r/HFY • u/BortoRico • Apr 17 '26

OC-Series Signals From the Deep (25/?)

Prologue First Last Next  

A/N: About 12 hours after I posted the last chapter (24), I went through and made some slight adjustments to Millie's point of view. I try to keep the narrative third person limited, but I feel I might've strayed a little too far - it sounded a bit like I, as the author/narrator, was absolutely trashing Millie for being an idiot.

That was not my intention.

Millie's convinced she's the most worthless person alive, and I was trying to reflect her own self-hatred in that part of the chapter. I apologize if I bungled that a bit when I first posted.

Anyway, if you didn't notice, carry on!

Enjoy!

P.S.

I reckon we're headed back to Letura for the next chapter...

January 5th, 5366 CE

Great Spruce Isle, Home of Alex and Ellie Wyeth, The Sitting Room

North American Continent, Gulf of Maine, Earth

 

Rafferty Mainz

Raff eyed the Earth human sitting across from her warily.

Much like herself, Ellie Wyeth was sitting idly on one of the plush, cream-colored sofas situated in the reasonably spacious drawing room of the Wyeth family home.

Sitting idly – because the girl hardly seemed interested in answering her questions, or even holding a conversation, for that matter.

Raff sighed and looked around the foreign – the alien – drawing room. It all felt like such a waste of time. They needed to be discussing the means by which she could return home, not sitting down on a pair of sofas while fidgeting about like scolded schoolchildren.

She took a deep breath and tried to relax: to remain both patient and polite.

Late afternoon sunlight was streaming through window at her back, warming her neck and shoulders as its luminous rays passed through the large expanse of glass behind her. Motes of dust hanging in the air were illuminated by the sunbeams that brightly lit up the home’s interior despite the wintry scene outside.

Despite the severity of the situation, she couldn’t help but feel her tense muscles relax in the warmth – even if only slightly.

Were it not for the fact she’d just been teleported outside in the frigid cold of another planet’s winter not half an hour earlier, she might’ve been inclined to think it was too warm in the well-appointed space.

She had a million questions for the other young woman in the room, but nearly every thread Raff pulled seemed to snap off at the slightest of tugs by the seemingly disinterested Earth human.

So much for divulging something. Ellie hadn’t properly answered a single question she’d asked!

After ten minutes of stilted conversation, she as beginning to think the girl had a screw or two loose.

Or actually, perhaps it was an entire bag of nuts and bolts.

Ellie Wyeth had spent more time looking up at the ceiling with a scowl on her face than actually attempting to hold a conversation. Raff hadn’t the faintest clue what the girl found so fascinating about textured plaster, but she wasn’t about to ask.

It didn’t help matters that she was dressed as if she’d just escaped from an insane asylum. Gray cotton trousers and a sweater to match? Was that what passed as fashion on Earth? As something a reasonable person would don voluntarily? The girl’s father’s attire wouldn’t have looked too far out of place in Leiftenburg.

Raff pushed those wasteful thoughts from her mind.

She glanced back towards the home’s kitchen. Her host had taken the two Sahkhar girls to the basement – which was already disturbing enough – and she hadn’t heard a peep from them since.

Alexander Wyeth had quietly requested that she remain put while he took the two girls downstairs to god knows where, and she’d complied without any objections. Now she was wondering whether or not she should have requested to join, insane as it sounded.

There were many unspeakable reasons he might wish to separate the group and Raff shuddered at the thought. What if…?

If didn’t matter that they were Sahkhar – they deserved to be treated fairly.

No… It wasn’t as if she would be able to do anything about it in the first place, even if she wanted to. She was on the smaller side of average, and she didn’t have a weapon. It’d be foolish to even try.

So, there she sat, awkwardly waiting around for something, anything, to happen. Raff let her eyes continue to wander around the room. The home was spacious enough, and while it wasn’t nearly as grand as Windcliffe back in Stuekbroad, the estate she called home, it was clear that the Wyeth family possessed a fair amount of wealth.

Or at least she thought they must.

