On the first night, almost no one slept.
Officially it was fatigue. A new environment. Tension.
Unofficially — no one wanted to be alone anymore.
In the morning they gathered in the control center.
“We checked the whole residential module,” Nojus reported. “No signs of life.”
“The labs are empty too,” Mira added.
“And the power system?” Lyra asked.
“Working perfectly.”
“Unattended for thirty-two years?”
“Yes.”
Salomė said quietly:
“That’s impossible.”
No one contradicted her.
While they were talking, one monitor turned on by itself.
Briefly.
For just a few seconds.
Five people appeared on it.
Crew members.
They stood exactly as they did now.
Only one difference.
A sixth person.
He stood between Lyra and Nojus.
His back turned to the camera.
A moment later the screen went dark.
“Did you…” Mira began.
“Saw it,” Nojus cut her off.
“Who was he?”
There was no answer.
That day they decided to work in pairs.
No one said out loud why.
But everyone felt the same thing.
If one of them started seeing what wasn’t there, the other could confirm it.
Or deny it.
Lyra and Mira headed down to the medical bay.
The deeper they went, the more the lights flickered.
The corridors seemed longer than on the station’s floor plan.
As if space itself had shifted slightly.
“Strange place,” Mira murmured.
“Scared?”
“Not yet.”
After a brief silence she asked:
“Why did you never talk about your brother?”
Lyra didn’t answer.
“Everyone at the academy knew he disappeared here.”
“They knew.”
“But you never said what he was like.”
Lyra smiled.
Sadly.
“Because I was afraid I’d remember the wrong person.”
In the medical archive they found old personnel records.
Some were corrupted.
But one file opened.
There was no patient name.
Only the doctor’s notes.
“Subject claims to have met himself in another corridor.”
“Believes the double knows his thoughts.”
“Recommend isolating from the crew.”
Lyra frowned.
“Why is a crew member logged as a patient in the medical journal?”
Mira scrolled further.
The last sentence had been erased.
Only a few words remained.
“The real one…”
“Never returned.”
Meanwhile, at the other end of the station, Nojus and Salomė were checking the communication antennas.
“Did you really see that person?” Nojus asked.
“Yes.”
“Maybe just a reflection.”
“And you?”
Nojus didn’t answer.
“You saw something too, didn’t you?”
He stopped.
“Tonight.”
“What?”
“Me.”
Salomė laughed.
But the laughter faded quickly.
“Where?”
“On the airlock camera.”
“I was looking at the screen.”
“I saw myself walking down the corridor.”
“At that same moment I was sitting in the control center.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I didn’t want them thinking I’d lost my mind.”
At that same moment, something moved at the end of the corridor.
Nojus raised his flashlight.
A man stood there.
In a dark jumpsuit.
Without a helmet.
His face was in shadow.
“Hey!”
The figure slowly raised a hand.
And beckoned.
As if inviting them to follow.
Nojus stepped forward.
“Don’t touch him!” Salomė shouted.
She only turned away for a moment to check the scanner.
When she looked again…
The corridor was empty.
Nojus stood alone.
“Where is he?”
“Who?”
“That man.”
Nojus slowly turned around.
“There was no one here.”
That evening they met again in the control center.
The atmosphere had changed.
There was no more easy conversation.
No more jokes.
Everyone spoke carefully.
Watching each other.
“All reports on the table,” Lyra said.
Mira spoke first.
“In the medical bay we found records of hallucinations.”
“Go on.”
“They started a week before contact was lost.”
Salomė frowned.
“Strange.”
“What?”
“The main log says everyone was completely healthy that week.”
“So which document is lying?”
No one knew.
“My turn,” Nojus said.
He set an old data drive on the table.
“Found it in the antenna block.”
Lyra plugged it in.
A video recording appeared on screen.
A man sat in it.
Tired.
Sleep-deprived.
“If anyone finds this recording…”
He was breathing heavily.
“…don’t trust your memories.”
The image glitched briefly.
“We started arguing about things that never happened.”
He glanced somewhere to the side.
As if someone else were in the room.
“The scariest part isn’t seeing another version of yourself.”
The scariest part is…
…when you no longer know…
…which of you remembers the truth.
The recording cut off.
That evening Lyra sat alone in Aronas’s cabin for a long time.
She read his notebook again.
This time she noticed something she’d missed yesterday.
Some sentences were written in different ink.
As if someone had added to them later.
“I no longer trust Julius.”
Further on.
“I no longer trust the captain.”
Further still.
“I no longer trust myself.”
The last entry was almost illegible.
“If I meet myself tomorrow…”
“I don’t know…”
“…which one of us…”
The sentence ended there.
Lyra closed the notebook.
For a moment it seemed to her that someone sighed quietly.
She looked up.
At the other end of the room, by the porthole, a person was standing.
Broad-shouldered.
Fair-haired.
Aronas.
He was looking at the planet.
Not moving.
Lyra slowly rose.
“Aronas…”
The figure didn’t turn.
She stepped closer.
Only a few steps remained.
“Is that you?”
The man slowly tilted his head.
But not toward her.
Toward the window’s reflection.
Lyra instinctively looked at the glass.
More than one person stood in it.
Two.
One was Aronas.
The other…
Herself.
Only her reflection was smiling.
Lyra flinched and spun around.
There was no one else in the room.
When she looked at the window again, the reflection was exactly as it should be.
Only beyond the glass, in the black cosmos, the planet seemed, for an instant, to have turned to face her.