The dome emerged through the storm like a monolith of alloy and reinforced glass, so vast that it seemed to drink in the wind around it, leaving a strange pocket of calm in its shadow. It was only then, standing beneath it, that I truly understood just how massive the structure was. With thick, reinforced panels that rose overhead like the ribs of an ancient behemoth, scarred by years of exposure to the harsh elements yet still standing firm as if they could endure for hundreds more.
But for all the majesty of its construction, there was a creeping dread that seemed to permeate the air around it, tightening my gut the longer I stared at it. Yet even after everything that had happened, the others somehow still had the energy to joke.
"Anyone else feel like we're walking into a horror story?" Ella said over the comms. "I mean, just look at this place. It's like there isn't a soul in there."
Henry let out a tired chuckle. "If something attacks us, I'm blaming you for jinxing it."
Rolling my eyes, I tuned out the rest, but couldn't deny that something about the city felt wrong. Even with the storm howling around us, there was a strange stillness to the city beyond.
Nearing the entrance, the wind battered us with renewed force, almost as if Mars itself were furious that we'd managed to make it this far. Ahead, what looked to be a massive airlock loomed, large enough to admit supply crawlers and even some smaller ships.
"Ah, there it is." Ella beamed and hurried to a console beside the entrance, where she pulled up the access codes from the mission file and spent a moment searching through them before settling on one and punching it into the keypad.
A sharp beep answered her, followed by a deep mechanical hiss as the outer door slowly rumbled open, revealing a dim corridor lined with flickering emergency lights.
"Phew." Ella let out a relieved breath. "I was starting to worry these codes wouldn't work on this access panel." She glanced back at us with a faint grin. "Would've sucked to get all the way here just to slowly suffocate outside."
Clearly not amused, Henry grunted and adjusted his hold on Owen as he helped me drag his limp body toward the open hatch.
"And this should close it," Ella muttered, and with a pull of the lever, the massive door began to close behind us. It ground slowly into place before sealing with a heavy metallic clunk, cutting off the last traces of the storm outside.
For a moment, all I could hear was my own breathing inside my helmet. With no howling wind constantly bombarding our suits, it was strange how uncomfortable the quiet felt after spending so long wishing for exactly that.
Still, there was something reassuring about knowing several feet of metal now stood between us and the storm outside. For the first time in what felt like hours, I didn't have to worry about the wind sweeping me off my feet or some piece of debris coming out of nowhere to finish the job.
And slowly, my body seemed to realize that too.
Some of the tension began to ease from my shoulders, my breathing gradually settling as I allowed myself to relax. Unfortunately, the moment I did, I became painfully aware of just how heavy my suit had become.
With the adrenaline now wearing off, every ache I'd managed to ignore slowly settled back into place, as if my body had simply been waiting for the noise to stop before reminding me how much everything hurt.
Stepping towards another lever, Ella pulled it down. "And this one should seal the outer lock completely and start the decontamination process."
With a low hum, the system came alive. Tiny nozzles hidden in the walls rotated into place and released a fine mist over our armor. After a couple of moments, a green light flickered above the inner door, and Ella stepped forward to pull the third lever.
Another door slid aside, revealing a narrow passage and, beyond that, yet another sealed entrance. Layered safety systems. Redundancy stacked on redundancy.
It took some time to make it through all three chambers, but when the final doors slid open, I couldn't help the wave of relief that came at the sight of the skyline beyond.
We weren't alone, either. Standing just beyond the entrance to the grand dome were four figures in battered suits, each of them looking about as wrecked as we were. Unlike us, though, they had their helmets off, making it easy to recognize one of them as none other than Captain Grayson of the Dauntless-class explorer.
She stood out immediately. Tall and strongly built, she carried herself with the kind of natural confidence that made it difficult not to notice her. Her deep blue eyes held a sharp, searching intensity, softened somewhat by the loose curls of blond hair framing her face, their edges catching the scattered emergency lights in shades of dark gold.
It was good to see she'd made it. The other three, though, were unfamiliar to me.
"Atlas," she said, exhaling as if seeing me alive had solved at least one of her problems. "What's the situation with the third squadron? Did they make it?"
