Ash fell like snow over the ruined city, swirling in the still air as if reluctant to settle.
Maya stepped through the shattered archway, her boots crunching on what remained of the tower's inner sanctum. "It's quiet. Too quiet."
Liam nodded, his gaze fixed on a fragment of alien plating embedded in the stone. It pulsed faintly, casting greenish shadows across the wreckage.
"I don't like it," he muttered. "That tower should've been the end of it."
"It felt final," Maya said. "But now… it's like the air is humming."
They paused. Around them, the remnants of the battle remained: alien spires collapsed like broken bones, circuitry twitching with dying sparks. A low, rhythmic vibration ran through the soles of their feet—imperceptible at first, then insistent.
"You feel that?" Maya asked, her voice low.
Liam closed his eyes. "Yeah. And something else. A frequency... barely there, like it's burrowed into the sound of the wind."
From the distance, a soft pop echoed—followed by flickering lights from the remains of a comm tower.
"That's the third blackout this morning," Maya said. "We're not the only ones picking up the echo."
"Let's check the relay grid. If this is bleedover from the alien systems, we need to know what it's doing to our tech."
As they moved, a survivor stumbled from behind a pile of wreckage, clutching his head.
"Hey!" Maya rushed forward. "You okay?"
The man looked up—eyes glowing faintly, irises flickering with iridescent hues. "They're not gone," he rasped. "They're inside."
Later, beneath the makeshift dome of the survivors' encampment, Liam sat cross-legged, breathing slowly.
"You're glowing again," Maya noted, arms crossed as she leaned against a support beam.
He opened his eyes—silver laced his pupils like fine wire. "I can feel heat signatures. Even behind walls. And time's… weird. Like I know when something's going to happen. Just flashes, though."
Maya pulled back the sleeve of her coat and let a small orb of energy form between her palms. It pulsed gently, responding to her heartbeat. "Mine's more instinctive. Kinetic feedback, like I can read momentum—redirect force."
"Have you tried pushing it further?"
She hesitated. "A little. But every time I do, I see… things. Like visions. Alien landscapes. Moons that don't belong to this star system."
Liam turned to the flickering interface that had emerged from his upgraded system. Glyphs danced across the translucent panel, constantly shifting.
"Tier 2 access unlocked," he muttered. "But this isn't just a level-up. It's like the system's adapting. Look at this—data about the convergence event. Signal maps. And this."
He pointed at a red-threaded timeline.
Maya frowned. "Projected events?"
"Predictions," Liam confirmed. "Or maybe warnings."
A high-pitched whine suddenly split the air. Communications scrambled. Devices sparked. And somewhere beyond the walls, someone screamed.
They found them near the edge of the crater—six figures huddled around a fire made of shattered drone parts.
One woman turned sharply as they approached, her hands crackling with static. "Stay back."
"We're not your enemies," Liam said. "We were changed too."
The group eyed them warily. One man, younger, his face flushed with fever, stepped forward.
"I saw you at the tower," he said. "You broke the pulse barrier."
"We stopped the beacon," Maya corrected. "Or so we thought."
Another man—the oldest—stood. His arms trembled with barely contained energy, veins glowing blue beneath his skin. "It didn't stop. It just changed."
"Changed how?" Maya asked.
"There's a voice in my head," the fevered one whispered. "Not mine. It whispers in pulses… coordinates, patterns…"
A crack of energy shot out from one of the survivors, striking a nearby boulder and vaporizing it. He fell to his knees, gasping. "I didn't mean to I can't control it!"
Liam crouched. "You're all infected with something—but it's not a virus. It's integration."
A quiet gasp cut through the group. One girl—the smallest, barely sixteen—held up her hand. Alien script glowed across her skin.
"I can read it," she said softly. "It's not a language. It's code."
Back at the relay hub, Liam tapped into a preserved transmitter node.
"It's not a broadcast," he murmured, eyes scanning the shifting frequencies. "It's a reply."
"Reply to what?" Maya asked.
He didn't answer immediately, working his way through the encryption layers. His fingers moved fast, bypassing firewalls with instinctive ease.
Then he paused.
"What is it?" she asked.
"It's a recursive signal. It loops, but each pass gets stronger. Like it's rewriting itself. It's not calling for help. It's… talking to something."
The screen blinked.
> > Vector Sync: 61% Temporal Anchor Detected. Subroutine: Memory Seed – Active.
"Oh no," Liam whispered. "This isn't about the invasion. It's a program. Something was meant to happen after the tower fell."
Maya stepped back. "You're saying we triggered it?"
Liam stood slowly, dread creeping into his voice. "We were the trigger."
Following the signal's path led them beneath the rubble of the central tower. Steel and alien alloy gave way to a hidden tunnel—untouched, silent, alive with latent energy.
"This place isn't on any map," Maya said.
"Because it wasn't meant to be found by humans," Liam replied.
The chamber opened before them—massive, spherical, lined with alien constructs in dormant stasis. Lights flickered on as they stepped in.
A central console lit up in response to Liam's presence.
"You're interfacing," Maya said. "Careful—"
Too late. Liam's eyes rolled back as a flood of alien memory surged into him.
Flight. Desperation. Worlds collapsing into singularities. Refugees encoded into machines. Seeds planted in distant systems—not to conquer, but to survive. To evolve.
He gasped and fell to his knees. "It wasn't an invasion…"
Maya drew her weapon as the constructs began to stir. Their eyes ignited, blue fading to red.
"They weren't here to conquer," Liam said, his voice hollow. "They were here to change us."