Kali scaled the ridge with practiced care, his boots finding silent purchase on the jagged rock. He moved like a shadow, wrapping himself in the folds of his reflective cloak as he reached a small outcropping overlooking the relay station below. The air was thin and sharp, the silence oppressive, broken only by the occasional hum of his gear calibrating itself to the moon's light gravity.
He unpacked the longneedle rifle, its matte-black frame folding open with a faint hiss of magnetic locks. The bipod legs extended into the dust with a soft clack. He nested behind it, his breathing already slowing. One by one, he adjusted the thermal and spectral lenses on his scope, cycling through filters until the relay station came into crisp, haunting clarity.
The others had reached the station's threshold, three silhouettes ghosting between fractured walls and corroded structures, weapons drawn, armor glinting faintly in the sickly light of the dying stars beyond the system's reach.
Then something moved.
Kali's scope shifted slightly to the upper right quadrant. A figure, lithe, bipedal, and out of place, emerged over the far ridge, less than two hundred meters from the relay's perimeter. He slowed his breath and zoomed in.
"Movement on the far ridge," Kali reported calmly through the comms. "Single contact."
The others froze in place.
The figure wore a torn lab coat that fluttered as if caught in a wind that didn't exist. Underneath, its frame was oddly stretched, too tall, too narrow. The face was obscured beneath a cascade of oily hair, and its gait was wrong: jerky, unsteady, like it had just remembered how to walk.
"Is it Diens?" Brann asked, voice low.
Kali focused the lens. "Negative."
He centered the crosshairs on the figure's head, exhaled slowly, and squeezed the trigger.
The longneedle fired with a muffled thump, and in the moment that followed, Kali expected the usual, impact, collapse, stillness.
Instead, the figure shattered, no. Dissolved, like black ink dropped into water, bleeding in slow spirals through the dust. The body sank into the earth, leaving no trace but a soft, spreading stain of liquid shadow.
The comms crackled with static for a heartbeat.
"Kali," Sela said, tense. "What the hell was that?"
He didn't answer immediately. He pulled back from the scope, scanning for movement.
"Not human," Kali muttered, his voice low and dry with unease. He shifted slightly behind his rifle, eyes still scanning the far ridge. "And not alone. Whatever you're doing down there, make it fast."
The silence that followed on the comms was thick with tension. Then, Brann's voice crackled through, clipped and resolute. "Copy. Moving in."
The trio picked up their pace, shadows slipping between jagged doorways and fractured columns of alloy and synthcrete. The facility loomed like a carcass from another age, its walls still standing, but riddled with corrosion and streaked with the black residue of old firefights. Strange cables slithered from the ceiling like vines, pulsing faintly.
It was quiet inside—too quiet. No hum of machinery, no flicker of automated systems. Just the soft crunch of boots against debris and the occasional hiss of stale air venting from broken panels.
Bodies lay scattered across the facility's open floor and side corridors, uniforms shredded, limbs twisted at unnatural angles. Some had burned-out implants. Others bore expressions frozen in sheer terror.
"Place isn't as wrecked as the last station," Kharv murmured, his weapon sweeping the corners. "But I'd take rubble over this… any day."
"Eyes up," Brann said, sweeping his rifle toward a half-lit terminal bay. "We're here for the second message and Diens' data. Spread out. Grab it quick."
A sharp crack echoed from outside the facility, then another, and another. Muffled through the thick walls, but unmistakable rifle fire.
"Shots," Kharv muttered, snapping his head toward the entrance. "Kali."
Brann's jaw clenched. "He's engaging. Fade anomalies."
The silence that followed was pierced again, three rapid shots in succession, then nothing. No return fire, no screams, no roars. Just that suffocating, terrible quiet settling once more like dust.
"Still no breach alarms," Sela whispered, her fingers dancing over the terminal's interface. "But that won't last. The Fade, stage one or not, doesn't stay dormant for long."
They all knew it. The Fade always escalated.
Stage one infestations were rare, relatively containable. A few spectral entities breaching through dimensional thin points. But left unchecked, they grew. They fed. They called more.
"Whatever's happening out there," Brann said, voice dropping to a low rasp, "we're lucky. Stage one means we still have time. Barely."