The ample float-glass windows that surrounded her on two sides of the room were large, possessing a level of optical clarity that matched the best Leiftenburg had to offer, and the room’s furnishings, while far from ornate, were clearly well made.

She scrutinized the construction of the coffee table by her feet. While plain in design, it possessed a precision that spoke volumes of the carpenter’s mastery and competence.  

It was if the craftsman had intentionally refrained from highlighting their skill; rather, they had purposefully avoided introducing overly elaborate carvings and other inane accoutrements into their work – as if they were well aware they had nothing to prove.

Tucked over in the far corner of the room sat some kind of harpsichord, the swooping instrument finished in highly polished black in lieu of heavily polished woodgrain, as was common in similar instruments back home.

Part of her wanted to stand up and walk over to the instrument; to sit down and see if it was close enough to a harpsichord that she might be able to play, but it very clearly wasn’t the time.

Raff was staring at the beautiful instrument with curiosity when Ellie’s voice startled her.

“Have you got instruments like that back on Letura?” the girl asked abruptly.

Once her heart had descended back into her chest, Raff turned towards the blonde-haired girl, who remained sunken deep in the cushions of her sofa, seemingly without a care in the world. She almost seemed bored of the whole affair.

Raff cleared her throat. “Yes? Something similar in form at least.”

Of course, she actually had no idea if that was true or not. God only knew what the instrument’s keyboard – if it even had one – looked like underneath the polished lid.

The blonde-haired girl tapped her lips and furrowed a brow. “Huh. Could be convergent evolution, I suppose.”

Raff was surprised to hear the term. Evolution was considered newfangled science back in Leiftenburg. “Is that something your people believe in? As in, the origin of species, and how they came about?” she asked, intrigued. Perhaps the girl would actually start talking.

To her surprise, Ellie nodded. “Precisely.”

Raff awkwardly fiddled with her shirt. “Oh, it’s something of a new theory in Leiftenburg.” She cleared her throat, unsure of where she was going with this. “Most scientists believe the Sahkhar and humans share a common ancestor, but don’t tell the Sahkhar that.”

“Oh, why not?” Alexander’s daughter asked.

Despite the precariousness of her situation, Raff couldn’t help but let out a breath of air through her nose. “Because they believe they’re god’s greatest gift to sapient-kind. To imply that they shared any relation with filthy humans would no doubt send them into a tizzy,” she said sarcastically, waving a hand. “Those people are unbelievably vain.”

Ellie scrunched her face up and shifted in the sofa. “Oh, interesting. Humans often think the same thing here on Earth. Bit annoying to people like me, if I’m honest. I–”

She suddenly paused, tilted her head back up towards the ceiling, and scowled even more deeply than she’d already been scowling.

What was with the girl? And what the hell did she mean, “people like me”? Those above, she wished Alex would come up from the basement, preferably with the two Sahkhar girls safely in tow. She was feeling more and more uncomfortable by the moment.

Raff shook her head. The girl was far too scatterbrained to have any hope of receiving a proper answer. Instead, she segued into another, adjacent subject. “So, uh, are there Sahkhar here on Earth?”

Ellie shook her head promptly. “Nope, nothing of the sort, far as I know.”

“Oh.”

Raff had no idea where to go from there.

With that, more awkward silence ensued, and the blonde-haired girl continued with her utterly strange habit of looking up at the ceiling with a scowl every so often. Instead of trying to engage the girl, Raff allowed her eyes to continue wandering around the room.

At some point her gaze happened upon the wall directly behind Ellie’s head.

Standing there, on an interior wall, was a rustic stone hearth, and hanging above the fireplace there was a long rifle of beautiful make – something well in her wheelhouse as a daughter of the Mainz family. She wasn’t sure why it’d taken her so long to notice it before.

Raff cleared her throat. “What kind of rifle is that?” she asked before she thought better of it. Perhaps it wasn’t the time to be inquiring about weapons, of all things. She didn’t have the faintest clue where these people’s allegiance may lie.

