The Last Signal

Commander Rayna Carter drifted through the endless void, her breath shallow inside her helmet. The SS Odyssey, once a beacon of human ambition, was now a dead husk. Its systems flickered, its crew long gone—victims of time, despair, and the cold, uncaring cosmos.

Earth had gone silent years ago. No messages. No distress calls. Just a final, garbled transmission filled with static and fear. No one knew what had happened. No one remained to tell the story.

Rayna had spent years searching for an answer. She had scoured the abandoned relay stations, decoded dying signals, and listened to the static, hoping to hear something—anything. But the stars were silent.

Her rations were running low. The oxygen recyclers were failing. She had long accepted that she would die out here, a lone ghost in an empty universe.

Then the signal came.

It was faint, barely more than a whisper, crackling through the comms like a dying breath.

"Help us… The Beacon… last hope…"

Rayna's heart pounded. The message was old, fragmented, but undeniably human. It came with a set of coordinates—impossibly far, near the event horizon of a dying star.

She should have ignored it. It could be a trick, a meaningless echo of something long dead. But what did she have to lose?

She programmed the Odyssey’s navigation, using the last of her fuel reserves. If this was a trap, she wouldn’t have enough power to turn back. If it was real… then maybe she wasn’t alone after all.

The journey took weeks. She drifted in and out of sleep, waking only to check the ship’s systems and ration her dwindling food supply. The Odyssey trembled as it approached the coordinates. Outside her viewport, the dying star loomed like an angry eye, its light flickering with unnatural intensity.

And then she saw it.

A massive, derelict space station floated near the event horizon, its metal hull scorched and fractured. The Beacon.

Rayna’s hands trembled as she initiated docking. The station’s automated system flickered to life just long enough to guide her in. She stepped into the airlock, boots echoing in the hollow corridors.

The station was a tomb. Flickering monitors lined the walls, showing distorted images of people—scientists, engineers, families. Their faces were frozen in time, captured in brief, haunting moments before everything had gone dark.

A terminal near the entrance blinked erratically. Rayna approached, wiping dust from the cracked screen. The message it displayed sent a chill through her spine.

"Project Ark. Last survivor. Final hope."

She followed the station’s flickering emergency lights through the abandoned halls. Rusted tools and broken equipment lay scattered on the floor. A thick layer of dust covered everything, untouched for what felt like centuries.

Then she found it.

A single cryo-pod, still active.

Inside was a young woman, her face peaceful, her breath slow but steady. She was still alive.

Rayna wiped the frost-covered glass, her own reflection staring back at her. A small monitor beside the pod flickered with life, displaying encrypted logs. She scanned through them, piecing together the truth.

Project Ark had been humanity’s last attempt at survival. When Earth went dark, a handful of scientists had placed one final hope inside this station—this girl. She had been frozen in time, left to sleep until someone came to find her.

Rayna’s throat tightened. This was it. The last remnant of her species, hidden away in a dying station. If she could wake her, if she could get the systems running, then maybe—just maybe—humanity wasn’t lost after all.

She hesitated only for a moment before pressing the button.

The pod hissed open.

The girl’s eyes fluttered.

And for the first time in a decade, Rayna wasn’t alone.