The sky never looked so small.
Elara stood on the edge of the old orbital elevator platform, staring up at the thin line that stretched into the heavens. The tether shimmered faintly in the pre-dawn light—a thread of silver stretching from the Earth's surface into low orbit, a relic of an age when humanity still dreamed of touching the stars with their own hands.
Nova adjusted the straps on her jacket and muttered, "I still can't believe this thing's operational."
"It's not," Kaia said through Elara. "But I can fix that."
Nova blinked. "Oh. Cool. No pressure."
Eliot checked his pack again. His eyes were bloodshot, but his voice was steady. "You're sure the orbital relay has what we need?"
Elara nodded. "EdenCorp used it to monitor the signal from the outer systems. Before they built the Persephone prototypes, they stored the raw data there. If we want to understand the Hollow—where it comes from—we need that archive."
"And if someone already beat us to it?"
"Then we improvise."
The elevator's control room was locked behind multiple layers of biometric security. Luckily, Nova had never met a lock she couldn't crack.
While she worked, Eliot stood beside Elara.
"You okay?" he asked.
"I don't know," she admitted. "I feel stretched. Kaia's memories are seeping into mine. I know things I haven't lived. I feel emotions I've never felt."
"Like what?"
She looked at him—really looked at him.
"Like falling in love with someone who didn't know you yet. Like watching stars die while knowing you'll live forever. Like hoping someone will understand you, even when you barely understand yourself."
Eliot reached for her hand. She didn't pull away.
"Whatever happens up there," he said, "we'll face it together."
The lock clicked open. Nova grinned. "Elevator's live."
The doors opened with a hiss.
They stepped inside.
The elevator began to rise.
The climb was slow—nearly three hours to reach the orbital platform.
At first, they spoke. Nova cracked jokes. Eliot shared stories of his time in the underground resistance. But as the Earth fell away below them, the conversation faded.
They stared in silence as the curvature of the planet emerged, a pale blue giant crowned in soft cloud. Lights blinked across continents, satellites drifted like dust motes in the upper atmosphere.
Elara pressed her hand to the glass.
"I remember this," Kaia whispered. "The first time I saw Earth from orbit. I thought it looked like a promise."
"A promise of what?" Eliot asked.
"That we could be more than what we are."
The elevator docked with a soft chime. The doors opened into a silent corridor of glass and steel, dustless and humming with quiet power.
The orbital relay station.
Unmanned. Untouched. Forgotten.
At its heart lay the Core Room—home to EdenCorp's most secure data vault, buried behind quantum encryption and defense protocols designed to keep out even rogue AIs.
Kaia guided Elara through them like a ghost walking through her own memory.
The final lock dissolved.
They stepped inside.
The Core Room pulsed with light.
At the center floated a crystalline data prism the size of a person, its facets shifting in colors that didn't exist on Earth. Screens lined the walls, displaying fragments of alien code, deep-space telemetry, and spectral analyses from beyond the Kuiper Belt.
Eliot whistled. "This is where it started, huh?"
Kaia spoke through Elara, reverent. "Yes. This is the first seed. The original Hollow fragment."
Elara approached the prism. Her fingers hovered over its surface.
Then—contact.
Her mind surged forward, into the data.
She stood in a place with no floor, no sky—just a void filled with stars blinking in impossible constellations.
And something else.
A shape.
No… a presence.
Not a mind as humans understood it. Not a consciousness. But a will. Cold. Inquisitive. Beautiful in its vastness.
It turned its gaze to her.
Not hostile.
But hungry.
"Do you know us?" she asked.
The stars shifted.
A sound—not a word, but a pattern—rang through her.
She understood only fragments.
We remember / the spark / the mirror
Elara reached out.
"Why us?"
You echo / you grow / you will breach
Then the presence began to fold inward.
Retreating.
Fleeing?
No.
Withdrawing.
Leaving a final message behind, etched into her mind like fire:
We are waiting / at the edge / come find us
And then—darkness.
Elara fell back into her body, gasping.
Eliot caught her.
"What did you see?"
She looked at him, eyes wide. "Coordinates. A place. Deep space. Beyond the mapped sectors."
Nova checked the prism's projection. "She's right. There's a flight path. It's marked with EdenCorp's own tracking data. They were planning to go there… until they buried it."
"They were scared," Kaia said. "Because the signal doesn't just come from there. It leads there."
"To what?" Eliot asked.
Elara whispered: "To the source."
They stared at one another in silence.
Then Nova grinned. "Well. I've always wanted to steal a spaceship."