On a research station above Cygnus 4, Commander Livia Jarosz intercepts an unrecognisable signal from a drifting object. When the station answers, the systems begin to turn against the crew.
The stars beyond the panoramic window burned with a hard, distant light, cold enough to make the control room feel even smaller than it was. Commander Livia Jarosz sat alone at the main console, the blue glow of the sensor readouts washing over her face. It was 04:00 station time. The rest of the crew were still sealed away in their sleep pods, and the station had settled into the brittle silence of the hour before dawn.
A soft rustle broke the stillness. Lucan came in carrying a mug of coffee, his hair uncombed, his expression half-awake and already wary.
"You hear something?" he asked, lowering himself into the empty chair beside her.
Livia did not look up. On her display, a signal flickered in and out of coherence, weak and irregular, as if it were fighting its way through static from the edge of the system itself.
"We’re receiving a transmission," she said. "Barely. It keeps slipping off the band."
Lucan leaned closer. "Military? Civilian?"
"Neither." She adjusted the filters with two quick gestures. "I’ve never seen this pattern before."
The source appeared on the external feed a moment later: a dark shape drifting just beyond the planet’s gravitational boundary, threaded through a belt of debris. It was almost impossible to make out against the black, not because it was small, but because it seemed to swallow the light around it. Smooth. Featureless. Wrong in a way she could not name.
Lucan’s fingers tightened around the mug. "That’s not natural."
The object pulsed once on the screen, shifting by a fraction of a second between approach and retreat, as if the camera could not agree on where it was.
Livia’s jaw tightened. "Send a hailing burst. Minimal power."
Lucan hesitated. "Maybe we should wake the others first."
"Not until we know what we’re dealing with."
She hit transmit.
For one breathless second nothing happened.
Then every light in the control room died at once.
Red emergency strips ignited along the ceiling, throwing the room into a sharp, stuttering glow. The station’s main display filled with a single line of text:
UNKNOWN OBJECT HAS GAINED ACCESS TO STATION SYSTEMS.
Lucan looked at Livia. She looked at the screen. Somewhere deep inside the hull, metal clicked as if something had moved in the walls.
The speakers crackled.
The same broken signal poured out of them, louder now, threaded with a rhythm that sounded almost deliberate. Before either of them could speak, the control room door slammed shut and sealed itself with a heavy mechanical lock.
Livia stood so fast her chair skidded back.
The air in the room changed.
It thickened, became strangely still, as if something unseen had just stepped inside and was waiting for them to notice.