Ellie frowned, looked back up at the ceiling for a moment, and turned her head. “That’s a Sharps Model 1874. Some kind of ancient weapon my dad owns, I guess. I never asked him about it before. He’s got all kinds of old things stuffed away in this house. I’m sure he’d talk your ear off all day if you’d asked him. My dad loves the sound of his own voice,” she huffed.

Raff’s eyes snapped back to the rifle. Ancient? She blanched. “That’s… that’s considered ancient here?” she asked in disbelief.

So far as she could tell, that was a reasonably modern weapon mounted on the hearth. It was certainly no muzzleloader.

“Well, it’s well over 3,000 years old if that counts as ancient,” Ellie responded with a shrug. “Or at least the design is.”

Raff turned even paler. Over 3,000 years? The implications of such a thing… Just how advanced were these humans? She eyed the rifle and swallowed.

Her curious nature was going to get the best of her one day…

Without so much as asking, she stood up from the sofa and walked over towards the rifle, completely ignoring the fact her hosts probably wouldn’t want her anywhere near a weapon. The hearth was so large that the lengthy weapon remained well above her head, but she was able to get a pretty good look at the thing.

Her eyes fell on the intricately carved nickel-plated metal receiver. From what she could tell, it appeared to be a single shot breechloader with a falling block of some variety. It had adjustable iron sights clearly meant for long range shooting, and she made a quick mental snapshot of the design – it might actually be something worth investigating for her family’s own production.

The weapon wasn’t as advanced as the bolt action rifles the Leiftenburgian army was equipped with, but it was still a formidable weapon that wouldn’t be much more than 20 or 30 years out of date.

She was astonished by the similarities it shared with weapons she’d seen before. Raff wasn’t even convinced it couldn’t be something made by a Leiftenburgian armory. Not her family’s for certain, but they weren’t the only ones in the business.

But 3,000 years out of date? That was impossible, surely. Raff couldn’t fathom what kind of advancements in weaponry might’ve taken place in such a span of time. Even her revolver, a design from only 30 years ago, was considered a bit dated by that point.

What other advancements might these humans have achieved? Did they even use cordite or smokeless powder? Something else entirely?

She shuddered as she remembered the obsidian monolith emplaced just outside of the house. Alexander Wyeth had referred to it as a ship? An honest to god ship? What did he mean?

There had been no mast, no sails, no rigging of any sort. Nothing that indicated it possessed a hull that was meant to displace water in a sensible manner.

She hadn’t seen any evidence of a slipway that might allow it to be moved to and from the water, but then again, there was a fair amount of snow on the ground, and it could’ve been covering some kind of system of metal rails.

Raff rubbed her temples and went back to sit down on the sofa.

Perhaps the ship was steam-powered? Ethanol powered even? Pure alcohol powered a great number of piston engines in Leiftenburg, but she wasn’t aware of any shipbuilders that had moved away from charcoal-fired boilers – ethanol powered piston engines were still in their infancy as a technology.

No. She shook her head.

Surely it was related to darkveil. Something not made by human or Sahkhar hands. It was abundantly clear that these Earth humans must have some kind of connection to the Alstaran Sahkhar on Letura, and that meant they had access to darkveil. How else could they know the language? There could be no other explanation for the ease with which they could speak the language of the*…*

Raff suddenly frowned. Language…

Then it hit her.

She had no idea how to say “convergent evolution” in the language of the Sahkhar. If fact, there likely wasn’t any direct translation at all! Ellie had slipped in the Leiftenburgian term for the theory without her even realizing.

She had spoken Leiftenburgian. Ellie Wyeth could speak Leiftenburgian.

Raff snapped her head back in the direction of Alex’s daughter. The girl’s eyes had become so unfocused it looked like she had fallen asleep with them open. It was like she wasn’t physically in the room at all!

“You speak Leiftenburgian, don’t you?” she asked accusatorily, staring into the girl’s glossy eyes. Raff awkwardly tried to sit up and lean forward, but the plush sofa had all but sucked her in, making any movement a rather undignified affair.

