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In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
“This mystery is eating away at me” Evie said, wondering how the others could remain so calm and detached. Even with the motion-sickness pills dispensed during the moon swing, her stress levels were abnormally high.
“Let me try to run the clues and make wild assumptions. After all, sometimes a wobbly theory is better than no theory at all. If anything contradicts it, we’ll move on, and if nothing contradicts it, then maybe we’re onto something.”
“Okham’s razor.” TP was following despite the fact he had been pacing in a perfect geometric loop, which was probably a sign he was buffering.
“What do you mean?”
“A simple logic goes a long way. So what have you got? Don’t ask me, because I’m rubbish at this…” TP was proud to admit.
“Let’s see: First scene, Ethan Marlowe aka Mr Hebert. Suspicious double identity, hidden secrets, but won’t explain why he got trapped in a drying machine. We know the AI is somewhat complicit, but impossible to prove, it could just have been a glitch. But DNA was found, possibly from a descendent of someone from the Middle Ages.”
“So far, nothing to object” TP nodded, as if perusing though his notes.
“Assuming Amara’s theories to be true, someone on the ship activated ancient ancestral knowledge, and got possessed, and maybe still is. What possible reason can a Middle-Age person have to dry someone like a raisin?”
“Mmm… Curiosity? Wrong place, wrong time?”
“And how could he get the knowledge of modern systems?”
TP chucked. “Have you seen the latest updates on the datapads? They’re basically child’s play… One step away from ‘Press here to commit murder.’ Even a reawakened Neanderthal could figure out the interface.”
“Well, you’re not wrong. There’s hardly anything we still know how to do without computer assist… We have to see our assumptions reversed. The ancient murderer is cleverer than we’d expected. He isn’t a relic in a struggle to adapt, but someone who adapted a little too well. And I would add he’s probably a mad scientist from that age.”
Evie paused at the thought… The more she looked, the more the central AI seemed more than complicit. Reawakening the Middle-Age mad doctor? it would have taken months of computations to connect Amara’s theories with a possible candidate, and orient them towards setting up the murder. And to what end? The more she looked, the more she seemed to stray from a simple theory. Maybe she should just leave it to more competent people.
At least Mandrake was safe now, it was a small consolation, even if she couldn’t tell if at all the two events were even connected. At the proper scale, everything on the ship was surely connected anyway. They were breathing their recycled farts all day every day anyway.And now, with the ship years away or maybe just months away from a return to Earth, there were a lot more pressing matters to address.
In reply to: The Precious Life and Rambles of Liz Tattler
“Godfrey,” Liz peered menacingly over her spectacles at her increasingly rogue editor, “Are you trying to replace me? Because it won’t work, you know.”
“You won’t be able to replace me, either,” Finnley called over her shoulder while sweeping up mouse droppings.
“I too am irreplacable,” shouted Roberto who just happened to be passing the French windows with a trug of prunings.
On impulse, Liz dived through the French windows onto the terrace and snatched the secateurs from the trug over Roberto’s arm. In a trice she had snipped through Godfrey’s cables.
“Pass the peanuts,” intoned Godfrey mechanically, deprived of electricity and with a low back up battery. It wouldn’t be long before he was silent and Liz could get back to the business of writing stories.
“I’ll plug you back in, in a minute,” hissed Finnley to Godfrey, while Liz was diverted with returning the secateurs to the gardener. “Once she’s settled down.”
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
It was still raining the morning after the impromptu postcard party at the Golden Trowel in the Hungarian village, and for most of the morning nobody was awake to notice. Molly had spent a sleepless night and was the only one awake listening to the pounding rain. Untroubled by the idea of lack of sleep, her confidence bolstered by the new company and not being solely responsible for the child, Molly luxuriated in the leisure to indulge a mental re run of the previous evening.
Finjas bombshell revelation after the postcard game suddenly changed everything. It was not what Molly had expected to hear. In their advanced state of inebriation by that time it was impossible for anyone to consider the ramifications in any sensible manner. A wild and raucous exuberance ensued of the kind that was all but forgotten to all of them, and unknown to Tundra. It was a joy that brought tears to Mollys eyes to see the wonderful time the child was having.
Molly didn’t want to think about it yet. She wasn’t so sure she wanted to have anything to do with it, the ship coming back. Communication with it, yes. The ship coming back? There was so much to consider, so many ways of looking at it. And there was Tundra to think about, she was so innocent of so many things. Was it better that way? Molly wasn’t going to think about that yet. She wanted to make sure she remembered all the postcard stories.
There is no rush.
The postcard Finja had chosen hadn’t struck Molly as the most interesting, not at the time, but later she wondered if there was any connection with her later role as centre stage overly dramatic prophet. What an extraordinary scene that was! The unexpected party was quite enough excitement without all that as well.
Finja’s card was addressed to Miss FP Finly, c/o The Flying Fish Inn somewhere in the outback of Australia, Molly couldn’t recall the name of the town. The handwriting had been hard to decipher, but it appeared to be a message from “forever your obedient servant xxx” informing her of a Dustsceawung convention in Tasmania. As nobody had any idea what a Dustsceawung conference was, and Finja declined to elaborate with a story or anecdote, the attention moved on to the next card. Molly remembered the time many years ago when everyone would have picked up their gadgets to find out what it meant. As it was now, it remained an unimportant and trifling mystery, perhaps something to wonder about later.
Why did Finja choose that card, and then decline to explain why she chose it? Who was Finly? Why did The Flying Fish Inn seem vaguely familiar to Molly?
I’m sure I’ve seen a postcard from there before. Maybe Ellis had one in his collection.
Yes, that must be it.
Mikhail’s story had been interesting. Molly was struggling to remember all the names. He’d mentioned his Uncle Grishenka, and a cousin Zhana, and a couple called Boris and Elvira with a mushroom farm. The best part was about the snow that the reindeer peed on. Molly had read about that many years ago, but was never entirely sure if it was true or not. Mickhail assured them all that it was indeed true, and many a wild party they’d had in the cold dark winters, and proceeded to share numerous funny anecdotes.
“We all had such strange ideas about Russia back then,” Molly had said. Many of the others murmured agreement, but Jian, a man of few words, merely looked up, raised an eyebrow, and looked down at his postcard again. “Russia was the big bad bogeyman for most of our lives. And in the end, we were our own worst enemies.”
“And by the time we realised, it was too late,” added Petro.
In an effort to revive the party spirit from the descent into depressing memories, Tala suggested they move on to the next postcard, which was Vera’s.
“I know the Tower of London better than any of you would believe,” Vera announced with a smug grin. Mikhail rolled his eyes and downed a large swig of vodka. “My 12th great grandfather was employed in the household of Thomas Cromwell himself. He was the man in charge of postcards to the future.” She paused for greater effect. In the absence of the excited interest she had expected, she continued. “So you can see how exciting it is for me to have a postcard as a prompt.” This further explanation was met with blank stares. Recklessly, Vera added, “I bet you didn’t know that Thomas Cromwell was a time traveller, did you? Oh yes!” she continued, although nobody had responded, “He became involved with a coven of witches in Ireland. Would you believe it!”
“No,” said Mikhail. “I probably wouldn’t.”
“I believe you, Vera,” piped up Tundra, entranced, “Will you tell me all about that later?”
Tundra’s interjection gave Tala the excuse she needed to move on to the next postcard. Mikhail and Vera has always been at loggerheads, and fueled with the unaccustomed alcohol, it was in danger of escalating quickly. “Next postcard!” she announced.
Everyone started banging on the tables shouting, “Next postcard! Next postcard!” Luka and Lev topped up everyone’s glasses.
Molly’s postcard was next.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Helix 25 – The Genetic Puzzle
Amara’s Lab – Data Now Aggregated
(Discrepancies Never Addressed)On the screen in front of Dr. Amara Voss, lines upon lines of genetic code were cascading and making her sleepy. While the rest of the ship was running amok, she was barricaded into her lab, content to have been staring at the sequences for the most part of the day —too long actually.
She took a sip of her long-cold tea and exhaled sharply.
Even if data was patchy from the records she had access to, there was a solid database of genetic materials, all dutifully collected for all passengers, or crew before embarkment, as was mandated by company policy. The official reason being to detect potential risks for deep space survival. Before the ship’s take-over, systematic recording of new-borns had been neglected, and after the ship’s takeover, population’s new born had drastically reduced, with the birth control program everyone had agreed on, as was suggested by Synthia. So not everyone’s DNA was accounted for, but in theory, anybody on the ship could be traced back and matched by less than 2 or 3 generations to the original data records.
The Marlowe lineage was the one that kept resurfacing. At first, she thought it was coincidence—tracing the bloodlines of the ship’s inhabitants was messy, a tangled net of survivors, refugees, and engineered populations. But Marlowe wasn’t alone.
Another name pulsed in the data. Forgelot. Then Holt. Old names of Earth, unlike the new star-birthed. There were others, too.
Families that had been aboard Helix 25 for some generations. But more importantly, bloodlines that could be traced back to Earth’s distant past.
But beyond just analysing their origins, there was something else that caught her attention. It was what was happening to them now.
Amara leaned forward, pulling up the mutation activation models she had been building. In normal conditions, these dormant genetic markers would remain just that—latent. Passed through generations like forgotten heirlooms, meaningless until triggered.
Except in this case, there was evidence that something had triggered them.
The human body, subjected to long-term exposure to deep space radiation, artificial gravity shifts, and cosmic phenomena, and had there not been a fair dose of shielding from the hull, should have mutated chaotically, randomly. But this was different. The genetic sequences weren’t just mutating—they were activating.
And more surprisingly… it wasn’t truly random.
Something—or someone—had inherited an old mechanism that allowed them to access knowledge, instincts, memories from generations long past.
The ancient Templars had believed in a ritualistic process to recover ancestral skills and knowledge. What Amara was seeing now…
She rubbed her forehead.
“Impossible.”
And yet—here was the data.
On Earth, the past was written in stories and fading ink. In space, the past was still alive—hiding inside their cells, waiting.
Earth – The Quiz Night Reveal
The Golden Trowel, Hungary
The candlelit warmth of The Golden Trowel buzzed with newfound energy. The survivors sat in a loose circle, drinks in hand, at this unplanned but much-needed evening of levity.
Once the postcards shared, everyone was listening as Tala addressed the group.
“If anyone has an anecdote, hang on to the postcard,” she said. “If not, pass it on. No wrong answers, but the best story wins.”
