The Data-Bleed
The med-scanner screamed before Jace even hit the deck.
Elara caught him mid-collapse, her shoulder taking the brunt of his weight as his knees buckled. He was burning—not with fever, but with something worse. The skin of his forearm where the Reaper's weapon had grazed him was wrong. It flickered, like a corrupted video feed, pixels of flesh dissolving into static and then snapping back into place.
"Get him on the table," Silas barked, already shoving cables and circuit boards off his workbench. "Now, girl. Move."
Elara dragged Jace across the cramped Bazaar workshop, her boots skidding on scattered components. His breath came in ragged gasps, each exhale carrying a faint electronic whine that shouldn't exist in human lungs. She heaved him onto the metal surface, and his head lolled back, eyes half-open but unfocused.
"Jace. Jace, stay with me." She slapped his cheek lightly, then harder when his gaze started to drift. "Look at me. Look at my face."
His eyes snapped to hers, and for a moment, she saw terror there—raw and animal. "El," he wheezed. "Something's... eating me."
Silas shoved her aside with surprising strength for a man who looked like he hadn't eaten properly in a decade. He ran a handheld scanner over Jace's flickering arm, and the device immediately began to smoke. He dropped it, cursing in a language Elara didn't recognize.
"Data-bleed," he muttered, grabbing a different tool—this one analog, with a needle gauge and a glass lens. "I've seen it before. Three times. All three people were dead within the hour."
"Then you're going to save him," Elara said. It wasn't a question.
Silas looked at her over his shoulder, his paranoid eyes sharp beneath his wild gray hair. "I'm going to try. But you need to understand what we're dealing with. The Reaper didn't just wound him. It *tagged* him. That weapon doesn't cut flesh—it cuts reality. It marks a person as redundant, and the RIG does the rest."
"The RIG." Elara's hands clenched into fists. "It's still targeting him. Even now."
"Especially now." Silas pressed the glass lens against Jace's forearm, and the skin beneath it rippled like water. "The RIG doesn't just erase people who learn too much. It erases people who become *inconvenient*. Your friend here saw the Reaper. He saw what it did. That makes him a loose thread, and the RIG is very good at pulling loose threads."
Jace groaned, his back arching off the table. The static on his arm spread, crawling up toward his elbow. Elara grabbed his hand, squeezing hard.
"Fight it," she said. "Whatever it's doing, fight it."
"I'm trying," he gritted out. "It feels like... like I'm forgetting myself. Like my own name is slipping away."
Silas pulled a syringe from a locked drawer, the liquid inside it a swirling silver that seemed to move on its own. "This is going to hurt. It's a reality stabilizer—binds your pattern to the local timeline. But it's crude, and it's temporary. Maybe an hour, maybe two. After that, the RIG will reacquire you."
"Do it," Jace said through clenched teeth.
Silas plunged the needle into Jace's neck.
The effect was immediate. Jace's body convulsed, his back bowing so hard Elara heard something crack. The static on his arm retreated, pulling back from his elbow to his wrist, but it didn't disappear. It pulsed there, a malevolent shimmer that seemed to be waiting.
Jace collapsed, gasping, sweat pouring down his face. "That was... unpleasant."
"You'll live," Silas said, but his voice was grim. "For now."
Elara helped Jace sit up, supporting his back with her arm. His skin was pale, and his eyes had a haunted quality she'd never seen before. This was Jace—her anchor, her mechanic, the man who could fix anything with a wrench and a curse word. He wasn't supposed to look fragile.
"How long?" she asked Silas.
"Until the stabilizer wears off? Maybe ninety minutes. Maybe less." He began packing his equipment with frantic efficiency. "And when it does, the RIG will finish what the Reaper started. He'll be gone. Not dead—*erased*. No body, no memory, no trace that he ever existed."
Elara's stomach dropped. "Then we need to get him somewhere safe. Somewhere the RIG can't reach."
"There is nowhere safe," Silas said flatly. "The RIG is everywhere. It's in the station's network, in the comm relays, in the power grid. It's woven into the fabric of human civilization. You can't hide from it."
"Then we unweave it."
