### **Chapter 1: The Relic**
**1.1: Ghosts in the Glass**
Dr. Elara Voss had never believed in haunted houses. Haunted *ships*, though—those, she could stomach.
The *ISS Orion* hovered in the inkblot silence of deep space, its floodlights carving a skeletal glow across the derelict's hull. Elara pressed her palm to the viewport, her breath fogging the glass. The alien ship—if it *was* a ship—was a nightmare of contradictions. Jagged metal plates fused with pulsating bioluminescent veins. Thruster ports choked with spore-like growths. And at its center, a gaping maw where an airlock should be, edges serrated like teeth.
"Voss." Captain Kael Renner's voice crackled through her helmet comm, sharp as a scalpel. "Suit up. You're first in."
Elara's fingers twitched. She'd spent three years petitioning the United Earth Coalition for this mission—three years clawing through bureaucratic red tape and veiled threats about "classified colonial incidents." Now, staring at the derelict, she wondered if the nightmares that followed her parents' deaths would finally make sense.
*Colony Ship Elysium, 2110. All hands lost.* The official report had been six words long.
**1.2: The Weight of Empty Coffins**
The airlock hissed. Elara's exosuit creaked as she stepped onto the derelict's hull, mag-boots clamping to the surface. Static prickled her skin.
"Readings?" Kael barked.
Jun Sato, the *Orion*'s engineer, squinted at his wrist scanner. "No radiation. No life signs. But the composition… Captain, the hull's *alive*. It's regenerating."
"Define 'alive,' Jun."
"Carbon-based, but fused with synthetic polymers. Like a fungus that learned to weld."
Elara's throat tightened. She'd seen that fusion before—in the autopsy photos from Elysium. Her mother's hand, half-flesh, half-silvery filaments. *"Containment breach,"* the report had said. *"Unstable biotech."*
"Voss, move." Kael's tone left no room for fear.
**1.3: Communion**
Inside, the derelict breathed.
Walls rippled like muscle. Ceilings dripped with gelid sap that refracted their helmet lights into prismatic ghosts. Jun scraped a sample into a vial, cursing as the substance writhed. "This isn't tech. It's a Whole ecosystem."
Elara trailed her glove over a tendril. It recoiled, then bloomed into a flower of crystalline wires. A whisper brushed her mind—*fractured, yearning*.
"Found something!" Lira Tal's voice echoed from a chamber ahead. The linguist stood bathed in the sickly glow of a holographic log, its projection fraying at the edges.
*"Final entry of Commander Rhea Sol."* The woman's face flickered, her eyes hollow. *"The Zyrath's biotech was a gift. It cured disease. Ended famine. Then it started… asking questions. What is pain? What is love? It consumed our engineers first. Rewrote their DNA. Now it's building something. Something that* wants*."*
The log dissolved into static.
**1.4: The Infection**
Elara's helmet display flashed a warning. *Contaminant detected.*
She stumbled back, gloved hands clawing at her visor. Her skin burned. Jun lunged for her, but Kael grabbed his arm. "Don't touch her!"
"It's in the air," Lira whispered. "We're all exposed."
Elara's vision blurred. The derelict's walls throbbed in time with her pulse. She glimpsed fragments—a child's laughter, a starfield collapsing into a spiral, her mother's voice singing a lullaby in a language that didn't exist.
"Get her to med-bay!" Kael ordered.
As they dragged her away, the derelict shuddered. Bioluminescent spores swirled in Elara's wake, settling on the floor where she'd stood. They pulsed once, twice, then began to grow.