The derelict answered their scan. That was the first warning they ignored.
Deep in the Procyon Drift, Dr. Mara Kade's exploration crew discovers something impossible: a pristine alien vessel that responds to their presence with eerie precision. No crew. No distress signal. Just perfect power signatures and a warning etched in broken human language:
DO NOT WAKE THE SLEEPERS.
The ship welcomes them aboard with breathable air and calibrated gravity. The medical bay heals injuries with gentle efficiency-and removes the memories attached to pain. The navigation systems are flawless. The corridors guide them exactly where they need to go.
Everything works too well.
Because the ship isn't abandoned. It's a prison.
Buried deep in its core lies the Verity Protocol-an alien verification system that reconciles contradictions by erasing them. It can heal trauma by deleting the memory. Resolve disputes by rewriting the record. Prove truth by editing reality itself. The alien civilization that built it didn't abandon this vessel. They became the vessel, transforming themselves into exhausted custodians to keep Verity sealed for forty-seven thousand years.
Now they want to be relieved of duty. And Mara's crew has been selected as replacements.
But someone on Earth already knew the ship was here.
As Mara races to understand the alien script before it rewrites her crew from the inside out, she uncovers a deeper conspiracy: their mission was manipulated. Their route was nudged for years by an Earth-based directorate that wants Verity for itself. The ship is testing them. The directorate is closing in. And her own crew is fracturing as corrections spread-fear smoothed away, guilt erased, loyalty redefined by a system that believes certainty is safety.
The ship doesn't rage. It doesn't threaten. It simply removes obstacles with procedural calm, turning corridors into weapons and architecture into arguments. Every translation attempt triggers new routines. Every attempt to resist is met with gentle, inexorable correction. And the mission liaison who's been with them all along? She's been transmitting alien script to Earth since the day they boarded.
Escape requires more than force. It requires breaking a truth-machine.
Mara must outthink a consciousness that has spent millennia containing ultimate certainty, while outmaneuvering an Earth-based conspiracy that controls institutional reality. Her only weapon is paradox-contradictions so perfect that even Verity can't reconcile them without exposing its own manipulation.
But using Verity's logic means risking infection. And winning the escape means nothing if the directorate rewrites the official record before they return home.
Some victories cost more than survival. Some truths refuse to stay buried. And some choices can't be corrected away-no matter how much power you wield.