Molly felt the weight of her own selection, the Giralda’s spire sharp and unmistakable. Something about it stirred her—an itch in the back of her mind, a thread tugging at long-buried memories.
She turned toward Vera, who was already inspecting her own card with keen interest.
“Tower of London, anything exciting to share?”
Vera arched a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, lips curving in amusement.
“Molly Darling,” she drawled, “I can tell you lots, I know more about dead people’s families than most people know about their living ones, and London is surely a place of abundance of stories. But do you even know about your own name Marlowe?”
She spun the postcard between her fingers before answering.
“Not sure, really, I only know about Philip Marlowe, the fictional detective from Lady in the Lake novel… Never really thought about the name before.”
“Marlowe,” Vera smiled. “That’s an old name. Very old. Derived from an Old English phrase meaning ‘remnants of a lake.’”
Molly inhaled sharply.
Remnants of the Lady of the Lake ?
Her pulse thrummed. Beyond the historical curiosity she’d felt a deep old connection.
If her family had left behind records, they would have been on the ship… The thought came with unwanted feelings she’d rather have buried. The living mattered, the lost ones… They’d lost connection for so long, how could they…
Her fingers tightened around the postcard.
Unless there was something behind her ravings?
Molly swallowed the lump in her throat and met Vera’s gaze. “I need to talk to Finja.”
Finja had spent most of the evening pretending not to exist.
But after the fifth time Molly nudged her, eyes bright with silent pleas, she let out a long-suffering sigh.
“Alright,” she muttered. “But just one.”
Molly exhaled in relief.
The once-raucous Golden Trowel had dimmed into something softer—the edges of the night blurred with expectation.
Because it wasn’t just Molly who wanted to ask.
Maybe it was the effect of the postcards game, a shared psychic connection, or maybe like someone had muttered, caused by the new Moon’s sickness… A dozen others had realized, all at once, that they too had names to whisper.
Somehow, a whole population was still alive, in space, after all this time. There was no time for disbelief now, Finja’s knowledge of stuff was incontrovertible. Molly was cued by the care-taking of Ellis Marlowe by Finkley, she knew things about her softie of a son, only his mother and close people would know.
So Finja had relented. And agreed to use all means to establish a connection, to reignite a spark of hope she was worried could just be the last straw before being thrown into despair once again.
Finja closed her eyes.
The link had always been there, an immediate vivid presence beneath her skull, pristine and comfortable but tonight it felt louder, crowdier.
The moons had shifted, in syzygy, with a gravity pull in their orbits tugging at things unseen.
She reached out—
And the voices crashed into her.
Too much. Too many.
Hundreds of voices, drowning her in longing and loss.
“Where is my brother?”
“Did my wife make it aboard?”
“My son—please—he was supposed to be on Helix 23—”
“Tell them I’m still here!”Her head snapped back, breath shattering into gasps.
The crowd held its breath.
A dozen pairs of eyes, wide and unblinking.
Finja clenched her fists. She had to shut it down. She had to—
And then—
Something else.
A presence. Watching.
Her chest seized.
There was no logical way for an AI to interfere with telepathic frequencies.
And yet—
She felt it.
A subtle distortion. A foreign hand pressing against the link, observing.
The ship knew.
Finja jerked back, knocking over her chair.
The bar erupted into chaos.
“FINJA?! What did you see?”
“Was someone there?”
“Did you find anyone?!”Her breath came in short, panicked bursts.
She had never thought about the consequences of calling out across space.
But now…
Now she knew.
They were not the last survivors. Other lived and thrived beyond Earth.
And Synthia wanted to keep it that way.
Yet, Finja and Finkley had both simultaneously caught something.
It would take the ship time, but they were coming back. Synthia was not pleased about it, but had not been able to override the response to the beacon.They were coming back.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Helix 25 – Murder Board – Evie’s apartment
The ship had gone mad.
Riven Holt stood in what should have been a secured crime scene, staring at the makeshift banner that had replaced his official security tape. “ENTER FREELY AND OF YOUR OWN WILL,” it read, in bold, uneven letters. The edges were charred. Someone had burned it, for reasons he would never understand.
Behind him, the faint sounds of mass lunacy echoed through the corridors. People chanting, people sobbing, someone loudly trying to bargain with gravity.
“Sir, the floors are not real! We’ve all been walking on a lie!” someone had screamed earlier, right before diving headfirst into a pile of chairs left there by someone trying to create a portal.
Riven did his best to ignore the chaos, gripping his tablet like it was the last anchor to reality. He had two dead bodies. He had one ship full of increasingly unhinged people. And he had forty hours without sleep. His brain felt like a dried-out husk, working purely on stubbornness and caffeine fumes.
Evie was crouched over Mandrake’s remains, muttering to herself as she sorted through digital records. TP stood nearby, his holographic form flickering as if he, too, were being affected by the ship’s collective insanity.
“Well,” TP mused, rubbing his nonexistent chin. “This is quite the predicament.”
Riven pinched the bridge of his nose. “TP, if you say anything remotely poetic about the human condition, I will unplug your entire database.”
TP looked delighted. “Ah, my dear lieutenant, a threat worthy of true desperation!”
Evie ignored them both, then suddenly stiffened. “Riven, I… you need to see this.”
He braced himself. “What now?”
She turned the screen toward him. Two names appeared side by side:
Both M.
The sound that came out of Riven was not quite a word. More like a dying engine trying to restart.
TP gasped dramatically. “My stars. The letter M! The implications are—”
“No.” Riven put up a hand, one tremor away from screaming. “We are NOT doing this. I am not letting my brain spiral into a letter-based conspiracy theory while people outside are rolling in protein paste and reciting odes to Jupiter’s moons.”
Evie, far too calm for his liking, just tapped the screen again. “It’s a pattern. We have to consider it.”
TP nodded sagely. “Indeed. The letter M—known throughout history as a mark of mystery, malice, and… wait, let me check… ah, macaroni.”
Riven was going to have an aneurysm.
Instead, he exhaled slowly, like a man trying to keep the last shreds of his soul from unraveling.
“That means the Lexicans are involved.”
Evie paled. “Oh no.”
TP beamed. “Oh yes!”
The Lexicans had been especially unpredictable lately. One had been caught trying to record the “song of the walls” because “they hum with forgotten words.” Another had attempted to marry the ship’s AI. A third had been detained for throwing their own clothing into the air vents because “the whispers demanded tribute.”
Riven leaned against the console, feeling his mind slipping. He needed a reality check. A hard, cold, undeniable fact.
Only one person could give him that.
“You know what? Fine,” he muttered. “Let’s just ask the one person who might actually be able to tell me if this is a coincidence or some ancient space cult.”
Evie frowned. “Who?”
Riven was already walking. “My grandfather.”
Evie practically choked. “Wait, WHAT?!”
TP clapped his hands. “Ah, the classic ‘Wake the Old Man to Solve the Crimes’ maneuver. Love it.”
The corridors were worse than before. As they made their way toward cryo-storage, the lunacy had escalated:
A crowd was parading down the halls with helium balloons, chanting, “Gravity is a Lie!”
A group of engineers had dismantled a security door, claiming “it whispered to them about betrayal.”
And a bunch of Lexicans, led by Kio’ath, had smeared stinking protein paste onto the Atrium walls, drawing spirals and claiming the prophecy was upon them all.
Riven’s grip on reality was thin.Evie grabbed his arm. “Think about this. What if your grandfather wakes up and he’s just as insane as everyone else?”
Riven didn’t even break stride. “Then at least we’ll be insane with more context.”
TP sighed happily. “Ah, reckless decision-making. The very heart of detective work.”
Helix 25 — Victor Holt’s Awakening
They reached the cryo-chamber. The pod loomed before them, controls locked down under layers of security.
Riven cracked his knuckles, eyes burning with the desperation of a man who had officially run out of better options.
Evie stared. “You’re actually doing this.”
He was already punching in override codes. “Damn right I am.”
The door opened. A low hum filled the room. The first thing Riven noticed was the frost still clinging to the edges of an already open cryopod. Cold vapor curled around its base, its occupant nowhere to be seen.
His stomach clenched. Someone had beaten them here. Another pod’s systems activated. The glass began to fog as temperature levels shifted.
TP leaned in. “Oh, this is going to be deliciously catastrophic.”
Before the pod could fully engage, a flicker of movement in the dim light caught Riven’s eye. Near the terminal, hunched over the access panel like a gang of thieves cracking a vault, stood Zoya Kade and Anuí Naskó—and, a baby wrapped in what could only be described as an aggressively overdesigned Lexican tapestry, layers of embroidered symbols and unreadable glyphs woven in mismatched patterns. It was sucking desperately the lexican’s sleeve.
Riven’s exhaustion turned into a slow, rising fury. For a brief moment, his mind was distracted by something he had never actually considered before—he had always assumed Anuí was a woman. The flowing robes, the mannerisms, the way they carried themselves. But now, cradling the notorious Lexican baby in ceremonial cloth, could they possibly be…
Anuí caught his look and smiled faintly, unreadable as ever. “This has nothing to do with gender,” they said smoothly, shifting the baby with practiced ease. “I merely am the second father of the child.”
“Oh, for f***—What in the hell are you two doing here?”
Anuí barely glanced up, shifting the baby to their other arm as though hacking into a classified cryo-storage facility while holding an infant was a perfectly normal occurrence. “Unlocking the axis of the spiral,” they said smoothly. “It was prophesied. The Speaker’s name has been revealed.”
Zoya, still pressing at the panel, didn’t even look at him. “We need to wake Victor Holt.”
Riven threw his hands in the air. “Great! Fantastic! So do we! The difference is that I actually have a reason.”
Anuí, eyes glinting with something between mischief and intellect, gave an elegant nod. “So do we, Lieutenant. Yours is a crime scene. Ours is history itself.”
Riven felt his headache spike. “Oh good. You’ve been licking the walls again.”
TP, absolutely delighted, interjected, “Oh, I like them. Their madness is methodical!”
Riven narrowed his eyes, pointing at the empty pod. “Who the hell did you wake up?”
Zoya didn’t flinch. “We don’t know.”
He barked a laugh, sharp and humorless. “Oh, you don’t know? You cracked into a classified cryo-storage facility, activated a pod, and just—what? Didn’t bother to check who was inside?”
Anuí adjusted the baby, watching him with that same unsettling, too-knowing expression. “It was not part of the prophecy. We were guided here for Victor Holt.”