I shook my head. "From what I can tell, we're the only ones who made it out of the crash." The words tasted bitter. If it hadn't been for whoever dragged me from my stupor in the hangar bay, I would've been among the dead too.
Grayson lowered her gaze for a moment before looking past me toward the others. "I take it this is everyone who made it out in time?"
I nodded, only then taking a better look at the group with her.
One of them was an older man with graying hair and deeply lined features, clad in what appeared to be a Mark Three suit, the kind usually reserved for medical staff in the Fifth Regiment.
Noticing my glance, he gave me a quiet nod.
I returned it, only for a heavy thud beside me to make me look down. Ella had collapsed onto the floor, utterly spent.
Beside her, Henry let out a long breath. "You know," he muttered, "I half expected something to be horribly wrong with this place." He looked around the dome, frowning. "But with everything seeming to be in working order... I just don't understand where all the colonists went."
I followed his gaze. The structure was intact, and since we were breathing just fine, the atmosphere systems were clearly still functioning. Which meant the colony hadn't suffered a total systems failure.
So where was everyone?
As if reading my thoughts, Grayson stepped closer, her expression grim. "From what we've seen, there doesn't seem to be anyone left. And without the supplies to venture outside the dome, we don't exactly have the means to go looking for survivors." She glanced toward the empty city. "So for now, our best option is to search what's left of the colony, find somewhere we can hunker down, and wait for rescue."
Though the look in her eyes told me rescue wasn't coming anytime soon. Especially not after what had happened to the ship, which raised an even more pressing question.
"Captain Grayson," I said, "what happened while I was asleep?"
She gave me a tired, humorless look, rubbing at her brow. "Please, call me Amelia. I'm no captain anymore."
I nodded.
Taking a slow breath, she continued. "To be honest, I don't know what went wrong. As best we can tell, we were hit by something big enough to tear straight through the hull."
I glanced toward the distant flames and grimaced. "An asteroid?"
"Seems that way."
But that didn't sit right with me. Any asteroid large enough to do that should've been picked up by our scanners long before it got close, let alone managed to reach the ship.
"That's bullshit!" a voice spoke up, drawing everyone's attention toward a man striding toward us.
There was something almost frantic in the way he moved, as though he were barely keeping himself under control. Sunken brown eyes stood out against his exhausted face, while messy black hair hung loosely across his forehead, leaving him looking every bit as shaken as he sounded.
"You and I both know that was no asteroid," he snapped. "No fucking asteroid has wings the size of a building!"
Amelia let out a slow sigh. "Ethan, it's common to be disoriented after coming out of stasis. Hallucinations aren't exactly unheard of."
"That was no fucking vision," he hissed. "I'm telling you, it was a monstrosity."
For a moment, no one seemed to know what to say. Amelia eventually pinched the bridge of her nose and glanced toward the older man beside her. "Benjamin, could you please? I don't have time for this."
"I'll take care of him," Benjamin said with a small nod.
Still fuming, Ethan shoved away the hand Benjamin offered. "Fine. Don't believe me." His eyes settled on Amelia for a moment. "But when that thing comes back, don't say I didn't warn you."
With that, he stormed off, leaving the rest of us watching him go.
Once he was out of immediate earshot, Amelia exhaled and ran a hand back through her hair.
"Sorry," she muttered. "He's... not taking the crash well."
I watched Ethan disappear into the distance. "Can't exactly blame him. Something like that isn't easy to get over."
"No, it isn't." Amelia's expression remained troubled as she watched him go. "But it still concerns me."
Before I could ask what she meant, a smaller girl with short, messy hair jogged up beside us and held out a tablet. "These are the flight logs," she said quickly, only to notice me watching a moment later. Her entire posture seemed to shrink beneath my gaze. "I-I mean... the logs from the last few hours," she corrected in a rush. "The ones you asked for."
Amelia chuckled softly as she took the tablet. "You did great, Emily." Noticing the girl still seemed uneasy around me, she gave her a reassuring smile. "And don't worry about Atlas. He won't hurt a fly."
Emily didn't look particularly convinced. Her emerald eyes shifted toward me, and hoping to put her at ease, I offered a small smile.
