On the Hadar 7 orbital station, three teenagers intercept a signal no one can explain, and the closer they listen, the less certain they become about what is answering back.
For a week, the Hadar 7 had hung above a nameless gas giant in the Gliese 581 system, its metal ribs creaking softly as it turned through the dark. From the observation port, Dominica could see only the planet below, swollen with bands of violet and rust, and the hard scatter of stars beyond it. Earth felt less like a place now and more like a story someone else had told her once.
Sasha was at the scanner array when the signal came through. At first it was barely more than static, a thin thread buried under the station's usual hum. Then the thread tightened into rhythm. Not noise. Not interference. A pattern.
"That isn't one of ours," Sasha said, his hand frozen over the controls.
Maks looked up from his diagnostics screen with a sceptical frown. "Could still be a reflection. The antenna's been acting up." But he was already leaning closer, drawn in despite himself.
Dominica slid into the chair beside Sasha and pulled up the raw data. The numbers stacked in neat clusters, repeating with a precision that made her skin prickle. She ran the sequence through the station's decoder once, then again, and the same structure came back at her, unchanged.
"It's carrying information," she said quietly. "Look at the intervals. It's not random."
Maks crossed his arms, but he didn't argue this time. The signal had a cadence to it, almost deliberate, as if whoever sent it knew exactly how to stay just beyond comprehension. Sasha rerouted the scanner to the main antenna, and the readout jumped so sharply that all three of them recoiled.
Outside the port, the planet's cloud bands seemed to pulse in time with the transmission.
"Tell me you see that," Sasha whispered.
Dominica did. The light on the surface wasn't a trick of reflection. It brightened, dimmed, brightened again, matching the signal beat for beat. Her fingers moved faster across the console, forcing a map of the local system onto the screen. At first it showed only the planets and their moons, familiar shapes in a familiar orbit. Then a new node blinked into existence beyond the charted edge, where no object should have been.
Maks went very still.
The node expanded into a red point, pulsing once, then twice, inching toward Hadar 7 with a slow certainty that made the room feel smaller.
"That's impossible," he said, but his voice had gone thin.
The loudspeaker crackled. A sharper burst of sound cut through the cabin, clear now, almost close enough to breathe on. The station lights flickered. One by one, the panels dimmed until only the monitor glowed white against their faces.
Then a line of text formed in the centre of the screen.
CONNECTION ESTABLISHED.
Nobody moved. Dominica could hear the blood rushing in her ears, and somewhere deep in the station, something heavy shifted with a low metallic groan, as if Hadar 7 had just turned toward whatever was waiting outside.