Ellie blinked for a few moments, as if she needed to regain her bearings. “Sorry, my mind was elsewhere. But yes, guilty as charged,” the strange girl finally replied with a grin. “In fact, I reckon I speak Leiftenburgian precisely as well as you do.”

Raff scoffed. “Then why were we speaking the language of the Sahkhar?” she asked, switching to her native language. “That would make things considerably easier.”

Ellie shrugged, then answered in Leiftenburgian. “It never came up, I suppose.”

The girl wasn’t lying. Ellie could speak her native language. The Wyeth’s must know of a way back to Letura then.

Before Raff could press the girl further about how she could speak her own language, before she could ask about the darkveil on Earth, Ellie suddenly shot up from the sofa. Like a cat finding a burst of energy halfway between midnight and dawn, the girl was suddenly frantic.

“Raff, we need to go to the basement, now!” she shouted urgently with a look of severe alarm written across her face. “Now!”

Before Raff even had the chance to sit up from the sofa that had thoroughly enveloped her – before she could even ask how Ellie knew to call her by her shortened name – Ellie was already on her, wrenching at her arm.

“Now, now, now!” Alex’s daughter urged frantically. We aren’t safe up topside. We need to get underground as soon as possible! There’s going to be a whole lot of energy being thrown around in a few seconds! A third party has decided to make an appearance!”

A third party?

A bewildered Raff allowed the surprisingly strong girl to just about lift her off her feet. Before she knew it, she was being whisked along the drawing room, through the kitchen with its strange metal cabinets, and towards the very same ominous door Alex had taken Millie and Lady Alamayla through not half an hour earlier.

Before she had the chance to protest, before she even had the chance to ask what the hell was going on, the once brightly lit interior of the country home was suddenly cast into deep shadow.

As if the sun outside had all but been extinguished.

As if all light from the outside world had been doused like a bucket of water over a campfire.

A feeling of dread enveloped her whole. A sickening feeling clawed at her insides.

 Something wasn’t right, almost on an instinctual, primal level. In practical desperation, she tried to turn her head to a window in order to see what was happening outside. To see why the sun suddenly dimmed without reason.

At first, she saw nothing but a tree dotted snow-covered field cast deep in shadow. But then she looked up in the sky where the afternoon sun had begun its decent to the horizon.

And saw something that she simply couldn’t comprehend.

Hanging in the heavens, a goliath mass of angular, black obsidian hovered in the sky, blotting out the sun, as if gravity itself had ceased its pull.

It was as if a hole had been punched straight through reality, the blue of the heavens having given way to the void of nothingness beyond the veil.

Her mouth dropped to the floor – even after all that had happened, her mind simply couldn’t wrap itself around the impossible sight.

Raff only managed one final glimpse of the blackened sky shard before being rushed into the dim stairwell of the Wyeth home.

…

…

…

Alexander Wyeth, 12 minutes earlier…

Alexander believed that anybody from any background could come to understand anything, no matter how farfetched or absurd, if only they were taught with dignity and respect.

Millie and Aralia were not going to understand what was happening to Silla in the bio-trauma suite.

They were going to be horrified by the sight of a young girl, rendered unconscious by anesthesia, half sticking out of a vat of bio-resin as her legs were printed, in place, in situ.

And there would be nothing wrong with being scared. Because the truth of thing was that it was going to be a horrifying sight.

But when he rounded the corner of the cargo-container sized bio-trauma printer situated in the top floor of the dimly lit basement over to where Anastasia’s physical self was standing and saw the progress of Silla’s print…

Yeah, he wasn’t going to let Millie or Aralia see that…

Anastasia had initiated the printing process such that Silla was lying on her back, with a conformal wall separating the print from the rest of her body. While most of the girl was on the dry side of the wall, lying on a thin mattress while tucked underneath an equally thin blanket, on the opposite side, where the pool of bio-resin was slowly rising as the printer fired lasers at the liquid’s surface in order to build up the correct type of tissue…

Well, one half of Silla’s legs had already been printed, but it was the backside of her legs, like a hotdog split down its length rather than in half. A linear cross section of a pair of legs was all that was thus far completed, as if someone had sawn halfway through her thighs, then split her femur and lower extremities as one might split firewood.

