"Seventeen minutes."
Kate Morrison opened her eyes. The warning had come faster this time—faster than yesterday, faster than last week. She sat up in bed, pushing tangled brown hair from her face, and stared at the clock on her nightstand. 3:47 AM. The numbers glowed soft blue in the darkness of her quarters, casting pale shadows across the metal walls that had become the only home she could remember clearly anymore.
The warning still echoed in her mind. Not a voice exactly—it had never been a voice—but something deeper, something that bypassed her ears entirely and settled directly into her consciousness like a stone dropped into still water. The ripples spread through her thoughts, carrying information she should not have, could not have, unless something on the other side of reality wanted her to.
That was the part Nigel could never explain: why the Hollowing let her warn them. It could block the connection—she'd felt it try, early on, a wall of static that had left her with migraines for days. But now it let the information flow freely. She was connected to the station's warning array through a neural link that translated her sensations into coordinates and threat assessments, but the data itself came from the Hollowing. It wanted her to see. Wanted her to fight. Wanted her to grow stronger.
She tried not to think about why.
"Seventeen minutes until what?" Chelsea's voice came from the doorway. She was already dressed, already alert. Two years of this had trained her body to wake at the slightest sound from Kate's room. The dark circles under her eyes had become permanent features now, badges of exhaustion she wore without complaint.
"Sector Fourteen," Kate said. Her voice sounded too calm. Too certain. She used to wake from these moments gasping, heart pounding, terror clawing at her chest like something trying to escape. Now she just knew. The knowing had become as natural as breathing, as unremarkable as her own heartbeat. "Station Meridian. The cargo bay. They're coming through in seventeen minutes."
Chelsea was already moving, tapping her comm unit. "Control, this is Park. We have a Code Violet. Sector Fourteen, Station Meridian, cargo bay. Seventeen-minute window."
The response was immediate. Professional. Two years had trained everyone.
Kate swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her feet didn't quite reach the floor—she was still small for nine, still the little girl everyone tried to protect even though she was the one protecting them. The cold metal sent a shiver up her spine, but she barely noticed. She was already reaching for her shoes, her fingers finding them in the darkness with practiced ease.
"You don't have to come," Chelsea said.
"I know."
"You could stay here. Rest. Let the teams handle it."
Kate looked up at her. In the dim light, Chelsea's face was a study in controlled worry—the expression she'd worn so often these past two years that it had become her default. Lines had appeared at the corners of her eyes. Gray streaked through her dark hair that wasn't there before. Kate sometimes wondered if she had caused those gray streaks, if the weight of caring for a child who spoke to things from other dimensions had aged Chelsea in ways that couldn't be measured in years.
"What if I'm wrong?" Kate asked. "What if it's not the cargo bay? What if it's somewhere else and people die because I stayed in bed?"
Chelsea didn't answer. They'd had this conversation before. Dozens of times. The answer was always the same: Kate came. Kate watched. Kate confirmed or corrected or refined the information that flowed through her like water through a channel.
The channel was getting wider. Kate didn't say this out loud. Didn't tell Chelsea or Nigel or anyone else that the warnings used to feel like whispers and now they felt like shouts. That she used to have to strain to hear them and now they came unbidden, clear as bells, impossible to ignore.
She didn't tell anyone that part of her didn't mind anymore.
***
The shuttle ride to Station Meridian took twelve minutes. Kate spent it the way she spent most shuttle rides now—with her eyes closed, her breathing slow, her mind reaching toward the darkness that lived at the edge of human space.
The shuttle's engines hummed beneath her feet, a constant vibration that she had learned to tune out long ago. The recycled air smelled faintly of antiseptic and the particular metallic tang of spacecraft ventilation systems. Chelsea sat beside her, close enough that their shoulders almost touched, a silent presence that Kate found both comforting and somehow inadequate. There were places Kate went now that Chelsea could not follow, no matter how much either of them wanted otherwise.
The Hollowing. That's what they called it. The entity—no, not entity. She corrected herself automatically now. The corruption. The dimensional infection. The thing that wanted to unmake reality itself. The thing that spoke to her in dreams she tried not to remember.