Silas stopped packing and stared at her. "You're serious."
"Dead serious." Elara helped Jace off the table, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. He was heavy, but she could carry him. She'd carried worse. "You said the original Elara built a Counter-RIG. You said it could restore erased people. Where is it?"
Silas's face went through a series of expressions—surprise, then calculation, then something that looked almost like hope. "The *Odysseus*. Sister ship to the *Icarus*. It's drifting in a dead Rift Lane, about three days' travel from here."
"Then that's where we're going."
"Elara." Jace's voice was weak, but it carried a warning. "Three days. I don't have three days."
She turned to face him, cupping his face in her hands. His skin was cold, and she could feel the faint buzz of instability beneath it, like a failing power cell. "You're going to make it. I didn't come this far to lose you."
"You didn't come this far for me at all," he said, a ghost of his usual grin flickering across his lips. "You came for the truth."
"The truth can wait." She pressed her forehead to his. "You can't."
Silas cleared his throat. "I hate to interrupt this touching moment, but if we're going to make a run for the *Odysseus*, we need to leave now. The Reaper that attacked you—it will have reported back to Aethelred. They'll know you survived, and they'll send more."
"Then let's not give them time to arrive." Elara helped Jace toward the door, then paused. "Silas. You said you've seen data-bleed before. Three times. What happened to the survivors?"
Silas's face darkened. "There were no survivors. They all died."
"Then why are you helping us?"
He looked at her for a long moment, something unreadable in his eyes. "Because I've been waiting twenty years for someone to ask the right questions. And you're the first person who has." He grabbed a battered analog briefcase and shoved it into her free hand. "This contains everything I know about the RIG. Frequencies, weaknesses, backdoors. If I don't make it, you'll need it."
"You're coming with us?"
"I'm coming with you." He pulled a worn coat off a hook and shrugged it on. "Someone has to keep that stabilizer working, and you two look like you couldn't change a lightbulb between you."
Jace managed a weak laugh. "I can change a lightbulb."
"Can you change a reality stabilizer?"
"...No."
"Then shut up and walk."
---
The *Moth* was exactly where they'd left it, docked in a shadowed corner of the Bazaar's chaotic docking ring. The ship looked like a battered cargo hauler, all rust and patchwork plating, but Elara knew better. Beneath that ugly exterior was a vessel that had been designed by her own hands—or at least, by the hands of the woman she'd been copied from.
CASSIUS's voice greeted them as the hatch cycled open. "Elara. I detect elevated stress markers in your biometrics. And Jace's vitals are... concerning."
"Jace got tagged by a Reaper," Elara said, guiding him through the hatch. "He's data-bleeding. We need to get to the *Odysseus*."
There was a pause—a flicker of something that might have been surprise in the AI's synthesized voice. "The *Odysseus*. That is... an unexpected destination."
"You know it?"
"I know of it. It was the sister ship to the *Icarus*, launched six months prior. It was declared lost in a Rift Lane collapse eleven years ago." Another pause. "Elara, the lane it was lost in is dead. Completely collapsed. Navigating it would be suicide."
"Then we'll have to be creative." She laid Jace down on the ship's small cot, checking his pulse. It was thready, irregular. The static on his arm had crept back up to his elbow. "How long until we can jump?"
"Engines are warm. I can have us in the Rift Lane within four minutes."
"Do it."
"Elara." CASSIUS's voice was softer now, almost concerned. "If I may be frank—"
"You may not." She turned to face the ship's main console, where a small camera lens tracked her movements. "I don't have time for your warnings, CASSIUS. Jace is dying. The only thing that can save him is on that ship. So we're going."
"Understood." The ship's engines hummed to life, a deep vibration that shook the deck plates. "Preparing for departure. Silas, I recommend you strap in. The Bazaar's gravity well is unpredictable."
Silas dropped into the co-pilot's seat, fumbling with the harness. "I've flown through worse."
"I doubt that."
The *Moth* detached from the docking ring with a clang that echoed through the hull. Through the viewport, Elara watched the Bazaar shrink—a chaotic cluster of metal and light and desperation, clinging to the edge of a dead asteroid. She'd only been there for a day, but it already felt like a lifetime.
