Ice crystals bloom across the bulkhead like slow-motion white ferns. The air in the bunkroom is a solid, biting weight, smelling of recycled oxygen and ozone. Mara Sund wakes not to an alarm, but to the absolute absence of one. The steady thrum of the station’s heart has flatlined into a vacuum of sound. She checks her wrist display. Ninety-four hours of breathable air remain. The silence is a physical pressure against her eardrums, a thick wool wrapping around the dark.
She fumbles for the emergency band on her console, her fingers stiff inside her parka. The station is a tomb of frozen metal. Everyone else is gone—Ada’s parka was an empty shell in the hall, a ghost of the woman who ran this place. Mara twists the dial through the frequencies. White noise spills out, jagged and meaningless, until a rhythm emerges. Three sharp bursts of static cut the hiss.
Mara-bear, are you there? The voice is low, male, and uses a name buried twenty years deep. She freezes. It is impossible. Her gloved hand hovers over the comms dial just as the static breaks into the sound of a throat being cleared.