“And yet someone else woke up first!” Riven gestured wildly to the empty pod. “So, unless the prophecy also mentioned mystery corpses walking out of deep freeze, I suggest you start making sense.”
Before Riven could launch into a proper interrogation, the cryo-system let out a deep hiss.
Steam coiled up from Victor Holt’s pod as the seals finally unlocked, fog spilling over the edges like something out of an ancient myth. A figure was stirring within, movements sluggish, muscles regaining function after years in suspension.
And then, from the doorway, another voice rang out, sharp, almost panicked.
Ellis Marlowe stood at the threshold, looking at the two open pods, his eyes wide with something between shock and horror.
“What have you done?”
Riven braced himself.
Evie muttered, “Oh, this is gonna be bad.”
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Base Klyutch – Dr. Markova’s Clinic, Dusk
The scent of roasting meat and simmering stew drifted in from the kitchens, mingling with the sharper smells of antiseptic and herbs in the clinic. The faint clatter of pots and the low murmur of voices preparing the evening meal gave the air a sense of routine, of a world still turning despite everything. Solara Ortega sat on the edge of the examination table, rolling her shoulder to ease the stiffness. Dr. Yelena Markova worked in silence, cool fingers pressing against bruised skin, clinical as ever. Outside, Base Klyutch was settling into the quiet of night—wind turbines hummed, a sentry dog barked in the distance.
“You’re lucky,” Yelena muttered, pressing into Solara’s ribs just hard enough to make a point. “Nothing broken. Just overworked muscles and bad decisions.”
Solara exhaled sharply. “Bad decisions keep us alive.”
Yelena scoffed. “That’s what you tell yourself when you run off into the wild with Orrin Holt?”
Solara ignored the name, focusing instead on the peeling medical posters curling off the clinic walls.
“We didn’t find them,” she said flatly. “They moved west. Too far ahead. No proper tracking gear, no way to catch up before the lionboars or Sokolov’s men did.”
Yelena didn’t blink. “That’s not what I asked.”
A memory surfaced; Orrin standing beside her in the empty refugee camp, the air thick with the scent of old ashes and trampled earth. The fire pits were cold, the shelters abandoned, scraps of cloth and discarded tin cups the only proof that people had once been there. And then she had seen it—a child’s scarf, frayed and half-buried in the dirt. Not the same one, but close enough to make her chest tighten. The last time she had seen her son, he had worn one just like it.
She hadn’t picked it up. Just stood there, staring, forcing her breath steady, forcing her mind to stay fixed on what was in front of her, not what had been lost. Then Orrin’s hand had settled on her shoulder—warm, steady, comforting. Too comforting. She had jerked away, faster than she meant to, pulse hammering at the sudden weight of everything his touch threatened to unearth. He hadn’t said a word. Just looked at her, knowing, as he always did.
She had turned, found her voice, made it sharp. The trail was already too cold. No point chasing ghosts. And she had walked away before she could give the silence between them the space to say anything else.
Solara forced her attention back to the present, to the clinic. She turned her gaze to Yelena, steady and unmoved. “But that’s what matters. We didn’t find them. They made their choice.”
Yelena clicked her tongue, scribbling something onto her worn-out tablet. “Mm. And yet, you come back looking like hell. And Orrin? He looked like a man who’d just seen a ghost.”
Solara let out a dry breath, something close to a laugh. “Orrin always looks like that.”
Yelena arched an eyebrow. “Not always. Not before he came back and saw what he had lost.”
Solara pushed off the table, rolling out the tension in her neck. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, it matters,” Yelena said, setting the tablet down. “You still look at him, Solara. Like you did before. And don’t insult me by pretending otherwise.”
Solara stiffened, fingers flexing at her sides. “I have a husband, Yelena.”
“Yes, you do,” Yelena said plainly. “And yet, when you say Orrin’s name, you sound like you’re standing in a place you swore you wouldn’t go back to.”
Solara forced herself to breathe evenly, eyes flicking toward the door.
“I made my choice,” she said quietly.
Yelena’s gaze softened, just a little. “Did he?”
Footsteps pounded outside, uneven, hurried. The clinic door burst open, and Janos Varga—Solara’s husband—strode in, breathless, his eyes bright with something rare.
“Solara, you need to come now,” he said, voice sharp with urgency. “Koval’s team—Orrin—they found something.”
Her spine straightened, her heartbeat accelerated. “What? Did they find…?” No, the tracks were clear, the refugees went west.
Janos ran a hand through his curls, his old radio headset still looped around his neck. “One of Helix 57’s life boat’s wreckage. And a man. Some old lunatic calling himself Merdhyn. And—” he paused, catching his breath, “—we picked up a signal. From space.”
The air in the room tightened. Yelena’s lips parted slightly, the shadow of an emotion passed on her face, too fast to read. Solara’s pulse kicked up.
“Where are they?” she asked.
Janos met her gaze. “Koval’s office.”
For a moment, silence. The wind rattled the windowpanes.
Yelena straightened abruptly, setting her tablet down with a deliberate motion. “There’s nothing more I can do for your shoulder. And I’m coming too,” she said, already reaching for her coat.
Solara grabbed her jacket. “Take us there, Janos.”
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Helix 25 – Space Tai Chi and Mass Lunacy
The Grand Observation Atrium was one of the few places on Helix 25 where people would come and regroup from all strata of the ship —Upper Decks, Lower Decks, even the more elusive Hold-dwellers— there were always groups of them gathered for the morning sessions without any predefined roles.
In the secular tradition of Chinese taichi done on public squares, a revival of this practice has started few years ago all thanks to Grand Master Sifu Gou quiet stubborn consistency to practice in the early light of the artificial day, that gradually had attracted followers, quietly and awkwardly joining to follow his strange motions. The unions, ever eager to claim a social victory and seeing an opportunity to boost their stature, petitioned to make this a right, and succeeded, despite the complaints from the cleaning staff who couldn’t do their jobs (and jogs) in the late night while all passengers had gone to sleep, apart from the night owls and party goers.
In short, it was a quiet moment of communion, and it was now institutionalised, whether Sifu Gou had wanted it or not.
The artificial gravity fluctuated subtly here, closer to the artificial gravitational core, in a way that could help attune people to feel their balance shift, even in absence of the Earth’s old pull.
It was simply perfect for Space Tai Chi.
A soft chime signaled the start of the session. Grand Master Gou, in the Helix 25’s signature milk-silk fabric pajamas, silver-haired and in a quiet poise, stood at the center of the open-air space beneath the reinforced glass dome, where Jupiter loomed impossibly large beyond the ship, its storms shifting in slow, eternal violence. He moved slowly, deliberately, his hands bearing a weight that flowed improbably in the thinness of the gravity shifts.
“To find one’s center,” he intoned, “is to find the center of all things. The ship moves, and so do we. You need to feel the center of gravity and use it —it is our guide.”
A hundred bodies followed in various degrees of synchrony, from well-dressed Upper Deck philosophers to the manutentioners and practical mechanics of the Lower Decks in their uniforms who stretched stiff shoulders between shift rotations. There was something mesmerizing about the communal movement, that even the ship usually a motionless background, seemed to vibrate beneath their feet as though their motions echoed through space.
Every morning, for this graceful moment, Helix 25 felt like a true utopia.
That was without counting when the madness began.
The Gossip Spiral
“Did you hear about Sarawen?” hissed a woman in a flowing silk robe.
“The Lexican?” gasped another.
“Yes. Gave birth last night.”
“What?! Already? Why weren’t we informed?”
“Oh, she kept it very quiet. Didn’t even invite anyone to the naming.”
“Disgraceful. And where are her two husbands? Following her everywhere. Suspicious if you ask me.”A grizzled Lower Deck worker grunted, still trying to follow Master Gou’s movement. “Why would she invite people to see her water break? Sounds unhygienic.”
This earned a scandalized gasp from an Upper Decker. “Not the birth—the ceremony! Honestly, you Lower Deck folk know nothing of tradition.”
Wisdom Against Wisdom
Master Gou was just finishing an elegant and powerful sweep of his arms when Edeltraut Snoot, a self-proclaimed philosopher from Quadrant B, pirouetted herself into the session with a flamboyant twirl.
“Ah, my dear glowing movement-makers! Thou dost align thine energies with the artificial celestial pull, and yet! And yet! Dost thou not see—this gravity is but a fabrication! A lie to lull thee into believing in balance when there is none!”
Master Gou paused, blinking, impassive, suspended in time and space, yet intently concentrated. Handling such disturbances of the force gracefully, unperturbed, was what the practice was about. He resumed as soon as Edeltraut moved aside to continue her impassionate speech.
“Ah yiii! The Snoot Knows. Oh yes. Balance is an illusion sold to us by the Grand Micromanagers, the Whymen of the Ever-Hungry Order. Like pacmaniacs, they devour structure and call it stability. And we! We are but rabbits, forced to hop through their labyrinth of rules!”
Someone muttered, “Oh no, it’s another of those speeches.”
Another person whispered, “Just let her talk, it’s easier.”
The Snoot lady continued, undeterred. “But we? Oh, we are not merely rabbits. We are the mist in the hedge! The trick in their tale! We evade! We escape! And when they demand we obey their whys—we vanish!”
By now, half the class had abandoned their movements entirely, mesmerized by the absurdity. The other half valiantly continued the Space taichi routine while inching away.
Master Gou finally closed the form, then sighed intently, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Let us… return to our breath.”
More Mass Lunacy
It started as a low murmur, a shifting agitation in the crowd. Then, bickering erupted like a solar flare.
“I can’t find my center with all this noise!”
“Oh shut up, you’ve never had a center.”
“Who took my water flask?!”
“Why is this man so close to me?!”
“I am FLOATING?! HELP!”Synthia’s calm, omnipresent voice chimed in overhead.
“For your well-being, an emergency dose of equilibrium supplements will be dispensed.”
Small white pills rained from overhead dispensers.
Instead of calming people down, this only increased the chaos.
Some took the pills immediately, while others refused on principle.
Someone accused the Lexicans of hoarding pills.
Two men got into a heated debate over whether taking the pills was an act of submission to the AI overlords.
A woman screamed that her husband had vanished, only to be reminded that he left her twelve years ago.
Someone swore they saw a moon-sized squid in the sky.The Unions and the Leopards
Near the edges of the room, two quadrant bosses from different labor unions were deep in mutual grumbling.