"Jumping in three... two... one."
The Rift Lane swallowed them.
---
The dead lane was exactly what its name suggested—a corridor of space that had once been a highway between stars, now collapsed into a frozen graveyard. Ships hung suspended in the void, their hulls coated in frost, their engines dark. Some were ancient, their designs dating back centuries. Others were recent, their paint still bright beneath the ice.
Elara had mapped derelicts her whole career, but she'd never seen anything like this. This wasn't a graveyard of ships. It was a graveyard of *journeys*—of people who had been mid-transit when the lane collapsed, their destinations forever out of reach.
"Beautiful," Jace murmured from the cot, his voice barely audible. "In a horrible way."
"Focus on staying alive." Elara checked the stabilizer Silas had rigged to his arm—a crude device of wires and analog gauges that pulsed with a steady rhythm. "We're close. CASSIUS, how much further?"
"Approximately two hours at current speed. But Elara, I must warn you—the *Odysseus* is not showing up on my sensors as a derelict."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean it's showing up as *active*. Power signatures, life support, even a functioning navigation array." CASSIUS's voice was carefully neutral. "The *Odysseus* is not dead. It's waiting."
Elara's blood ran cold. She remembered the *Icarus*—how it had powered up the moment she'd found the cryo-pod. How it had tried to jump into a Rift Lane and destroy itself, taking her with it.
"Trap," she breathed.
"Almost certainly," CASSIUS agreed. "But it's also the only chance Jace has. The Counter-RIG is on that ship. If we turn back, he dies."
Elara looked at Jace. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow. The static had reached his shoulder now, pulsing beneath his skin like a living thing. He didn't have two hours. He barely had one.
"Full speed," she said. "And CASSIUS? Start plotting an escape route. If this goes wrong, I want options."
"Always, Director."
The *Moth* surged forward, threading through the frozen graveyard toward the waiting ship. And in the silence of the dead lane, Elara Voss prepared to walk into a trap with her eyes wide open—because the alternative was watching her best friend fade out of existence.
She'd rather die fighting than let that happen.
Elara caught him mid-collapse, her shoulder taking the brunt of his weight as his knees buckled. He was burning—not with fever, but with something worse. The skin of his forearm where the Reaper's weapon had grazed him was wrong. It flickered, like a corrupted video feed, pixels of flesh dissolving into static and then snapping back into place.
"Get him on the table," Silas barked, already shoving cables and circuit boards off his workbench. "Now, girl. Move."
Elara dragged Jace across the cramped Bazaar workshop, her boots skidding on scattered components. His breath came in ragged gasps, each exhale carrying a faint electronic whine that shouldn't exist in human lungs. She heaved him onto the metal surface, and his head lolled back, eyes half-open but unfocused.
"Jace. Jace, stay with me." She slapped his cheek lightly, then harder when his gaze started to drift. "Look at me. Look at my face."
His eyes snapped to hers, and for a moment, she saw terror there—raw and animal. "El," he wheezed. "Something's... eating me."
Silas shoved her aside with surprising strength for a man who looked like he hadn't eaten properly in a decade. He ran a handheld scanner over Jace's flickering arm, and the device immediately began to smoke. He dropped it, cursing in a language Elara didn't recognize.
"Data-bleed," he muttered, grabbing a different tool—this one analog, with a needle gauge and a glass lens. "I've seen it before. Three times. All three people were dead within the hour."
"Then you're going to save him," Elara said. It wasn't a question.
Silas looked at her over his shoulder, his paranoid eyes sharp beneath his wild gray hair. "I'm going to try. But you need to understand what we're dealing with. The Reaper didn't just wound him. It *tagged* him. That weapon doesn't cut flesh—it cuts reality. It marks a person as redundant, and the RIG does the rest."
"The RIG." Elara's hands clenched into fists. "It's still targeting him. Even now."
"Especially now." Silas pressed the glass lens against Jace's forearm, and the skin beneath it rippled like water. "The RIG doesn't just erase people who learn too much. It erases people who become *inconvenient*. Your friend here saw the Reaper. He saw what it did. That makes him a loose thread, and the RIG is very good at pulling loose threads."