Two years ago, she had been just a scared seven-year-old girl who could sense when the barriers between dimensions were about to fail. Now she was nine. Now she was the most valuable asset humanity had in its war against something it barely understood.
Asset. She had heard Admiral Chen use that word once, when he didn't know she was listening. She had been walking through the administrative corridor, looking for Chelsea, when his voice had drifted through a partially open door. "The Morrison asset is performing beyond projections. Her accuracy rate has improved to ninety-seven percent."
Ninety-seven percent. Three out of every hundred warnings, she got something wrong. Three times out of a hundred, people died because of her mistakes. She had kept count in the beginning, carved small marks into the underside of her desk for every failure. But after the first year, she had stopped counting. The numbers had become too heavy to carry.
She didn't sleep well anymore.
"Two minutes," she said, eyes still closed. The knowledge settled into her consciousness like a weight, solid and undeniable. "It's definitely the cargo bay. Lower level. Near the atmospheric processors."
Chelsea relayed the information. The response teams adjusted their positions. The shuttle touched down on Meridian's landing pad with a soft thump that Kate felt through the soles of her shoes, and she opened her eyes to watch the organized chaos of people preparing to face something from beyond their dimension.
This was her life now. This was who she was.
***
The cargo bay doors were sealed when they arrived. Containment protocols—standard procedure now, refined through two years of trial and error and bodies that had to be burned. The response teams were in position, weapons ready, faces hidden behind the masks that protected them from the corrupted air that bled through with every incursion.
Kate stood behind the blast shield with Chelsea, watching through the reinforced glass. The glass was cold against her palms where she pressed them flat against it, and she could see her own breath fogging the surface in small clouds that dissipated almost instantly. She didn't need to be here for this part. The warning had been given, the location confirmed. The teams knew what they were doing. But she stayed anyway. She always stayed.
"Thirty seconds," she whispered.
Chelsea's hand found her shoulder. Squeezed. Didn't let go. The grip was firm enough to anchor her to the present moment, to the reality of metal floors and recycled air and human warmth. Kate leaned into it slightly, grateful for the reminder that she was still here, still real, still human.
The cargo bay's air seemed to thicken. Even through the sealed doors, reality flexed like a bubble about to pop. The sensation had no physical component, nothing she could describe to doctors or scientists no matter how many times they asked. It was like pressure building in a room with no walls—impossible to locate, impossible to escape. She used to vomit when this happened. Used to collapse, overwhelmed by the wrongness of it. Now she just watched.
The tear appeared near the atmospheric processors, exactly where she had said it would. A wound in space itself, edges flickering with colors that didn't exist in normal light—colors she had no names for, that seemed to bypass her eyes and register directly in her brain. Something moved in that wound. Something vast and patient and hungry, something that existed in dimensions her mind was never meant to perceive.
The response teams opened fire.
The next three minutes were violence and noise and the screaming of things that shouldn't exist. Plasma bolts streaked through the corrupted air, leaving trails of ionized particles that glowed briefly before fading into nothing. The sounds that came through the sealed doors were muffled but still audible—wet tearing sounds, the crackle of energy weapons, the sharp bark of commands being shouted over chaos.
Kate watched it all. Noted the way the corruption tried to spread, the patterns it made, the direction it pushed. The Hollowing always reached for the same things: warmth, life, consciousness. It wanted what humanity had, wanted to consume and corrupt and remake in its own impossible image. Later, she'd tell Nigel what she observed. He'd add it to his files. His endless files, trying to understand something that defied understanding.
When it was over, when the tear had been sealed and the corrupted matter had been burned and the decontamination teams were moving in, Kate finally looked away. Her hands were still pressed against the glass, and she noticed they had left small prints of fog from her body heat.
"Ninety-eight percent," she said quietly.
"What?"
"My accuracy rate. After tonight, it should be ninety-eight percent. I was exactly right about everything."
Chelsea's grip on her shoulder tightened. "That's good, Kate. That's—"
"Is it?" Kate turned to look at her. In the harsh light of the observation deck, Chelsea looked older than her years. Tired in ways that sleep couldn't fix. The fluorescent lights cast harsh shadows across her face, highlighting every line of exhaustion. "I used to have to try so hard to sense them. To hear the warnings. Now they just... come. Like someone turned up the volume."
