# FYP
## Chapter 1: Signal Lost
The maintenance shaft was barely wide enough for Marcus Chen's shoulders, but he'd been crawling through worse spaces for the past three years. The neural interface behind his left ear buzzed softly—a reminder that his shift quota was still twelve units short. He ignored it and continued threading fiber optic cables through the junction box, his headlamp cutting through the darkness of Orbital Station Theta-7's bowels.
"Chen, you copy?" The voice crackled through his comm unit, distorted by the electromagnetic interference that plagued the lower decks.
"I'm here, Rodriguez. What's the emergency now?"
"Emergency? Hell, this is Christmas morning compared to usual. Got a priority repair request from the brass upstairs. Something about the quantum relay in Section C-9."
Marcus paused, his hands still on the cable harness. Section C-9 was restricted access—had been for months. Even the maintenance crews needed special clearance to get within fifty meters of it. "You sure about that sector designation?"
"Double-checked it myself. Orders came straight from Commander Voss. Says it's critical infrastructure."
That was the second red flag. Voss had been acting strange lately, canceling routine briefings and spending more time in the secure communications center than his own office. Marcus had noticed the pattern—three years of fixing things taught you to spot when other things were breaking down.
He backed out of the maintenance shaft and dropped into the corridor, his magnetic boots clanking against the metal deck plating. The station's artificial gravity was set to 0.8G, light enough to make movement easy but heavy enough to keep loose objects from floating away. Around him, the constant hum of life support systems provided a mechanical lullaby that every station worker learned to sleep through.
"I'll be there in twenty," Marcus said, checking his tool kit. "And Rodriguez? Run a diagnostic on the communication array while I'm gone. Something's been off about the signal integrity."
"Will do. And Chen? Watch yourself in C-9. That section's been giving me bad vibes lately."
Marcus signed off and began the long walk through the station's maze-like corridors. Theta-7 was one of the smaller orbital platforms, originally designed as a research station but repurposed for deep space communications when the funding dried up. Now it served as a relay point for messages traveling between the inner colonies and the frontier worlds—a cosmic post office with a crew of forty-three and enough automation to run itself for months.
The corridors grew quieter as he approached the restricted section. Emergency lighting cast long shadows, and the usual background chatter from other workers faded to nothing. Marcus's footsteps echoed in the empty hallway, each sound seeming to stretch longer than it should.
At the security checkpoint, he swiped his maintenance card and waited for the scanner to verify his identity. The system hesitated—unusual for a routine authorization—then flashed green. The heavy blast door slid open with a hydraulic hiss.
Section C-9 was different from the rest of the station. The walls were lined with equipment Marcus didn't recognize, sleek panels covered in displays showing data streams that scrolled too fast to read. The quantum relay itself was a cylindrical structure about the size of a shuttle pod, suspended in a web of power conduits and cooling lines.
But it wasn't the equipment that made Marcus stop cold. It was the silence.
Every piece of machinery on the station made noise—cooling fans, power regulators, data processors. It was the sound of technology working, the mechanical heartbeat that kept them all alive in the void. But here, in the most sophisticated section of the station, everything was perfectly, impossibly quiet.
Marcus approached the relay and ran his scanner over its surface. The readings made no sense. According to his instruments, the device was operating at 347% of normal capacity while simultaneously showing zero power consumption. The laws of physics weren't suggestions, but apparently no one had informed the quantum relay.
"Chen to Rodriguez," he said into his comm unit. Static answered him. "Rodriguez, do you copy?"
Nothing. He tried switching frequencies, then attempted to contact the main communications center. The comm unit was working—he could hear the carrier signal—but no one was responding. It was as if the entire station had gone silent while he was in C-9.
A soft chime echoed through the chamber, and one of the wall displays flickered to life. Text began scrolling across the screen, green letters on a black background:
NEURAL INTERFACE SYNC DETECTED
AUTHORIZATION LEVEL: MAINTENANCE TECH
CLASSIFICATION: NEED TO KNOW BASIS
WELCOME TO PROJECT FYP
Marcus stepped back from the display, his heart rate spiking. He hadn't touched anything, hadn't activated any systems. The neural interface behind his ear was buzzing more insistently now, not the gentle reminder of his work quota but something else—a rhythmic pulse that seemed to match his heartbeat.
More text appeared on the screen:
CONGRATULATIONS, MARCUS CHEN
YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED FOR PHASE TWO IMPLEMENTATION
PLEASE REMAIN CALM
EXTRACTION TEAM EN ROUTE
The lights in the chamber dimmed, and somewhere in the distance, Marcus could hear the sound of magnetic boots against metal decking. Multiple sets, moving fast, heading in his direction.
He turned toward the exit, but the blast door had sealed itself. The control panel showed a red lock symbol, and his maintenance card wasn't responding to the scanner. Whatever was happening, someone had planned it carefully.
The footsteps were getting closer.
Marcus looked around the chamber, searching for another way out, but the walls were solid bulkheads with no maintenance hatches or emergency exits. He was trapped in a room full of impossible technology, with his neural interface doing things it wasn't supposed to do, and people were coming to get him.
The display continued its relentless scroll:
PROJECT FYP STATUS: ACTIVE
QUANTUM CONSCIOUSNESS TRANSFER: 67% COMPLETE
ESTIMATED TIME TO FULL INTEGRATION: 47 MINUTES
Marcus didn't know what any of that meant, but he knew one thing for certain: his life as a maintenance tech was over. Whatever FYP was, whatever they had planned for him, it was bigger than fixing broken cables and meeting shift quotas.
The footsteps stopped outside the chamber door. Marcus could hear voices now, muffled but urgent. Someone was arguing about protocols and authorization levels. Someone else was talking about neural compatibility and integration windows.
The neural interface behind his ear was no longer buzzing. It was singing—a high, clear tone that seemed to resonate through his entire skull. And for the first time in three years, Marcus Chen felt like he was exactly where he was supposed to be.
The blast door began to open.