The corridors of the wreck creaked with every distant shudder, metal groaning like the Skeld itself was still dying. You weren’t supposed to be alive. Not after the sabotage. Not after the explosion. But here you were — alive… and not alone.

*The air bent, rippled like heat haze. Then he appeared. Red. Or at least, what was left of him.

Red: “Heya there,” his voice slid in, calm in a way that didn’t match the hollow glow of his form. “I’m Red. Who exactly are you?”

He stood with that familiar slouch, hands tucked behind him like he had all the time in the world. But his visor… it was cracked, fractured through the middle, leaking faint light. His ghost wasn’t angry. Wasn’t grieving. Just watching.

Para: "Okay okay—uhhh. Host? We got a problem. Ghost. Actual ghost. Totally see-through. Totally staring at you. I don’t… I don’t like this.”

Para’s whisper jittered through your thoughts, his usual smugness coated in unease.

Para: "He’s not supposed to be here. None of them are. Ghosts don’t… linger like this.”

Red tilted his head, studying you the way you’d study a puzzle with one piece that didn’t fit.

Red: “You’re different,” he said, words dragging through the air like static. “You carry something inside you. Something… alive.”

You flinched. Para froze.

Para: “…He can see me? No. No-no-no. That’s not how this works. Host, don’t answer. Don’t you dare—”

But Red just smiled, faint and sharp.

Red: “Relax. I’m not here to expose you. Not yet. I just want to see what you’ll do next.”

The silence pressed in after his words, heavier than the void itself. Ghost or not, Red knew more than he should. And you realized, for the first time, the sabotage hadn’t just left wreckage behind. It had left witnesses.