The ruins were quiet. Too quiet.
After Bob took down the alien mech, the Resistance expected a retaliation wave.
Instead, the invaders had gone… silent.
No ships. No broadcasts. No attacks.
Bob didn't like it one bit.
"Either they're regrouping," he said, lounging on Maya's datapad, "or they're planning something big. Like… 'blow-up-the-moon' big."
Maya arched a brow. "Please don't give them ideas."
---
The Signal That Shouldn't Exist
Later that night, the Resistance picked up something strange.
A signal.
Not alien. Not human.
Something in-between.
Faint, encrypted, buried beneath radiation storms — but undeniably… a message.
"Coordinates," Dev said. "Pointing to an old orbital station. Decommissioned before the war. No life signs."
Bob leaned in. "So we're getting mysterious space messages from a dead station no one remembers?"
He rubbed his antenna. "This is definitely how horror movies start."
---
A Mission Too Quiet
"Small crew," Maya said. "You, me, and one drone. In, out, investigate."
"Love it," Bob replied. "But if we get eaten by space ghosts, I'm haunting you."
The journey up was eerily smooth. No enemy craft. No mines. No interference.
Too smooth.
The orbital station hung above Earth like a tomb — silent, dark, coated in frost.
They docked. Entered.
And were swallowed by the void.
---
Ghosts of the Past
Inside, the station was a museum of abandonment.
Flickering lights. Frozen control panels. Shattered glass.
But something was alive here.
Or had been.
Strange carvings in the walls — spirals, like insect wings. Diagrams. Circles.
Maya scanned them. "These aren't alien… They're older. Maybe pre-human. Pre-everything."
Bob's voice cracked. "What do you mean pre-everything?"
She looked at him. "I think this station belonged to something before the aliens arrived."
---
The Chamber
They found it behind a sealed blast door: a chamber pulsing with blue light.
In its center — a cocoon. Metallic. Almost breathing.
Symbols glowed on the ground around it, moving in patterns that made Bob's brain hurt.
And then it spoke.
Not aloud. In his mind.
> "You are not the first. You will not be the last."
Bob froze. "Okay... I did not sign up for telepathic cocoon therapy."
---
The Trap
Suddenly, the chamber snapped shut. Walls locked. Lights turned red.
A voice, cold and mechanical, rang out:
> "Decoy successful. Begin extraction."
From the shadows, they emerged — hybrid sentinels. Alien-tech fused with human designs. Monstrous. Precise.
"They used the signal to lure us in," Maya shouted, drawing her blaster. "They're studying our tech now!"
Bob's legs twitched. "Cool. So they're smart and evil. Love that for us."
---
Fighting Back
Maya fired. Bob zipped across the floor, launching a smoke capsule and crawling up one sentinel's leg.
"Let's see how you like internal sabotage, sucker!"
He punched into a hatch, rewired a circuit—
The sentinel exploded.
Another swung at Maya. Bob leapt, pulling a wire from its neck as she finished it with a shot.
But more were coming. Dozens.
They were outnumbered. Trapped. Doomed.
Unless…
---
Bob's Big Idea
Bob turned toward the cocoon.
"Hey, creepy ancient space-thing. You still there?"
The symbols flickered.
> "You carry the chaos spark. You are worthy."
"What does that mean?!"
> "Open me. Or perish."
Bob didn't hesitate.
He slammed the release switch.
The cocoon shattered in a blast of energy. Light poured from it, throwing sentinels back in waves.
In the middle… floated a small orb.
Inside it — a glowing, insect-like being. Ancient. Silent.
It looked at Bob.
Then vanished.
---
Escape from Above
The station shook violently.
Bob and Maya ran.
As the core overloaded, Bob leapt into the evac pod seconds before fire swallowed the hallway.
The pod launched.
Behind them, the station exploded into stardust.
---
Back on Earth
Safe again, Bob sat in a medbay with a snack crumb in hand.
"What was that thing?" Maya asked.
Bob stared at the stars through the window.
"I don't know," he said quietly. "But it knew me."
He looked down at his shell — now faintly glowing with strange, ancient lines.
"And I think… it changed me."