Chapter 12: Blind Spots

Incident Report: #QY4130-00055827-004

Statement taken on: QY4130-02U-09 23:08 QSLT

Interviewee: VELL, KOR

RE: EGERIA-1 MAINTENANCE

My name? Oh, for the record. It’s—I’m Kor Vell. I’m, um, a specialist maintenance worker for Capena Port-operated space stations—have been for… two years now, I think?

Capena has regular maintenance workers, of course, but they typically do janitorial-related work on a daily basis. My unit does weekly rotations between stations for the more technical stuff. There are six of us: a robotics specialist, two AI diagnostics workers, two docking and fueling workers, and me.

I do tracking diagnostics—like for remotely checking IDs, payments, room stays, and other logs like that. If someone docks their ship, it gets tracked, and anyone else who’s requesting to dock will get notified of how much space we have left in port. If someone swings by the food court and grabs a meal, it’ll track their payment for location and anti-theft purposes.

Look, I know it seems like I’m rambling, but just give me a second. I promise this isn’t a waste of time.

Every camera and sensor in the entire station is used to track the whereabouts of each person because the company doesn’t want a huge fucking lawsuit on their hands if a criminal sneaks into port and gets away with something that pulls in the authorities from every sector in the galaxy. There are no blind spots in Egeria-1. They made sure of that since it’s a pit stop in the middle of nowhere. It’s usually the last one we hit before my unit gets a few days off.

I think it was around 2100 when we landed? I’m not too sure because I’d fallen asleep while reading. But when I left my room to get ready for docking, there’d been some commotion in the common area between Zu and Sirel—the AI geeks—about the mini poker tournament we’d had the night before. It’s sort of like a fucked-up potluck where we wager a treat we’ve picked up at another stop. Anyway, I think they were trying to say that Jaxon—the robotics guy—cheated or something. He was loudly exclaiming that he didn’t and called them sore losers while I suited up.

They joke with each other a lot because their specializations overlap, so it was more of a banter thing, but I could tell the fueling and docking workers were getting a little pissed. Yeln and Qi are the oldest ones in the unit and they don’t—um—didn’t appreciate everyone else in the crew acting a little more casual. The two of them often argued that if they screwed up, they got the worst of it because docking is how they get people into the stations. If that goes wrong, you lose money. Sure, an AI or robot can screw up a service request and give someone the wrong suite amenity or food court order, but that can be refunded. Lost revenue can’t be replaced.

Needless to say, I usually kept my mouth shut about countering that mindset, even though I know my ass would be on the line if Capena’s data ever had any hiccups. So I typically stick with Jaxon, Zu, and Sirel. The “young bloods” of the crew.

Anyway, I remember Yeln and Qi were relieved when we docked because there were a ton more ships in port than usual. That’s always a good sign. It means money for Capena, which means more money for us. Plus, we still managed to get a docking spot, so their jobs were looking easy for Egeria-1 maintenance day. It’s why they stayed behind to hook into the data servers there and run diagnostics first while the rest of us and the pilots headed to the food court for a quick meal.

I… think I should’ve known something was wrong when we were taking the travelator to the outer ring of the station. The pilots decided to walk it, but everyone else leaned against the travelator’s railing and chatted as the huge walls of ads slid past like we were entering a tunnel at an inter-rave. I’m, well, not… exactly super talkative, so I typically just listen, which is how I ended up staring at the life-sized or larger-than-life people on each of the screens before they rotated to another one.

I’ve seen these things probably a dozen times by now—a lot of the ad providers have long contracts with the company—but… there was a newer one I didn’t remember from last time. It was a hot pink thing that everyone immediately shielded their eyes from with a joke and some laughs about how it did the opposite and made you not want to look at it. I originally laughed with them, but when it popped up again during the ride over, I couldn’t help but take another look.

It featured a woman—or someone extremely feminine-appearing—lounging in a hot pink dress on a hot pink chaise to match the background. Shopping bags with designer labels sat scattered around the floor of the ad, some of them tipped over and others seemingly untouched. But I think the thing that stood out the most to me was that the woman looked bored. When it scrolled away, I thought that maybe it was a new marketing campaign that Capena was doing to promote Egeria-1—not that anyone would go out of their way to shop there—since I couldn’t really make sense of what else it was supposed to be advertising. Plus, I’d seen some of those designer names above storefronts when I’d walked through the outer ring on the way to the food court every week.

