The rain was relentless. It battered the glass dome of the university observatory like impatient fingers tapping to be let in. Inside, 22-year-old Ellie Raines was buried beneath a stack of old celestial charts, her third coffee of the night going cold beside her.
Ellie wasn’t supposed to be here. Not tonight, anyway. Her astronomy professor, Dr. Calvin Rourke, had postponed their star-mapping project due to a system maintenance update on the observatory computers. But Ellie had forgotten her notebook and she hated forgetting things.
The keycard still worked.
She climbed the spiral stairs to the control room and switched on only the auxiliary lights, casting dim yellow beams across the star charts and dusty monitors. As she retrieved her notebook from under a stack of planetary data logs, a voice crackled from one of the dormant speakers.
"—still transmitting?"
Ellie froze.
The radio was supposed to be offline. Maintenance, after all. But the voice had come from the long-range receiver channel the one used to listen to deep-space frequencies.
She crept closer, heart beginning to thump. Static flared again, then another voice, clearer this time, deep and calm.
"Confirmed. 7-Delta. Coordinates unchanged. He hasn’t moved."
A pause. Then the first voice, anxious and clipped, spoke again.
"Dr. Rourke said no one should know. Are you sure the signal's still bouncing back?"
"Positive. But we need to shut it down soon. They’ll trace the ping eventually."
Ellie leaned in, instinctively holding her breath.
A third voice entered, this one unmistakably Dr. Rourke’s. Stern. Measured. Cold.
“I told you both, this isn’t a discussion. We maintain contact until July 30th. If Subject 7-Delta breaks protocol, we need to act. He knows too much.”
There was silence.
Then, abruptly, the channel went dead.
Ellie blinked, backing away from the console. “What the hell…?” she whispered to herself.
Who was Subject 7-Delta?
She was about to replay the channel log when the elevator doors at the base of the dome clicked open.
Voices.
She scrambled. Notebook clutched to her chest, she ducked behind the observatory’s central terminal just as footsteps echoed up the stairs. Through the gap between two filing cabinets, she saw them: Dr. Rourke, a man she didn’t recognize — tall, suited, with military bearing — and another technician, Theo, who worked in the engineering lab.
They didn’t see her.
“I don’t like this,” Theo whispered. “She’s smart. If Ellie was here tonight and heard anything—”
“She wouldn’t understand what she heard,” Rourke said coolly. “And if she did… well, we’ll deal with it.”
Ellie’s stomach dropped.
The suited man spoke, his voice gravelly and precise. “Dr. Rourke, the agency authorized this project with strict boundaries. Contact with the subject must remain classified. If the student becomes a liability—”
“She won’t,” Rourke interrupted, but something in his voice wavered.
The suited man gave a thin smile. “Good. Because if she is, we can’t afford to be sentimental.”
They walked past, up to the control console. Ellie slid silently across the floor and down the opposite stairs, heart pounding in her ears.
Back in her dorm room, Ellie couldn’t sleep. Her mind raced with what she’d heard. Who was Subject 7-Delta? What were they hiding in that observatory?
She opened her laptop and began digging. She’d seen that designation before — not in her astronomy work, but in a strange file accidentally sent to her university inbox last year, labeled “Project Echo: 7-Δ Archive.” It was a corrupted audio file. She hadn’t been able to open it then.
Tonight, she tried again.
To her surprise, the file opened — and began to play.
It was faint. A human voice, distorted. Male.
“This is Delta-7. They found me. I can’t hold the signal for long. If you’re receiving this… I’m not from here. They lied about the mission. Earth was never supposed to know.”
A crackle, then silence.
Ellie stared at the screen. Not from here?
The next day, she confronted Theo in the engineering lab.
“You were in the observatory last night,” she said. “I heard everything.”
Theo blanched. “Ellie, I—”
“You need to tell me what’s going on. Who is Subject 7-Delta?”
Theo glanced around nervously, then pulled her into a storage closet.
“He’s… he was one of us. A student. Brilliant. His name was Micah. But three years ago, something happened during a deep-space scan. He intercepted something — or it intercepted him. His data changed. His behavior changed. He claimed to hear a voice from the signal.”
Ellie’s eyes widened.
“They institutionalized him, said it was psychosis,” Theo continued. “But Rourke… Rourke kept contact. That’s what those transmissions are. Micah’s still sending data — from a location none of us can trace.”
“And the agency?” Ellie asked.
“They’re afraid,” Theo said. “If Micah is right, if he’s made contact with something beyond Earth… it changes everything. They’re trying to contain it. Bury it.”
Ellie stepped back. “I need to talk to him. Micah. Can you connect me?”
Theo hesitated. “Only one person still has access to the live feed. Rourke. And he keeps the access key in his lab.”
That night, under cover of a fake fire alarm, Ellie snuck into Rourke’s office. She found the encrypted key — a drive hidden behind a fake astronomy book titled Silent Skies.
Back at the observatory, she inserted the key into the console. The terminal flickered. A familiar frequency crackled to life.
Then a voice.
“Ellie?”
She gasped.
“How do you know my name?” she whispered.
“I’ve been listening. Watching. You're not like the others.”
“Who are you?”
“I was Micah. Before. Now I’m something else. I saw what’s out there, Ellie. I saw the stars breathe.”
“Why are they hiding you?”
“Because truth scares them. They think I’m dangerous. Maybe I am.”
The line trembled.
“They’ll come for you now. You know too much.”
“What do I do?” she asked, breath catching.
“Find the second signal. There’s another voice. It knows more than I do. And Ellie—”
“Yes?”
“Don’t trust Rourke.”
The console shorted out. Sparks flew. The feed died.
Ellie backed away, stunned. As she reached for her phone to call Theo, the door slammed open.
Rourke stood there, a gun drawn.
“I’m sorry, Ellie,” he said, not looking sorry at all. “I really am.”
Then a blinding blue light erupted from the console — and Rourke was thrown across the room like a ragdoll.
Ellie shielded her eyes. When the light faded, a faint whisper echoed through the air.
“Come find me.”
React
