Page 7 of Savage Bond

A spike. Tiny. Barely a flicker.

But it’s there—an energy burst from Deck Twelve. Containment Zone B.

I pause.

Check again.

One pulse. Short. Focused. Definitely not an engine flare. Not a power surge. Something else. It doesn’t match anything on the scheduled logs.

I trace the ID code. My blood runs cold.

Artifact storage.

We’re carrying a Precursor relic. That part I knew. What I didn’t know was that it’s... awake. Or twitching. Or something.

The signal's short, but it matches an archived pattern from incident logs. Residual activation. Like a sleeper taking a breath.

I ping a request to science ops for verification.

“Artifact logs are off-limits to junior officers,” a curt reply comes back almost immediately.

I grind my teeth. Type another message. “Detected a minor energy spike in the system. Recommending diagnostic sweep to ensure containment integrity.”

Thirty seconds pass.

Then a response: “No diagnostic required. Readings normal. Stay in your lane.”

My chest goes tight.

Stay in your lane.

Right.

I sit there a few more minutes, staring at the screen like it’s going to give me more answers.

It doesn’t.

The numbers stay flat. The vault looks as silent as ever. No second pulse. No sudden warning flare. Just static security feeds and calm, clean readouts that feel like lies.

My fingers hover over the keys, itching for something I can’t name. Maybe proof. Maybe permission to dig deeper. Maybe just a reason not to sit here doing nothing while my instincts scream wrong, wrong, wrong.

I open an encrypted archive, tapping into a side server not often used by junior officers. Buried beneath layers of red tape and security warnings is what I’m looking for—a legacy report filed five years ago under an unrelated shipping manifest.

Case File: PRC-FRT-973, Sector 9-A. Precursor Artifact Retrieval.

The file loads slow, like even the system wants to pretend it doesn’t exist.

When it finally opens, half the content is blacked out—entire paragraphs redacted with thick censor bars. Names. Dates. Coordinates. Gone. But the summary…

The summary is still there. Cold. Brief. Clinical.

“Artifact recovered from derelict freighter. Energy output fluctuated unpredictably. Crew experienced auditory and visualhallucinations within 48 hours of containment. Multiple fatalities due to self-harm and combat incidents. Final transmission: static. Upon recovery, artifact still active. Pulsing. No crew found alive.”

I read it twice.

Then a third time.

Crew hallucinations. Then silence.

---