When the flash of pink came around again, I found the woman in the ad was staring at me. I don’t think it was some trick of the tunnel or too many days on a ship, so don’t give me that shit or laugh. She went straight from looking off into space, looking bored, to watching me.

But, of course, when I elbowed Zu to point it out, the ad was gone, and I shut my mouth because I didn’t want to be poked at for having space madness. I think that’s the point where I told myself that I’d been reading too many horror stories recently. And I didn’t see the ad again before we stepped off, so I couldn’t really confirm it with anyone else. But I decided to try to let it go and keep my head down on the way to the food court.

When we got there, the pilots were already sitting at one of the tables, and one of them waved us over. They half-shouted something like, “Thanks for the free meal!”

So Zu frowned and asked, “What do you mean free? Did you steal my wallet?”

They shook their head and pointed their thumb to the white-shelled robot with blue blinking eyes in charge of the gyro place. “It said it was on the house.”

Zu exchanged a confused look with Sirel, and the two of them wove through the tables to the shop. Jaxon scratched his head and glanced at me before saying, “Maybe they’re trying to prank us, and they had a voucher?”

I shrugged. Hells if I know what Capena does to compensate their pilots.

We followed them, and found Sirel placing an order that I guess was considered to be on the larger side that she muttered something about Capena not allowing on the freebie list. But when she hit the button, the robot’s eyes turned into little upward pointing carets and told her it was on the house.

Zu was like: “What the fuck? What do you mean on the house? Fuck me. Damnit it’s fucking broken. Of fucking course.”

Sirel tried to calm her down by saying, “Breathe, Zu, it’s likely just a glitch. Let’s order everything else from another vendor.”

So we shuffled down to another food court stall, and… it was free. Again.

Zu was practically blowing steam from her ears at this point, and Sirel was looking more sheepish and downtrodden. Jaxon decided to take it upon himself to try one of the vendors at the opposite end of the strip, only to come back with a free container of sushi. And some sake. On the house.

Needless to say, Zu was crimson by the time we sat down. She didn’t really eat. Instead, she was already on her datapad, connecting to the servers wirelessly to see if she could take a look at the logs while the rest of us ate. Jaxon tried to lighten the mood with some jabs at the robots, trying to make it sound like he’d been the one to mess something up instead, but Zu just ended up mumbling to herself and let Sirel do all the talking for her.

When we finally finished up, Zu stormed off, Sirel chased after her, and Jaxon lingered behind. He gave me a shrug with a look that said: what can you do? And then he went after them.

It was when I turned around to head to the central computing station that I realized just how empty the food court was. Each step I took on my way back to the travelator left an unsettling echo with nobody around to dampen it. That’s honestly pretty normal for the Egeria-1, but as I got closer to the main walkway, I couldn’t help but look back at the corridor of lifeless shops and seating that usually culminated in accommodating at least one or two people that I’d pass during a normal trip.

So, I just shook it off.

I think that’s the funny thing about something being wrong when you can’t quite put your finger on it. You tend to invent a reason for why things are occurring around you because that’s easier to handle than the possibility of explaining something you can’t—well—explain. And I decided to tell myself that people weren’t hungry or in the mood to shop. I could imagine some cargo freighters were hunkered down and passed out in the hotel rooms in the central ring, which is why I also didn’t see any lights on in any of the windows of those five floors of dedicated temporary housing. After all, it was late. We’re out here on the fringes of this galaxy. No one wants to imagine something going wrong in the middle of nowhere.

That’s why I kept riding the travelator all the way to the inner ring instead of heading back to the ship. This time, no hot pink ads popped up to stare at me. And when I got there, I immediately forgot about the eerie silence.

Out of all of Capena’s space stations, Egeria-1 became my favorite after a few short months because of the inner ring. It’s quiet, in a comforting way. The rattling and creaking of all the metal holding the thing together fades into the far background there. I always said it was because of the artificial sunlight they pumped in, but… I know it was more than that.

Capena’s designers for this ring really knew how to make an oasis. The place is like walking through a zen garden brimming with fresh flowers around the edges. It always left me wanting to go to the gift shop to buy one of those designer floral soaps. I’ve never actually purchased any of them because none of them quite capture the same scent—let alone that feeling of walking alongside a window of blackness and stars. A planetarium and terrarium rolled into one.

