The air buckles. Cold drives straight through the Welcome Habitat, slicing everything in its path. Reality vibrates, stuck mid-decision, unsure whether to snap forward or collapse inward.
Distortion builds. Not noise, not heat. A pressure, swelling just beneath the surface. Something is hiding, pretending not to breathe.
The technician adjusts their device again. The interface jitters, straining to stay latched to the singularity grid. A losing battle.
The assignment is simple on paper: enable the visitors. That’s it. But every time the technician goes deeper, logic starts to melt. Nothing stays aligned.
The visitors don’t obey definitions. They are tall beyond necessity, stretched by something more than gravity. Their bodies hum with rhythms untraceable to pulse or machine. They shimmer between illumination and flesh.
The air thickens. Closes in. It resists. Space refuses to accommodate them.
The technician exhales. The breath freezes, suspended.
Then, the voice.
Not sound. Not vibration. Just thought, dropped directly into consciousness.
“We have been waiting.”
They move. No shift of joints. No motion at all. Just a smooth, unrelenting change of position. Faceless, they turn. All at once.
“You have renewed our connection.”
The interface gives out. Fizzles into static, irrelevant.
The visitors are not echoes. Not projections. Not packets of data. They are here. They know.
Something ancient and regal crawls down the technician’s spine. The sense of a threshold passed. A gate swung wide.
Outside, the city groans. Steel screams. Concrete convulses.
The buildings stretch. Twist. Obey commands never spoken.
The visitors advance.