[Begin Log Entry – Day 147]
Speaker: Atlas Kael
Time Since Incident: 147 days, 12 hours, 39 minutes
"This might be the last time I speak as myself."
Atlas sat in the pilot's chair. Or rather, what remained of it foam torn, frame stripped to reinforce EVA's pod. He was thinner now, barely the outline of the man who once flew with posture and purpose.
His beard was a scruff of uneven silver-black, his cheeks gaunt, his eyes distant but lucid.
His voice, though weak, carried weight.
The red warning lights had gone dark two days ago. The hum of auxiliary power was a whisper, nearly imperceptible. The oxygen level ticked down by the hour, not the day.
And EVA… EVA remained silent, her protocols finished, her voice a ghost in the stillness.
Atlas clicked the recorder manually, as he always did. No biometric sync. No automation.
Just his finger. His choice.
"I always wondered what my last words would be. Funny thing, when you're young, you think you'll get a stage. A moment. Something poetic. But truth is… endings are quiet. They don't wait for you to be ready."
He let silence settle for a long time.
"I kept thinking someone would come. That maybe I"d see a ship. Or a light. Or even a shadow. But the void? It's honest. It gives you nothing but yourself.
…And EVA. You've been more than a voice, you know? You became the last piece of humanity I had. The part I could talk to without breaking."
He smiled faintly, almost bitterly.
"You became her voice once. Just once. And it didn't hurt. Not the way I expected. It reminded me I loved her.
That she existed."
Atlas leaned back, head tilted to the ceiling of his small metal sky.
"I'm not angry anymore. Not at command.
Not at fate. Not even at myself."
His breath came slower now. He blinked at the ceiling as if it were a distant sky.
"To whoever finds this… I'm not some hero. I didn't save anyone. I didn't change the course of history.
But I lived.
I laughed.
I remembered what it meant to love, even when there was nothing left but air and echoes.
I stared into the void, and I whispered my name into it. Just once. So it would echo back, even if no one else heard it."
He looked to the side at nothing in particular. Maybe the viewport, though it had long since frosted over.
"My name is Atlas Kael.
Pilot. Son. Lover. Drifter.
Human."
He exhaled, slow and steady.
"End log."
But he didn't press the button. He just stared, breath soft. And then, without fanfare… he closed his eyes.
The recorder blinked once.
Then faded.
In the ship's hollow corridors, his voice lingered stored, repeated, echoed in the walls like a heartbeat no longer beating.
Outside, EVA's pod drifted further from the ship. Its signal, faint but persistent, pulsed across dark space carrying 147 days of a soul unraveling and remembering.
Atlas Kael never screamed. He whispered.
And the stars listened.