Judging by the way she immediately stiffened, it had the opposite effect. She stammered out another apology before quickly retreating, leaving me to watch her go with a slight frown.
"Don't mind her," Amelia said, watching her go. "She's a little nervous around people."
Then her attention dropped back to the tablet. She studied it for a moment, but the longer she looked, the deeper her confusion seemed to grow.
"Nothing seems out of order," she murmured. "At least not from the system side of things." Her brow furrowed. "But the impact log says we were dragged back for a moment."
I frowned. "Dragged?"
She gave a small, frustrated shake of her head. "That's just what it reads like. I can't make sense of it."
Then she exhaled and lowered the tablet. "Whatever happened, we can figure it out later. Right now, we need to get a handle on our situation."
"Probably for the best," I said. Then I turned my attention to the three I had brought in with me. "Captain, we have an injured man we pulled from the ship. Can you have your medic take a look at him?"
Her eyes flicked toward Owen, and she nodded. "And once again," she said with a tired huff, "I'm not captain anymore. Just Amelia."
A faint smirk tugged at my mouth. "Alright. If you insist."
She gave me a look before turning to Benjamin. "We've got an injured man here. Can you take a look at him?"
Benjamin glanced toward Owen and nodded, apparently more than happy to leave Ethan to stew in whatever spiral had claimed him. As he moved over to check on him, I finally had a chance to step back and take in the colony around us.
My eyes wandered across the structures rising from the dust, their designs dominated by hard lines and practical shapes. Steel walkways stretched between the larger facilities at varying heights, connecting one structure to another while thick support beams climbed toward the curved shadow of the dome overhead. Here and there, emergency lights flickered weakly through the gloom, casting dull patches of red across walls, empty windows, and streets that seemed to disappear into darkness.
But after a few moments, I realized it wasn't what I was seeing that bothered me. It was the sound.
For a colony that should've held hundreds, maybe even thousands, the silence left behind felt deeply wrong, sending a subtle chill up my spine that made me shudder and turn away before I could convince myself that something might be staring back.
By the time I faced the others again, Benjamin had already finished his examination.
"He'll live," Benjamin said at last, straightening from his work. "I'm not seeing any signs of major internal trauma. Most of what I'm picking up points to a concussion, along with significant exhaustion and oxygen deprivation. With rest, he should regain consciousness on his own."
Nodding, Amelia turned to the rest of us, the brief relief already gone from her expression. "I want a clearer picture of this colony's condition," she said. "Power, life support, structural integrity—everything. We need to know what still works, what doesn't, and whether this place can keep us alive."
"I suggest we split into teams," I said, looking between the darkened halls and the surrounding structures. "We'll cover more ground that way."
Amelia considered it for only a second before nodding. "I think that's wise."
The idea clearly didn't sit well with the others, but what other choice did we have?
So with Owen stable and the colony waiting for us beyond its silent corridors, we gathered what we needed and headed out to see just how bad things really were.
The massive biosphere, once designed to mimic a safe, livable environment for long-term habitation, now felt like an empty grave. The wind still screamed somewhere outside, muffled beneath layers of steel and reinforced glass, but somehow the silence in here was worse. It was too undisturbed, almost as though something had been preserving it.
Unable to bear the oppressive silence any longer, Henry finally spoke. "Do you think anyone made it out? I mean, I just can't imagine how this even happened. There was no distress signal. Nothing to even hint at where they all went. It's like they all just... vanished."
I nodded absently, my attention drifting toward a set of open doors where the darkness waited beyond. "Let's just hope whatever happened to them doesn't happen again."
He nodded, but didn't have much to say after that until the tablet on my forearm pinged softly, informing us of our destination.
"The Atmospheric Center's just ahead," I said, motioning toward a circular structure partially obscured by support beams and overhead pipes.
Expecting it to be locked, Henry stepped forward and tried the door, only for it to let out a low groan and swing open into darkness.
Giving me a look, he stepped inside cautiously.
Lights blinked on overhead in response to our movement, slow, flickering strips that lit the room in a pale white glow and revealed machinery lining the walls, along with consoles all displaying the same steady readouts.
