Mara Voss adjusted her gloves, the thick material crunching as she stepped into the cold. The air inside Kryo-7’s maintenance corridor smelled like rust and burnt circuitry, a scent she’d memorized over three years. Her boots echoed against the steel floor, each step a reminder of the colony’s fragile heartbeat. The life support system had failed three hours ago, and the temperature in Sector B was dropping faster than the engineers could fix. She pulled her jacket tighter, fingers brushing the data pad at her hip. It buzzed—a message from Control. She tapped it open.
‘Status update,’ it read. ‘No progress. Evacuation protocols engaged.’
Mara exhaled, the breath visible in the frigid air. Evacuation. The word felt like a betrayal. She’d spent her life avoiding places like this, but Kryo-7 had been a promise: a fresh start, a chance to forget the war, the bodies, the screams. Now it was dying, and she was stuck in its belly, chasing ghosts.
A metallic clang echoed down the corridor. Mara froze. The sound wasn’t part of the colony’s usual hum—no, this was something else. She turned, her flashlight beam cutting through the darkness. The walls here were older, their panels warped from decades of pressure. She’d never been down this far before, not without a team. But the data pad buzzed again, a new message: ‘Sector B-9. Unresponsive.’
She moved toward the sound, her boots scraping against the floor. The corridor narrowed, the ceiling pressing lower. Her flashlight flickered, casting jagged shadows on the walls. Then she saw it—a crack in the metal, a thin line of light bleeding through. It wasn’t part of the colony’s design. Mara stepped closer, her breath shallow. The light pulsed, faint but steady, like a heartbeat.
She reached out, fingers brushing the edge of the crack. A surge of heat radiated through her gloves, and the light flared. The air thickened, charged with a low hum that vibrated in her bones. Mara stumbled back, her pulse roaring. This wasn’t a malfunction. This was something else.
A voice crackled in her earpiece. ‘Voss? You there?’
‘I’m here,’ she said, her voice tight. ‘There’s something… wrong with Sector B-9.’
‘We’re aware. Get to the main hub. Now.’
Mara hesitated. The light still pulsed, beckoning. She glanced at the crack, then at the data pad. The message had changed: ‘Approach prohibited. Unauthorized access denied.’
She turned away, her boots echoing again. But the light didn’t fade. It followed her, a silent promise of secrets buried deep in the colony’s core.
—
The main hub was a chaos of flickering lights and shouted orders. Engineers scrambled between consoles, their faces pale under the harsh glow. Mara pushed through the crowd, her boots clanking against the floor. Control’s voice cut through the noise.
‘We’ve lost 40% of the oxygen reserves. If we don’t stabilize the system in 90 minutes, we’re all dead.’
Mara’s hands clenched into fists. ‘What caused the failure?’
‘Unknown,’ Control said. ‘But the core’s readings are… inconsistent. It’s fluctuating between normal and something else.’
‘Something else?’
A pause. ‘We don’t have a classification.’
Mara turned, scanning the room. Her eyes landed on the central console, its screen pulsing with erratic data. The numbers didn’t make sense—fluctuations that defied physics, readings that should have been impossible. She stepped closer, her breath catching as she noticed something strange: a pattern in the chaos, a rhythm that didn’t belong to the colony’s systems.
‘This isn’t a malfunction,’ she said, more to herself than anyone else. ‘It’s… responding.’
Control’s voice was sharp. ‘What are you talking about?’
Mara didn’t answer. Her fingers hovered over the console, the air around it crackling with energy. The light from the crack in Sector B-9 had led her here, but now it felt like the colony itself was alive, watching, waiting. She reached out, fingertips brushing the screen.
The console flared to life, its lights surging brighter. The room went silent, everyone frozen as the data on the screen shifted. Numbers dissolved into symbols, then into something else—shapes that twisted and reformed, a language she didn’t understand but somehow felt. A whisper filled her mind, not words but impressions: *survival, resistance, awakening.*
‘What the hell is that?’ someone shouted.
Mara pulled her hand back, her pulse hammering. The screen went dark, the hum of the colony returning to its normal rhythm. But the feeling remained, a weight in her chest. The core wasn’t broken. It was *reacting.*
‘We need to shut it down,’ Control said, but Mara shook her head.
‘No. We need to understand it.’
—
The deeper Mara dug, the more the colony revealed. Sector B-9 wasn’t just a crack—it was a doorway. The alien structure beneath the surface pulsed with energy, its design alien yet eerily familiar, like a mirror of the colony’s own systems. She found records buried in the data logs, fragments of messages from long ago: *‘They are not alone. The vein is alive. Protect it.’* The words were incomplete, but their meaning was clear. The colony had been built on top of something ancient, something that had been waiting.
The engineers dismissed her findings as hallucinations, but Mara couldn’t ignore the patterns. The fluctuations in the core, the whispers in her mind—they weren’t random. They were *instructions.* She began to decode them, her fingers moving over the console as if guided by an unseen force. The symbols shifted, revealing a path: a series of coordinates hidden deep within the asteroid’s core.
‘You’re wasting time,’ Control said, his voice laced with frustration. ‘We need to stabilize the system.’
‘This is the system,’ Mara countered. ‘It’s not broken—it’s *adapting.*’
The argument escalated, but Mara didn’t stop. She followed the coordinates, navigating through tunnels that felt older than the colony itself. The air grew heavier, charged with a strange energy that made her skin tingle. At the heart of the asteroid, she found it: a vast chamber filled with glowing veins of light, pulsing in sync with the colony’s systems. The structure was alive, its purpose unclear but its presence undeniable.
A voice echoed in her mind, not words this time but a sensation: *‘You have come far. The choice is yours.’* Mara stumbled back, her breath ragged. The chamber pulsed brighter, and she realized the truth—the colony wasn’t just dependent on the structure; it was *connected* to it. The energy from the veins sustained the colony, but something had disrupted that balance. The failure wasn’t an accident; it was a test.
She returned to the hub, her mind racing. The engineers were still scrambling, their efforts futile against the chaos. Mara stepped forward, her voice steady. ‘The core isn’t failing. It’s trying to communicate. We need to let it.’
Control’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re suggesting we trust *this*?’ He gestured to the flickering screens. ‘We’ve lost half the colony’s systems!’
‘Not lost,’ Mara said. ‘Reconfigured.’
The room fell silent as she explained what she’d found. The engineers hesitated, but desperation outweighed doubt. They followed her back to the chamber, their faces lit by the glowing veins. Mara reached out again, this time not to control but to *connect.* The energy surged, wrapping around her like a second skin. The colony’s systems stabilized, the fluctuations easing into harmony.
As the last of the chaos faded, Mara collapsed to her knees, exhausted but alive. The structure had accepted her, its purpose revealed: to sustain life, to protect. She looked up at the engineers, their faces etched with relief. The colony was safe, but the truth remained—Kryo-7 wasn’t just a mining outpost. It was a bridge, a link between two worlds. And she was its keeper.
—
The days that followed were quiet, the colony rebuilding itself around the new understanding. The engineers studied the structure, their fear replaced by curiosity. Mara spent her time in the chamber, learning its language, its rhythms. The whispers in her mind grew clearer, offering glimpses of a future she couldn’t yet comprehend.
One evening, as she stood before the glowing veins, a new message formed in her mind: *‘The vein will endure. So will you.’* She smiled, the weight of the journey settling into something like peace. Kryo-7 had been her mistake, her exile—but now it was something more. A beginning.
She turned away from the chamber, the colony’s lights flickering in welcome. The future was uncertain, but for the first time in years, she wasn’t afraid of what came next.
