The ripple in space left no trace on the sensors. Liora checked twice, then three more times, her fingers trembling over the console. Each time the answer was the same: nothing.
"Empty," she whispered. "Like it was never there."
Mara slammed the side of her chair. "Don't give me nothing. We all saw it. Felt it."
Eris said nothing. His eyes lingered on the viewport, though there was only the vast black of space, stars spread like salt across infinity. He knew it hadn't been nothing. He had felt the thrum again, stronger this time—like the Heart of Mars had reached across the void to remind him of its claim.
Jonas leaned back, rubbing his temples. "Whatever it was, it didn't hit us. Engines are stable. Hull's intact. We stay on course."
But none of them slept easily that night.
In the artificial cycle of the ship, "night" meant dimmed lights and the hum of secondary systems powering down. Eris drifted in and out of uneasy dreams. He saw red horizons stretching forever, shadows walking without faces, and the crystal Heart beating like a star beneath the crust of Mars. When he woke, sweat chilled his skin despite the regulated air.
The next "day," it got worse.
The comm system crackled to life on its own, spitting static into the cabin. Liora rushed to silence it, but before she could, the static warped into a sound that froze them all: whispers.
Not human. Not machine.
A chorus of low, broken voices echoing through the channel, like the same murmurs they had heard in the Martian night.
"No signal inbound," Liora said, her voice tight. Her fingers flew across the console. "Nothing's transmitting—this isn't possible."
Jonas snapped, "Shut it down!"
The voices stopped. The static died.
But the silence that followed was worse.
For the first time, Mara didn't argue. She just stared at the comms panel as though it might speak again.
Later, when the lights dimmed again, Eris caught his reflection in the viewport. For a split second, the reflection wasn't his. It was the cloaked figure—the same one that had stood when the crystal was born. And then it was gone.
He closed his eyes, whispering to himself, "We're not alone out here."
None of them were.