Jace groaned, his back arching off the table. The static on his arm spread, crawling up toward his elbow. Elara grabbed his hand, squeezing hard.
"Fight it," she said. "Whatever it's doing, fight it."
"I'm trying," he gritted out. "It feels like... like I'm forgetting myself. Like my own name is slipping away."
Silas pulled a syringe from a locked drawer, the liquid inside it a swirling silver that seemed to move on its own. "This is going to hurt. It's a reality stabilizer—binds your pattern to the local timeline. But it's crude, and it's temporary. Maybe an hour, maybe two. After that, the RIG will reacquire you."
"Do it," Jace said through clenched teeth.
Silas plunged the needle into Jace's neck.
The effect was immediate. Jace's body convulsed, his back bowing so hard Elara heard something crack. The static on his arm retreated, pulling back from his elbow to his wrist, but it didn't disappear. It pulsed there, a malevolent shimmer that seemed to be waiting.
Jace collapsed, gasping, sweat pouring down his face. "That was... unpleasant."
"You'll live," Silas said, but his voice was grim. "For now."
Elara helped Jace sit up, supporting his back with her arm. His skin was pale, and his eyes had a haunted quality she'd never seen before. This was Jace—her anchor, her mechanic, the man who could fix anything with a wrench and a curse word. He wasn't supposed to look fragile.
"How long?" she asked Silas.
"Until the stabilizer wears off? Maybe ninety minutes. Maybe less." He began packing his equipment with frantic efficiency. "And when it does, the RIG will finish what the Reaper started. He'll be gone. Not dead—*erased*. No body, no memory, no trace that he ever existed."
Elara's stomach dropped. "Then we need to get him somewhere safe. Somewhere the RIG can't reach."
"There is nowhere safe," Silas said flatly. "The RIG is everywhere. It's in the station's network, in the comm relays, in the power grid. It's woven into the fabric of human civilization. You can't hide from it."
"Then we unweave it."
Silas stopped packing and stared at her. "You're serious."
"Dead serious." Elara helped Jace off the table, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. He was heavy, but she could carry him. She'd carried worse. "You said the original Elara built a Counter-RIG. You said it could restore erased people. Where is it?"
Silas's face went through a series of expressions—surprise, then calculation, then something that looked almost like hope. "The *Odysseus*. Sister ship to the *Icarus*. It's drifting in a dead Rift Lane, about three days' travel from here."
"Then that's where we're going."
"Elara." Jace's voice was weak, but it carried a warning. "Three days. I don't have three days."
She turned to face him, cupping his face in her hands. His skin was cold, and she could feel the faint buzz of instability beneath it, like a failing power cell. "You're going to make it. I didn't come this far to lose you."
"You didn't come this far for me at all," he said, a ghost of his usual grin flickering across his lips. "You came for the truth."
"The truth can wait." She pressed her forehead to his. "You can't."
Silas cleared his throat. "I hate to interrupt this touching moment, but if we're going to make a run for the *Odysseus*, we need to leave now. The Reaper that attacked you—it will have reported back to Aethelred. They'll know you survived, and they'll send more."
"Then let's not give them time to arrive." Elara helped Jace toward the door, then paused. "Silas. You said you've seen data-bleed before. Three times. What happened to the survivors?"
Silas's face darkened. "There were no survivors. They all died."
"Then why are you helping us?"
He looked at her for a long moment, something unreadable in his eyes. "Because I've been waiting twenty years for someone to ask the right questions. And you're the first person who has." He grabbed a battered analog briefcase and shoved it into her free hand. "This contains everything I know about the RIG. Frequencies, weaknesses, backdoors. If I don't make it, you'll need it."
"You're coming with us?"
"I'm coming with you." He pulled a worn coat off a hook and shrugged it on. "Someone has to keep that stabilizer working, and you two look like you couldn't change a lightbulb between you."
Jace managed a weak laugh. "I can change a lightbulb."
"Can you change a reality stabilizer?"
"...No."
"Then shut up and walk."
