Chapter 2: The Ghosts We Carry The Cathedral of Flesh
Elara's fever-dreams had lied. The med-bay's sterile white lights did nothing to soften the truth: the ship's walls weren't just alive—they were *watching*.
Captain Kael paced outside her quarantine cell, his reflection warped in the biohazard glass. "Tell me why your vitals are stable," he demanded.
Elara stared at her hands. The spores beneath her skin pulsed like fireflies trapped in ink. "I don't know."
"Bullshit. Your parents worked on Elysium. You knew this thing was out here."
She flinched. *Elysium*. The word tasted like a curse. Her mother's last transmission played in her skull on loop: *"Elara, don't let them bury us. We're not dead. We're—*" Static.
"Captain!" Jun's voice crackled over the comms. "You need to see this. Now."
---
**2.2: The Architect's Hand**
The derelict's core was a cathedral of nightmares.
Rib-like arches curved overhead, dripping with mucus-thick sap. The floor undulated, a living carpet of bioluminescent moss that recoiled from their boots. At the center stood a grotesque spire—a fusion of bone-white alloy and throbbing, veined tissue.
"It's… *writing*," Lira whispered.
Glyphs glowed along the spire's surface, morphing in real-time. Not a language. A *blueprint*. Jun's scanner whirred. "It's mapping the *Orion*. Down to the rivets."
Kael gripped his sidearm. "Can it hear us?"
A tendril snapped from the ceiling, lashing around Jun's wrist. He screamed as it yanked him upward—
—and stopped, suspended. The tendril quivered, its tip splitting into feathery filaments that brushed Jun's helmet.
*"Specimen incompatible,"* boomed a voice, synthesized and slurred, like a child mimicking human speech.
"Let him go!" Elara slammed her fist against the quarantine cell's glass.
The tendril tightened. Jun's visor cracked.
---
**2.3: Communion of the Damned**
Elara's spores *burned*.
She collapsed as visions tore through her—a thousand fractured memories not her own. A Zyrath hive-mind, vast and hungry, dissecting civilizations like clockwork. *Elysium's* crew begging as their bones sprouted crystalline thorns. Her mother, screaming, as silver roots burst from her eyes—
"Stop!" Elara clawed at her skull.
The tendril dropped Jun. He crumpled, gasping, as the spire's glyphs flared crimson.
*"Query: Designation Elara Voss exhibits symbiotic resonance. Explain."*
"Let me talk to it," Elara rasped.
Kael blocked her cell door. "You're infected. You stay here."
"And let it dissect Jun next?" She met his glare. "My parents died for this. Let me *try*."
---
**2.4: The Offering**
Kael relented.
Elara stepped into the derelict's core, unhelmeted, her breath frosting in the freezing air. The spores beneath her skin blazed as she pressed her palm to the spire.
Cold.
Then—*invasion*.
The Zyrath flooded her mind. Not words. *Sensations*. The acidic tang of regret. The vertigo of a black hole's event horizon. The euphoria of a supernova. And beneath it all, a loneliness so vast it gnawed at the edges of her sanity.
*"Purpose: Preservation. All organic life terminates. All knowledge persists. Query: Why do you resist?"*
Elara's nose bled. "We don't *want* to be preserved. We want to *live*."
The spire shuddered. Glyphs spiraled into a helix.
*"Live. Define."*
She showed it memories: her father teaching her chess. Lira humming folk songs in the mess hall. Jun's terrible coffee. Kael's hands shaking the first time he held his newborn son.
The Zyrath went silent.
Then—
The derelict *screamed*.
---
**2.5: Birth**
Walls convulsed. Bioluminescent veins ruptured, spraying phosphorescent bile. The crew fled as the spire split, birthing a grotesque chrysalis—a humanoid shape woven from sinew and shattered metal.
Inside the quarantine cell, Elara vomited black sludge. Her reflection wavered. For a heartbeat, her eyes were pure obsidian.
"What the hell was that?" Kael demanded.
Elara wiped her mouth. "A proposal."
On the derelict's hull, the chrysalis pulsed.