When impossible fog begins creeping across the moon city of Lunaris, Lara, Ivo, and Miko race to uncover what has entered the dome before the base is sealed from the inside.
Lunaris glittered under its transparent dome like a jewel forgotten on the Moon. Towers of glass and alloy rose above the Silver Sea, their lights scattering across the dust outside in cold, silver shards. Between the clean lines of the streets, service drones moved with disciplined precision, and under the dome the city sounded almost alive, humming with power, traffic, and the faint thrum of the life-support grid that kept everyone breathing.
For Lara, Ivo, and Miko, that hum had always meant safety. It was the backdrop to school, training drills, and long afternoons in the research lab beneath the eastern arc. Lara could make a drone do things its designers had never imagined. Ivo led the youth exploration team with the kind of calm that made other people trust him before they realised it. Miko built machines from spare parts, broken tools, and stubbornness, then made them work better than anything in the stores.
Lara was the first to notice something wrong.
She was bent over her console, reprogramming a scout drone, when the reflection in the lab window made her look up. At the far edge of the horizon, beyond the dome, a grey veil was spreading low over the lunar surface. Fog. Real fog, thickening in slow waves against the black. Lara stared at it, waiting for her eyes to correct themselves.
"That is not possible," she said quietly.
Ivo was at her side in an instant, and Miko followed, wiping grease from his hands. The three of them stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the panoramic window. The mist kept moving, sliding closer in a way that felt deliberate, almost measured, as if it knew exactly where to go. Then the western district blinked out. One row of towers, then another. The lights died in a dark sweep that crawled across the city.
Their communicators erupted with sharp warning tones.
"Power loss in the research zone," Ivo read, already reaching for his gear. "No, wait. Multiple sectors."
Miko dragged open a storage cabinet and began pulling equipment free. Lara grabbed her upgraded drones and snapped their case shut. Ivo took the atmosphere scanner and checked its display twice, as if the numbers might apologise and change. None of them said fog again, but all three of them were thinking it.
When they reached the airlock corridor, they saw the mist pressing against the outer seals. It was thinner there, threaded with a faint blue shimmer that pulsed once, like a signal hidden inside the haze. A soft buzzing slipped through the metal walls. Not an alarm. Not quite machinery. Something in between.
Then the service door ahead of them slammed shut.
The impact rang through the corridor, and the emergency strip lights dropped to a dim red glow. For one breathless second, the three friends stood frozen in the narrow hall, listening to the buzzing grow louder in the dark. A shape moved beyond the glass panel in the door. Not a person. Not a drone.
Something in the fog was waiting for them.