Breach of Kepler Station

Prologue

Kepler Station orbits a dead star in the Andromeda Expanse, where conventional physics fractures and bends. It is humanity's furthest outpost—a sprawling cylindrical megastructure of research labs, habitation rings, and a massive particle accelerator array. It was meant to be invulnerable. It is not. Three days ago, a distress beacon activated. Then silence. A salvage crew has been dispatched to investigate, and upon arrival, they discover the truth: Kepler Station is not abandoned. It has been infiltrated. Something from beyond known space has breached the station's containment protocols—a parasitic entity, possibly organic, possibly something stranger. It spreads through systems and crew alike. Sections of the station are warped and overgrown with alien biomass. Artificial gravity flickers between sectors. Survivors are trapped behind sealed bulkheads, either quarantined or hiding. The station's AI, ARIA, has fragmented into conflicting subroutines—simultaneously helpful and hostile. Worse, the entity seems to be studying the particle accelerator, preparing to use it for purposes unknown. Time is collapsing as fast as the station's orbit. If the entity escapes to a populated system, the consequences could be extinction-level. Someone on the crew may have deliberately let it in. And there are whispers that the dead star orbiting above is not dead at all—that it is something far older and far stranger. The void presses against every hull. The thin line between survival and catastrophe has already been crossed.