[AUDIO DIARY – ROTATION 7,963]
Recording starts. There's a faint hum of the ship's engines in the background, intermittent groans from the hull settling and the distant, irregular sound of someone coughing somewhere down the corridor. ■■■■'s voice is steady, clinical almost, but there's an undertone of exhaustion that seeps through.
"Rotation 7,963. I don't even remember when the seventh celebration ended. Time here has no meaning beyond survival and yet I mark it anyway. Maybe because memory is one of the few things they haven't taken from me. Fourteen thousand have died since then. Fourteen thousand lives have been extinguished by the quiet, grinding teeth of hunger. Eighty percent elderly and middle-aged. They went quietly at first, muttering prayers, staring at the void outside as if it could give them mercy. Twenty percent are young children, barely old enough to understand the concept of death. They screamed. And when they could no longer scream, the silence was worse.
The rations ended on rotation 7,200. After that, morality died along with the first few bodies. At first, they tried to resist. "I won't eat them," they said. But hunger is a virus far crueler than any pathogen. Hunger doesn't negotiate. Hunger doesn't care about friendship, family or history. Hunger makes you remember the warmth of your own last meal, and it gnaws at your stomach until the only thing left in your mind is flesh. They broke. Survivors began eating those they once knew, slicing memories into ration-sized portions. Each meal left a shadow on the soul, but it also left them alive.
There are sixteen thousand of us left. Each one is a walking corpse in all but name and yet our numbers persist because the Second Prince can—thankfully—heal what should be fatal. His Body Reconstruction patches the flesh, rebuilds the damaged organs and smooths over the decay of starvation and disease. He does it and the others treat it as their salvation and their curse. Some beg, some bribe, some threaten him to heal only on their terms. Some use it as a condition to kill. Yesterday, I watched the Second Prince face them for the first time in months and I thought he would burn the entire ship down.
A group of guards were rounding up those infected with a sickness that, in normal circumstances, should have spread death. And yet no one died, because the Second Prince is here. And yet, they tried to weaponize it. They killed their own, dragging the infected into dark corridors, slicing throats, breaking ribs and stripping meat all for rations. And when they looked at him, there was no fear. Only entitlement. Only hunger made violent.
He snapped. I have never seen the Second Prince snap before. His calm presence shattered in a way that made the air itself seem to tremble. He ordered them thrown into the void of space. Their screams were swallowed by the vacuum and some of the others whispered that it was wasteful. Waste, they said. They are dying, and yet he is furious. I understood then that morality can still burn even when the rest of the ship has surrendered to savagery.
Today, he is checking on an old friend. He is someone who contracted the sickness days ago and hid it until it was almost too late. Even his Reconstruction powers have limits. Even he cannot hold back the inevitable forever. I watch him move through the corridors, and the weight of what is coming presses on me. By my calculations, before rotation 8,000, they will turn on each other again. Panic will become a disease itself, spreading faster than the virus ever could. Some will hurl themselves into the void just to escape the hunger. Others will murder not for food, but to prevent someone else from having it. And soon, perhaps before the next rotation, only he and I will remain.
I watched the shadows of the sick crawl along the walls a few hours ago. Their eyes are hollow. Their fingers are twitching and faces are gaunt and sunken. The smell of decay is no longer an insult. Cannibalism is now a protocol. I see mothers dragging children they once protected to the cold metal floors. I hear fathers whispering lullabies over the throats of their victims, as if singing could justify what they are doing. I walk among them because I do not hunger. But I am not free. Hunger is only physical after all.
The corridors are a maze of corpses and whispering survivors. Some reach for me, thinking perhaps they can feed on me and survive. I let them not because I need it because I want to watch how desperation transforms flesh into weaponry and morality into blades. I want to watch the Second Prince bend his reconstruction to their twisted games, healing, rebuilding and yet knowing the futility of it all. He is a god here, and yet they forget he is not. They push, they scheme, they kill, and he is forced to correct the imbalance.
Before rotation 8,000, there will be nothing left but him, and me. And perhaps, in the vacuum of this dying ship, that is all that will matter.
End recording."
°°°°°°
■■■■ walks through the dimly lit corridors of the ship. The faint groans of the sick and dying echo in the distance, intermingling with the hollow whispers of those who wait for the next ration or the next corpse. She makes her way to the Second Prince's quarters.
Inside, the room is still, save for the ragged breathing of a frail old man lying on a deathbed. His body is shriveled. Age has claimed him completely. Even the Second Prince's Body Reconstruction cannot undo the decay of decades, and doing so would come at a cost far greater than the effort itself. It would need him to alter fate and exhausting him beyond measure.
The old man sees ■■■■ and lifts his weak gaze despite the frailty.
"How long… how long do we have, Lady ■■■■?"
"At least 200 rotations. At least before pandemonium consumes the rest of the survivors."
The Second Prince exhales as he looked outside space.
"I expected this to happen but seeing it is different."
His eyes flick toward ■■■■.
"Do not tear off your hand to feed them. Even if you can regenerate it, it is not mercy. It is a poison. Giving them that is only to make them addicted to your power."
■■■■ bows her head. "I apologize."
The old man coughs before holding the Second Prince's hand.
"It's my fault. When I was exiled, I pleaded with the Second Prince to let them go with me, because they were exiles too. Now… now they are not happy. Only despair remains. Nothing else."
"Had you not asked that, I would have gone insane being with ■■■■."
The old man lets out a weak, hoarse laugh.
"Time… passes so fast. I was just a man near middle age, and now I am old. And I was their leader, their guide… and yet, here I am. Dying. I have a favor to ask. If you find a world… a place for them to inhabit… bury me there. Let me finally be still."
The Second Prince opens his mouth to agree and promise that he will honor this wish but the words die before leaving him, because the ship suddenly pulses with green light, glowing along every wall, corridor and surface. ■■■■ immediately moves to the holograms materializing around her. Her eyes scan the projections in disbelief. Her voice is barely audible, trembling with the impossibility of it.
"We've entered a system with a habitable planet."