"Looks like it's still running," I said, eyeing the readouts across the control panel. Oxygen levels, circulation, filtration—everything's in the green.
"Yeah," Henry agreed, stepping up beside me. "Still, I'll double-check. Better to be safe than dead."
I followed his lead. Together, we checked the valve integrity and pressure seals while he rattled off system names and expected readings. Eventually, he stopped and looked up.
"Looks like everything's in order," he said, exhaling with just a touch of relief.
"Let's hope it stays that way," I replied, reaching up to unlatch my helmet. The seal hissed as I removed it and took my first breath of Martian air. Then I toggled the comms. "Life support is functional. Everything checks out."
A pause.
Then Amelia's voice came through, slightly muffled by static. "Copy that. Start heading to the center."
"Alright, let's go."
Back outside, we continued moving sector by sector, staying meticulous in our sweep until we eventually reached a residential block made up of several smaller domes connected by narrow, extendable corridors.
It was there, just inside one of the entrances, that I noticed a teddy bear lying abandoned on the floor.
I slowed and knelt to pick it up, brushing a gloved thumb across the faded fabric. It was worn and clearly well-loved, its fur flattened in places from years of being held, making its abandonment here feel all the more unsettling.
"I don't know what people were thinking," I muttered, turning it over in my hands. "Bringing kids here."
Henry glanced over, his gaze lingering on the bear for a moment. "Yeah," he said softly. "It doesn't sit right."
I placed it carefully on a nearby cabinet before looking farther into the residential block, where several corridors branched away from the main chamber, each leading toward another cluster of rooms.
"Let's split up," I suggested. "We'll get through this quicker."
Henry nodded and headed down one corridor while I took the other. The rooms I passed through looked strangely ordinary, with personal belongings scattered around in the casual way they might've been on any other day. Furniture still sat where it belonged, and moldy food remained on tables as though people had simply gotten up in the middle of a meal and never returned.
But looking down told a different story, one etched into the layers of dust that had settled over everything.
Footprints covered the floors, most following the same familiar paths people must have walked every day. But cutting across them were others, scraping through the dust as they spilled from rooms and converged toward the nearest exit.
Yet none ever reached it.
One by one, the tracks simply stopped, some in the corridor, others halfway through doorways. Farther ahead, a set of scuff marks ended beside two handprints pressed into the dust, as though someone had fallen and tried to push themselves back up.
But there were no footprints leading away.
Realizing that sent a shudder through me, and with nothing else left to find, I turned and made my way through the rest of the building. Some time later, I found myself passing through what looked to be a small repair station, judging by the tools still humming quietly on standby, before finally stepping outside through an exit at the back.
I had barely had time to look around before Amelia's voice broke over the comms. "Everyone..." There was the faintest hitch in her voice. "Regroup at my location. Now."
"We're on our way," I replied, giving Henry a look before we set off toward the coordinates she'd sent us.
They led us deeper into the colony's industrial core, and it wasn't long before we saw what had gotten her attention.
At first, I mistook it for another piece of equipment rising between the surrounding structures, maybe some kind of mining tower. But the closer we got, the more I began to realize just how massive the thing actually was. It towered above everything around it like some monolithic structure raised for a forgotten god, rising from the earth in a single obsidian blade.
Yet there was something wrong with its surface, as if it simply absorbed whatever touched it, leaving behind an impossible darkness that my eyes struggled to make sense of.
And beneath it all was a low vibration.
I could feel it more than hear it, a steady hum passing through my chest until it almost seemed as though my heartbeat had found a second rhythm.
As we drew nearer, I lowered my rifle slightly, finding nothing else in sight, though my fingers remained wrapped firmly around the grip. Ella was already crouched near the base of the structure with a scanner she'd apparently scavenged from somewhere nearby, her brows drawn tight as she studied the readings.
"Ella," Amelia asked, "What are we looking at?"
The scientist slowly shook her head, never taking her eyes from the device. "I... don't know. According to every reading I'm getting, it's not here."
Henry blinked. "What does that even mean? It's not like I can't see it, so how can it not pick up something?"
