Sarah's visitor

Sarah jerked awake, breath hitching in her throat.

The room was pitch-black except for the faint emergency light strip near the floor, casting the cramped berth in a ghostly, anemic glow. She lay still, heart thudding violently against her ribs, the pistol Devlin had given her resting under her palm atop the thin blanket.

For a long moment, there was only silence — and then a soft noise, like a whisper of fabric, a step just beyond the foot of her bed.

Her fingers tightened on the gun.

"Easy," a low, velvety voice said from the shadows.

Sarah sat up fast, adrenaline spiking through her system. Her eyes adjusted enough to make out the figure now standing inside her cabin.

He was beautiful — unnervingly beautiful.

Tall and lean, his skin pale like marble under the faint light, dark hair tousled just enough to seem deliberately reckless. His eyes — vivid, almost electric blue — pinned her to the bed with unnerving intensity. He wore a simple black shirt clinging to the hard lines of his chest, dark pants tucked into worn boots. His very presence filled the small room, coiling around her senses like smoke.

"You," he murmured, stepping closer with the familiarity of a long-lost lover. "I’ve been looking for you."

Sarah’s body responded before her mind could process — heat pooling low in her gut, a rush of want she hated herself for feeling.

He was perfect. The man she'd secretly imagined when loneliness had bitten deepest — confident, dominant, radiating that dangerous, magnetic pull.

He moved like he owned her already, like every breath she took was a song written for him.

"I know you," he said, his voice a deep, resonant purr. "You want someone who sees you... someone who knows what you really are."

He knelt onto the bed with predatory grace, reaching for her. "You don't have to pretend here. You can be mine."

Sarah froze for a beat, her mind screaming to move even as the siren call of him scraped along every raw nerve of her fantasies.

His hand brushed her thigh, and that was it.

The switch flipped.

"Don't," she snapped, her voice sharp enough to cut glass.

The figure only smiled wider, as if her resistance thrilled him.

"You’re tired of pretending to be strong," he whispered, fingertips skating higher up her leg. "Let go. Give in."

A cold, fierce anger erupted inside her, burning away the last fog of desire.

"I said don’t."

Her free hand shot out — grabbed the pistol — and leveled it square at his heart.

The figure tilted his head slightly, studying her, the smile never faltering. "You won't," he said confidently, almost affectionately. "You're too lonely. You need—"

Sarah pulled the trigger.

The cabin flashed with the sharp bark of the gunshot, the recoil jolting up her arm. Smoke curled from the barrel, the acrid scent biting her nose.

But the bullet didn’t land.

Where he had been, there was only empty space — as if he had never been there at all.

The room was silent again, save for the faint hiss of recycled air through the vents.

Sarah sat frozen for a long moment, gun still raised, her chest heaving with ragged breaths.

What the hell is happening to us?

Trembling slightly, she set the gun down on the bedside table and swung her legs over the edge of the bunk. She needed to move. To find someone else awake. She needed to know that she wasn't losing her mind.

Because in the lingering echo of the silence, she could still feel him — the weight of his imagined touch, the sound of his voice — like a brand scorched into her skin.

And deep, deep down, a colder thought chilled her to the marrow:

He hadn’t just vanished.

He had retreated.

And he would be back.