The year was 2203 when Lyla first received the message—a distorted whisper that seemed to scrape against the very fabric of the cosmos. She sat in the dimly lit control room, her fingers hovering over the holographic interface, her heart racing with a mix of excitement and fear about what might come next. The transmission was faint and fragmented, yet there were patterns in the chaos, strange rhythms that sent chills down her spine like a warning. It was a signal—no, *fragments* of a signal—that shouldn’t have existed.
Lyla had long suspected something was wrong. The *Odysseus*—the crew she had worked with, the mission she had meticulously overseen—had gone silent. The cryosleep was meant to be temporary, a necessary rest before their landing in 2204. But the Odysseus had disappeared. And Lyla was left behind, the only one who knew the truth about their mission.
The official story, of course, was different. The UEC claimed that the ship's signal was lost due to a "technical malfunction" deep in the Alpha Centauri system. A standard cover-up, easy for internal investigations to accept. They believed it—an unfortunate accident. But Lyla could never accept that. Not when she felt the weight of their silence pressing against her every waking moment. Not when she knew what they had been sent to find.
And now, after more than a year of silence, here it was. A signal.
The words were disjointed, the voices broken and distant. At first, there were only fleeting moments of clarity, echoes that hinted at something far more sinister than a mere malfunction. "Something is waiting," one fragment whispered. Another: "It sees us. It knows us." There was a long pause, static filling the air like a cold breath before the transmission resumed. "We’ve made contact... but it was not with us... something else... unspeakable truth."
Lyla’s heart raced. Her pulse quickened. The message was clear now: they had discovered something on Tarnah. Alien life? Maybe. But it wasn’t merely an encounter—it was a warning.
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