The rover's floodlights carved pale beams into the canyon scar, illuminating jagged rock and drifting plumes of dust. Selene's scanners hummed restlessly, their displays dancing with faint blue spikes. The rhythmic pulse was back—faint, irregular, but unmistakable.
"Signal strength rising," she reported. Her voice was tight, almost reverent. "It's synchronizing with our instruments. Like it knows we're here."
Marlowe stood at the edge of the fissure, arms folded across his chest. His visor reflected the glow below, his stance unyielding. "Keep logging. Thirty more minutes. Then we pull out."
Harlan kicked a rock into the fissure. It tumbled into darkness, swallowed by the glow. "Feels like poking a sleeping bear," he muttered.
"Then stop poking," Marlowe shot back.
But Elara crouched closer to the edge, visor tilted. She was still, too still, as though listening. "It's not a bear," she whispered. "It's older. Wiser. And it's not sleeping."
Darius shivered. He wanted to look away, to retreat into the safety of the rover, but his eyes refused. The light below was mesmerizing, like water shifting beneath glass. He thought of the cloaked figure in the briefing archives, the crystal that had vanished centuries ago. Could this be connected?
Suddenly, the scanners shrieked. Selene's display flared red.
"Energy surge! Massive spike—off the charts!"
The canyon floor convulsed. Dust exploded upward, a choking storm of red grit. The fissure widened with a sound like tearing metal, splitting the earth beneath their boots.
"Fall back!" Marlowe roared, dragging Elara by the arm.
But she resisted, her gaze locked on the light erupting from below. "Do you see it?"
The glow surged, no longer faint embers but roaring veins of crystal light, jagged shards thrusting skyward. Blue fire crackled along the canyon walls, racing like lightning.
Darius stumbled back, shielding his visor. Through the storm, he saw shapes forming within the light—structures, symmetrical, deliberate. Not random geology. Architecture.
"It's… a construct," Selene gasped. Her scanners went wild, symbols flickering across her feed—unknown language, patterns repeating like code.
The fissure roared louder, and then the ground breathed. Dust blasted outward in a shockwave, knocking them to their knees.
From the heart of the canyon, something began to rise.
At first it looked like a spire, crystalline and jagged, glowing from within. Then more followed, interlocking towers clawing upward from beneath the surface, as though Mars itself was unfolding hidden bones.
Harlan swore under his breath. "We didn't find Mars. Mars found us."
Darius's chest tightened. The spires pulsed with the same rhythm he had felt since orbit, like veins channeling blood. But this wasn't just a heartbeat. It was a signal. A summons.
Elara tore free from Marlowe's grip, stepping forward into the storm of light. "It's been waiting," she said. Her voice carried through the comms, calm and certain. "And now… it's awake."
The ground thundered one final time, and the fissure sealed shut beneath the rising structure, leaving the crew stranded before a crystalline fortress glowing with alien life.
The pulse grew louder.
And this time, it was no longer beneath their feet.
It was inside their heads.