At the center of it all is this large, unobstructed view of space, where all of the galaxy is reduced to pinpricks of light, and you turn into a mere far-off observer. You’d think someone would go mad staring out into that void, knowing that you’re so far removed from the galaxy. Smaller than one of the specks outside that window. In a place where it would take at least sixteen hours to get to you if you needed someone.

But it’s the water feature that always anchored me—that man-made three-meter trickling faux waterfall adjacent to the viewing glass. Its soothing ambient noise always kept me there because it reminded me of the places I’d visited when I was a child. My father tended to seek out wherever the largest fountain was, and that’s where he’d dig out his decaying coin purse to toss one in.

It was when I grew into my teens that I finally asked why he even bothered keeping a pouch of old, worthless coins. After all, everyone uses electronic credits—you don’t see anything physically unless it’s on a credit stick, which can be rather shady. He told me that he finds them all the time at the recycling hub. They end up just getting melted down, so he pockets a few of them when he can because—well—think of all the hands they’ve touched before yours.

He said it was like holding a piece of history—like hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of souls had owned that same coin before he had. And now he could leave it somewhere else, just as they had, as proof that he’d been there.

I kept his coin purse when he passed. And every time I stood in Egeria-1’s oasis, I always made sure to leave a coin in the basin of the waterfall. Proof that I was there—and maybe a little naïve hope that anyone’s soul bound to that coin would find peace there. Like the peace I’ve found in that very spot.

After that, I recall sitting down for a bit on the black, polished edge of the fountain wall and… cleared my thoughts, I guess. It’d turned into a ritual before I crossed through to deal with the tracking diagnostics server, which can turn into a bit of a headache sometimes. So I spent a few minutes there, and then I moved on.

Once you leave the garden, everything else feels super lifeless. Everything’s gray—the sleek metal walls, the brushed metal floors, the occasional digital-canvas landscape or portrait of some dead guy hung up in the backrooms of the administrative and core maintenance corridors. Usually, I pass by some disgruntled Egeria-1 staff in suits or jumpsuits, but it was super quiet that day. I didn’t see anyone in their offices when I glanced through their windows. And when I passed by the break room, I expected a couple of the janitorial personnel to be playing their typical card games. But instead… it was a ghost town.

Maybe I just missed them all or maybe they decided to have a large staff meeting. That’s what I told myself before I scanned my badge to get into the server room.

Everything there was normal. The lights turned on when I stepped inside, muting all the blinking LEDs from the server racks, and I headed straight for the monitors at the end of the room. I also caught a glimpse of Zu, Sirel, and Jaxon at their stations on the security cameras before it flipped to another view.

So, I plugged in my console, scanned my badge for clearance, typed in my fifteen-hundred ridiculous passwords to jump through various portals to get into the system, et voilà, I was in. I started combing through the overall data like I usually did, starting with the beginning of the previous week, right after I last signed out, and everything looked great.

It was the day after I’d last checked into Egeria-1 that the numbers did something… unexpected. I remember breaking out into a sweat and not being able to see straight as I tried to make sense of the data, thinking, “Oh, shit, this is how I get fired. I’m going to lose my job because I fucked up a routine update like a dumbass.”

I ended up switching back and forth between some of the data panels for a few minutes before I leaned back in the chair and took a deep breath, telling myself that the AI was also having hiccups. There had to be something bigger going on. I just needed to get a grip, take a look at the numbers, and dig down to the root of the problem. It was very much possible that whatever was happening had absolutely nothing to do with me. Granted, I absolutely didn’t believe that last bit, but I had to tell myself something to keep from having a mental breakdown.

I started to drill down into each of the categories to find the discrepancies, and the first thing I noticed was the check-ins versus check-outs. Every day past when I’d last left the Egeria-1, the check-ins were steady, but the check-outs dropped to zero. That was the first red flag.

Naturally, I pulled up the logs for the hotel to see if it matched, and it did. So I thought, “There must be something wrong with the check-out process.” But when I looked at the update logs for the last time there was a patch, it’d been at least three weeks prior to the number drop.

Since that seemed like a dead-end, I decided to jump to the shopping numbers. Once again, it dropped to zero for a good three of the seven days in the previous cycle—same with food court access. But surely it registered at least six people there today, right? I don’t check the data for the same day I’m in the system until I return, but I decided to make an exception this time. Sure enough, there were six IDs logged, and I recognized one of them as mine.

