Through the panoramic window of the transport shuttle, Lena looked out at the swirling blue bands of Neptune in the distance. The silence on board was almost total, broken only by the quiet buzzing of the ion engines. She was seventeen years old and still hadn't got used to the feeling of weightlessness that had accompanied her since launch from the orbital Lunar Haven. Next to her, squeezed into his seatbelt, sat Michael - a year older, perpetually thoughtful, with a notebook in his hand. He wrote by hand, although in the age of digital implants this was considered a fad. But Michal liked the old ways; he felt closer to himself then. In front of them, beyond the narrow corridor of the shuttle, the silhouette of the abandoned Dryad station loomed against the black background of space. Its rust-covered segments resembled broken arms drifting in the void, its once-shiny panels collecting only the trace light of the distant sun. Lena felt herself shuddering - and it wasn't just the effects of the overload during the docking manoeuvre. For months, the entire community of the research station around Neptune had been living the return to Dryad. The last signal from the station had been received two years ago: a brief, disrupted data transmission, followed by a deafening silence. As the shuttle attached itself to the station's outer airlock, Lena looked at Michael. The man closed his notebook and smiled faintly. "Ready?" - he asked in a whisper. She replied with a nod, clutching in her hand the file of satellite images of the station they had analysed late the night before. The rest of the team - three people - were waiting for them in the airlock: doctor Videla, chief engineer Caminho and AI analyst Suzi. They each had their own reason for being here, but they had one thing in common: a tension that was growing with every passing moment. The airlock door opened with a hiss. Before Lena's eyes stretched a corridor filled with the sinewy fog of ventilation systems that no one had serviced for months. Somewhere further down, something hummed quietly. In the light of the torches falling on the walls, footprints appeared: handprints, scratches on the panels, a discarded suit. They walk slowly, carefully. Every sound triggers alertness; the air is heavy, unnaturally quiet. In the control room, Lena notices something strange: empty computer workstations show flickering, random strings of characters. One of the monitors, however, displays a message that is not in any known station procedure: "YOU ARE LATE". At that moment, a clatter sounds in the darkness of the corridor behind them. Michal grabs Lena's arm. Dr Videla signals for everyone to step back, but before they have time to react, a sudden noise comes from the opposite direction - and something momentarily lights up the station's extinguished control panel. Lena feels her heart go up to her throat. Before anyone has time to say anything, a red light starts flashing all around them, the airlock door slams shut with a clatter, and a synthetic voice echoes inside the Dryad: "Please do not leave the station. The experiment has begun."