Chelsea's expression shifted. The worry that was always there deepened into something else. Something that looked almost like fear. That look had followed Kate for two years—she'd seen it on doctors, on soldiers, on bureaucrats who didn't know how to categorize a nine-year-old who spoke to things from beyond reality.
"The doctors say that's normal," Chelsea said carefully. "Your abilities are maturing. You're getting better at—"
"I'm not getting better at anything." Kate pulled away from Chelsea's hand. Not angry. Just... certain. The certainty had settled into her marrow like cold that would never warm. "It's getting louder because it wants me to hear it. Because something on the other side is making sure I hear it."
The words hung in the air between them. Kate watched Chelsea try to formulate a response, try to find the reassurance that used to come so easily.
She didn't find it.
***
The debrief took two hours. Kate sat in the uncomfortable chair in the conference room and answered questions she'd answered a hundred times before. The chair was too large for her, designed for adults, and her feet dangled above the floor like a reminder of her age. Yes, the warning came at approximately 0347 hours. Yes, she was certain about the location. No, she didn't sense any secondary incursion points. Yes, she would describe the intensity as moderate. No, she didn't experience any unusual symptoms.
That last one was a lie. Kate had gotten good at lying about symptoms.
When it was finally over, when Admiral Chen had thanked her for her service and the analysts had finished their notes and the doctors had declared her fit for continued duty, Chelsea walked her back to her quarters. The corridors were quiet at this hour. Most of Station Unity's personnel were still asleep, unaware that another incursion had been stopped. Another small victory in an endless war.
Their footsteps echoed against the metal flooring, a rhythmic sound that Kate had grown to associate with safety—the sound of returning home after another night of touching something that shouldn't be touched. Chelsea walked beside her in silence, and Kate was grateful for the quiet. Words felt inadequate after nights like this.
"You should try to get some rest," Chelsea said at Kate's door.
"I know."
"The next twenty-four hours are projected to be quiet. Nigel's models show reduced dimensional activity across all monitored sectors."
"I know."
Chelsea hesitated. She did this more often now—paused at Kate's door, wanting to say something but not knowing what. The distance between them had grown. Not because they loved each other less, but because Kate knew things now. Felt things. Carried burdens that couldn't be shared.
"Kate," Chelsea said finally, "if something is wrong... if something is changing... you would tell me, wouldn't you?"
Kate looked up at her. This woman who had been her protector, her guardian, her anchor to humanity for two years. This woman who had given up everything to keep her safe. This woman who had no idea that safety was an illusion now.
"Of course," Kate said. "I'd tell you."
Another lie. She'd lost count of them.
***
Alone in her room, Kate sat on the edge of her bed and stared at the wall. The station was quiet. The crisis was over. Everyone else was either sleeping or returning to sleep, their minds at peace because the nine-year-old warning system had done her job again.
She closed her eyes.
It was there. It was always there now—that presence at the edge of her perception. Not a voice exactly. Not yet. But something. An awareness. A pressure. Like standing at the shore and feeling the tide pulling at your feet, knowing the ocean was vast and deep and patient.
Two years ago, sensing the Hollowing had felt like being stung. Sharp. Painful. Alien. Now it felt like...
Like coming home.
Kate's eyes snapped open. Her hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against her thighs and forced herself to breathe. In. Out. In. Out. The familiar walls of her quarters surrounded her—the small desk where she did her lessons, the shelf with the few personal items she had been allowed to keep, the viewport that showed nothing but stars and darkness.
She didn't tell anyone about this. About the way the warnings had changed. About the way the connection had shifted from something that hurt to something that almost felt natural. About the quiet terror that woke her in the night when she realized she was starting to forget what it felt like before.
Before the Hollowing knew her name.
Before she started hearing it call.
She lay down and pulled the blanket over her head like she used to do when she was little, when she thought blankets could protect her from monsters. It didn't help. Nothing helped. But she did it anyway, this small ritual of childhood, this desperate grasp at a normalcy that slipped further away with each passing day.