At that point, I’d sat back in my chair and tried to comprehend what I was looking at, exactly. People had been logged as stepping foot onto Egeria-1, but there was no record of them ever leaving. I recall how my eyes snapped over to my datapad, still plugged into the terminal, and how my fingers itched to pull up one of the system programs—one I’d gotten accustomed to from my time as a hotel worker on a station a few years ago.

Back then, I hadn’t worked on a Capena station—it was some sub-brand of a sub-brand with the overall company policy to do in-person wellness checks on guests every five days. That station typically catered to businesses and conventions, so it wasn’t out of the ordinary for some guests to stay a little longer by checking in early or checking out late. I’d done them on a weekly basis before getting the job with Capena.

Capena, however, has a strict policy to respect guest privacy. The company runs rest stop ports. The longest stay isn’t usually more than a couple of days. But there are no blind spots on the Egeria-1. And the data was telling me a story that could only be confirmed by doing a wellness check.

If I was going to get fired because of data that I couldn’t explain to Capena’s higher-ups, then fuck company policy. I was screwed either way.

I looked up a guest that checked in the day I left Egeria-1 a week ago who still wasn’t marked as being checked out, and I copied their room key signal onto my datapad.

My heart was practically hammering out of my chest as I left the server room. I thought I’d drop my datapad from how sweaty my hands felt, so I stuck it back into my belt before I left the still-disturbingly-empty staff hall. The walk through the garden didn’t help calm my nerves as much as I’d hoped it would because I was focused on that idea that the nearest inhabited celestial body was sixteen hours away.

When I reached the travelator, I walked with purpose, rather than letting it drag my body to the central ring. The tunnel rotated through a blur of ads that crept into the edge of my vision, constantly threatening to show that pink monstrosity that never came.

The hotel rooms eventually came into view, and my stomach twisted into so many knots I thought I might freeze and let the travelator sweep me straight to the ship instead. But I managed to step off, despite how newly disturbing all the darkened room windows felt around me.

Of course I’d somehow picked the guy with a room practically at the end of the wing. The entire walk had me checking for any sliver of light that wasn’t from the dimmed corridor or the little serenity spaces that attempted to emulate the larger garden of the inner ring. But I eventually made it to the stairs leading up to his room. Even though this guy was on the fourth floor, I didn’t trust the elevator—not with how fucked the tracking was—and I shuddered to consider being stuck in there if it truly was a malfunction of some sort.

Winded, I made it to the door and knocked a few times before I fumbled with my datapad. I prayed to whatever deity was out there that I wasn’t about to walk into something so horribly scarring that I would end up with space madness.

I… almost wish that I’d seen a body in there now.

Instead, when the door slid open, it was empty. There wasn’t a soul in sight, not when I covered my nose to stave off the stench of week-old leftovers sitting out on a desk tucked into the corner of the room, and quietly tip-toed in to check the bathroom. No one.

But all of his things were still there. His bag sat on its back by the closet, unzipped. The man’s comm was on the nightstand, still charging, with several notifications that lit up when my shadow passed over it.

The shower stall was empty. The closet only held coat hangers. The bed was slightly crumpled from someone sitting on it briefly.

I took a step back to try to see under the bed before I finally dropped down to peer underneath. Turns out, it was a solid base—no one could hide under there.

I was at a loss for words, sitting on my knees in the middle of a room that should be occupied. All the records said so.

There are no blind spots on Egeria-1.

Do I go back and check the logs again? Did I misread something or make a mistake? Would the missing guest magically walk into his room and demand to know what I was doing there?

I remember gagging because of the smell again and reminded myself that no normal person would leave a meal they had bought—on record—seven days ago out to rot. But this man couldn’t have simply vanished either.

After another minute of contemplative silence, I heard it.

Like a… tip or a very soft crinkling—something that almost sounded like when the shop robots wrapped people's purchases in that faux tissue paper stuff. I waited another moment, and it happened again. And again. And again.

I pushed myself off the floor and followed the sound to the bathroom, where I looked around to find the source of the noise until I caught a streak of movement out of the corner of my eye. Something dropped into the small trash can between the toilet and the sink, tapping against the liner and sliding down. I peered inside, and everything around me seemingly went still.

The liner was caked in layers of brown, some of it completely dry, while the far edge, where the drips had been sliding down, gleamed a deep red. Another drop fell, making a dull tip against the liner, and I looked up, tracing where it’d come from. The fan vent above the toilet.

