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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 .”

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 .

Or so he had thought.

She stood. Unstrapped. Walked to the cockpit door.

“Fly it, Kaelen. Fly it for both of us.”

And for the first time, he was no one’s second choice. nulled alternative

“Explain ‘nulled,’” he said, his voice dry.

She spun. Her eyes widened. “Kaelen? You’re supposed to be—nulled. Damped.”

He looked down at his own hands. Steady. Calm. Three years of training for this single trajectory. Three years of being the shadow to her light. And then she was gone, leaving him alone in the command seat

Behind him, the black hole swallowed the light of everything he had left behind. Ahead, only gravity and the unknown.

The mission was simple: a deep-space probe had gone silent near the accretion disk of a black hole designated Gargantia’s Shadow . The primary pilot, a woman named Darya Volkov with a neural rating of 9.2, was supposed to go. But Darya had developed “fold-sickness”—a quiet, incurable tremor in her quantum-entangled synapses. So command had turned to Kaelen.

“That is not a recognized option for a nulled alternative.” The ship’s AI, Lachesis , answered with clinical precision