The black box hummed in a frequency only machines could hear.
Drayven Korr stared at the object resting on the metal table, his breath fogging against the cold glass of the observation chamber. It was roughly the size of a lunchbox, jet black with no visible seams or ports—just smooth, polished edges that absorbed light like a singularity. His mind could barely process what he was looking at. He'd been a maintenance engineer for too long to believe in coincidences, but this? This was beyond his training.
According to Central Archives, the object didn't exist.
According to his hands, it definitely did.
He hadn't meant to find it. Two hours ago, he'd been ankle-deep in coolant pipes under Deck 17, rerouting circuits for the Chrono Gate's power grid. A normal day for an underpaid maintenance engineer on the edge of humanity's last great experiment—the Dawnbreaker, humanity's final colony ship, halfway to the Orion Cluster.
Then the floor collapsed. Literally.
Drayven fell through thirty feet of rusted infrastructure and landed in a forgotten subdeck that wasn't on any schematic. A place that shouldn't have existed, even though the ship's AI had no problem mapping it. That's where he found the chamber. And the box.
No lights. No systems. Just the black object sitting on a pedestal like it had been waiting.
For him.
His fingers itched, but something held him back. His training, his instinct, told him to report it. Log it. But then… he felt something. A subtle vibration, a hum in the air that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. It wasn't just the ship's systems—it was something else. The box.
PING.[UNRECOGNIZED OBJECT IDENTIFIED.][SYNC POTENTIAL: 97.2%][INITIATE? Y/N]
Drayven blinked, rubbing his eyes, but the prompt still lingered. It was more than just a notification—it was embedded in his mind, an invasive thought that wasn't his. His stomach churned.
"What the hell?" he muttered aloud.
There was no interface, no neural link, no uplink HUD. He hadn't authorized any implants beyond his basic work rig—no black-market augmentations, no experimental firmware. He wasn't equipped for this, not by a long shot. Yet here it was, the prompt staring at him like a taunt.
[INITIATE SYNC? Y/N]
The words sync sent a ripple of dread down his spine. He knew what the term meant in a broad sense—syncing with AI systems, with tech networks, with virtual constructs. But this? This wasn't just tech.
This was something else. Something… ancient.
He looked down at his hands, trembling slightly. His mind raced with possibilities. This was beyond the mission. His job was simple—maintain systems, troubleshoot anomalies, report failures. But this… this box was a failure in and of itself.
He couldn't resist. Not entirely. He reached out slowly, fingers brushing the surface.
The instant his fingers made contact, everything shattered.
The world convulsed in a flash of light and noise, like falling through a window made of stars. The sensation was overwhelming, disorienting. Time itself seemed to bend and fold. Drayven's vision flickered—he saw a thousand images at once.
Explosions. Screaming. The Chrono Gate imploding. The hum of the engines failing, the rupture of the time-distorting machinery. And then, he was there. In deep space, watching the Dawnbreaker, their colony ship, break apart in the void, its hull splintering like paper caught in a cosmic wind.
He saw himself, older, eyes hollow, whispering a name he didn't recognize.
"Reya..."
The name echoed in his mind, though it was a name he had never spoken. Or had he?
Before he could process it, he felt his body plummet through the cold expanse of space, drifting weightlessly toward the blackness. Then there was something—something vast, ancient, coiled in the black between stars. Watching. Waiting. A presence so immense it stretched his mind, like it was trying to pull him into itself.
And then, just as quickly, it was gone.
Everything went dark.
He awoke on the floor of the subdeck, gasping for air, as if he had been drowning. His throat burned, but his mind felt… fragmented. The edges of his thoughts were frayed, like the memory of a dream slipping away just as you tried to grasp it. He blinked, trying to shake off the disorientation, the dizziness.
The box was gone.
But the prompt remained. Hovering in his vision like a specter.
[SYNC COMPLETE.][MEMORY ANCHOR ESTABLISHED: TIMESTAMP -14 DAYS][WARNING: CHRONO LOOP DETECTED.][BEGINNING QUANTUM REBOOT…]
"What the hell does that even mean?" he hissed, staggering to his feet.
He gripped the edge of the console, steadying himself. His breath came in quick, shallow gasps. Something was wrong. His head pounded as a surge of unfamiliar knowledge flooded his brain. Not just memories—experiences—from another version of him. Another timeline, perhaps. His fingers twitched, pressing against the cold metal as if trying to ground himself in the present.
It felt like something inside him was waking up. Something alien. Something that shouldn't exist.
His hands trembled, but it wasn't fear—it was awareness. He suddenly knew things he shouldn't.
A fire would break out in the medical bay tomorrow. His best friend, Captain Varick, would break his arm in a fight with a rival crew member. The Chrono Gate—a device designed to stabilize the ship's transition between timelines—would fail. No, it would implode.
Not on his watch.
Drayven shook his head, pushing the thoughts away. This wasn't real. It couldn't be.
"Is this some kind of sick joke?" he muttered, his voice barely a whisper. "No… it's real."
The heavy thrum of the ship's machinery hummed through the deck, a constant reminder of the dying colony ship that was supposed to save humanity. Every creak, every groan of the Dawnbreaker felt amplified. This was supposed to be their salvation—their escape from Earth's dying orbit. They were supposed to reach the farthest reaches of space, to unlock the potential of time itself with the Chrono Gate.
And yet…
The box… and the sync… it was real, wasn't it?
He rubbed his temples, trying to clear the fog from his head. The walls were closing in—he could feel it. He had to do something.
But there was only one thing he knew for sure.
The future was unstable. His actions were no longer his own. He was connected to something larger now. And the only way out was forward.
He stared at the dim, flickering console that marked the entrance to the subdeck. The ship's AI voice crackled, familiar and cold.
"Drayven Korr, please proceed to Command Deck for emergency debriefing."
His heart skipped a beat. The emergency debriefing wasn't scheduled until— two weeks from now.
The voices in his head grew louder, overlapping, fractured. Different voices—shattered fragments of memories, whispers from another version of himself. He tried to focus. Tried to block it out.
"Reya..." The name was foreign but... not.
He turned, looking at the dim corridor leading to the rest of the ship. The distant hum of life support systems was the only thing that kept him anchored to reality. But he felt his mind pulling away again, into that void he couldn't quite reach.
The captain. The crew. It was all wrong.
He was running out of time, and he didn't even know what timeline this was. He'd already failed in one of them, hadn't he?
"I need answers," he whispered to himself. "Before it's too late."
But which timeline would he trust? Which one was his?