"So do I," Ella replied. "But it's like the instruments can't. There's no heat, no radiation, no measurable energy that its sensors can pick up." She paused, glancing up at the impossible structure looming over us. "Even the light hitting it isn't coming back."
I stared up at it, finding that nothing she'd said made any sense. And yet, somehow, none of it felt entirely wrong either. There was something about the structure that I couldn't properly describe. There was no obvious reason for it. Nothing I could point to and explain. Just the quiet certainty that something wasn't as it should be.
However, movement beside me finally pulled my attention away, and to my surprise, I found Owen fully awake.
Without saying a word, he stepped closer to the structure, his gaunt frame going still as he stared up at it with a strange intensity. It was the first time since the crash that I'd really gotten a chance to look at him.
He looked young. Far younger than I would've expected. If I hadn't known better, I might have guessed he was no older than seventeen. But there was too much weight in his expression for that. His cyan eyes seemed to take everything in without needing to say a word, and his messy black hair only made him look more drawn, as if he somehow belonged beside the monolith in a way I couldn't explain.
Then, after a moment, he shook his head, like he was trying to clear some strange feeling from it.
Ella rose, though her gaze never really left the monolith. "It's physical. That much I'm sure of, since it ruptured through the surface. So I'm thinking it was probably buried here for… well, a very long time. But I'll need to run a ground-penetrating radar scan just to be sure. If we're lucky, the nearby facility should have one. Either way…" She let out a breath. "I'll need some time."
Her eyes drifted toward the horizon, where the last light of day was already fading. "And some shelter," she added. "Sun's going down, and I don't really like the idea of just sitting out in the open."
"I'll check the nearby buildings for food," Benjamin offered, already turning toward one of the storage units.
"Alright," Amelia said, then turned to the rest of us. "Let's make sure the camp's ready for the night. Ethan, help Benjamin with the meal. Henry, Atlas, make sure the perimeter's clear."
Nodding, we got to work without another word, gathering whatever we could find and unpacking what little we had to make the area somewhat more hospitable. Though no matter what I occupied myself with, it was hard to completely ignore the massive structure looming behind us like some silent judge.
Thankfully, Benjamin gave me something else to focus on when he managed to scrounge up a bit of food, along with enough makeshift supplies to give us some shelter for the night.
From there, setting up didn't take long. We pitched the tents in a tight semicircle nearby, laying out tarps, ground pads, and power cells. It wasn't much, but it would hold for a night.
Off to the side, Ella was half-buried in wires and sensor rods from the ground-penetrating rig she'd found in one of the nearby depots. I watched her from our makeshift table, little more than a salvaged flat top balanced across a few metal barrels, taking the occasional sip from my water bag as she worked.
"What do you think about calling it a night?" I asked.
"Just a couple more points to scan," she replied without looking up, driving another probe into the dirt with a soft thunk.
"Alright, just make sure to get some rest," I replied before pushing myself up and heading for the tents.
Once my watch was over, I powered down my suit, the systems hissing as the pressure lines disconnected. A faint chill touched my skin as I peeled myself out of the exoskeleton and stepped into the Martian night air.
Letting out a long breath, I took a moment to really look at the towering structure.
Even from here, there was something unsettling about it. The darkness of its surface seemed to shift, like some infinite tide moving beneath it, but the longer I stared, the less I understood how I was even seeing it. The surface itself remained utterly still, giving no sign that anything was actually moving within those impossible depths. It was like someone had carved a piece from the emptiness of space itself and planted it in the middle of the colony.
Maybe that was why I couldn't seem to look away.
Or at least, that was what I told myself.
Because the longer I stood there, the more I became aware of something else beneath the unease. A faint, almost imperceptible sense of familiarity, like I'd seen something similar before, though where or when I couldn't begin to say.
Though the feeling was faint enough that I eventually dismissed it and turned toward Ethan's tent, nudging it with my boot.
"Your turn," I murmured.
His groggy grunt was the only reply I got before he rolled out, bleary-eyed and muttering to himself.
I stepped into my own tent, peeled off the outer layers of my undersuit, and lay down.