Blood.

Blood was dripping from the ceiling. My mind raced, trying to justify that there’s no way this man could’ve possibly crawled into the vents. And why would he even want to do that? It’s not like he’d been locked in his room, right?

I had a sudden jolt of panic as I quickly backed out of the bathroom and made a sprint for the door. It opened, and I was gripping onto the railing just outside, gulping down fresher air before I vomited down three stories to the corridor below.

That’s when my datapad rang. I practically jumped out of my skin and almost dropped the damn thing before I answered the call.

“Where are you?” It was Jaxon.

How the hell was I supposed to tell him I broke several company rules and wandered into a guy’s hotel room? I think I stammered something incoherent out.

“We just had to force our way into the warehouse to check on supplies because things weren’t adding up and the shop robots aren’t functioning right either.” I could hear the urgency climbing with every word he relayed at this point.

“Something’s wrong with the tracking system too,” I said. “Well, maybe not with the system, but⁠—”

“Kor, you need to head back. Now.”

I remember turning around to stare at the guest’s door again, feeling pinpricks shoot up my spine. I’ll admit that I might’ve squeaked when I asked: “Why?”

His hesitation didn’t help me get my legs going. I was frozen to the spot until he finally said: “We found the station staff in the cold room. They’re dead. We don’t know what killed them.”

And I was alone. In the central ring. Surrounded by rooms and rooms that I had no idea what lurked inside.

“I’m on my way,” I managed to croak out before I started for the stairs.

I fell into the walls on half the landings before I hit the bottom and sprinted through the hotel corridor. The doors stretched on for forever on my way to the travelator.

And just when I thought I could ride it to the outer ring to catch my breath, all of the screen flashed to a recording—a recording of me. From less than an hour ago. From when I’d dropped the coin into the water in the garden.

As soon as the coin hit the surface, I had to shield my eyes because the screens flashed to that horrid hot pink. Half of them showed the woman on the chaise, smiling with a real heart in her hands, blood dripping into the toppled-over shopping bags at her feet. The other half simply said, in uppercase:

THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTION.

Every screen rotated through, highlighting each line like I’d won a grand prize in a casino. I was too shocked to scream, but I sure as hell ran. I ran as fast as I could, despite feeling like I was moving in place. I held back tears as the travelator kept the same pace as the horrific ads—of the heart, of the woman, of the thank yous for carrying on a tradition I suddenly regretted in that moment.

But when Jaxon, Zu, and Sirel appeared, running into the intersection of the outer ring, the neon ads snapped off. Their shrieks sounded as we plunged into darkness, and the travelator shuddered to a stop. I pitched forward and nearly ground my nose against the tread, but I caught the railings and shot forward to run with the rest of them to the ship.

Ships that had been docked there for a week idled in the same port as our own, taking up precious space that forced ours to the far end. The far end, where two forms lay prone. Sirel blubbered something I can’t recall, but it was mournful, especially once we realized they were both in our jumpsuits. It was Qi and Yeln. Both of them had a huge red stain over the spot where their heart was. That’s when I heard Jaxon say something about them being like the others in the warehouse.

The emergency lights flashed, and the alarms started going off when we clamored up the steps to get into the ship. The pilots were nowhere to be found, and I think Zu was the one who said to leave them because she wouldn’t put it past them to have done it. She and Jaxon took over the controls just in time to fly us out before the port’s gravity and oxygen dropped.

I… don’t want to admit it, but… I think whatever entity is—was—I don’t know at this point since it’s still under investigation and, well, I put in my resignation with Capena this morning. Um… I think it was trying to stop the three of them from leaving. I feel like I gave it what it wanted, and I’ve been having nightmares now about not bringing my father’s coin purse with me.

It’s funny… they prided Egeria-1 on not having any blind spots, and yet… somehow there’s no footage of Qi and Yeln’s deaths… Or where the pilots went. I guess they were wrong. And I’d like to think that some things are better off not knowing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cara Nox (they/them) is an urban and science fantasy writer, combining their love of magically-inclined chaotic idiots and modern/futuristic tech. They also love mysteries, thrillers, and anything that draws inspiration from stars. Cara works as a web developer by day, holds BA in Japanese Language and Literature they occasionally use to read video game announcements, and resides in Ohio with their younger sister and two black cats.

For more information on where to find them online and more about their books, visit caranox.com.