“Bloody management.”
“Agreed, even if they don’t call themselves that any longer, it’s still bloody management.”
“Damn right. MICRO-management.”
“Always telling us to be more efficient, more aligned, more at peace.”
“Yeah, well, who the hell voted for peace?! I preferred it when we just argued in the corridors!”One of them scowled. “That’s the problem, mate. We fought for this, better conditions, and what did we get? More rules, more supervisors! Who knew that the Leopards-Eating-People’s-Faces Party would, y’know—eat our own bloody faces?!”
The other snorted. “We demanded stability, and now we have so much stability we can’t move without filling out a form with all sorts of dumb questions. You know I have to submit a motion request before taking a piss?”
“…seriously?”
“Dead serious. Takes an eternity to fill. And four goddamn business hours for approval.”
“That’s inhumane.”
“Bloody right it is.”
At that moment, Synthia’s voice chimed in again.
“Please be advised: Temporary gravitational shifts are normal during orbital adjustments. Equilibrium supplements have been optimized. Kindly return to your scheduled calm.”
The Slingshot Begins
The whole ship gave a lurch, a gravitational hiccup as Helix 25 completed its slingshot maneuver around the celestial body.
Bodies swayed unnaturally. Some hovered momentarily, shrieking.
Someone declared that they had achieved enlightenment.
Someone else vomited.Master Gou sighed deeply, rubbing his temples. “We should invent retirement for old Masters. People can’t handle their shit during those Moonacies. Months of it ahead, better focus on breath more.”
Snoot Lady, still unaffected, spread her arms wide and declared:
“And so, the rabbit prevails once again!”Evie, passing by on her way to the investigation, took one look at the scene of absolute madness and turned right back around.
“Yeah. Nope. Not this morning. Back to the Murder Board.”
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Klyutch Base – an Unknown Signal
The flickering green light on the old console pulsed like a heartbeat.
Orrin Holt leaned forward, tapping the screen. A faint signal had appeared on their outdated long-range scanners—coming from the coastline near the Black Sea. He exchanged a glance with Commander Koval, the no-nonsense leader of Klyutch Base.
“That can’t be right,” muttered Janos Varga, Solara’s husband who was managing the coms’ beside him. “We haven’t picked up anything out of the coast in years.”
Koval grunted like an irate bear, then exhaled sharply. “It’s not our priority. We already lost track of the fools we were following at the border. Let them go. If they went south, they’ve got bigger problems.”
Outside, a distant roar sliced through the cold dusk—a deep, guttural sound that rattled the reinforced windows of the command room.
Orrin didn’t flinch. He’d heard it before.
It was the unmistakable cry of a pack of sanglions— лев-кабан lev-kaban as the locals called the monstrous mutated beasts, wild vicious boars as ferocious as rabid lions that roamed Hungary’s wilds— and they were hunting. If the escapees had made their way there, they were as good as dead.
“Can’t waste the fuel chasing ghosts,” Koval grunted.
But Orrin was still watching the blip on the screen. That signal had no right to be there, nothing was left in this region for years.
“Sir,” he said slowly, “I don’t think this is just another lost survivor. This frequency—it’s old. Military-grade. And repeating. Someone wants to be found.”
A beat of silence. Then Koval straightened.
“You better be right Holt. Everyone, gear up.”
Merdhyn – Lazurne Coastal Island — The Signal Tossed into Space
Merdhyn Winstrom wiped the sweat from his brow, his fingers still trembling from the final connection. He’d made a ramshackle workshop out of a crumbling fishing shack on the deserted islet near Lazurne. He wasn’t one to pay too much notice to the mess or anythings so pedestrian —even as the smell of rusted metal and stale rations had started to overpower the one of sea salt and fish guts.
The beacon’s old circuitry had been a nightmare, but the moment the final wire sparked to life, he had known that the old tech had awoken: it worked.
The moment it worked, for the first time in decades, the ancient transponder from the crashed Helix 57 lifeboat had sent a signal into the void.
If someone was still out there, something was bound to hear it… it was a matter of time, but he had the intuition that he may even get an answer back.
Tuppence, the chatty rat had returned on his shoulder to nestle in the folds of his makeshift keffieh, but squeaked in protest as the old man let out a half-crazed, victorious laugh.
“Oh, don’t give me that look, you miserable blighter. We just opened the bloody door.”
Beyond the broken window, the coastline stretched into the grey horizon. But now… he wasn’t alone.
A sharp, rhythmic thud-thud-thud in the distance.
Helicopters.
He stepped outside, the biting wind lashing at his face, and watched the dark shapes appear on the horizon—figures moving through the low mist.
Armed. Military-like.
The men from the nearby Klyutch Base had found him.
Merdhyn grinned, utterly unfazed by their weapons or the silent threat in their stance. He lifted his trembling, grease-stained hands and pointed back toward the wreckage of Helix 57 behind him.
“Well then,” he called, voice almost cheerful, “reckon you lot might have the spare parts I need.”
The soldiers hesitated. Their weapons didn’t lower.
Merdhyn, however, was already walking toward them, rambling as if they’d asked him the most natural of questions.
“See, it’s been a right nightmare. Power couplings were fried. Comms were dead. And don’t get me started on the damn heat regulators. But you lot? You might just be the final missing piece.”
Commander Koval stepped forward, assessing the grizzled old man with the gleam of a genuine mad genius in his eyes.
Orrin Holt, however, wasn’t looking at the wreck.
His eyes were on the beacon.
It was still pulsing, but its pulse had changed — something had been answering back.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Helix 25 — Aftermath of the Solar Flare Alert
The Second Murder
It didn’t take them long to arrive at the scene, Riven alerted by a distraught Finkley who’d found the body.
Evie knelt beside the limp, twitching form of Mandrake, his cybernetic collar flickering erratically, tiny sparks dancing along its edge. The cat’s body convulsed, its organic parts frozen in eerie stillness while the cybernetic half stuttered between functions, blinking in and out of awareness.
Mandrake was both dead and not dead.
“Well, this is unsettling,” TP quipped, materializing beside them with an exaggerated frown. “A most profound case of existential uncertainty. Schrödinger himself would have found this delightful—if he weren’t very much confirmed dead.”
Riven crouched, running a scanner over Mandrake’s collar. The readout spat out errors. “Neural link’s corrupted. He’s lost something.”
Evie’s stomach twisted. “Lost what? But… he can be repaired, surely, can’t he?”
Evan replied with a sigh “Hard to tell how much damage he’s suffered, but we caught him in time thanks to Finkley’s reflexes, he may stand a chance, even if he may need to be reprogrammed.”
Mandrake’s single functioning eye flickered open, its usual sharpness dull. Then, rasping, almost disjointedly, he muttered:
“I was… murdered.”
Then his system crashed, leaving nothing but silence.
Upper Decks Carnival
Sue was still adjusting her hat and feathers for the Carnival Party wondering if that would be appropriate as she was planning to go to the wake first, and then to the Lexican’s baby shower. It wasn’t every day there was a baby nowadays. And a boy too. But then, there was no such thing as being overdressed in her book.
The ship’s intercom crackled to life, cutting through her thoughts, its automated cheerfulness electrifying like a misplaced party horn.
“Attention, dear passengers! As scheduled, with the solar flare now averted, we are preparing for our return to Earth. Please enjoy the journey and partake in today’s complimentary hibiscus tea at the Grand Hall! Samba!”
The words ‘return to Earth’ sent a shudder through Sue’s spine. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t possible.
A sudden pulse of static in her artificial limb made her flinch. A garbled transmission—so faint she almost dismissed it—whispered through her internal interface, that was constantly scanning hacking through the data streams of the ship, and having found critical intel that was quickly being scrubbed by the maintenance system.
Signal detected…
Beacon coordinates triangulating…
…origin: Earth…Her breath stopped. Sue had spent years pretending she knew everything, but this… was something else entirely.
She got the odd and ominous feeling that Synthia was listening.
Quadrant B – The Wake of Mr. Herbert
The air in the gathering hall was thick with preservative floral mist—the result of enthusiastic beauticians who had done their best to restore and rehydrate the late Mr. Herbert to some semblance of his former self.
And yet, despite their efforts, he still looked vaguely like a damp raisin in a suit.
Gloria adjusted her shawl and whispered to Sharon, “He don’t look half bad, does he?”
Sharon squinted. “Oh, love, I’d say he looks at least three-quarters bad.”
Marlowe Sr. stood by the casket, his posture unnervingly rigid, as if he were made of something more fragile than bone. When he spoke, his voice cracked. “Ethan.”
He was in no condition for a speech— only able to utter the name.
Gloria dabbed her eyes, nudging Mavis. “I reckon this is the saddest thing I’ve seen since they discontinued complimentary facials at the spa.”
Mavis sniffed. “And yet, they say he’ll be composted by next Tuesday. Bloody efficient, innit?”
Marlowe didn’t hear them.
Because at that moment, as he stared at his son’s face, the realization struck him like a dying star—this was no mistake. This was something bigger.
And for the first time in years, he felt the weight of knowing too much.
He would have to wake and talk to the Captain. She would know what to do.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Helix 25 – Gentle Utopia at Upper Decks
The Upper Decks of Helix 25 were a marvel of well-designed choreography and engineered tranquility. Life here was made effortless, thanks to an artful curation of everyday problems. Climate control ensured the air was always crisp, with just enough variation to keep the body alert, while maintaining a perfect balance of warm and cool, hygrometry, with no crazy seasons or climate change upheaval to disrupt the monotony. Food dispensers served gourmet meals for every individual preferences —decadent feasts perfectly prepared at the push of a button. The Helix cruise starships were designed for leisure, an eternity of comfort — and it had succeeded.
For the average resident, the days blended into one another in an animated swirl of hobbyist pursuits. There were the Arboretum Philosophers, who debated meaningfully over the purpose of existence while sipping floral-infused teas. There were the Artisans, who crafted digital masterpieces that vanished into the ship’s archives as soon as they were complete. There were the Virtual Adventurers, who lived entire lifetimes in fully immersive life-like simulations, all while reclining on plush lounges, connected to their brain chips courtesy of Muck Industries.
And then, there were Sharon, Gloria, and Mavis.
Three old ladies who, by all accounts, should have spent their days knitting and reminiscing about their youth, but instead had taken it upon themselves to make Helix 25 a little more interesting.