For a moment, I returned my gaze to the monolith, watching how the darkness around it seemed to bend, as if even light were reluctant to linger too long in its presence. Then, with nothing more to make of it, I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.
Yet even with my eyes closed, that constant feeling of being watched hadn't left me. It clung to me there in the dark, as if something deep beneath the surface of that impenetrable black had stirred from an ancient sleep and turned its gaze toward us.
I tried to ignore it, focusing instead on the quiet sounds of the camp and the slow rhythm of my breathing. Gradually, those sounds began to fade, each breath seeming a little farther away than the last until even the ground beneath me no longer felt quite so solid.
At some point, I stopped feeling it altogether, and when I opened my eyes again, I was weightless.
I hung suspended in an endless void where shadows moved like dancers in a fluid, hypnotic rhythm. They spiraled and twisted around me in shifting patterns I couldn't begin to understand, flowing without gravity, without direction, without any law I knew.
Then came the sound.
It arrived all at once, a thunderous wave like a thousand war horns erupting in the same instant. It was less a sound than a force, a crushing pressure that rattled through my bones, tore across my chest, and left only silence in its wake.
And then it was there.
The monolith.
It did not rise from the darkness or descend from above. It simply existed before me, sudden and immovable, as if it had always been there and only now had I caught up to it. My breath caught as it loomed over me, vast beyond reason, its scale so impossible that my mind couldn't fully hold it.
Then the world twisted.
The space around me folded inward. The ground blurred, though I couldn't have said whether there had ever been ground at all, before I was pulled forward, weightless once more, until I stood inches from its surface.
I should have stepped back or at least pulled away. Instead, my arm lifted on its own, as though some part of me had already made the choice. I reached out and pressed my hand against the monolith, expecting it to be deathly cold.
Instead, I found only warmth.
The kind of warmth you only notice in contrast, like standing near a fire after being cold for far too long. It spread across my palm, climbed my arm, and sank deep into my chest, filling me with something almost unbearable in its gentleness. It did not burn. It soothed. It settled into me with a strange, impossible familiarity, easing parts of me I had not realized were wounded.
Then everything snapped to darkness, only to return a second later in a violent rush.
I jolted upright, my heart pounding so hard it felt like my ribs might give out, and for one wild instant I thought I was still dreaming. But as my thoughts cleared, the truth hit me all at once.
I wasn't in my tent lying down for the night ahead, nor within the safety of my power armor.
I was standing outside, directly in front of the monolith.
And my hand…
My hand was inside it.
The surface of the monolith had swallowed my palm whole, yet there was no seam or break. It was as if my hand and the thing itself had simply fused, as though neither of us knew anymore where one ended and the other began.
"What in the world…" I breathed, then panicked when I tried to pull back, only to find it stuck.
Trying again, I yanked harder, only for the same outcome.
Then, from somewhere deep within the monolith, a low hum began to rise. It reverberated through my arm, climbed into my chest, and finally settled in my skull.
Then came the heat.
Not the warmth of a fire in the dark, but the agony of being thrown straight into the flames. It came in pulses, each one hotter than the last, like molten metal crawling beneath my skin. I screamed, though I couldn't hear it. I couldn't think. The pain became everything. My vision blurred at the edges, black creeping inward like ink spilled through water.
And then it let go.
I stumbled back with a gasp and collapsed to my knees, clutching my arm and bracing myself for the inevitable blisters, the blood, and ruined flesh.
But when I finally looked, there was nothing. My hand was completely unmarked. Stranger still, many of my old scars were gone without a trace.
I barely had a second to process it before the ground shifted beneath me, twisting as though something deep below the surface had begun to wake. A moment later, the monolith's surface collapsed inward, turning fluid as it rippled like disturbed water.
And from that collapse, something poured out.
A thick black liquid, tar-like and endless, gushed from the heart of the monolith like the lifeblood of some long-forgotten creature, spilling across the ground in a thousand slithering rivulets.
I ran.
But the ground buckled beneath me, rising and falling like breathing lungs. Every step felt wrong, as if gravity had shifted and no one had thought to warn my body. The black tide surged after me, moving faster than anything that thick had any right to.
Then, before I could even draw another breath, it overtook me.