LOCATION: GLOBAL SCIENCE COMMAND (GSC), PRIMARY OBSERVATION DECK
TIMESTAMP: T-MINUS 00:01:00 TO IMPACT
The air in the observatory was a physical thing, thick with the hum of supercomputers and the held breath of thirty of the world's finest minds. On the main holoscreen, the object—designated K-77 "Anomaly"—painted a silent, fiery path across the global tracking map.
Dr. Aris Thorne gripped the console, his knuckles white. "Final atmospheric entry calculations confirm. Projected impact zone: Siberian Exclusion Zone. Yield... still unquantifiable. But it's big."
A collective shudder ran through the room. They had evacuated a continent-sized area for a reason. This was it.
TIMESTAMP: T-PLUS 00:00:05 TO IMPACT
"All civilian sectors report full evacuation," a voice called out, tight with stress.
"Then we watch," Aris whispered, not to anyone in particular. "We witness."
The countdown hit zero.
The screen flared, a brief, brilliant star blooming on the Russian tundra. Seismographs around the globe spiked... but only for a moment. The data stream stabilized almost immediately. The expected, continent-shaking shockwave never came. The fireball dissipated in seconds, not minutes.
Silence.
Then, chaos.
"Report!" Aris barked.
"Energy discharge is... minimal. Sub-kiloton."
"Seismic activity is a localized 2.1 magnitude. That's... that's like a truck hitting the ground."
"No electromagnetic pulse. No radiation spike. Nothing."
Aris stared at the data. It was impossible. An object with that mass, that velocity... it should have carved a new sea. Instead, it had landed with the subtlety of a falling leaf.
"Get me visuals," he ordered, his voice low and steady, belying the tremor in his hands. "And suit up the First Response Team. I want a hundred men in A.T.S.S. units on the ground in one hour. The world is waiting for an answer, and right now, all we have is a bigger question."
TIMESTAMP: T-PLUS 01:15:00
On a bank of monitors, a hundred individual camera feeds flickered to life. The soldiers of Alpha Team moved with disciplined precision, their "Atlas" suits glinting under the harsh Arctic sun. They fanned out across the pristine snow, advancing on the coordinates.
"Sir," a technician said, her voice puzzled. "Bio-readings are nominal. Atmospheric is... green across the board. It's perfectly normal."
"Then what the hell did we just watch hit us?" Aris muttered.
The lead soldier's voice, codenamed JINX, crackled over the comms, calm and professional. "GSC, we are approaching the primary crater site. Visual confirmation in three... two... one..."
On the main screen, Jinx's helmet-cam feed dominated. It showed a gentle depression in the snow, not a crater. And at its center, not a charred rock from another star, but a smooth, obsidian-black sphere, perfectly intact, half-buried in the ice. It was no larger than a cargo truck. It hummed with a low, sub-audible frequency that made their teeth ache.
Jinx took a step closer. "GSC, are you seeing this? There's no heat signature. No scarring. It's... pristine."
"Run the full sensor suite," Aris commanded, leaning forward. "Everything you've got."
A new window popped up on the screen—the raw data from Jinx's suit. The numbers scrolled, a waterfall of information. Then, they began to flicker. Oxygen levels jumped to impossible highs, then plummeted. Gravity readings swung wildly. A radiation type that wasn't on any known spectrum registered for a split second.
"Jinx, your telemetry is glitching," Aris said.
"Negative, GSC," Jinx replied, his voice losing its edge of calm. "My HUD is clear. The sphere... it's changing."
On the video feed, the surface of the sphere shimmered like liquid mercury. Then, it irised open. Not a mechanical door, but an opening into absolute, light-swallowing blackness.
The last thing the scientists heard from Alpha Team was a burst of static, torn between a scream and a prayer.
The last thing they saw was Jinx's camera feed stretching, the image of the world around him distorting like a reflection in a funhouse mirror, before it winked out into nothing.
The last thing the scientists heard from Alpha Team was a burst of static, torn between a scream and a prayer.
The last thing they saw was Jinx's camera feed stretching, the image of the world around him distorting like a reflection in a funhouse mirror, before it winked out into nothing.
Silence. For three heartbeats, the observation deck was a tomb.
"Jinx? Alpha Team, respond!" Aris barked, his voice cracking. "Get me a satellite feed! Now!"
But before the order could be executed, Jinx's feed flickered back to life. The image was shaky, blurred, but it was there. He was on his knees, his breath fogging his visor in ragged gasps. Around him, the other soldiers were stumbling, disoriented. The obsidian sphere was gone. Vanished.
In its place, hovering a foot above the scorched earth, was a smaller object. It was about the size of a football, a perfect, smooth stone that pulsed with an internal, mesmerizing light. Swirls of color—sapphire, emerald, amethyst—drifted within its core like a captured nebula.
"What... what is that?" one of the junior scientists whispered, the awe in her voice echoing the stunned silence of the entire room.
"Jinx, status report!" Aris demanded, his eyes glued to the enchanting object.