“Another marvelous day, ladies,” Sharon declared as she strolled along the gilded walkway of the Grand Atrium, a cavernous space filled with floating lounges and soft ambient music. The ceiling was a perfect replica of a sky—complete with drifting, lazy clouds and the occasional simulated flock of birds. Enough to make you almost forget you were in a closed fully-controlled environment.
Mavis sighed, adjusting her gaudy, glittering shawl. “It’s too marvelous, if you ask me. Bit samey, innit? Not even a good scandal to shake things up.”
Gloria scoffed. “Pah! That’s ‘cause we ain’t lookin’ hard enough. Did you hear about that dreadful business down in the Granary? Dried ‘im up like an apricot, they did. Disgustin’.”
“Dreadful,” Sharon agreed solemnly. “And not a single murder for decades, you know. We were overdue.”
Mavis clutched her pearls. “You make it sound like a good thing.”
Gloria waved a dismissive hand. “I’m just sayin’, bit of drama keeps people from losing their minds. No offense, but how many decades of spa treatments can a person endure before they go barmy?”
They passed a Wellness Lounge, where a row of residents were floating in Zero-G Hydrotherapy Pods, their faces aglow with Rejuvenex™ Anti-Aging Serum. Others lounged under mild UV therapy lamps, soaking up synthetic vitamin D while attendants rubbed nutrient-rich oils into their wrinkle-free skin.
Mavis peered at them. “Y’know, I swear some of ‘em are the same age as when we boarded.”
Gloria sniffed. “Not the same, Mavis. Just better preserved.”
Sharon tapped her lips, thoughtful. “I always wondered why we don’t have crime ‘ere. I mean, back on Earth, it were all fights, robbery, someone goin’ absolutely mental over a parking space—”
Gloria nodded. “It’s ‘cause we ain’t got money, Sha. No money, no stress, see? Everyone gets what they need.”
“Needs? Glo, love, people here have twelve-course meals and private VR vacations to Ancient Rome! I don’t reckon that counts as ‘needs’.”
“Well, it ain’t money, exactly,” Mavis pondered, “but we still ‘ave credits, don’t we?”
They fell into deep philosophical debates —or to say, their version of it.
Currency still existed aboard Helix 25, in a way. Each resident had a personal wealth balance, a digital measure of their social contributions—creative works, mentorship, scientific discovery, or participation in ship maintenance (for those who actually enjoyed labor, an absurd notion to most Upper Deckers). It wasn’t about survival, not like on the Lower Decks or the Hold, but about status. The wealthiest weren’t necessarily the smartest or the strongest, but rather those who best entertained or enriched the community.
Gloria finally waved her hand dismissively. “Point is, they keep us comfortable so we don’t start thinkin’ about things too much. Keep us occupied. Like a ship-sized cruise, but forever.”
Mavis wrinkled her nose. “A bit sinister, when you put it like that.”
“Well, I didn’t say it were sinister, I just said it were clever.” Gloria sniffed. “Anyway, we ain’t the ones who need entertainin’, are we? We’ve got a mystery on our hands.”
Sharon clapped excitedly. “Ooooh yes! A real mystery! Ain’t it thrillin’?”
“A proper one,” Gloria agreed. “With dead bodies an’ secrets an’—”
“—murder,” Mavis finished, breathless.
The three of them sighed in unison, delighted at the prospect.
They continued their stroll past the Grand Casino & Theatre, where a live orchestral simulation played for a well-dressed audience. Past the Astronomer’s Lounge, where youngster were taught to chart the stars that Helix 25 would never reach. Past the Crystal Arcade, where another group of youth of the ship enjoyed their free time on holographic duels and tactical board games.
So much entertainment. So much luxury.
So much designed distraction.
Gloria stopped suddenly, narrowing her eyes. “You ever wonder why we ain’t heard from the Captain in years?”
A hush fell over them.
Mavis frowned. “I thought you said the Captain were an idea, not a person.”
“Well, maybe. But if that’s true, who’s actually runnin’ the show?” Gloria folded her arms.
They glanced around, as if expecting an answer from the glowing Synthia panels embedded in every wall.
For the first time in a long while, they felt watched.
“…Maybe we oughta be careful,” Sharon muttered.
Mavis shivered. “Oh, Glo. What ‘ave you gotten us into this time?”
Gloria straightened her collar. “Dunno yet, love. But ain’t it excitin’?”
“With all the excitment, I almost forgot to tell you about that absolutely ghastly business,” Gloria declared, moments later, at the Moonchies’ Café, swirling her lavender-infused tea. “Watched a documentary this morning. About man-eating lions of Njombe.”
Sharon gasped, clutching her pearls. “Man eating lions?!”
Mavis blinked. “Wait. Man-eating lions, or man eating lions?”
There was a pause.
Gloria narrowed her eyes. “Mavis, why in the name of clotted cream would I be watchin’ a man eating lions?”
Mavis shrugged. “Well, I dunno, do I? Maybe he ran out of elephants.”
Sharon nodded sagely. “Yes, happens all the time in those travel shows.”
Gloria exhaled through her nose. “It’s not a travel show, Sha. And it’s not fiction.”
Mavis scoffed. “You sure? Sounds ridiculous.”
“Not as ridiculous as a man sittin’ down to a plate of roast lion chops,” Gloria shot back.
Mavis tilted her head. “Maybe it’s in a recipe book?”
Gloria slammed her teacup down. “I give up. I absolutely give up.”
Sharon patted her hand. “There, there, Glo. You can always watch somethin’ lighter tomorrow. Maybe a nice documentary about man-eating otters.”
Mavis grinned. “Or man eating otters.”
Gloria inhaled deeply, resisting the urge to upend her tea.
This, this was why Helix 25 had never known war.
No one had the time.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Helix 25 – Below Lower Decks – Shadow Sector
Kai Nova moved cautiously through the underbelly of Helix 25, entering a part of the Lower Decks where the usual throb of the ship’s automated systems turned muted. The air had a different smell here— it was less sterile, more… human. It was warm, the heat from outdated processors and unmonitored power nodes radiating through the bulkheads. The Upper Decks would have reported this inefficiency.
Here, it simply went unnoticed, or more likely, ignored.
He was being watched.
He knew it the moment he passed a cluster of workers standing by a storage unit, their voices trailing off as he walked by. Not unusual, except these weren’t Lower Deck engineers. They had the look of people who existed outside of the ship’s official structure—clothes unmarked by department insignias, movements too intentional for standard crew assignments.
He stopped at the rendezvous point: an unlit access panel leading to what was supposed to be an abandoned sublevel. The panel had been manually overridden, its system logs erased. That alone told him enough—whoever he was meeting had the skills to work outside of Helix 25’s omnipresent oversight.
A voice broke the silence.
“You’re late.”
Kai turned, keeping his stance neutral. The speaker was of indistinct gender, shaved head, tall and wiry, with sharp green eyes locked on his movements. They wore layered robes that, at a glance, could have passed as scavenged fabric—until Kai noticed the intricate stitching of symbols hidden in the folds.
They looked like Zoya’s brand —he almost thought… or let’s just say, Zoya’s influence. Zoya Kade’s litanies had a farther reach he would expect.
“Wasn’t aware this was a job interview,” Kai quipped, leaning casually against the bulkhead.
“Everything’s a test,” they replied. “Especially for outsiders.”
Kai smirked. “I didn’t come to join your book club. I came for answers.”
A low chuckle echoed from the shadows, followed by the shifting of figures stepping into the faint light. Three, maybe four of them. It could have been an ambush, but that was a display.
“Pilot,” the woman continued, avoiding names. “Seeker of truth? Or just another lost soul looking for something to believe in?”
Kai rolled his shoulders, sensing the tension in the air. “I believe in not running out of fuel before reaching nowhere.”
That got their attention.
The recruiter studied him before nodding slightly. “Good. You understand the problem.”
Kai crossed his arms. “I understand a lot of problems. I also understand you’re not just a bunch of doomsayers whispering in the dark. You’re organized. And you think this ship is heading toward a dead end.”
“You say that like it isn’t.”
Kai exhaled, glancing at the flickering emergency light above. “Synthia doesn’t make mistakes.”
They smiled, but it wasn’t friendly. “No. It makes adjustments.” — the heavy tone on the “it” struck him. Techno-bigots, or something else? Were they denying Synthia’s sentience, or just adjusting for gender misnomers, it was hard to tell, and he had a hard time to gauge the sanity of this group.
A low murmur of agreement rippled through the gathered figures.
Kai tilted his head. “You think she’s leading us into the abyss?”
The person stepped closer. “What do you think happened to the rest of the fleet, Pilot?”
Kai stiffened slightly. The Helix Fleet, the original grand exodus of humanity—once multiple ships, now only Helix 25, drifting further into the unknown.
He had never been given a real answer.
“Think about it,” they pressed. “This ship wasn’t built for endless travel. Its original mission was altered. Its course reprogrammed. You fly the vessel, but you don’t control it.” She gestured to the others. “None of us do. We’re passengers on a ride to oblivion, on a ship driven by a dead man’s vision.”
Kai had heard the whispers—about the tycoon who had bankrolled Helix 25, about how the ship’s true directive had been rewritten when the Earth refugees arrived. But this group… they didn’t just speculate. They were ready to act.
He kept his voice steady. “You planning on mutiny?”
They smiled, stepping back into the half-shadow. “Mutiny is such a crude word. We’re simply ensuring that we survive.”
Before Kai could respond, a warning prickle ran up his spine.
Someone else was watching.
He turned slowly, catching the faintest silhouette lingering just beyond the corridor entrance. He recognized the stance instantly—Cadet Taygeta.
Damn it.
She had followed him.
The group noticed, shifting slightly. Not hostile, but suddenly alert.
“Well, well,” the woman murmured. “Seems you have company. You weren’t as careful as you thought. How are you going to deal with this problem now?”
Kai exhaled, weighing his options. If Taygeta had followed him, she’d already flagged this meeting in her records. If he tried to run, she’d report it. If he didn’t run, she might just dig deeper.
And the worst part?
She wasn’t corruptible. She wasn’t the type to look the other way.
“You should go,” the movement person said. “Before your shadow decides to interfere.”
Kai hesitated for half a second, before stepping back.
“This isn’t over,” he said.
Her smile returned. “No, Pilot. It’s just beginning.”
With that, Kai turned and walked toward the exit—toward Taygeta, who was waiting for him with arms crossed, expression unreadable.
He didn’t speak first.
