The wind on the surface of Nerathis IV was wrong. It wasn’t blowing strongly, not even enough to kick up the fine rust colored dust that clung to every seam of the away team’s uniforms, but it had teeth… It was sharp, slicing into the silence of the research site with a whisper.

Vama Dar wiped a sleeve across her face, brushing off the fine red dust clinging to her skin and uniform. The air was dry and thin, but breathable… just comfortable enough to feel like she was slowly being dehydrated from the inside out.

The buildings around the area were dark. Half of them were scorched or destroyed by the orbital strike. The other half, oddly, looked untouched. The windows were intact, and the lights were off; it was like someone had just stepped out and forgotten to return.

Jeremy Ryan walked slightly ahead of her, tricorder in one hand, phaser drawn in the other. His voice crackled over the open comm the team was using to cut through the noise of the wind, “No bodies.”

“There’s no sign of a fight up here,” Mehta stated. “Maybe the research team was underground when the attack hit?”

“Hopefully,” Ryan muttered. “Still… feels wrong.”

Valis brought up the rear, silent and contemplative as always. She was scanning the structures as they moved towards the dig site, occasionally pausing to get a deeper scan on some anomalous reading that caught her attention. Dar could feel her presence behind her like a metronome… calm… unshaken.

The team crested over a small rise, and the dig site came into view.

It was a dark oval in the cracked earth, ringed by collapsed scaffolding and shattered excavation equipment. The entrance was a vertical shaft, circular, ten meters across, its edges reinforced with hexagonal bracing and carbon plating that was mostly buckled and warped.

Dar felt her stomach tighten.

“It’s deeper than I expected,” she said. “Last reports I read said the discovered structure started only a few meters below the surface.”

Valis stepped up to the edge of the shaft beside Dar, scanning. “Confirmed, however, the excavation shaft descends nearly thirty-five meters. It appears the research team uncovered a secondary level.”

Mehta approached the edge and knelt to get a better look. “That explains the damage to the shaft supports. They probably overextended before fully analyzing the structural integrity.”

“Probably,” Dar said, though the word didn’t satisfy her.

Ryan peered over. “Lift is gone, looks like it collapsed during or after the attack.”

Dar’s eyes followed the twisted support rails downward. “So, how are we getting down?”

Dr. Pell approached, taking the supply pack off her back. “We’ve got climbing harnesses and rappel kits. We should be able to anchor to the support struts.”

Valis was already scanning the anchor points. “Material integrity is at seventy-nine percent. Well within safe load-bearing limit for a static descent.”

Mehta nodded. “Alright everyone, get suited up. Ryan, you first. Dar, you and Valis next, followed by Dr. Pell. I’ll bring up the rear.”

One by one, the team clipped into the rappelling system and descended into the shaft, boots scraping softly against the reinforced walls. The biting wind disappeared once they were below the surface, bringing some comfort, but it was replaced by a deep stillness. Not silence, there were still the sounds of heavy breathing, the scrape of a carabiner, the creak of a harness… but it felt thick, like wading through water.

Dar hit the bottom third. Her boots sank a few millimeters into the red-black dust at the shaft’s floor. The collapsed lift lay to her left. Valis stood over it, scanning what was clearly a patch of dried blood.

Dar moved towards Valis, heart pounding in her chest. The bloodstain wasn’t fresh, days old at least, but the smear told a story. Someone crawled from here, not in a straight line.

“Human,” Valis confirmed, not looking up from her tricorder. “Low iron count… female… higher than average copper concentration, possibly Vulcan ancestry.”

Dar exhaled softly. “Dr. Virex?”

“A reasonable assumption,” Pell added, stepping up beside them.

The tunnel ahead was tall enough to walk through comfortably, its walls covered in some black metallic substance the tricorder could not read. Dar ran a finger along it as they walked. It wasn’t warm… it wasn’t cold either… it just was.

“Nothing is reflecting properly,” she muttered, glancing at her tricorder again. “The walls don’t read as any known material, and they’re not scattering our scanning pulses.”

“They’re absorbing them?” Ryan asked.

“No. Just… not responding. The data comes back blank.”

Valis raised an eyebrow. “A material that passively nullifies EM and particle-based scans should not exist in nature.”

Mehta moved to the front of the team. “Let’s move. Keep it quiet, let’s see what’s ahead.”

The tunnel curved gently, leading them into a broader chamber, nearly a full dome, supported by thin, spine-like struts that converged at the top. At the center of the room sat a raised circular platform, etched with radial glyphs that pulse softly with blood-red light, shifting with a subtlety that defied focus. When Dar tried to focus on one particular glyph, it blurred… almost as if the act of observation distorted it.

Ryan stepped cautiously over to the platform, phaser in hand. “If they’re glowing, there must be a power source?”

Valis scanned the glyphs from a short distance. “No measurable energy output. No thermal signature. No radiation across any detectable band.”

“So… bioluminescence?” Ryan guessed.

Pell shook her head. “Bioluminescence doesn’t phase in and out of visibility depending on how you look at it.”

Dar knelt beside the platform, carefully… not touching, just closely observing.

Each glyph was carved with astonishing precision, etched as though the material had split willingly under the tools used to shape it. They were angular but elegant, arranged in tightly packed spirals radiating from the center outward. Each symbol pulsed faintly, softly. Breathing.

“They don’t repeat,” Dar said.

Valis moved to her side. “Confirmed. No recurring characters or mirrored geometries. That would suggest either a highly complex language or…”

“…or something that’s not language at all,” Dar finished.

She adjusted her tricorder, trying to isolate any patterns from the glow, wavelengths, modulation, phase shifts. Nothing. The device wasn’t registering the light as light.

“It’s not projecting anything measurable,” she murmured. “We’re seeing it, but the sensors don’t.”

Ryan exhaled slowly. “Then how are we seeing it at all?”

No one answered.

The chamber felt colder than the tunnel had.

Dar stood and took an involuntary step back.

“It’s like it’s looking at us,” she said. Quietly. Almost a whisper.

Valis tilted her head, raising one eyebrow, studying the glyphs. “That is a poetic interpretation.”

“No. I mean…” Dar shook her head. “Forget it.”

They stared at the platform in silence for a moment longer. The red glow pulsed gently, rhythmically, with no source and no reason.

Then Ryan said, very softly, “Why build something this deep, this hidden… and then make it so it glows like a beacon?”

Pell shifted uncomfortably. “Maybe it wasn’t built to be hidden.”

Dar swallowed. “Or maybe it was built to be left alone.”