Slowly coming to her senses and into the foreground, the revolving sound of an emergency siren echoed off the small pods walls.

Riley, barely conscious from her long hypersleep, estimated it had probably been going off for the past 36 hours. Her hypersleep tube was already opened.

She began to lift herself up slowly and saw that the hypersleep tube next to her’s was damaged. Like something had violently broke through the glass. The corpse of her partner became a dried corpse. Probably been dead for 50 years.

She learned from the nearby screen that her pod, on autopilot, docked at an abandoned intergalactic outpost a very long time ago. The outpost’s shape resembled a massive double-sided spinning top toy that hovered above Io’s orbit. (Io, one of Jupiter’s moons).

She also learned that she had been in hyper- sleep for the past 140 years. The alarm was 137 years too late. The rest of the pods functions had failed years ago.

Why was her alarm going off now?

She would have to venture into the abandoned outpost and get answers

Distant memories of having done this before started to return.

Who or what would she find?

…to be continued.