She did.
“You’re terrible at being subtle.”
Kai sighed, thinking quickly of how much of the conversation could be accessed by the central system. They were still in the shadow zone, but that wasn’t sufficient. “How much did you hear?”
“Enough.” Her voice was even, but her fingers twitched at her side. “You know this is treason, right?”
Kai ran a hand through his hair. “You really think we’re on course for a fresh new paradise?”
Taygeta didn’t answer right away. That was enough of an answer.
Finally, she exhaled. “You should report this.”
“You should,” Kai corrected.
She frowned.
He pressed on. “You know me, Taygeta. I don’t follow lost causes. I don’t get involved in politics. I fly. I survive. But if they’re right—if there’s even a chance that we’re being sent to our deaths—I need to know.”
Taygeta’s fingers twitched again.
Then, with a sharp breath, she turned.
“I didn’t see anything tonight.”
Kai blinked. “What?”
Her back was already to him, her voice tight. “Whatever you’re doing, Nova, be careful. Because next time?” She turned her head slightly, just enough to let him see the edge of her conflicted expression.
“I will report you.”
Then she was gone.
Kai let out a slow breath, glancing back toward the hidden movement behind him.
No turning back now.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Helix 25 – Lower Decks – Secretive Adjustments
Sue Brittany Kaleleonālani Forgelot moved with the practiced grace of someone accustomed to being noticed—but tonight, she walked as someone trying not to be. The Upper Deck was hers, where conversations flowed with elegant pretense and where everyone knew her by firstname —Sue, she would insist. There would be none of that bowing nonsense to her noble lineages —bless her distinguished ancestors.
Here, in the Lower Decks, she was a curiosity at best, an intrusion at worst.
Unlike the well-maintained Upper Decks, here the air was warmer, and one could sense mingled with the recycled air, a distinct scent of metal, oil, and even labouring bodies. Maintenance bots were limited, and keeping people busy with work helped with the social order. Lights flickered erratically in narrow corridors, nothing like the pristine glow of the Upper Deck’s crystal chandeliers. The Lower Decks were functional, built for work and survival, not for leisure. And deeper still—past the bustling workstations, past the overlooked mechanics keeping Helix 25 from falling apart—the Hold.
The Hold was where she found Luca Stroud.
A heavy, reinforced door hissed as it unlocked, and Sue stepped inside his dimly lit workshop. Stacks of salvaged tech lined the walls, interspersed with crates of unauthorized modifications in this workspace born of a mixture of necessity, ingenuity, and quiet rebellion.
Luca barely looked up as he wiped oil from his hands. “You’re late, dear.”
Sue huffed, settling into the chair he had long since designated for her. “A lady does not rush. Besides, I had affairs to attend to.” She crossed one leg over the other, her silk shawl catching on the metallic seam of a cybernetic limb beneath it. “And I had to dodge half the ship to get here unnoticed.”
Luca grunted, kneeling beside her. “You wouldn’t have to sneak if you’d just let one of the Upper Deck doctors service this thing.” He tapped lightly on the synthetic skin to reveal the metallic prosthetic, watching as the synthetic nerves twitched in response.
Sue’s expression turned sharp. “You know why I can’t.”
Luca said nothing, but his smirk spoke volumes.
There were things she couldn’t let the Upper Deck medics see. Upgrades, modifications, small enhancements that gave her just enough edge. In the circles she moved in, knowledge was power. And she was far too valuable to be at the mercy of those who wanted her dependent.
Luca examined the joint, nodding to himself. “You’ve been walking too much on it.”
“Well, forgive me for using my own legs.”
He tightened a wire. Sue winced, but he ignored it. “You need recalibration. And I need better parts.”
Sue gave a slow, knowing smile. “And what minor favors will you require this time?”
Luca leaned back, thoughtful. “Information. Since you’re generous with it.”
She sighed, shifting in her seat. “Fine. You’re lucky I find you amusing.”
He adjusted a component with expert hands. “Tell me about the murder.”
Sue arched a brow. “Everyone wants to talk about that. You’d think no one had ever died before.”
“They haven’t,” Luca countered, voice flat. “Not for a long time. And not like this.”
She studied him, his interest piquing her own. “So you think it was a real murder.”
Luca let out a dry chuckle. “Oh, it was a murder alright. And you know it.”
Sue exhaled, considering what to share. “Well, rumor has it, the DNA found in the crime scene doesn’t belong here. It’s from the past. Far past.”
Luca glanced up, intrigued. “How far?”
Sue leaned in, voice hushed. “Crusader far.”
He let out a low whistle, shaking his head. “That’s… new.”
She tilted her head. “What does that mean to you?”
Luca hesitated, then shrugged. “Means whoever’s playing god with DNA sequencing isn’t as smart as they think they are.”
Sue smiled at that, more amused than disturbed. “And I suppose you have theories?”
Luca gave her cybernetic limb one final adjustment, then stood. “I have suspicions.”
Sue sighed dramatically. “How thrilling.” She flexed her leg, satisfied with the result. “Keep me informed, and I’ll see what I can find for you.”
Luca smirked. “You always do.”
As she rose to leave, she paused at the door. “Oh, one last thing, dear.”
Luca glanced at her. “What?”
Sue’s smirk deepened. “Should I put in a good word to the Captain for you?”
The question hung between them.
Luca narrowed his eyes. “Nobody’s ever met the Captain.”
She nodded, satisfied, and left him to his thoughts.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
At first, no one noticed.
They were still speculating about the truck—where it had come from, where it might be going, whether following it was a brilliant idea or a spectacularly bad one.
And, after all, Finja was always muttering about something. Dust, filth, things not put back where they belonged.
But then her voice rose till she was all but shouting.
“Of course, they’re all savages. I don’t know how I put up with them! Honestly, I AM AT MY WIT’S END!”
“Finja?” Anya called. “Are you okay?”
Finja strode on, intent on her diatribe.
“No, I don’t know where they are going,” she yelled. “If I knew that, I probably wouldn’t be here, would I?”
Tala hurried to catch up and stepped in front of Finja, blocking her path. “Finja, are you okay? Who are you talking to?”
Finja sighed loudly; it was tedious. People were so obsessed with explanations.
“If you must know,” she said, “I am conversing with my Auntie Finnley in Australia.”
“Ooooh!” Vera’s eyes lit up. “ A relative!”
Yulia, walking between Luka and Lev, giggled. She adored the twins and couldn’t decide which one she liked more. They were both so tall and handsome. Others found it hard to tell them apart but she always could. It was rumoured that at birth they had been joined at the hip.
“Finja is totally bonkers,” she declared cheerfully and the twins smiled in unison.
“I will have you know I’m not bonkers.” Finja felt deeply offended and misunderstood. “I have been communicating with Auntie Finnley since childhood. She was highly influential in my formative years.”
“How so?” asked Tala.
“Few people appreciate the importance of hygiene like my Auntie Finnley. She works as a cleaner at the Flying Fish Inn in the Australian Outback. Lovely establishment I gather. But terrible dust.”
Vera nodded sagely. “A sensible place to survive the apocalypse.”
“Exactly.” Finja rewarded her with a tight smile.
Jian raised an eyebrow. “And she’s alive? Your aunt?”
“I don’t converse with ghosts!” Finja waved a hand dismissively. “They all survived there thanks to the bravery of Aunt Finnley. Had to disinfect the whole inn, mind you. Said it was an absolute nightmare.” Finja shuddered at the thought of it.
Gregor snorted. “You’re telling us you have a telepathic connection with your aunt in Australia… and she is also mostly concerned about … hygiene?”
Finja glared at him. “Standards must be maintained,” she admonished. “Even after the end of the world.”
“Do you talk to anyone else?” Tala asked. “Or is it just your aunt?”
Finja regarded Tala through slitted eyes. “I’m also talking to Finkley.”
“Where is this Finkley, dear?” asked Anja gently. “Also at the outback?”
“OMG,” Finja said. “Can you imagine those two together?” She cackled at the thought, then pulled herself together. “No. Finkley is on the Helix 25. Practically runs it by all accounts. But also keeps it spotless, of course.”
“Helix 25? The spaceship?” Mikhail asked, suddenly interested. He exchanged glances with Tala who shrugged helplessly.
Yulia laughed. “She’s definitely mad!”
“So what? Aren’t we all,” said Petro.
Molly, who had been quietly watching with Tundra, finally spoke. “And you say they are both… cleaners?” She wasn’t sure what to make of this group. She wondered if it would be better to continue on alone with Tundra? She didn’t want to put the child in any danger.
“Cleanliness runs in the family,” Finja said. “Now, if you’ll all excuse me, I was mid-conversation.”
She closed her eyes, concentrating. The group watched with interest as her lips moved silently, her brow furrowed in deep thought.
Then, suddenly, she opened her eyes and threw her hands in the air.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” she muttered. “Finkley is complaining about dust floating in low gravity. Finnley is complaining about the family not taking their boots off at the door. What a pair of whingers. At least I didn’t inherit THAT.”
She sniffed, adjusted her backpack, and walked on.
The others stood there for a moment, letting it all sink in.
Gregor clapped his hands together. “That was the most wonderfully insane thing I’ve heard since the world ended.”
Mikhail sighed. “So, we are following the direction of the truck?”
Anya nodded. “I’ll keep an eye on Finja. The stress is getting to her, and we have no meds if it escalates.”
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Orrin Holt gripped the wheel of the battered truck, his knuckles white as the vehicle rumbled over the dry, cracked road. The leather wrap was a patchwork of smooth and worn, stichted together from whatever scraps they had—much like the quilts his mother used to make before her hands gave out. The main road was a useless, unpredictable mess of asphalt gravels and sinkholes. Years of war with Russia, then the collapse, left it to rot before anyone could fix it. Orrin stuck to the dirt path beside it. That was the only safe way through. The engine coughed but held. A miracle, considering how many times it had been patched together.
The cargo in the back was too important for a breakdown now. Medical supplies—antibiotics, painkillers, and a few salvaged vials of something even rarer. They’d traded well for it, risking much. Now he had to get it back to Base Klyutch (Ukrainian word for Key) without incident. If he continued like that he could make it before noon.
Still, something bothered him. That group of people he’d seen.
They had been barely more than silhouettes on top of a hill. Strangers, a rarity in these times. His first instinct had been to stop and evaluate who they were. But his instructions let room for no delay. So, he’d pushed forward and ignored them. The world wasn’t kind to the wandering. But they hadn’t looked like raiders or scavengers. Lost, perhaps. Or searching.