The faint whine of an initializing data pull hissed from the terminal beside Sela.
"Got something," she said, focused. "Encrypted packet labeled 'D-RIFT: Protocol Diens'. Pulling now."
Kharv moved to cover her, rifle raised toward the hall.
"Clock's ticking," Brann repeated, louder this time, urgency sharpening his tone. "We get the data, and we go."
From outside, a final echo rolled in, deep, guttural, not quite a growl. More like something laughing through a mouth that didn't remember how.
Brann turned toward the doorway, checking his weapon. "Kali, report," he barked into the comm.
Static.
Then a single click. One long, two short.
Alive. Engaged. Holding position.
Brann exhaled. "Let's move."
Outside, Kali rotated slightly on the overlook, scanning the ridges. Thermal lenses flickered with static, something was interfering. Intermittent distortion streaked across his visor, corrupting the image like a cracked mirror trying to remember how it used to reflect light.
Movement. Two figures now, same gaunt build, same fluttering lab coats, but their faces were blank, as if wiped clean. No eyes. No mouths. One raised its head as if sensing him.
He fired. It burst like a balloon filled with oil, spraying black ichor that hovered too long in the air before evaporating.
Then the shadows began to move.
"Shit."
He scanned again. They were coming out of the ridgeline, half-seen silhouettes twitching in and out of view, never quite finishing their motion. Flickering. Glitching. They weren't just there. They were bleeding through.
Kali shot at a detonation beacon near the path leading to the relay station and the small charge went off with a low whomp. Dust and scree flared into the air. But the anomalies didn't react. They kept advancing, indifferent to physics, warping the world as they moved.
More static bled into his comms. Then Rizen's voice, distant and fractured. "This might be more than we bargained for. I'll advise retreat back to the Helion-9."
"And abandon them?"
"Yes," came the curt reply.
From the periphery of his vision, something skittered vertically along the rocks. A long-limbed creature with too many joints, too many fingers, too many... heads?
He threw his cloak into active pulse mode, cloaking his heat and bio-signature, and shifted his position behind a weathered rock spire. Even cloaked, the Fade could smell presence if they got too close.
He whispered into the comms. "Brann. I've got six… no, eight—dammit—more than that. Incoming anomalies. They're getting... smarter. Coordinating. We poked a nest and they're waking up."
Brann's reply was quick, tight: "We have the data. Extraction in two minutes. Hold your ground."
Kali settled in, adjusted his scope, and whispered to himself.
"Two minutes."
A Fade walker leapt onto the ledge below. He fired, the longneedle cracking like thunder.
"One down."
Then they came. The first creature collapsed in a spiral of ink and bone fragments.
Kali barely had time to shift targets before another bounded up the slope, limbs bending in ways that screamed against nature. Its form blurred, part shadow, part memory. He adjusted his aim a hair and squeezed the trigger. The longneedle punched clean through its skull-like mass, splattering illusion and substance alike. It twitched once, then folded into itself, vanishing.
His cloak fizzled, too much movement, too much heat.
From his perch, he could see the relay station far below, a faint red glow marking the entrance. Static filled his vision intermittently now, heat maps stuttering. His rifle's smart scope jittered, struggling to track the fadeforms.
"Clock's ticking," he hissed into the comms. "I need evac soon."
"One minute," Brann replied. "Hold!"
He pulled the rifle close, rotated the dial on its power chamber. The hiss of charging coils vibrated through his gloves, he'd pushed the longneedle into overburn mode. Ten shots left. Maybe.
The ridge itself was shifting. Not the stone, but the space. It rippled, peeled back like a wound exposing muscle. From it poured half-seen nightmares, things shaped like men but wrong in every proportion, flickering between colors not meant to be named. Some crawled on four limbs. Others dragged bodies they had already consumed.
Stage Two. Full escalation.
Kali took a breath and aimed down his scope.
Shot.
The lead figure's torso burst. The thing didn't fall. It detached, legs continuing to run, head turning in mid-air before the whole construct unraveled into strings of shadow.
Shot.
A crawler. Limbs twitching backward. He caught it just beneath the jaw. It didn't bleed. It just melted.
And yet they kept coming.