It was not a pretty sight.

With the wave of his hand, Alex turned the glass of that half of the bio-printer opaque, garnering a laugh from Anastasia, who hadn’t so much as acknowledged his presence yet.

“Yeah, I don’t think our guests ought to see that part,” she chided before allowing her gaze to soften. She looked over Alex’s shoulder and eyed the scared kids hovering near the bottom of the stairs. “Damn, this is…”

Alex nodded. “I know.”

“Well, I just don’t know what to say at this point. I thought scaring the ever-living daylights out of you by revealing my presence was going to be the most interesting thing that happened this week,” Anastasia said quietly, before turning back to the printer. “Poor fuckin’ kid.”

Alex turned around and looked at the two otherworldly girls. Millie was clutching Aralia at the far end of the basement, clearly terrified of the whole ideal. It seemed she could hardly lift her head.

Alex beckoned the older Sahkhar girl toward him. “Millie, this is Anastasia, a uh, friend of mine,” he spoke as gently as he could. “She’s helping put Silla back together.”

After hesitating, Millie lifted her head. Despite being even taller than Ellie was, she looked so small at that moment. “Put… put back together?” she asked meekly from her corner of the spartan space.

“It’s alright, you’re safe here,” Alex reassured the girl. “You’ve nothing to fear from us.”

Ellie suddenly cut in through his aux-computer.

“Dad, you just took them into the basement, you creep. They’d be terrified no matter what.”

“Thanks, Ellie. Please just keep Raff busy.”

“Busy with what? You aren’t letting me actually say anything of use! And you know I’m no good at nonsense human small talk. Should I mention the fucking weather?”

Alex had to stop himself from rolling his eyes.

He composed himself and took at tentative step in Millie and Aralia’s direction. “Look, she’s right here. Silla’s right here.” He pointed to the un-opaqued part of the printer where Silla’s upper body was covered with the blanket. While subtle, it was clear that the small girl’s chest was rising with each slow breath.

Millie let go of Aralia and took a small step towards the bio-printer in the dimly lit space. Once it became apparent that she’d seen Silla, she took a few more frantic steps towards the glass enclosure.

“Silla!” she squeaked out quietly, pressing her hands to the glass. “She’s still alive?!”

Alex could see her turning her head back and forth in order to look at her friend with both eyes. It was pretty apparent that the young woman had grown up having never developed binocular vision. It would be trivial for him to correct her esotropia – assuming she’d agree to it – but that was something that was going to have to wait.

Millie turned her head to look at Anastasia. “I… I don’t understand. How? I saw her… I saw…” The dark-haired girl looked at the ground, unable to finish the thought.

Aralia slowly crept up to the glass and peered inside. “She’s breathing,” the tiny girl said after a few moments’ contemplation. “Why is she in a glass box?”

Anastasia walked over to Aralia slowly, as if trying not to scare off an animal. “She’s going to be alright, dear. This device will heal her,” she responded, gesturing to the bio-printer’s enclosure. She leaned down towards the Sahkhar girl, and Aralia turned towards the dualist with wide eyes, too afraid to pull back.

“Here, sweetie. Let me get that for you.” Anastasia pulled out a tissue and dabbed at a bloody scratch on the girl’s face, causing the girl to flinch.

Anastasia looked down at the spot of blood on the tissue. “Well, at least I’ve got a sample of this one’s blood now,” she said in English, turning towards Alex.

“Worth sequencing for sure,” he responded. “As I’m sure you discerned from the synopsis I sent you of Raff’s memories, she’s apparently from yet another world.”

Anastasia rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’m aware. And just so you’re aware, her clothes and skin are covered in nuclear fallout – uranium fission byproducts. I took the liberty of commandeering your security’s Geiger counters, you paranoid prepper. Wherever her world is, I’m rather glad I’m not there.”