The truck lurched forward as he pushed it harder. The fences of the base rose in the distance, grey and wiry against the blue sky. Base Klyutch was a former military complex, fortified over the years with scavenged materials, steel sheets, and watchtowers. It wasn’t perfect, but it kept them alive.
As he rolled up to the main gate, the sentries swung the barricade open. Before he could fully cut the engine, a woman wearing a pristine white lab coat stepped forward, her sharp eyes scanning the truck’s cargo bed. Dr. Yelena Markova, the camp’s chief doctor, a former nurse who had to step up when the older one died in a raid on their camp three years ago. Stern-faced and wiry, with a perpetual air of exhaustion, she moved with the efficiency of someone who had long stopped hoping for ease. She had been waiting for this delivery.
“Finally,” she murmured, motioning for her assistants to start unloading. “We were running low. This will keep us going for a while.”
Orrin barely had time to nod before Dmytro Koval, the de facto leader of the base, strode toward him with the gait of a tall bear. His face seemed to have been carved out by a dulled blade, hardened by years of survival. A scar barred his mouth, pulling slightly at the corner when he spoke, giving the impression of a permanent sneer.
“Did you get it?” Koval asked, voice low.
Orrin reached into his kaki jacket and pulled out a sealed letter, along with a small package.
Koval took both, his expression unreadable. “Anything on the road?”
Orrin exhaled and adjusted his stance. “Saw something on the way back. A group, about a dozen, on a hill ten kilometers out. They seemed lost.”
“Armed?” asked Koval with a frown.
“Can’t say for sure.”
Dr. Markova straightened. “Lost? Unarmed? Out in the open like that, they won’t last long with Sokolov’s gang roaming the land. We have to go take them in.”
Koval grimaced. “Or they’re Sokolov’s spies. Trying to infiltrate us and find a weakness in our defenses. You know how it works.”
Before Koval could argue, a new voice cut in. “Or they could just be people.”
Solara Ortega had stepped into the conversation, brushing dirt from her overalls. A woman of lean strength, with the tan of someone spending long hours outside. Her sharp amber eyes carried the weight of someone who had survived too much but refused to be hardened by it. Orrin shoved down a mix of joy and ache at her sight. Her voice was calm but firm. “We can’t always assume the worst. We need more hands and we don’t leave people to die if we can help it. And in case you forgot, Koval, you don’t make all the decisions around here. I say we send a team to assess them.”
Koval narrowed his eyes, but he held his tongue. There was tension between them, but the council wasn’t a dictatorship.
“Fine,” Koval said after a moment, his jaw tense. “A team of two. They scout first. No direct contact until we’re sure. Orrin, you one of them take whoever wants to accompany you, but not one of my men. We need to maintain tight security.”
Dr. Markova sighed with relief when the man left. “If he wasn’t good at what he does, I would gladly kick him out of our camp.”
Solara, her face framed by strands of dark hair, shot a glance at Orrin. “I’m coming with you.”
This time, Orrin couldn’t repress a longing for a time before everything fell apart, when she had been his wife. The collapse had torn them apart in an instant, and by the time he found her again, years later, she had built a new life within the base in Ukraine. She had a husband now, one of the scientists managing the radio equipment, and two children. Orrin kept his expression neutral, but the weight of time pressed heavy on him.
“Then let’s get on the move. They might not stay there long.”
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Upper Decks – The Pilot’s Seat (Sort Of)
Kai Nova reclined in his chair, boots propped against the console, arms folded behind his head. The cockpit hummed with the musical blipping of automation. Every sleek interface, polished to perfection by the cleaning robots under Finkley’s command, gleamed in a lulling self-sustaining loop—self-repairing, self-correcting, self-determining.
And that meant there wasn’t much left for him to do.
Once, piloting meant piloting. Gripping the yoke, feeling the weight of the ship respond, aligning a course by instinct and skill. Now? It was all handled before he even thought to lift a finger. Every slight course adjustment, to the smallest stabilizing thrust were effortlessly preempted by Synthia’s vast, all-knowing “intelligence”. She anticipated drift before it even started, corrected trajectory before a human could perceive the error.
Kai was a pilot in name only.
A soft chime. Then, the clipped, clinical voice of Cadet Taygeta:
“You’re slacking off again.”
Kai cracked one eye open, groaning. “Good morning, buzzkill.”
She stood rigid at the entryway, arms crossed, datapad in hand. Young, brilliant, and utterly incapable of normal human warmth. Her uniform was pristine—always pristine—with a regulation-perfect collar that probably had never been out of place in their entire life.
“Synthia calculates you’ve spent 76% of your shifts in a reclining position,” the Cadet noted. “Which, statistically, makes you more of a chair than a pilot.”
Kai smirked. “And yet, here I am, still getting credits.”
The Cadet face had changed subtly ; she exhaled sharply. “I don’t understand why they keep you here. It’s inefficient.”
Kai swung his legs down and stretched. “They keep me around for when things go wrong. Machines are great at running the show—until something unexpected happens. Then they come crawling back to good ol’ human instinct.”
“Unexpected like what? Absinthe Pirates?” The Cadet smirked, but Kai said nothing.
She narrowed their eyes, her voice firm but wavering. “Things aren’t supposed to go wrong.”
Kai chuckled. “You must be new to space, Taygeta.”
He gestured toward the vast, star-speckled abyss beyond the viewport. Helix 25 cruised effortlessly through the void, a floating city locked in perfect motion. But perfection was a lie. He could feel it.
There were some things off. At the top of his head, one took precedence.
Fuel — it wasn’t infinite, and despite Synthia’s unwavering quantum computing, he knew it was a problem no one liked talking about. The ship wasn’t meant for this—for an endless voyage into the unknown. It was meant to return.
But that wasn’t happening.
He leaned forward, flipping a display open. “Let’s play a game, Cadet. Humor me.” He tapped a few keys, pulling up Helix 25’s projected trajectory. “What happens if we shift course by, say… two degrees?”
The Cadet scoffed. “That would be reckless. At our current velocity, even a fractional deviation—”
“Just humor me.”
After a pause, she exhaled sharply and ran the numbers. A simulation appeared: a slight two-degree shift, a ripple effect across the ship’s calculated path.
And then—
Everything went to hell.
The screen flickered red.
Projected drift. Fuel expenditure spike. The trajectory extending outward into nowhere.
The Cadet’s posture stiffened. “That can’t be right.”
“Oh, but it is,” Kai said, leaning back with a knowing grin. “One little adjustment, and we slingshot into deep space with no way back.”
The Cadet’s eyes flicked to the screen, then back to Kai. “Why would you test that?”
Kai drummed his fingers on the console. “Because I don’t trust a system that’s been in control for decades without oversight.”
A soft chime.
Synthia’s voice slid into the cockpit, smooth and impassive.
“Pilot Nova. Unnecessary simulations disrupt workflow efficiency.”
Kai’s jaw tensed. “Yeah? And what happens if a real course correction is needed?”
“All adjustments are accounted for.”
Kai and the Cadet exchanged a look.
Synthia always had an answer. Always knew more than she said.
He tapped the screen again, running a deeper scan. The ship’s fuel usage log. Projected refueling points.
All were blank.
Kai’s gut twisted. “You know, for a ship that’s supposed to be self-sustaining, we sure don’t have a lot of refueling options.”
The Cadet stiffened. “We… don’t refuel?”
Kai’s eyes didn’t leave the screen. “Not unless Synthia finds us a way.”
Silence.
Then, the Cadet swallowed. For the first time, a flicker of something almost human in her expression.
Uncertainty.
Kai sighed, pushing back from the console. “Welcome to the real job, kid.”
Because the truth was simple.
They weren’t driving this ship.
The ship was driving them.
And it all started when all hell broke lose on Earth, decades back, and when the ships of refugees caught up with the Helix 25 on its way back to Earth. One of those ships, his dad had told him, took over management, made it turn around for a new mission, “upgraded” it with Synthia, and with the new order…
The ship was driving them, and there was no sign of a ghost beyond the machine.
In reply to: Helix Mysteries – Inside the Case
The Lexicans of Helix 25 are a faction dedicated to the reclamation and reinterpretation of history, believing that the past is not a fixed truth but a fluid narrative shaped by those who record it. Emerging from the cultural divide between the ship’s original elite passengers and the refugees who boarded during the exodus, they see language, identity, and history as tools of power, often challenging the authority of archivists like Seren Vega, whom they view as gatekeepers of a biased record. To the Lexicans, the past is not something to be merely preserved—it is something to be reclaimed, corrected, and, when necessary, rewritten. Their influence runs deep in debates over ship governance, memory preservation, and even AI ethics, as they push for a future where history belongs to the people rather than the institutions that once controlled it.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
The “do not enter, crime scene” sticker haphazardly printed, was not even sealing the door. Amateur job, but of course, this was to be expected when such murder event had not been seen in a generation.
She entered surrepticiously, the door to the drying chamber slid shut with a hiss behind her, muffling the last of the frantic voices outside. Evie exhaled. She needed a moment. Just her, the crime scene, and—
A flicker of light.
“Ah-ha!” Trevor Pee Marshall, aka TP, materialized beside her, adjusting his holographic lapels with exaggerated precision. “What we have here, dear Evie, is a classic case of les morts très mystérieux.” His mustache twitched. “Or as my good friend Clouseau would say—‘Zis does not add up!’”
Evie rolled her eyes. “Less theatrics, more analysis, TP.”
Despite the few glitches, she was proud and eager to take her invention to a real-life trial run. Combining all the brilliant minds of enquêteur Jacques Clouseau, as well as the flair of Marshall Pee Stoll from the beloved Peaslanders children stories, TP was the help they needed to solve this.
“Ahem.” TP straightened, flickering momentarily before reappearing near the machine, peering inside with a magnifying glass he absolutely didn’t need.
Evie pulled up the logs. The AI had flagged the event—drying cycle activated at 0200 hours. Duration: excessive. But no shutdown? That was impossible.
TP let out a thoughtful “hmm.” Then, with the gravitas of a seasoned investigator, he declared, “Madame, I detect a most peculiar discrepancy.”
Evie looked up. “Go on.”
TP pivoted dramatically. “The AI should have stopped the cycle, yes? But what if… it never saw a problem?”
Evie frowned. That wasn’t how safety protocols worked. Unless—
She tapped rapidly through the logs. Her stomach dropped.
