The third week in space began with a sound no one expected: laughter.
It echoed faintly through the corridor, bouncing off the metal walls, thin and distorted. Mara froze mid-step, her hand tightening around the rail. "Tell me someone else heard that," she muttered.
Jonas pushed past her, storming toward the crew quarters. "No one's laughing. We're all awake."
But the sound persisted. A child's laugh this time—high, hollow, and impossibly out of place. It drifted down the corridor, teasing, mocking.
"Comms are off," Liora said sharply. Her face was pale as she scanned her console again. "No signals. Internal audio is clean. The ship didn't make that sound."
Eris stayed silent. His stomach knotted as he recognized the rhythm in the echoes—it pulsed like the Heart of Mars. Not laughter. Not really. The planet was still speaking to them, reshaping itself into whatever could unsettle them most.
The crew tried to work. They forced themselves into routine: checking stabilizers, recalibrating trajectory, monitoring life support. But the laughter returned at odd intervals, sometimes shifting into whispers, sometimes into cries. Never loud, never long, just enough to keep them on edge.
That night, Eris dreamed again.
He stood in the cavern of the Heart, but it wasn't buried in Mars anymore. It floated before him in the void, burning brighter than any star. The cloaked figure appeared beside it, its form taller now, clearer, as though space itself had given it shape.
"You carry it with you," the figure said. Its voice was a blend of whispers and roars, impossible to pin down. "The Heart does not stay behind. It travels. It waits."
Eris tried to speak, but no sound left his mouth.
The figure leaned closer, faceless and vast. "And when Earth sees it, the world will remember."
He woke with a start, gasping, his chest aching as though the words had been carved into him. Across the cabin, Mara stirred awake and frowned at him. "Another nightmare?"
Eris didn't answer. He stared out the viewport, where the faint blue shimmer of Earth was finally visible, a fragile dot in the sea of black.
Closer now. Too close for the Heart to remain silent much longer.