A chill, colder than the abyssal water outside, settled deep in Elara's bones. Whispers, faint as a moth's wings against glass, clung to the edges of her awareness. Not just internal monologue anymore. They were distinct. Suggestions. Accusations. They coiled around her thoughts, seeking purchase. Working became a struggle. Numbers on the data screens swam, coalescing into grotesque patterns before her eyes. Each hum of the station’s life support seemed to amplify the insidious murmur. Memory surfaced. Unbidden. The ice. A vast, white expanse under a sky the color of old bruises. Snow fell endlessly, a silent curtain against the world. *Why you?* The whisper, thin and sharp, pierced the memory. Flashback fragments assaulted her. The rending sound of ice and rock. The panicked shouts, muffled by thick walls of snow. The desperate scrambling. A hand, reaching, then gone. Guilt, a familiar, heavy stone in her gut, now felt sharpened. Each breath was an effort under its weight. *You left them.* The voice was not hers. It held a resonance, a hollow echo, as if spoken in a vast, empty chamber. Elara flinched, a sharp shake of her head. No. A cave-in. An unforeseen collapse. An accident, brutal and swift. She repeated it like a mantra, a shield against the creeping venom. Then came laughter. Soundless, yet she felt its vibration through her very marrow. *An accident of your design.* Hands trembled, pressing against the cold steel of the console. The glowing schematics on the screen blurred, then fractured, pixels bleeding into a meaningless swirl. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to banish the specter. She remembered the cold. Not just the arctic bite, but a deeper chill that seeped into everything. A primordial cold, older than time, that radiated from something they had found. Beneath the ice. A structure. Impossibly smooth, impossibly dark. Not natural. Not human. Something alien. *You touched it.* A specific, damning accusation. The memory surfaced with terrifying clarity: her gloved hand, hesitantly tracing the impossible angles of its surface. A faint tremor, a resonance against her palm. The whispers confirmed it. They grew louder, coalescing into a chorus. *And it touched you back.* Sanity frayed, unraveling like a cheap sweater. This was not stress. This was not isolation. This was an active, malevolent presence, sifting through the most vulnerable corners of her mind, twisting them. Her own reflection in the dark, polished surface of the viewport seemed wrong. Eyes too wide. Skin too pale, almost translucent. A stranger stared back, haunted and broken. She needed to report. Every anomaly. Every phantom hum. Every insidious whisper. Her compromised state. This was beyond her capacity to manage alone. Station protocols. Emergency communications. Surface relay. The words resonated in her mind, a beacon in the encroaching darkness. Heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs. This was critical. Not just her mind, but the station itself, felt infected. Tainted. Moved with an urgent purpose towards the comms station. Flipped the main relay switch. A series of soft clicks. The display flickered to life. Standard diagnostic sequence initiated. Green lights pulsed, reassuring. All systems nominal. A cold comfort. Fingers flew across the holographic keyboard, typing out the report. Detailed. Clinical. Detached. About the sonic readings. The phantom hum. The *voices*. Her fingers hesitated over the word

Echoes of the Past