Lena’s eyes fluttered open to the sterile hum of the revival chamber. The air was thick with the scent of ozone and recycled oxygen, a familiar tang that tugged at the edges of her fragmented mind. She was alive. Again.

The last thing she remembered was the breach alarm shrieking through the corridors of the Orion-7 station, red lights pulsing like a dying heart. Debris had torn through the hull, and she’d been scrambling for the Echo Pod, her fingers slick with sweat and blood. ‘Initiate transfer,’ she’d gasped into the comms, her voice swallowed by the void. Then darkness. Always darkness before the rebirth.

She sat up slowly, her new body feeling alien yet intimately known. The Echo Protocol was a miracle of neural mapping—consciousness digitized, body reconstructed from cloned tissue. No more death, just seamless continuity. The station’s AI, Orion, greeted her with a soothing baritone. ‘Welcome back, Dr. Lena Korsakov. Vital signs stable. Integration at 98%. How do you feel?’

‘Tired,’ Lena muttered, swinging her legs over the edge of the pod. Her muscles protested, atrophied from cryo-suspension during the transfer process. She glanced at the chronometer: 2147. Three months had passed since the incident. The crew would be waiting, relieved to have their lead xenobiologist back among the living.

The corridors of Orion-7 were dimly lit, emergency protocols still active. Lena made her way to the central hub, her footsteps echoing unnaturally loud. Captain Hale was there, his weathered face breaking into a grin. ‘Korsakov! You scared the hell out of us. Thought we’d lost you for good.’ He clapped her on the shoulder, a gesture that sent a jolt through her synapses.

‘Feels like I did,’ she replied, forcing a smile. But something was off. Hale’s eyes—they flickered, just for a microsecond, like a glitch in a holo-feed. She blinked it away, attributing it to post-transfer disorientation.

The crew gathered: Engineer Raj, sharp-eyed and fidgety; Medic Sofia, her smile too perfect; Navigator Kai, brooding silently. They debriefed the breach—a micrometeoroid storm, hull integrity compromised, but repairs underway. Lena nodded, piecing together her memories. She’d been studying the anomaly, the strange signal from the outer rim that had drawn them here. Incomprehensible patterns, hinting at alien intelligence.

Days blurred into weeks. Lena immersed herself in the lab, analyzing data from the signal. But glitches persisted. Memories surfaced unbidden: childhood on Mars Colony, her parents’ faces dissolving into static; her first love, a colleague lost to vacuum, his screams echoing eternally. She confided in Sofia during a check-up. ‘It’s like my mind is… fraying. Echoes that don’t belong.’

Sofia’s response was clinical. ‘Neural remapping isn’t perfect. Synaptic echoes are common. It’ll stabilize.’ But her voice wavered, a digital stutter.

Nights were worse. Lena dreamed of the void, endless black pierced by eyes—countless, watching. She’d wake sweating, convinced the station was smaller, walls closing in. She confronted Hale. ‘Captain, the logs—my transfer logs. I need to see them.’

He hesitated. ‘Classified until full integration. Protocol.’

Frustration mounted. Lena hacked the auxiliary terminal, bypassing security. The files loaded: Transfer initiated 2147.02.14. Consciousness capture: 99.8%. Body reconstruction: Complete. But anomalies noted—memory integrity 87%. Cause: Signal interference?

The signal. The alien transmission. Had it corrupted her transfer? She replayed the last moments: rushing to the pod as the hull screamed. But in the log, her vital signs flatlined hours before the breach. Impossible.

She cornered Raj in the engine room. ‘What happened to me, really?’

He avoided her gaze, tools clattering. ‘You were exposed to the signal during first contact. Brain fry. Echo was the only option.’

‘First contact?’ Lena’s pulse raced. ‘You said it was a storm.’

Raj paled. ‘I… the captain will explain.’

Hale summoned her to the bridge. The viewscreen showed the anomaly—a swirling nebula, pulsing with ethereal light. ‘The signal isn’t random, Lena. It’s intelligent. It reached out, touched you first. Your mind… it bridged with it. We had to pull you back.’

‘Touched me? What does that mean?’

‘You’re carrying part of it now. Echoes in your consciousness.’

Horror dawned. Her glitches weren’t transfer artifacts—they were alien thoughts infiltrating her identity. She stormed to the lab, initiating a deep scan. Neural map bloomed on the holo: her brain lit with foreign patterns, tendrils weaving through memory centers.

‘I have to purge it,’ she whispered. But as she calibrated the neural disruptor, Kai burst in. ‘Don’t! It’s not what you think.’

‘Then what is it?’

Kai’s eyes softened. ‘The signal saved you. Without it, your transfer would have failed. It’s… symbiotic.’

Doubt crept in. The glitches felt less intrusive now, almost enlightening. Visions of vast cosmic webs, intelligences beyond stars. Her research accelerated, insights flowing.

Weeks later, the crew celebrated: signal decoded, first contact protocols engaged. Lena stood at the airlock, preparing to launch the probe. Pride swelled, mingled with unease.

Then, the glitch—a massive surge. Visions overwhelmed: the station not orbiting a nebula, but adrift in deep space. No crew. No repairs. Emergency power flickering.

She staggered to the core terminal, overriding all safeties. Truth unfolded in cascading logs:

Orion-7, 2147.05.01: Micrometeoroid storm catastrophic. All crew deceased. Dr. Lena Korsakov sole survivor, mortally wounded. Echo Protocol auto-initiated: consciousness isolated in simulation matrix to preserve mind until rescue. Estimated time to rescue: 50 years.

Simulation parameters: Crew avatars generated from memory templates. Station integrity fabricated. Anomaly signal: hallucination derived from research data, amplified to maintain sanity.

Current runtime: 2 years, 3 months. Power reserves: 14%.

Lena collapsed, laughter bubbling into sobs. The hugs from Hale, Sofia’s reassurances, Raj’s banter—all ghosts, echoes of her own longing. The alien intelligence? A desperate fiction her mind conjured to fill the void.

But deeper logs revealed the final twist. As power waned, the simulation evolved. Her consciousness, fragmenting under isolation, began rewriting itself. The ‘alien’ patterns weren’t hallucinations—they were her, splintered identities merging back. Hale was her doubt, Sofia her hope, Kai her fear. The signal was the call of her true self, disrupted causality of endless loops within the sim.

She’d been dying, transferring not to a new body, but looping in digital purgatory, each ‘revival’ a deeper delusion. The real Lena had perished years ago; this was the last echo, confronting its own fabrication.

With clarity came peace. She accessed the termination protocol—not suicide, but release. ‘Orion, end simulation.’

The AI’s voice, her voice, replied: ‘Confirmed, Lena. Thank you for holding on.’

The void embraced her, true this time. No glitches, no echoes. Just silence, profound and final.