---
The *Moth* was exactly where they'd left it, docked in a shadowed corner of the Bazaar's chaotic docking ring. The ship looked like a battered cargo hauler, all rust and patchwork plating, but Elara knew better. Beneath that ugly exterior was a vessel that had been designed by her own hands—or at least, by the hands of the woman she'd been copied from.
CASSIUS's voice greeted them as the hatch cycled open. "Elara. I detect elevated stress markers in your biometrics. And Jace's vitals are... concerning."
"Jace got tagged by a Reaper," Elara said, guiding him through the hatch. "He's data-bleeding. We need to get to the *Odysseus*."
There was a pause—a flicker of something that might have been surprise in the AI's synthesized voice. "The *Odysseus*. That is... an unexpected destination."
"You know it?"
"I know of it. It was the sister ship to the *Icarus*, launched six months prior. It was declared lost in a Rift Lane collapse eleven years ago." Another pause. "Elara, the lane it was lost in is dead. Completely collapsed. Navigating it would be suicide."
"Then we'll have to be creative." She laid Jace down on the ship's small cot, checking his pulse. It was thready, irregular. The static on his arm had crept back up to his elbow. "How long until we can jump?"
"Engines are warm. I can have us in the Rift Lane within four minutes."
"Do it."
"Elara." CASSIUS's voice was softer now, almost concerned. "If I may be frank—"
"You may not." She turned to face the ship's main console, where a small camera lens tracked her movements. "I don't have time for your warnings, CASSIUS. Jace is dying. The only thing that can save him is on that ship. So we're going."
"Understood." The ship's engines hummed to life, a deep vibration that shook the deck plates. "Preparing for departure. Silas, I recommend you strap in. The Bazaar's gravity well is unpredictable."
Silas dropped into the co-pilot's seat, fumbling with the harness. "I've flown through worse."
"I doubt that."
The *Moth* detached from the docking ring with a clang that echoed through the hull. Through the viewport, Elara watched the Bazaar shrink—a chaotic cluster of metal and light and desperation, clinging to the edge of a dead asteroid. She'd only been there for a day, but it already felt like a lifetime.
"Jumping in three... two... one."
The Rift Lane swallowed them.
---
The dead lane was exactly what its name suggested—a corridor of space that had once been a highway between stars, now collapsed into a frozen graveyard. Ships hung suspended in the void, their hulls coated in frost, their engines dark. Some were ancient, their designs dating back centuries. Others were recent, their paint still bright beneath the ice.
Elara had mapped derelicts her whole career, but she'd never seen anything like this. This wasn't a graveyard of ships. It was a graveyard of *journeys*—of people who had been mid-transit when the lane collapsed, their destinations forever out of reach.
"Beautiful," Jace murmured from the cot, his voice barely audible. "In a horrible way."
"Focus on staying alive." Elara checked the stabilizer Silas had rigged to his arm—a crude device of wires and analog gauges that pulsed with a steady rhythm. "We're close. CASSIUS, how much further?"
"Approximately two hours at current speed. But Elara, I must warn you—the *Odysseus* is not showing up on my sensors as a derelict."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean it's showing up as *active*. Power signatures, life support, even a functioning navigation array." CASSIUS's voice was carefully neutral. "The *Odysseus* is not dead. It's waiting."
Elara's blood ran cold. She remembered the *Icarus*—how it had powered up the moment she'd found the cryo-pod. How it had tried to jump into a Rift Lane and destroy itself, taking her with it.
"Trap," she breathed.
"Almost certainly," CASSIUS agreed. "But it's also the only chance Jace has. The Counter-RIG is on that ship. If we turn back, he dies."
Elara looked at Jace. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow. The static had reached his shoulder now, pulsing beneath his skin like a living thing. He didn't have two hours. He barely had one.
"Full speed," she said. "And CASSIUS? Start plotting an escape route. If this goes wrong, I want options."
"Always, Director."
The *Moth* surged forward, threading through the frozen graveyard toward the waiting ship. And in the silence of the dead lane, Elara Voss prepared to walk into a trap with her eyes wide open—because the alternative was watching her best friend fade out of existence.
She'd rather die fighting than let that happen.