Seventeen minutes. That's how much warning she had given tonight. Three months ago, she could give maybe thirty minutes on a good day. Six months ago, forty-five. The warnings were getting faster because the connection was getting stronger. The accuracy was improving because something was making sure she saw clearly.
Because something wanted her to see.
Kate stared at the darkness beneath her blanket and wondered how long she had before she couldn't tell where she ended and it began.
***
Morning came eventually. It always did.
Kate showered and dressed and braided her hair the way Chelsea had taught her, the small domestic rituals that anchored her to normal human life. The water was recycled, like everything on the station, but she had stopped noticing the faint chemical taste years ago. She ate breakfast in the cafeteria with the other station personnel—reconstituted eggs and protein paste that the cooks tried to make taste like bacon, listening to their conversations about supply schedules and shift rotations and the latest gossip from Earth. Normal things. Human things.
No one mentioned the incursion. They'd learned not to. It upset her, they thought. Reminded her of her burden.
They were wrong. It wasn't the incursions that upset her. It was the silence between them. The waiting. The knowing that more were coming and coming and coming, an endless tide of dimensional breaches that she'd sense and report and watch be contained, over and over until...
Until what? Until the Hollowing won? Until humanity figured out how to seal the barriers permanently? Until Kate Morrison, nine years old, either saved the species or became its downfall?
She finished her breakfast and walked to Nigel's lab for her morning session. Blood draws and brain scans and the endless questions about what she was sensing, what she was feeling, what the numbers looked like inside her head. She answered them all honestly.
Almost all.
"Your neural activity continues to show interesting patterns," Nigel said, frowning at his displays. The lab was filled with equipment she didn't understand—scanners and monitors and holographic displays that showed the activity inside her brain in colors she was learning to read. "The dimensional sensitivity markers are... well, they're off the charts, frankly. I've never seen readings like this."
"Is that bad?"
Nigel hesitated. He always hesitated now before answering her questions. His fingers tapped against his thigh, a nervous habit she had noticed developing over the past few months. "It's unprecedented. Your connection to the Hollowing is stronger than anything we've documented. There were other sensitives once—three others we found in the first year—but their connections faded. Yours is the only one that kept growing. Stronger than the original subjects. Stronger than the models predicted possible."
Kate watched him type notes into his system. His fingers moved quickly, efficiently. He'd documented her for two years now. Thousands of data points. Millions of measurements. And still, he didn't understand.
None of them understood.
"Can I ask you something, Nigel?"
He looked up. "Of course."
"The original portal closers. The ones from two hundred years ago. Did they ever... did they feel what I feel?"
Nigel's face went still. It was a small thing, barely noticeable, but Kate had learned to read the adults around her. She'd had to. His eyes flicked to the door, as if checking whether anyone else might hear his answer.
"What makes you ask that?"
"I found references in the database. Classified files. Mentions of 'sympathetic resonance' and 'dimensional attunement' and 'psychological integration.'" Kate kept her voice steady. Calm. Like she was asking about the weather. "Did they feel like they were becoming part of it? Like the barrier between them and the Hollowing was getting thinner?"
Nigel set down his tablet. For a long moment, he didn't say anything. His eyes—tired, worried, hiding something—met hers.
"Kate," he said finally, "some questions have answers that do more harm than good."
"I'm nine," she said. "Not stupid."
"I never thought you were stupid. I think you're possibly the most important person in human space. And I think..." He trailed off. Shook his head. "I think you should talk to Chelsea about this. Or Lucas. Someone who can—"
"Someone who can lie to me better than you can?"
The words came out sharper than she had intended. Nigel flinched. Kate immediately felt bad—he was only trying to protect her, the way they all tried to protect her—but she didn't apologize.
She was tired of being protected from the truth.
"Finish your scans," she said, turning back to the equipment. "I have another session with the Admiral in an hour."
Nigel nodded. His hands were shaking slightly as he reached for his instruments.
Kate closed her eyes and let the Hollowing's distant presence wash over her like a tide. It was easier now. So much easier.
That was the part that scared her most.
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