The first sign wasn’t an alarm—it was a feeling.

A faint shiver ran through Sickbay as the Merrimack pushed deeper into the Expanse, the deck plates humming a half-tone lower than normal. Bio-beds compensated automatically, their inertial dampers tightening by fractional degrees, but the change was still perceptible—like a ship drawing a careful breath and holding it.

Medical displays flickered with transient static as the Expanse’s subspace interference washed across the hull. Vital readouts remained stable, yet several panels recalibrated twice before settling, their LCARS bands briefly skewing off-spectrum before snapping back into alignment. Gravity held firm, but it felt… thicker. Not heavier—just resistant, as if movement required a touch more intention.

A few patients stirred. One crewman shifted restlessly, brow creasing in his sleep as the bio-bed adjusted to a micro-variation in spacetime shear. Another reported a momentary sense of vertigo—gone almost as soon as it was noted. The EMH-less Sickbay relied on trained hands and instincts; the staff moved quietly, checking pupils, monitoring neural activity, logging the Expanse’s subtle fingerprints on living bodies.

The air carried a soft ozone tang from overworked field emitters, and somewhere beneath it all was the steady, reassuring rhythm of the ship’s heart—engines synchronized, systems compensating, life signs holding.

Whatever the Expanse was doing to space around them, Sickbay could feel it.

And it was watching just as closely in return.

GM Nosferatu
Your Darkest Nightmare