"GSC... we're... we're okay," Jinx's voice was dazed. "No injuries. The sphere... it's gone. But this thing... it's beautiful." His helmet cam zoomed in, the image stabilizing on the glowing stone. The scientists could see every intricate swirl, every pulse of light that seemed to beat like a silent heart. It was hypnotic.
"Readings are off the chart!" a technician called out. "It's emitting an energy signature we've never seen. Non-radioactive, non-thermal. It's... pure potential energy."
"Can you get closer for a better look?" Aris asked, his scientific curiosity overriding his dread. "I need a full spectral analysis."
On the screen, Jinx nodded slowly, mesmerized. "Copy that, GSC. Moving in." He rose to his feet and took a cautious step forward. Then another. His gloved hand reached out, not to touch, but to get his suit's sensors within optimal range.
He was five meters away.
Then three.
The stone's gentle pulsing quickened. The swirling colors inside began to churn violently.
"Jinx, back off!" Aris shouted, a cold fist of terror closing around his heart. "Your bio-readings are spiking!"
It was too late.
The football-sized stone began to shake violently, rattling against the very air that held it aloft. A high-pitched whine, so intense it distorted the audio feed, screeched from the speakers.
"WHAT'S HAPPENING?!" Jinx yelled, stumbling backward.
The whine peaked, and then—
BOOMMMMMMMM—
It wasn't a sound of destruction. It was a sound of creation. A sound of the universe itself tearing open.
The stone didn't fragment. It unfolded. It exploded not into shrapnel, but into a wave of pure, iridescent energy—a nebula given form. It was silent and blindingly bright, a tidal wave of liquid light that swallowed Jinx's camera feed in a searing white void.
The wave didn't stop. It expanded outwards at an impossible speed, washing over the rest of Alpha Team, over the craters, over the entire Siberian tundra. Satellite feeds showed the nebula energy blooming across the continent, a beautiful, terrifying stain spreading on the globe.
In the observation deck, every screen was filled with blinding white static. The hum of computers was replaced by the frantic blare of alarm klaxons as global sensor networks lit up like a Christmas tree.
Dr. Aris Thorne could only stare, numb, at the dead screens.
The question was no longer "What is it?"
The question, whispered into the stunned silence, was far, far worse:
"What have we just unleashed?"
LOCATION: IMPACT SITE, SIBERIAN TUNDRA
TIMESTAMP: T-PLUS 00:03:00
Jinx coughed, the sound raw in his ears. His head throbbed, a dull, insistent ache behind his eyes. The world swam back into focus through his visor. White. Static. Then, the cracked, scorched earth.
"GSC...? Anyone, copy?" His voice was a dry croak. Groans answered him over the squad channel as the rest of Alpha Team began to stir. They were scattered around the epicenter, lying where the wave had thrown them. "What happened? Report!"
"Jinx! You're back!" Aris's voice was laced with frantic relief from the speakers in his helmet. "Our screens went blank. The entire global grid flickered. We lost you for three minutes. What do you see?"
Jinx pushed himself to his knees, his A.T.S.S. suit whirring in protest. "I... I don't know, sir. Nothing's broken. But... everything feels... different." The air itself seemed to hum, charged with an energy that made the fine hairs on his arm stand up.
That's when he heard it. A low, menacing hiss.
It wasn't mechanical. It was organic, guttural, the sound of a cornered predator the size of a truck.
A dense, shimmering mist—the lingering residue of the nebula-energy—cloaked the area, reducing visibility to a few meters. The hiss came again, closer now, from the heart of the fog. The soldiers scrambled to their feet, rifles snapping up, forming a ragged defensive perimeter. The science chatter in their ears fell silent, replaced by the sound of their own panicked breathing.
"Thermal is useless!" one soldier yelled. "It's all a cold blob!"
"Motion sensor is going haywire!"
Then, a sudden, unnatural wind swept down from the heavens, swirling and pulling the obscuring mist away like a curtain being drawn back.
For a moment, there was only stunned silence.
Perched on the jagged, newly-formed spire of rock at the very center of the impact zone was a creature from a nightmare.
It had the basic skeletal structure of a giant eagle, but that was where any resemblance to nature ended. Its size was monstrous, dwarfing a military jeep. Its feathers were not feathers at all, but plates of obsidian-black chitin that gleamed like oil. From its skull erupted two massive, spiraling horns, slick with a dark, viscous fluid. Its talons were not claws; they were scythes of bone, each one as long as a man's forearm, digging deep grooves into the solid rock.
But it was the eyes that froze the blood in their veins. They glowed with a deep, crimson light—a primal, intelligent bloodlust that promised only evisceration.
One of the younger soldiers, a man named Evans, stumbled back a step, his rifle clattering to the ground. His voice, when it finally came, was a strangled, terrified shriek that ripped through the comms and echoed in the silent observation deck halfway across the world.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!"
The creature's blood-red eyes locked onto the sound. Its head cocked. It let out another, deeper hiss, and unfolded wings that blotted out the sun.