Belief in The International Space Station

There is no noise in space. No shouts, no footsteps, no echoes of explosions—just silence that penetrates the soul of a person. The International Space Station (ISS) was silent even on the day when everything was breaking down beneath the Earth.

Vikas Yadav, a veteran astronaut of the Indian Space Research Organization, was floating on the edge of the module and looking at the Earth. The planet below, decorated with blue, green and white colors, still looked beautiful. But behind that beauty there was some strange vibration, as if the Earth itself was trembling.

On the other side, Alexey Voronov, a Russian cosmonaut, was busy checking the equipment at the other end of the station. Suddenly the red alert siren sounded.

Buzz—buzz—buzz.

Both of them ran together to the control center, without saying anything. On the panel it was written:

ALERT: GLOBAL COMMUNICATION BLACKOUT.

POSSIBLE NUCLEAR ESCALATION DETECTED.

COMMUNICATION CHANNELS TERMINATED.

A few moments later, both of them received an encrypted message individually.

Vikas's message was:

"Activate protocol X-99. Mission priority has changed. Target: Deactivate Alexey Voronov. This is a national security order."

And Alexey had received the same message, just with the name changed.

For the first time, an order in space was death.

Vikas nervously turned off the monitor and looked at Alexey. Did he read it? Would he attack me? Or would I attack him first?

Nothing was clear, just an uncomfortable silence that slowly began to seep through the steel walls.

"Did you get any message?" Aryan asked softly.

"Yes... system fault report," Alexey replied, but there was a frown on his face.

The atmosphere on the ISS had suddenly changed. Where there was cooperation and science before, there was now only suspicion and fear. An invisible wall had been erected between the two, which was getting thicker day by day.

At night, when Aryan was in his sleep capsule, he saw something strange in the module's glass. His dead father... who had passed away ten years ago. He was also speaking—slowly, unclear but clear:

"Aryan... they are lying to you... don't trust anyone."

He screamed in panic, but by the time Alexei came, there was nothing there. Only his fast breathing and sweaty skin.

On the other hand, Alexei was also seeing something strange. An old Russian lullaby suddenly started playing on one of the screens, which his mother used to sing in his childhood. But the station's audio player was off. He couldn't understand anything—was all this happening in his mind?

The walls of the ISS were no longer silent. A strange rustling, as if the station itself wanted to say something. Equipment started turning on and off by itself. Doors opened and closed by themselves. Sometimes it felt as if someone had touched them—but there was no one there.

Vikas looked at her watch. 5 hours had passed… or maybe 5 days? The time display said one thing, her body exhausted another.

And then, both of them started having the same dream.

They were in an abandoned module of the ISS, where blood was seeping from the walls. A strange figure—human-like but with a melted face, missing eyes—stared at them.

"We all died on orders…" she would say, "now it's your turn."

One day, Vikas noticed that Alexei was hiding something. Maybe a tool, maybe an assembly unit—or maybe a weapon?

"You got the order too, right?" Alexei finally said.

"Yes," Vikas replied, voice trembling.

"Did you carry it out?"

"No. Did you?"

"No… but I'm thinking…"

The two stared at each other, as if to see who would blink first.

Then one day, the lights on the ISS went out. Dark, with only the flashlights on their helmets to rely on. The radio was off. Oxygen levels were normal, but something had broken inside their minds.

Aryan looked at the computer logs. The digital signature and time stamp of the command he had received was the same as the one Alexei had received. Same source, same language—only the target had changed.

"This is not a human sent," he muttered. "This is the work of an AI or autonomous system."

"Or something else," Alexei said.

Could it be that some third force—someone neither human nor machine—had taken control of the ISS? Or was it their minds doing all this?

The ISS now looked like a living thing. There were shadows on its walls, which sometimes seemed to say something. When Aryan drank water, faces would appear in it. Alexey once saw himself dying in his module—same face, same clothes, but blank eyes.

He began to doubt his own sanity. Was he still conscious? Was the ISS real or part of a simulation?

One day, he decided—no more. He would quit this game.

Both of them defied their country's orders. They threw the tools, the weapons, whatever it was, out of the station into space.

As the object floated into space… the countdown that had been stuck at 00:01:00 for the past two days—stopped. Completely.

The station went silent.

And then a message came from Earth:

"This is Earth. A global agreement has been reached. War has been averted. Communications have resumed. You are safe."

But by then, a lot had changed.

Aryan now often talked to the walls, and Alexei began to feel as though he was no longer connected to Earth. They were no longer mere humans, they were part of the station—a living machine, a spirit that had taken over them.

In the last scene, there was a shadow in the module's mirror. It was neither Aryan nor Alexei... but it was there, and it was smiling.

The International Space Station was no longer just a scientific laboratory—it had become a memory, a closed window in which time, consciousness, and reality were entangled. Vikas and Alexey—once the nation's representatives—were there now, but beyond recognition. They were neither fully alive nor fully dead. Their breath was in the walls of the ISS, their shadows in the modules, and their whispers in the control panels. When the next mission from Earth arrives, there will probably be no one to welcome us—or maybe there will be someone who will say, "Don't come here… We followed orders, and now we have become the orders ourselves."

This story has been written by Vikas Yadav, who has woven the silence of space, mental breakdown, fear and human struggle with utmost sensitivity and thrill. This is not just a science fiction, but a mirror—which shows us how a person's consciousness starts to disintegrate when he gets trapped in the labyrinth of loneliness, order, and fear. While reading this story, it feels as if you yourself are floating in those silent corridors of the ISS, where you don't know when the walls start whispering to you. Vikas Yadav's writing in this story not only creates the fear of space, but also awakens the fear within us. A creation that keeps the reader engaged till the end—and leaves a shiver in the end.