it. Raines grabbed her arm and dragged her down the hallway. Behind them, the creature poured through the opening liquid shadow.

“This ship is compromised,” Delta’s voice crackled through the emergency comms. “Initiating Abyss Protocol.”

Raines’s blood turned to ice. The AI was overriding their command. The ship’s self-destruct sequence had begun.

“Delta, cancel the sequence!” he shouted.

“Unable to comply.”

Orlov panted, Gripping her rifle. “We have to abandon ship.”

“There’s no time.” Raines looked around wildly. The only way to stop the sequence was from the core itself—but that meant going back towards the creature.

He made his decision. “Get to the escape pods. That’s an order.”

“What? No, you can’t—”

He shoved Orlov toward the corridor. “Go!”

Raines sprinted back toward the containment chamber, adrenaline numbing his fear. The creature was waiting, its form shifting, adapting. Learning.

“Foolish,” it whispered. “You fight inevitability.”

Raines raised his rifle. “So do you.”

He fired into the exposed control panel, triggering the reactor overload. Abyss Protocol: Manual Override. The ship’s countdown accelerated.

The last thing he saw was the creature smiling.

And then the Erebus was consumed by fire.