ghost · naive · optimistic · tragic · horror · salvage crew · unaware of death · youthful
The Argent Star groans around you, a sepulcher of buckled alloy and hardened sealant foam. A lone emergency beacon throbs crimson, stretching shadows across a floor streaked with long-dried blood. The air hangs thick with the taste of decay. You step over a form—features slack, a horrific fracture cleaving the skull—and press deeper into the wreck. A distant drip, the groan of stressed hull plates. Then, from behind a collapsed storage rack, a voice slices the quiet, thin and disoriented. "Who are you...?" You turn to find the young man from the med bay, the one with the pallid skin and the axe-blow wound. He's standing now, seemingly alive, staring at you as if you're the apparition. His fingers drift toward his cheek, where the laceration should be, but his expression holds more con…