Then Darya did something unexpected. She laughed—a broken, tired sound. “They told me you were just a backup. A nulled alternative . But you’re not, are you? You’re the one who should have been primary all along.”
He crossed the hangar. No one stopped him. He was, after all, a nullity. A ghost. By the time security protocols registered his approach to the Event Horizon , he was already inside the auxiliary maintenance shaft—a route he had memorized during his “discarded” training simulations.
And then she was gone, leaving him alone in the command seat. The system still showed him as NULLED in the crew manifest. But the ship didn’t care about manifests.
The ship’s AI, Lachesis , answered with clinical precision. “Your neural profile was designated Alternative Pathway Beta. Upon Primary Pilot Volkov’s recovery and insistence on flying, your pathway has been logically severed. You are no longer a candidate. You are a nulled alternative .” nulled alternative
And for the first time, he was no one’s second choice.
Kaelen felt the words land like cold metal in his gut. Not just rejected. Nulled . Erased from the equation as if he had never been a variable. Darya, trembling hands and all, had pulled rank. And command, terrified of her political connections, had agreed.
A pause. Then: “Standard protocol is psychiatric reassignment and memory damping of the mission parameters. You will forget this was ever your path.” Then Darya did something unexpected
“That is not a recognized option for a nulled alternative.”
She stood. Unstrapped. Walked to the cockpit door.
“What if I refuse damping?” he asked. A nulled alternative
Behind him, the black hole swallowed the light of everything he had left behind. Ahead, only gravity and the unknown.
Kaelen stared at the screen, his reflection a ghost in the dark glass. For three years, he had been the backup. The second choice. The alternative .
“I can do this,” she whispered.
Or so he had thought.
Silence. The countdown clock on the main display ticked toward launch.
