The silence in Sector 7 was not empty. It was heavy. It pressed against the eardrums like deep water. The station was buried fifty feet beneath the ice sheet, a concrete and steel bunker forgotten by the world that built it. Dust motes floated in the beam of the emergency lights, suspended in the frozen air. They didn't settle. Nothing settled here. Time had stopped when the researchers left.
Ezra sat in the control room. The consoles were dark, covered in a layer of grey frost. He had managed to power up one screen. It showed the seismic sensors Tomas had rigged outside the airlock. The screen was a flat green line. Flat. Silent. Dead.
Except for the blip.
Every few minutes, a small spike appeared on the graph. A rhythm. Thump. Thump. Thump. It wasn't coming from outside. It was coming