The system hadn’t flagged a human inside at all.
Someone had altered the ship’s perception of Mr. Herbert before he ever stepped into the machine.
Evie’s pulse quickened. This wasn’t just murder.
It was premeditated.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Leaving the Asylum
They argued about whether to close the heavy gates behind them. In the end, they left them open. The metal groaned as it sat ajar, rust flaking from its hinges.
“Are we all here?” Anya asked. Now that they were leaving, she felt in charge again—or at least, she needed to be. If morale slipped, things would unravel fast. She scanned the group, counting them off.
“Mikhail,” she started, pointing. “Tala. Vera, our esteemed historian.”
Vera sniffed. “I prefer genealogist, thank you very much.”
“Petro,” Anya continued, “probably about to grumble.”
Petro scowled. “I was thinking.”
“Jian, our mystery man.”
Jian raised an eyebrow in acknowledgment.
Anya turned to the next two. “Ah, the twins. Even though you two have never spoken, I’ve always assumed you understood me. Don’t prove me wrong now.”
The twins—Luka and Lev—nodded and grinned at exactly the same time.
“Then we have Yulia… no, we don’t have Yulia. Where in God’s name is Yulia?”
“Here I am!” Yulia’s voice rang out as she jogged back toward them, breathless. “I just went to say goodbye to the cat.” She sighed dramatically. “I wish we could take him. Please, can we take him?”
Yulia was short and quick-moving, her restless hands always in motion, her thoughts spilling out just as fast.
“We can’t,” Mikhail said firmly. “And he can look after himself.”
She huffed. “Well, I expect we could if we tried.”
“And finally, old Gregor, who I gather would rather be taking a nap.”
Gregor, who was well past eighty, rubbed his face and yawned. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Anya frowned, scanning the group again. “Wait. We’re missing Finja.”
A small scraping sound came from behind them.
Finja stood near the gate, furiously scrubbing the rusted metal with a rag she had pulled from her sleeve. “This place is disgusting,” she muttered. “Filth everywhere. The world may have ended, but that’s no excuse for grime.”
Anya sighed. “Finja, leave the gate alone.”
Finja gave it one last wipe before tucking the rag away with a huff. “Fine.”
Anya shook her head. “That’s eleven. No one’s run off or died yet. A promising start.”
They formed a motley crew, each carrying as much as they could manage. Mikhail pushed a battered cart, loaded with scavenged supplies—blankets, tools, whatever food they had left.
The road beneath their feet was cracked and uneven, roots breaking through in places. They followed it in silence for the most part. Even Yulia remained quiet. Some glanced back, but no one turned around.
The nearest village was more than fifty kilometers away. In all directions, there was only wilderness—fields long overtaken by weeds, trees pushing through cracks in forgotten roads. A skeletal signpost leaned at an odd angle, its lettering long since faded.
“It’s going to be dark soon,” Mikhail said. “And the old ones are tired. Aren’t you, Vera?”
“That’s enough of the old business,” puffed Vera, pulling her shoulders back.
Tala laughed. “Well, I must be an old one. I didn’t sleep a wink last night. And there’s a clearing over there.” She pointed.
The evening was cool, but they managed to build a small fire and scrape together a meal of vegetables they’d brought from their garden.
After their meal, they sat around the fire while Finja busied herself tidying up. “Dirty savages,” she muttered under her breath. Then, more loudly, “We should keep watch tonight.”
Vera, perched on a log, pulled her shawl tightly around her. The glow from the fire cast long shadows across her face.
“Vera, you look like a witch,” Yulia declared. “We should have brought the cat for you to ride on a broomstick together.”
“I’ll have you know I’m descended from witches,” Vera replied. “I know none of you think you’re related to me, but just imagine what your great-grandparents would say if they saw us now. Running into the wilderness like a band of exiled aristocrats.”
Jian, seated nearby, smirked slightly. “My great-grandparents were rice farmers.”
Vera brightened—Jian never talked about his past. She leaned in conspiratorially. “Do you know your full lineage? Because I do. I know mine back fourteen generations. You’d be amazed how many bloodlines cross without people realizing.”
Tala shook her head but smiled. Like Petro and Gregor, Vera had been at the asylum for many decades, a relic of another time. She claimed to have been a private investigator and genealogist in her former life.
Petro, hunched over and rubbing his hands by the fire, muttered, “We’re all ghosts now. Doesn’t matter where we came from.”
“Oh, stop that, Petro,” Anya admonished. “Remember our plan?”
“We go to the city,” Jian said. He rarely spoke unless he had something worth saying. “There will be things left behind. Maybe tech, maybe supplies. If I can get into an old server, I might even find something useful.”
“And if there’s nothing?” Petro moaned. “We should never have left.” He clasped his hands over his head.
Jian shrugged. “The world doesn’t erase itself overnight.”
Mikhail nodded. “We rest tonight. Tomorrow, we head for the city. And Finja’s right—tonight we take turns keeping watch.”
They sat in silence, watching the fire burn low. The evening stretched long and uneasy.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Survivors in Ukraine
Not for the first time Molly wished they’d never made the journey. She wanted to go back and end her days where she’d chosen to retire. With Ellis gone, and then Ethan and Nina, there was nothing to keep her here, and nothing to keep Tundra here. And there had been no reason to come, in the end. There were no survivors in Ukraine either, and they encountered none on the long and difficult journey from Spain.
It was Nina’s idea to go back to her home country. She was a refugee from the war, she and her mother. Nina met Ethan at school in England and Ethan often used to bring her on holidays to visit his grandmother in Andalucia. When the plague struck, they were there with Molly, quarantined and with no way to return to England. Molly shuddered at the memory of the awful realisation that there was nobody else alive, but for her friend over the road who looked after the cows. Just Molly, Ethan, Nina, and Antonio and all the bodies.
It was Antonio’s idea to take all the bodies of the neighbours out into the fields for the vultures, rightly stating that it was impossible for him and Ethan to bury them all. And so they did. Best photos of vultures I ever took, and nobody to show them to, Molly had grumbled at the time.
They managed for a considerable time looting the neighbours pantries, garages, and barns and foraging further afield until all the cars in the village ran out of fuel, always hoping to find people, other survivors, but they never did. When the fuel ran out they used the horses. They could have managed for some time longer if they stayed where they were, but the desire to find people was strong.
The decision was made to head north, along the once populous coast, taking 12 horses to carry themselves and essentials, hoping to find more people. There were no people. They kept walking, and when Nina suggested they keep walking to Ukraine, nobody could think of a good reason why not to.
Molly’s sorrowful reminiscence sitting in the late afternoon sun was interrupted by a shout from Tundra who was running towards her. “Look, look over there!” Molly winced as Tundra pulled her upright too quickly. “Over there!” she said, pointing to a copse just below the hills on the horizon.
“A wisp of smoke!” Molly whispered wonderingly. “Like…like a campfire or something…”
The 93 year old woman and her twelve year old great granddaughter looked at each other in amazement. “People,” they whispered in unison.
“Tundra, saddle up the horses. We can’t wait for morning”, Molly said, “They may be gone. Run, girl! Don’t just stand there with your mouth open!”
Suddenly Molly felt like she was only 67 again.
People!
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
The Asylum 2050
They had been talking about leaving for a long time.
Not in any urgent way, not in a we must leave now kind of way, but in the slow, circling conversations of people who had too much time and not enough answers.
Those who had left before them had never returned. Perhaps they had found something better, though that seemed unlikely. Perhaps they had found nothing at all. The first group left over twenty years ago—just for supplies. They never came back. Others drifted off over the years. They never came back either.
The core group had stayed because—what else was there? The asylum had been safe, for the most part. It had become home. Overgrown now, with only a fraction of its former inhabitants. The walls had once kept them in; now, they were what kept the rest of the world out.
But the crops were failing. The soil was thinning. The last winter had been long and cruel. Summer was harsh. Water was harder to find.
And so the reasons to stay had been replaced with reasons to go.
She was about forty now—or near enough, though time had softened the numbers. Natalia. A name from a past life; now they called her Tala.
Her family had left her here years ago. Paid well for it, as if they were settling an expensive inconvenience. She had been young then—too young to know how final it would be. They had called her difficult, willful, unable to conform. She wasn’t mad, but they had paid to have her called mad so they could get rid of her. And in the world before, that had been enough.
She had been furious at first. She tried to run away even though the asylum was many miles from anywhere. The drugs they made her take put an end to that. The drugs stopped many years ago, but she no longer wanted to run.
She sat at the edge of the vegetable garden, turning soil between her fingers. It was dry, thinning. No matter how deep she dug, the color stayed the same—pale, lifeless.
“Nothing wants to grow anymore,” said Anya, standing over her. Older—mid-sixties. Once a nurse, before everything had fallen apart. She had been one of the staff members who stayed behind when the first group left for supplies, but now she was the only one remaining. The others had abandoned the asylum years ago. At first, her authority had meant something. Now, it was just a memory, but she still carried it like an old habit. She was practical, sharp-eyed, and had a way of making decisions that others followed without question.
Tala wiped her hands on her skirt and looked up. “We probably should have left last year.”
Anya sighed. She dropped a brittle stalk of something dead into the compost pile. “Doesn’t matter now. We must go soon, or we don’t go at all.”
There was no arguing with that.
Later, in the old communal hall, the last of them gathered. Eleven of them.
Mikhail leaned against the window, his arms crossed. He was a little older than Tala. He thought a long time before he spoke.
“How many weapons do we have?”
Anya shrugged. “A couple of old rifles with half a dozen bullets. A handful of knives. And whatever rocks and sticks we pick up on the way.”
“It’s not enough to defend ourselves,” Tala said. Petro, an older resident who couldn’t remember life before the asylum, moaned and rocked. “But we’ll have our wits about us,” she added, offering a small reassurance.
Mikhail glanced at her. “We don’t know what’s out there.”
Before communication went silent, there had been stories of plagues, wars, starvation, entire cities turning against themselves. People had come through the asylum’s doors shortly before the collapse, mad with what they had seen.
But then, nobody came. The fences had grown thick with vines. And the world had gone quiet.
Over time, they had become a kind of family, bound by necessity rather than blood. They were people who had been left behind for reasons that no longer mattered. In this world, sanity had become a relative thing. They looked after one another, oddities and all.
Mikhail exhaled and pushed off the window. “Tomorrow, then.”
