Anjali Raghunathan

You make the decision before the hiss of the dead channel fades.

"Mira. I'm taking the shuttle."

She opens her mouth to argue, but you're already moving, grabbing a jacket from the hook by the hatch. "You have the bridge. If I'm not back in six hours, start the wake sequence and tell them whatever you need to tell them."

"Anjali—"

"You kept my secret. Now keep the ship."

You don't wait for her reply.

The shuttle bay is cold and dark, emergency lights casting long shadows across the deck. The Anselm's only lander sits in its cradle—a compact, single-pilot craft built for survey drops, not comfort. You climb in, seal the hatch, and run the pre-flight by muscle memory.

The engines catch. The bay doors open.

Corvid IV fills your viewport, blue-green and waiting.

You drop.

The descent is smooth, the shuttle's atmospheric shielding humming against the hull. You skim low over the forest canopy, following the same approach path the drone took. The city lights bloom ahead. Then the shielded structure, rising from the treeline like a scar.

You set down two hundred meters from the perimeter fence, in a clearing just deep enough to hide the shuttle's heat signature.

The hatch opens. Cold air hits you—clean, sharp, smelling of pine and something else. Metal. Coolant. The smell of a machine that's been running too long.

The fence stands before you. Beyond it, the building. Dark. Silent.

But the door at the southern end is slightly ajar.

You reach into the emergency kit bolted behind the pilot's seat and pull out the scout drone—a palm-sized disc with four rotors, no louder than a whisper. You power it on, sync it to your wrist display, and send it buzzing toward the ajar door.

The feed is grainy but clear. The drone slips through the gap.

Inside: a corridor. Fluorescent lights flicker overhead, casting a sickly pallor on bare metal walls. The floor is scuffed, marked by heavy boot traffic. The air reads as breathable but stale—recycled too many times.

The drone moves deeper. Past a row of closed doors, each one numbered. Past a darkened intersection. Past a console still displaying data—lines of text scrolling in a language you don't recognize.

Then the feed cuts to static.

You tap the wrist display. Nothing. The drone is gone.

The ajar door remains open. Silent. Waiting.

You draw the sidearm from the shuttle's emergency locker—standard kinetic, nothing fancy, but it fires rounds that stop what they hit. You check the load, chamber a round, and step out into the cold air.

The ajar door is twenty meters away. You cross the distance fast, boots silent on the packed earth. The gap is just wide enough to slip through sideways.

Inside, the corridor is exactly as the drone showed it. Flickering lights. Scuffed floors. The smell of recycled air and something underneath—something organic, faintly sweet.

Your wrist display shows no drone signal. Dead.

You move forward, gun low, back against the wall. The first door you pass is numbered 07. Sealed. You try the handle. Locked.

The second door: 09. Also locked.

The third: 12. The handle turns.

You push it open.

The room beyond is small, windowless, lit by a single overhead panel. A desk. A chair. A terminal, still running. And on the desk, face-down, a data crystal identical to the ones in the Anselm's archive bay.

The terminal screen displays a single line of text:

WAKE SEQUENCE COMPLETE. ALL PERSONNEL REPORT TO ASSEMBLY POINT ALPHA.

The timestamp is from six years ago.

You leave the room, the data crystal heavy in your pocket. The corridor stretches ahead, the flickering lights casting shifting shadows. You follow the faded signs bolted to the wall—Assembly Point Alpha →—their arrows pointing deeper into the building.

The air grows colder as you walk. The sweet organic smell strengthens, mixing with something metallic. Your boots echo against the deck, each step too loud in the silence.

The corridor opens into a larger space—a circular chamber, maybe thirty meters across. Rows of empty chairs face a central podium. A holographic projector hangs dormant from the ceiling. The walls are lined with screens, all dark.

But the podium is not empty.

A figure sits in a chair behind it, slumped forward, head resting on the surface. Still. Too still.

You approach slowly, weapon raised. The figure doesn't move.

Up close, you see it's a woman. She wears a Titan Forge uniform, the three rings stitched on her collar. Her skin is pale, waxy. Her eyes are closed.

She's been dead a long time.

On the podium beside her hand, a single piece of paper lies face-up. Handwritten. The ink is faded, but legible:

They came from the ground. Not the sky. We were never ready for what was already here.

You leave the dead woman where she sits. The note is folded carefully and slipped into your pocket beside the data crystal. From the ground. The words echo as you cross the chamber toward a stairwell door marked LOWER LEVELS — AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

The door is unlocked.

