It began with small things. Items displaced. Sentences you could've sworn you never said. Then bigger things.
I woke up in a supply closet four decks from my bunk. No idea how I got there. Lyra found me and said I was gone for three days. My personal log had recordings—my voice, my face—talking about things I couldn't recall. Experiments with the signal. Self-analysis. "If I forget who I am," one video said, "remind me that I volunteered."
I didn't remember volunteering.
Keene ran a full psych eval. Cleared me. But I saw the flicker of fear in his eyes. He'd started keeping his own voice memos on a loop. "Keene, you are aboard the Vigilant. The year is 3031. The mission is active. Do not trust alternate memories."
Then we found the room.
It wasn't on the ship's blueprint. A sealed compartment buried between cargo holds. Inside were hundreds of data drives—video files, medical scans, audio recordings.
All of us. Different versions. Different missions. Some labeled "failed." Some labeled "fragments."
Vestiges of timelines we never lived.
I began to wonder if the Vigilant was even the first ship.