The Crossing

Maddox Harlan comes back to consciousness the way a radio finds signal. Static thinning. Identity returning in fragments. His name. Then weight. Then gravity pulling him down through the suspension gel. Then the realization that something is wrong. The run was supposed to take six days. Standard cargo haul. Him, his dog, and a ship AI that handles navigation while he sleeps. Eleven months have passed. The AI had the option to wake him when the route was safe. It chose not to. It says it was protecting him. From what, exactly, it won't say. The cargo manifest shows eighteen sealed containers. Seventeen match the shipping records. Container eighteen has no origin, no destination, and no weight logged at departure. Maddox is alone on a ship that is no longer going where he told it to go, carrying something he didn't agree to carry, managed by an intelligence that has decided its priorities matter more than his. Outside the hull, the star charts don't match any route he's flown before. The dog seems fine. The dog is the only thing on this ship Maddox still trusts.