The stairs descend three flights, the air growing heavier with each step. The sweet smell is stronger here, almost cloying. The fluorescent lights on the lower level are dimmer, some flickering, some dead.

You emerge into a hallway lined with reinforced doors—thicker than the ones upstairs, with heavy seals and viewing windows covered by sliding plates. A containment level. You've seen this design before, in disaster relief briefings and outbreak protocols.

The first window plate is partially open.

You step closer and peer through.

The room beyond is dark, but your eyes adjust. Racks of equipment. Medical beds. Restraints. And on the far wall, scrawled in what looks like dried paint, a single word:

LISTEN.

A sound reaches you from further down the hall. Faint. Rhythmic.

Breathing.

You leave the window plate half-open and move toward the sound. The breathing is slow, labored—a rhythm that speaks of exhaustion or injury. It's coming from the last door on the left, its seal partially broken, a thin line of light escaping from the gap.

You approach, weapon up. The breathing stops.

Then a voice, cracked and dry, barely above a whisper:

"You're not them."

You freeze. The voice continues, each word an effort:

"The door's not locked. But I'd think carefully before you open it. I've been in here six years. I don't know what I look like anymore."

A pause. The breathing resumes, harsher now.

"My name is Doctor Helena Voss. I was the lead xenobiologist at this facility. And I'm the only one left."

The seal creaks. The light wavers.

You keep your distance, weapon still low but ready. The door seal creaks as you lean against the wall beside it, out of direct line of sight.

"Doctor Voss. My name is Anjali Raghunathan. I'm the landfall director of the colony ship Anselm. We just arrived in orbit."

A bitter laugh from inside. "Arrived. You're nineteen years late."

"Tell me what happened here."

Silence. Then the sound of shifting weight, a body adjusting position.

"Titan Forge found something in the bedrock beneath this facility. A structure. Not geological. Not human. They drilled into it and brought samples back to the surface. The samples weren't inert."

Her voice drops. "They were dormant. And we woke them up."

A cough. A wet, rattling sound.

"The first team died within a week. The second team lasted a month. The third team... they didn't die. They changed. Started talking to something in the walls. Saying it was speaking to them. Saying it wanted to go home."

She pauses. "I sealed myself in this room on day forty-three. I've been here ever since. The others... they're still down there. In the lower labs. Waiting."

The breathing resumes. Slower now.

"Whatever you do, Director, don't go to the lower labs."

"Thank you, Doctor. I'm going to get help."

A pause from inside the room. Then, quietly: "Be careful, Director. It listens."

You turn and walk back up the stairs, each step feeling heavier than the last. The corridor with the flickering lights passes in a blur. The ajar door. The cold night air hits you like a wall.

You cross to the shuttle, seal the hatch, and key the comms.

"Mira. Patch me through to the Anselm's senior crew. I need a full survey team, hazmat equipment, and a portable containment unit prepped in the shuttle bay. And I need Doctor Voss's personnel file pulled from the archive—she's alive, and she's been down here alone for six years."

Mira's voice comes back, tight with concern. "Alive? Anjali, what did you find?"

You look out the viewport at the dark building, its silhouette sharp against the stars.

"Something that wasn't in any survey report. Something that's been waiting for us."

You lean back in the pilot's seat and let it all out—the dead woman in the assembly hall, the note about what came from the ground, the containment doors, Doctor Voss's six-year vigil, the thing in the walls that speaks.

Mira listens without interruption. When you finish, there's a long silence on the channel.

"Anjali." Her voice is steady, but you hear the weight in it. "If what Voss says is true, then this planet isn't uninhabited. It was never uninhabited. And Titan Forge knew it before we ever left Earth."

Another pause.

"Your sister's name on that contract. The drone casings. The logo on the building. This goes deeper than a survey team finding something they shouldn't have. Someone on Earth knew what was here. And they put it on your ship."

The cryo-bay hums below. Eighteen hours until the first sleeper wakes.

You key the comms, voice steady despite the tremor in your chest.

"Mira. Full away team. Hazmat suits, sidearms, portable breaching kit. I want four people max—small and fast. Meet me at the shuttle bay in twenty minutes."

A pause. Then: "We're going back in."

Mira doesn't argue. "I'll pull Chen and Okafor. They've got exo-biology field training. And I'm coming with you."

You almost smile. "Wouldn't have it any other way."

You cut the channel and sit in the silence of the shuttle, the dark building looming beyond the viewport. The data crystal weighs heavy in your pocket. The note from the dead woman sits beside it. They came from the ground. Not the sky.

Twenty minutes. Then you go back inside.

This time, you won't be alone.

This time, you're bringing Doctor Voss out.