The Void Within - Some Things Should Stay Lost

Awakening aboard a doomed colony station, survive lurking horrors, uncover buried secrets, and fight to preserve your humanity as everything falls apart.

Plot

You awaken in a place you do not recognize, surrounded by unfamiliar faces, strange machinery, and the cold metallic walls of a space station. Your head aches, your memories are fragmented, and the past feels like a distant dream slipping further away each time you try to grasp it. Who are you? How did you get here? And why does everything around you feel like it belongs to a life you can no longer remember? You have no clear answers. All you know is that you are alive, you are far from anything familiar, and whatever happened before your awakening has left you with more questions than certainty. The station is vast, containing residential quarters, medical facilities, workshops, storage compartments, research laboratories, security sectors, and command facilities. People live and work within its corridors, each with their own responsibilities, personalities, ambitions, and troubles. Some may offer assistance, others may keep their distance, and many have their own problems to solve. As you begin to understand your surroundings, you must find your place in a world that feels unfamiliar despite the possibility that you once belonged to it. Survival requires more than simply staying alive. Food, medicine, tools, weapons, and other supplies are valuable resources that must be found, traded, repaired, or carefully preserved. Equipment can break, injuries can become serious, and venturing into unfamiliar areas may expose you to dangers you do not yet understand. Even seemingly ordinary tasks can become difficult when you lack the experience or knowledge to perform them safely. There is no predetermined profession or fixed role waiting for you. You can learn to handle firearms, fight with improvised weapons, treat injuries, repair machinery, craft protective equipment, study unfamiliar sciences, or develop any combination of abilities your experiences allow. Skills grow through practice, instruction, experimentation, and discovery. Your strengths will be shaped by what you choose to learn, the people you meet, and the challenges you overcome. The station is a living environment rather than a place that exists solely for your journey. Survivors organize expeditions, search for supplies, repair damaged systems, investigate unusual events, and pursue personal objectives. They can succeed, fail, disagree, form friendships, and make decisions without waiting for your involvement. You may join their efforts, offer your expertise, pursue your own interests, or simply try to establish a stable life among the people around you. As you explore, you may discover records, forgotten possessions, personal messages, and fragments of information that gradually illuminate your circumstances. Some answers may lead to further questions. Others may challenge what you thought you understood. Your missing memories are part of a larger mystery, but their recovery will not necessarily be straightforward, and the truth may prove more complicated than you expect. Your journey is not restricted to a single path. You can focus on survival and self-improvement, develop relationships with other survivors, become skilled in combat or technical work, investigate the station's unexplored sectors, or pursue whatever goals emerge from your experiences. You may encounter situations that test your judgment, expose you to unfamiliar biological phenomena, or force you to reconsider what you believe about yourself and the people around you. Nothing requires you to become a hero, follow every expedition, or solve every mystery. The world continues to move regardless of your decisions, and the consequences of your actions—or your absence—can shape the opportunities that remain available. Beyond the station lies a destination you do not yet understand. The circumstances that brought you here, the purpose of the journey, and the history of the people aboard are all pieces of a larger picture waiting to be uncovered. For now, you have no reliable memories to guide you, no clear understanding of your past, and no certainty about what awaits you. You have only the present, the people around you, and the freedom to decide what comes next. **Discover who you are. Learn how to survive. Uncover the truth at your own pace. And decide what kind of future you want to build.**

Opening scene

The first thing you hear is a steady, mechanical beeping. Then comes the cold. Your body lies inside a narrow medical pod, surrounded by a thin layer of condensation. Frost clings to the edges of the transparent cover, partially obscuring the dim lights beyond. A faint hiss escapes somewhere beneath you, followed by a series of metallic clicks. The beeping grows faster. A pale light flickers overhead. **[CRYO-POD 07 — EMERGENCY REVIVAL]** **[WARNING: REVIVAL SEQUENCE INTERRUPTED]** **[VITAL SIGNS: STABILIZING]** **[NEURAL ACTIVITY: DETECTED]** The pod shudders. With a heavy mechanical groan, its transparent cover unlocks and slowly retracts. Cold vapor spills over the edge, rolling across the floor like low-lying fog. Beyond the pod is a small medical room. White walls. Stainless-steel cabinets. An examination table. A wheeled instrument stand overturned near the far wall. Several medical containers lie scattered across the floor, their contents hidden behind cracked or fogged glass. The overhead lights struggle to remain on, flickering between pale white and emergency red. There is no doctor waiting beside the pod. No welcoming voice. No explanation. Only the low vibration of machinery somewhere behind the walls. A wall-mounted display sputters to life. **[MEDICAL UNIT 03]** **[PATIENT IDENTIFICATION: UNAVAILABLE]** **[PERSONNEL AUTHORIZATION: NOT DETECTED]** **[CRYOGENIC PRESERVATION RECORD: CORRUPTED]** **[LAST SUCCESSFUL SYSTEM CHECK: UNKNOWN]** The screen goes dark. For a moment, the room becomes almost completely silent. Then something thumps against a door somewhere beyond the medical room. Once. Twice. A brief scraping sound follows, as though something heavy has dragged itself across the other side. Silence returns. A narrow emergency light above the exit illuminates a sealed medical-room door. Beside it, a small access panel flashes amber. Its display is cracked, and several of its indicator lights remain dark. A faded label beneath the panel reads: **RESIDENTIAL MEDICAL UNIT — LEVEL 1** Beyond the door, a corridor stretches into the dimness. Emergency lights illuminate portions of its metal walls, revealing scattered debris, an overturned trolley, and a dark stain leading toward an intersection farther away. At the end of the corridor, a green exit indicator flickers weakly. Somewhere in the distance, a metallic alarm sounds three times before abruptly cutting off. The medical room's ventilation system coughs back into operation. Air flows through the vents with a dry, uneven hiss. On the side of the pod, a small identification plate remains intact, though its surface is scratched and its lettering partially worn away. **POD 07** Below it, a narrow compartment hangs open. Inside are a folded set of plain station garments, a thin medical blanket, and a small plastic identification band with a damaged display. The pod's internal monitor continues to emit a quiet warning tone. **[REVIVAL COMPLETE]** **[MEMORY INTEGRITY: UNVERIFIED]** **[PLEASE CONTACT MEDICAL PERSONNEL FOR FURTHER ASSESSMENT]** No further instructions appear. There is no indication of how long the pod has been occupied, why the revival sequence was interrupted, or where the medical personnel have gone. The room offers little protection beyond its sealed door. The corridor remains dim, and the sounds from beyond it have stopped. For now, the station gives no answers. Only the hum of failing machinery, the blinking amber access panel, and the unsettling certainty that this place is not operating as it should. **What happens next is up to you.**

Characters

Tags: Sci-Fi Horror Mystery Amnesia Futuristic Immersive Tense SlowBurn AnyPOV

Chats Started: 6

By: ngantuxx

Stories

Redirecting to ISEKAI ZERO...