Chapter 1: Forty Seconds of Static

Dr. Mira Okonkwo had been alone on Kepler Station for two hundred and twelve days when the radio began to speak.

It started as static, the usual hiss of the void, but forty seconds into the transmission the noise folded into words. A woman's voice, low and hoarse, counting backward from ten.

Mira listened with her hand over her mouth. The voice was her own.

She replayed it a dozen times. There was no doubt. The same slight lisp on the letter s, the same tired rhythm. At zero, the voice said only: Do not open the airlock on Thursday. Then silence.

It was Monday. The station's only supply drone was due on Thursday morning.

Mira did what any careful scientist would do. She checked the equipment, ran diagnostics, and logged the signal with timestamps. The source was local, bounced from a relay satellite that should not have been transmitting. The recording was dated Thursday at 06:14, three days ahead.

On Tuesday, the message came again, longer this time. It is not the drone, Mira. It is what follows the drone.

On Wednesday it was shorter, a whisper, frightened. Please listen. I could not.

Mira barely slept. She rationed her coffee, double-checked the locks, and stared at the airlock door until her eyes burned. On Thursday at 06:00, the drone's proximity alarm began to chime. At 06:10, the airlock indicator turned green.

She sat at the console with a wrench in her hands, her own voice still echoing in her head.

At 06:14, the radio crackled to life and she heard it live, for the first time: If you are hearing this in real time, then you chose to wait. Good. I did not. I opened the door.

Then the voice began to laugh, softly, with enormous relief.

Now go to the observation deck and look at the drone.

Mira ran. Through the portholes she saw the supply drone drifting beside the station, and clinging to its hull, something long and pale and patient, folded like an insect's wing. It had not yet noticed the lights.

She shut off every lamp on Kepler Station, one by one, until the dark was perfect. Then she sat in the silence with her heart pounding, and waited for the thing to leave, as her future self never had.