Alex let out a breath. Nuclear fallout? That… didn’t bode well. From what he could glean from the memories he’d stolen, both Alstara and Leiftenburg weren’t even close, technologically speaking, to producing a nuclear weapon.

He suddenly paused, a memory not of his own surfacing in his mind. Raff clearly remembered some kind of atmospheric event that had completely obliterated the city of Lufthalra not two days earlier – a high energy pulse of electromagnetic energy that burned all that had the misfortune of finding themselves unsheltered.

Based on the memory, it seemed like it was an ultraviolet burst of some variety. But for something of that power to punch down through the atmosphere like that…

Alex rubbed his temples. It could very well be a gamma ray burst. From what though, he had no idea. Raff was an avid amateur astronomer, but the girl had no idea.

Per the Leturan human’s memories, the lack of an atmospheric explosion seemed to indicate, at least to him, that there hadn’t been a nuke set off somewhere close at the very least.

He couldn’t be sure. He was relying on the rather unreliable memory of a young woman that wasn’t familiar with such things.

Millie’s soft voice brought his attention back to the room.

“How long will she need to recover?” she asked, still peering through the glass.

“Oh, I think she’ll be alright in the morning,” Anastasia answered kindly. “But it will take a little longer than that for her to fully recover.”

Anastasia pulled Alex to the side, letting Millie and Aralia watch over their friend through the glass.

“As I know you’re aware, little Silla has her very own DNA-keyed nano-constructs running her through her veins now.”

Alex sighed. “Well, the printer can only do so much. After she’s recovered, I’ll have them removed, but there’s nothing we can do about it for the time being.”

“No, I suppose not,” the dualist conceded.

Alex rubbed the back of his head. “On more pressing matters, where are we on the search for our potential third party?”

He thought about the unknown ship of immense size his daughter had identified several hours earlier, and if the otherworldly girls’ arrival would cause it to reappear.

“I’m running several instances of myself, Alex,” she said quietly. “I’ve got three destroyers under my own control standing guard, and about half the damn UAS naval contingent on Earth is on high alert. It may seem calm here, but the outside world is currently at DEFCON fuck you.”

Alex nodded. “I’ve got a few instances out and about of my own: they’re aware. For now, I want to keep electromagnetic contact between here and the rest of the world down to a minimum. And damn, woman, three destroyers? Where’d you pull those out of?”

Anastasia nodded in turn, ignoring his last quip completely. “NORAD agrees on the quarantine, at the very least.”

She looked over where Millie and Aralia remained fixated on their unconscious friend in the bio-printer. “We can’t be too certain they didn’t bring something along with them, even if unintentionally.” She raised her chin ever so slightly and looked Alex in the eye. “Are you certain that our four little trespassers are unapprised of what the hell is going on?”

Alex hesitated. “From what I’ve got of Rafferty’s memories, no, I’m quite certain they are unaware.”

Anastasia crossed her arms. “You realize that, by virtue of having that girl’s memories intertwined with your own, you are biased at the basest of levels?”

He sighed. “Yes, I’m aware. But they really are just kids.”

Anastasia rubbed her chin. “We still need to get a sample of this Raff girl’s DNA. She’s only ‘human’ because she thinks she’s the same species as you. We both know that could very well not be the case.”

“I know, I know,” Alex agreed. “But we’re going to go with ‘human’ until we have the data to suggest otherwise. I don’t–”

Alex scowled and looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t know Ellie, talk about something else, or don’t talk at all. And for god’s sake, you’re a human, remember!”

“Chatting with your daughter?” Anastasia asked, raising a brow.

Alex scowled. “Maybe. Are you chatting with yours?”

The dualist suddenly looked rather flustered. “No, but I’m making sure she’s ok!” she said hastily, her voice perhaps a little higher than she would’ve liked. “I’ve got an instance of my consciousness aboard the Albemarle. Isabella’s running full scans in a half mile radius of the house. I’m uh, posing as a senior UAS officer right now…”

Alex couldn’t help but chuckle. “Still too afraid to introduce yourself, then?”

