The Last Astronaut and the Unknown Entity
The visor went black. Complete, suffocating black.
Captain Alex Mercer froze mid-movement, 200 miles above Earth, tethered to a spacecraft that suddenly felt far too fragile.
His heart raced, hammering against his ribs like a drum of warning.
Mission control’s voices came faintly through the comm, distant and helpless.
He could hear the concern, the rising panic, but they could not see him, could not touch him, could not pull him back.
He was alone.
Alex had trained for this.
Navy fighter pilot, test astronaut, seasoned in high-stress scenarios where mistakes meant death.
Carrier decks in stormy night skies, jets screaming toward steel decks: he had survived that.
He had survived simulations designed to mimic the impossibilities of space.
But none of that prepared him for this.
The Astronaut Maneuvering Unit floated nearby, a gleaming promise of mobility and independence.
In theory, it was simple: glide, test thrusters, demonstrate control.
In practice, the suit betrayed him.
Every joint resisted, every motion burned through energy he didn’t know he had.
Heat built inside the pressurized shell.
Moisture trapped, suit stiffened, muscles screamed.
He checked his heart rate, mentally ticking each beat: 160… 175… 190… nearly at lethal limits.
His visor fogged completely, obscuring the cosmos he had trained to navigate.
Starless darkness surrounded him.
The infinite void stretched outward, indifferent.
Alex moved by memory, by touch, feeling along the spacecraft’s hull.
Handholds, edges, seams—the architecture of the vessel became his only map.
Two hours.
One hour and fifty-seven minutes.
Each second felt like eternity.
Every breath was conscious, every motion deliberate.
One slip, one lost grip, and the void would claim him.
When he finally reached the hatch, relief threatened to overtake him.
Almost home.
Almost safe.
But the return would demand precision he could not see.
“Left hand on the handle… slow… slow… now push your right arm… good…” Sarah Thompson’s voice guided him, the calm steadiness of a co-pilot who had faced her own demons in orbit.
Inch by inch, motion by motion, Alex obeyed.
Muscles screamed, lungs burned, sweat soaked his suit.
He collapsed inside.
Fluid lost, heat drained.
Thirteen pounds gone, mostly water.
Survival alone had consumed him.
And then the lights flickered.
A soft hum vibrated through the cabin, almost imperceptible.
Then stronger, deeper, a resonance that did not belong to any system Alex recognized.
The spacecraft shuddered, gently at first, then violently.
Mission control had no readings.
Nothing in the telemetry suggested a malfunction.
Alex’s pulse surged again.
Something was out there.
Something alive.
Or intelligent.
Something that should not exist in low Earth orbit.
He tried the comms.
“Control… this is Mercer… do you read me?” Static.
Nothing.
Sarah’s voice cracked slightly, “Mercer… what the hell—?”
A shadow moved outside the viewport.
Not another spacecraft.
Not debris.
Something darker, fluid, impossibly fast.
Alex’s mind raced.
Could it be a micrometeoroid? No—it moved against the relative motion of the station.
Against physics.
He recalled the first EVA failure, Gemini simulations, the two hours he had worked blind.
Every training exercise had been designed to prepare him for the unexpected.
But this… this was beyond the edge of prediction.
His survival instincts kicked in.
Alex strapped into the Maneuvering Unit, heart still thrumming dangerously, and moved toward the exterior.
No one could see him.
He could barely see.
Fogged visor.
Heat rising.
But he had to investigate.
Whatever this anomaly was, it had breached orbit and could compromise the spacecraft—and them all.
As he approached the shadow, reality twisted.
The dark shape resolved into something organic.
Metallic sheen, but alive.
Tentacles? Wings? Impossible geometry, glimmering, reflecting starlight that should not exist.
The thing moved almost as if it knew him, or maybe studied him.
Alex’s brain screamed to retreat.
But training overrode instinct: assess first, panic later.
He activated cameras, sensors, and comms.
Nothing recorded.
Instruments went haywire.
EM fields spiked.
Sarah’s voice was panicked now, repeating his name.
Then the entity did something entirely unforeseen: it mirrored his movements.
Every tilt, every rotation, it matched.
Like a shadow, but conscious.
Plot twist number one: the spacecraft’s life-support sensors began to fluctuate.
Not random failures—intentional, as if the shadow controlled the systems from outside.
Pressure dropped in the aft compartment by fractions of a millimeter.
Oxygen levels fluctuated.
Warning lights blinked in sequences that seemed… deliberate.
Alex realized something chilling.
This was not an accident.
The entity was aware of him, aware of the systems, manipulating the spacecraft, testing his reactions.
He had survived extreme physics, extreme stress, extreme human error.
But this was different.
The environment itself was now an enemy.
He signaled Sarah.
“Stay in the cabin. Do not open any airlocks. I need to understand it.”
Hours passed in a tense standoff.
The shadow followed, mimicked, and retreated in patterns that suggested intelligence.
Alex deployed a small drone from the MU.
It transmitted… nothing.
The drone’s feed showed only darkness, but the shadow reacted—emerging to block the view, like a predator in deep water.
Plot twist number two: sensors picked up a pulse.
Not human, not machine, but something synchronized with his own heartbeat.
As if the entity could feel him.
Every thump in his chest, every movement, mirrored in the space around him.
He felt it deep inside the MU, a resonance that vibrated through bone and blood.
Exhaustion clawed at him.
Mentally and physically, he was at the brink.
But instinct and training forced him onward.
He had faced the impossible before: carrier decks, EVA failures, deadly simulations.
And now, an unknown intelligence tested him.
Then it happened.
The shadow vanished for a moment.
Alex thought he had survived.
Relief was brief.
The hatch alarm sounded—soft, insistent.
Not from the spacecraft, but from inside the MU suit.
A hidden compartment in the back panel opened silently.
Something was inside.
Something that had not been there before.
Alex froze.
Hand hovering over the controls, he realized… the suit he had trusted, the suit that had nearly killed him before, had been breached from the inside.
Something alive—or technologically advanced—was already inside him.
His pulse skyrocketed.
Everything he had trained for, every survival lesson, every EVA maneuver, every near-death memory, led to this: he had to execute perfectly, now, not just for himself, but for the entire crew.
And in the black outside, the entity waited.
Silent.
Patient.
Watching.
The universe, it seemed, was no longer empty.
