The air inside the pod reeked of metal and antiseptic, a sharp tang that clung to Lira’s throat as she adjusted the visor of her suit. Outside the reinforced glass, the planet’s sky pulsed in hues of violet and iron, a swirling mass of charged particles that made the horizon flicker like a dying ember. Her fingers tightened around the control panel, knuckles whitening. This was it—Project Aegis’s first live test, and the weight of it pressed against her ribs like a second heartbeat.
“You ready?” The voice crackled through her headset, low and steady. Jaxon. His calmness grated against her nerves. She exhaled, forcing her shoulders to drop.
“Ready,” she said.
The pod shuddered as the engines roared to life, a deep growl that vibrated through the floor. Lira’s pulse spiked, but she didn’t look away from the viewport. Below them, the surface of Eos-9 stretched in jagged ridges, dark and fractured, as if the planet had been split open and left to bleed. No signs of life. No signs of anything but dust and silence.
“Approaching deployment zone,” Jaxon said. “Three minutes.”
Lira’s gaze darted to the data stream on her console. The signal was there—faint, but unmistakable. A pattern, repeating in intervals that defied natural cycles. Not random. Intentional. Her breath hitched. They’d spent years chasing ghosts, and now this? A whisper from a world that shouldn’t exist.
The pod dropped like a stone. Wind howled against the hull, and the sky blurred into a storm of static. Lira braced herself as the landing thrusters fired, sending a jolt through her bones. When the pod finally settled, the silence that followed was louder than the engines had been.
“Surface temperature: -42 degrees Celsius,” Jaxon muttered. “Atmosphere stable, but… odd.”
Lira stepped out onto the terrain, her boots crunching against a brittle crust that gave way to something softer beneath. The ground felt wrong, like walking on a sponge soaked in oil. She crouched, scraping a gloved hand across the surface. It left a smear of black, glinting faintly under the violet light.
“Whatever this is, it’s not rock,” she said.
“Could be organic,” Jaxon replied. “Or synthetic. We’ll know when we get closer.”
The structure loomed ahead, half-buried in the dust. It was a spire, slender and jagged, rising like a broken tooth from the earth. Its surface was smooth, reflecting the sky in shifting patterns that made Lira’s head swim. She approached slowly, her boots leaving tracks that vanished within seconds.
“Feel that?” she asked, pausing mid-step.
“Feel what?”
“The pull,” she said. “Like the air’s heavier here.”
Jaxon was silent for a moment. “I’m reading fluctuations in the magnetic field. Could be the structure itself.”
Lira reached out, her fingers grazing the spire’s surface. A shiver coursed through her, not from the cold, but from something deeper—like a vibration she couldn’t hear but felt in her teeth. The pattern on the spire shifted, rearranging itself in a way that made her stomach twist.
“Jaxon,” she said, voice tight. “This isn’t just a structure. It’s… alive.”
A pause. Then, “What do you mean, ‘alive’?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But it’s reacting to me.”
The spire pulsed, and the ground beneath her feet trembled. Lira stumbled back, heart hammering. The sky above darkened, the violet hues deepening into a bruised purple. A low hum filled the air, growing louder, more insistent.
“Lira—get back!” Jaxon’s voice was sharp now, edged with something she’d never heard before.
She turned, but it was too late. The spire’s surface rippled, and a wave of energy surged toward her. She dove sideways as the ground erupted in a plume of dust and blackened rock. The air smelled of ozone and burning metal.
“Lira!”
“I’m fine!” she gasped, pushing herself up. Her suit’s HUD flickered, warning lights flashing red. The spire was still pulsing, but now the pattern was different—more chaotic, as if something inside it had been disturbed.
“Whatever you did,” Jaxon said, “don’t do it again.”
She didn’t answer. Her mind raced through possibilities. The signal, the structure, the reaction—this wasn’t a random discovery. It was a message. A warning. And she’d just triggered something far worse than she’d imagined.
The ground beneath her shifted again, and this time, the hum turned into a scream.
The spire cracked, splitting down the middle. A beam of light shot upward, piercing the sky, and the world around them began to unravel.