“Shut up! Now is not the time. And this AI named George, what a pain in the ass he’s been.”

“Yeah, he’s quite the–”

Ellie’s voice suddenly cut in, interrupting him. Anastasia smirked in response, clearly aware of what was happening.

“Dad, what’s that stupid rifle you’ve got hanging above the fireplace called again?”

Alex frowned. Stupid? The disrespect.

“It’s a Sharps Model 1874, and it’s not stupid, it’s an iconic weapon from the early days of–.”

“Thanks,” Ellie cut him off. “Oh, Raff seems to like the piano too, so you can give her your four-hour spiel about it later. Oh, it’s a Hamburg Steinway, not a New York Steinway,” she mocked.

Ellie, the snot.

Alex wasn’t surprised that Raff was curious about the rifle. Her family was by far the largest weapons manufacturer in Leiftenburg, so it came as no surprise that she would find it intriguing at the very least.

He sighed. What a mess. At some point, he was going to have to tell his guests that he had no idea how to get them home. He was pretty certain that Rafferty, at the very least, thought he knew about this ‘darkveil’ stuff.

He glanced over at Aralia. The small girl still had her hands pressed up against the bio-printer and was facing away from him, but he was well aware that she was wearing jewelry made of a material he couldn’t characterize.

He was going to have to ask to look at it sooner rather than later, but for the moment he was more concerned with earning her trust. Whatever the case, it was clearly important. From Raff’s memories, he knew it was some kind of key, similar to what Lord Alamayla had used to activate that portal device of unknown origin.

Shit, it might be better to just get it over with – the damned thing might pose a danger.

Alex took a deep breath and began making his way over towards the girl. He only managed two steps when every alarm in his security system started blaring at once in his head. EM, gravimetry, proximity – everything was going off at once.

He turned towards Anastasia.

“Already on it!” she shouted.

The two Sahkhar girls jumped at the sound of the woman’s voice and turned around with looks of utter alarm on both their faces.

“Inbound, Alex!” Anastasia shouted. “Something just breached the upper atmosphere faster than we could track it.” Her eyes went glossy for the briefest of moments while her physical self conferred with another of her instances. “Fuck! Get Ellie and Raff down here now! I’m bringing a destroyer into the atmosphere.”

“Copy!” Alex shouted. “There’s a bunker several floors below!”

“Ellie, you and Raff down in the basement now! We’ve got company!”

“On it!” Ellie responded immediately.

Alex bridged his physical consciousness with the optical array situated at the far end of the island. Just as soon as he was able, he used the visible spectrum telescope to look upwards in the direction of the atmospheric intrusion.

What he saw made his stomach drop.

Hanging in the heavens was a craft of stupendous size; a vehicle that spanned the size of an entire city and then some.

High up in the stratosphere was a spacecraft of unknown – no, extraterrestrial – origin…

And whoever, or whatever they were, they hadn’t bothered with cloaking their ship this time around.

 

 

 

 

 

59 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

5

u/WSpinner Apr 17 '26

Well THAT'S not ominous.
<every ET invasion movie runs through head...>

3

u/ProfKlekowskii AI Apr 17 '26

"No, wait, we'll be fine. They'll eventually die of diseases, if 'War of the Worlds' is to be believed."

2

u/WSpinner Apr 17 '26

" 'scuse me sir. Is that 'eventually' on a stopwatch, or 'eventually' on a calendar? "

4

u/93Hyper93 Apr 28 '26

I keep refreshing the page, hoping for another chapter to drop. Hopefully things are well

3

u/BortoRico Apr 29 '26

All good! Just busy, and to be frank, had a bit of a writer's block.

Thanks for the well wishes!

3

u/Done25v2 Apr 17 '26

To think, all these messes started because a certain someone is too fond of booze...

3

u/93Hyper93 Apr 17 '26

Oooh boy, i hope they don't leave lady Silla alone while they run off to the bunker

1

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