Three teenagers arrive at ECHO-4, a station orbiting Proxima Centauri B, and intercept a signal that sounds less like static than a voice trying to break through from somewhere impossible.
The bridge of the Astra was so quiet that Natalia could hear the soft hum of the controls beneath her fingertips. Beyond the forward porthole, Proxima Centauri burned like a wound in the dark, red and steady, while the rest of space stretched out cold and unreadable.
She kept her hands close to the console, as if stillness alone could stop them from shaking. First mission beyond the Solar System. She had repeated the words so many times on the way out that they had started to feel unreal. Behind her, Bartek stood with his notebook clutched to his chest, ready to record every number, every reading, every anomaly. Kira leaned against the opposite bulkhead, rolling a metal bracelet around her wrist with quick, nervous movements she probably thought no one noticed.
Weeks of travel had brought them here, to the edge of a system no human had ever seen up close until recently. ECHO-4 hung ahead of them in orbit around Proxima Centauri B, a research station built to study the planet, monitor the station's failing life support, and catalogue the strange radio signals that had begun surfacing from deep space months before. They had trained for this. They had memorised procedures, emergency protocols, docking sequences. They had been told, more than once, that the station was safe.
Natalia was beginning to hate the word.
Viki's voice came through the speakers, calm and perfectly measured. "Docking request transmitted. Awaiting clearance."
The ship slid closer to ECHO-4. The station's outer ring caught the red light from Proxima and threw it back in dull, metallic flashes. Natalia watched the docking lights blink in sequence and waited for the usual answer: permission granted, trajectory corrected, welcome aboard.
Nothing came.
Viki repeated the request.
Still nothing.
Bartek looked up from his notes. "That is not normal."
Kira straightened. "Maybe they're already inside the station. Maybe the comms array is down."
Natalia opened her mouth to answer, but the console gave a sharp crack of static that cut across the bridge like a blade. The sound was wrong immediately, too layered, too alive. It wasn't just noise. Something was buried inside it, pieces of speech twisted through metallic interference, as if a voice had been dragged through a broken transmitter and was still trying to keep its shape.
Bartek moved closer to the receiving panel. His face had gone pale. "I don't think that's from the station."
The sound came again, longer this time, repeating in a pattern that made Natalia's skin tighten. Not random. Not malfunction. It almost sounded deliberate, like a message being forced through a channel never built to carry it.
Kira's fingers froze on her bracelet. "Can you translate it?"
Bartek shook his head once. "It isn't any language I've seen. But it's structured. It's trying to say something."
The bridge lights flickered.
Then every screen on the console flared red at once.
Outside the porthole, ECHO-4 vanished in a wash of blue light so bright Natalia had to turn her head. For one stunned second the entire station seemed to glow from the inside, as if something deep within its hull had just awakened. The signal inside the ship rose with it, louder and sharper, until it became almost unbearable.
When Natalia looked back, she saw a shape where there had been empty space before.
It was too close to the station to be part of it and too large to be debris. A dark outline, shifting at the edges, suspended against the blue glare. She couldn't tell whether it was moving toward them or unfolding out of the light itself.
Viki spoke again, but this time the calm in the AI's voice was gone.
"Unidentified presence detected."
The Astra shuddered hard enough to throw Natalia against the console. The signal screamed through the speakers. Red warnings bloomed across the bridge. And in the blue-white glare beyond the glass, the shape turned toward them, as if it had been waiting for the ship to arrive all along.