Chapter 2: The Signal

Three days into the mission, the Wanderer detected a transmission.

It wasn’t human.

The signal repeated every seventeen minutes.

Mara ordered the crew to decode it.

The AI succeeded.

“Translation complete.”

A hologram appeared.

A planet.

A city.

Then thousands of alien ships.

The message was a warning.

“Do not wake the sleeping world.”

Everyone stared.

The navigator whispered.

“What’s the sleeping world?”

The AI answered.

“The planet beneath us.”

Mara looked through the window.

Their destination colony was built on a planet that had never appeared on official records as inhabited.

Something beneath the surface was alive.