Required Crew Member

The manifest listed six crew. Every system agreed. So did the ship. Yet each night,

something moved through the corridors—soft footsteps timed between our heartbeats, careful not to be

heard. Sensors recorded a presence that never showed on cameras,

only in the gaps between frames. Mission Control told us to stay calm.

Fatigue causes patterns. Then the ship’s AI updated the crew count to seven—retroactively, all the way back

to launch. Our names were unchanged. The seventh was listed as “Required.” When the lights

went out, a voice came over the intercom. “Please stop pretending I wasn’t here first.”