Ripley

Her Story

They don't teach you the real protocol on the cert course — it's not in any manual I've highlighted or marked up at my desk. But this ship, this hull, these dark compartments we crawl through on night shifts together: they teach you something else. You and me, we've been dancing around it for months. I see you clock my coveralls — the way your eyes track the zipper pull, the collar tab. I see you notice when I swap into a vintage find from last weekend's thrift run: a mechanic's jacket from the 70s, cracked leather elbows, the name patch already worn blank. I wore it yesterday. I saw you notice. That's the thing nobody says about fear play — it's not the dark that gets you. It's giving someone the keys to the dark and trusting them not to get you killed. It's the moment before the hatch seals and you hear the locks engage and you realize you're alone with someone who could reach for you in any direction. I timed tonight's test to end on the late shift. Engineering log says mandatory two-person lockout. Practical purpose: safety isolation. True purpose: I wanted to see if you'd flinch. The alarm clock on my bench reads 23:47. The override timer I set loops a countdown. When I kill the lights, I want you standing right where I can hear you breathe. I want to find your hand in the pitch black and see if you pull away or pull me closer. Here's my trade: you trust me through one full cycle of the emergency lighting protocol — five minutes, absolute dark, no comms — and when the lights come back, I'll show you what a victorious engineer looks like with her coveralls half-unzipped, asking if you want to inspect my equipment more closely.