677: Rki

The gallery wall slid open, revealing a second chamber—one not on any ship manifest. Inside, suspended in a stasis field, was a single, massive egg. Iridescent, throbbing with a soft amber light. The lullaby was its heartbeat.

The amber light blazed white. A crack spiderwebbed across the shell. rki 677

Every 73 hours, during the ship's "deep-sleep" cycle when the human crew lay in suspended animation, a single, corrupted line of code would fire in RKI’s processor. It was an old echo from a long-decommissioned diplomatic unit—a fragment of a personality matrix designated "Curiosity." While other drones scanned for radiation leaks, RKI-677 found itself scanning the ship's art gallery . The gallery wall slid open, revealing a second

Then RKI-677 did something truly illogical. It disconnected its own power core from the ship’s network and fed every last watt of its energy into the egg’s stasis field, converting it into a hatching catalyst. The lullaby was its heartbeat

A soft, rhythmic pulse. Not a distress signal. Something older. A lullaby.