The forest was breathing.
Not with life — but with wind moving through broken branches and the faint rustle of ash-covered leaves.
Arin sat beside a small fire that barely fought the cold. Sparks rose into the air, disappearing into a sky the color of rust.
Lira cleaned the barrel of her pulse rifle, her hands shaking just slightly. Kai was setting up a perimeter beacon — a small ring of motion sensors scavenged from the shuttle's toolkit. Professor Ren stood away from the fire, staring into the dark.
"Battery at fifty percent," Kai reported. "That'll give us maybe six hours of perimeter watch."
"Six hours is more than enough," Ren murmured, though he didn't sound convinced.
Arin tightened the straps on his half-damaged space suit. It still smelled faintly of ozone and smoke from re-entry. His eyes scanned the horizon — twisted trees, a collapsed highway half-buried in dust, and beyond that, flickers of movement that might've been shadows… or something worse.
He whispered, "I can't hear the world anymore."
Lira looked up. "What?"
He gestured around them. "No birds. No insects. Just… nothing."
Ren finally turned. "Then listen closely, Arin. In this kind of world, silence means something is listening to us."
The first scream came an hour later.
Not human — not fully. A wet, choking howl that rolled through the trees like a dying animal.
Arin leapt to his feet, rifle raised. "Direction?"
Kai checked the scanner. "East. Maybe a hundred meters."
Lira's eyes widened. "That's inside the perimeter."
Before anyone could respond, the beacon lights flashed red. Motion detected.
Branches cracked. Footsteps — uneven, fast.
Then figures emerged from the mist.
They were human once.
Their bodies twisted, bones showing through torn suits and melted flesh. Some crawled, some ran, but all of them moved with the same jerky hunger.
"Open fire!" Ren shouted.
Pulse shots cracked through the forest — blue flashes tearing into bodies that should have fallen but didn't. The infected kept coming, silent except for the grinding of their teeth.
Arin aimed for the head — two shots, then another. One creature's skull burst, spraying dark fluid that hissed as it hit the ground.
He barely dodged as another lunged; its nails scraped across his visor, leaving deep grooves.
Kai slammed a shock charge into the soil — boom! — an explosion of light and dust threw several of them back, but more poured in from the shadows.
"Fall back to the shuttle!" Lira yelled.
"Negative," Ren barked. "If they breach the engines, we lose everything!"
"Then what—"
"Hold the line!"
Arin didn't think. He just fired, moved, fired again. His shoulder burned from recoil. The smell of rot and metal filled the air.
But for every one they dropped, two more appeared.
Something slammed into him from behind — a heavy body, cold hands clawing at his throat.
He rolled, drew his sidearm, fired point-blank. The creature's jaw shattered, but its arms didn't stop until Lira's blade cut through its spine.
"Arin!" she shouted. "Move!"
He stumbled to his feet, gasping. The ground was slick with blood — too dark to be normal.
Then came the worst sound yet.
A deeper growl. Not many — one. Massive.
From the trees stepped a figure twice the size of the rest. Its body was a patchwork of others fused together, faces stretching under its skin like trapped souls.
Kai froze. "What the hell is that?"
Ren whispered, "Mutation. The virus… it's adapting."
The creature roared, and the shockwave flattened the flames.
"Scatter!" Arin yelled.
It charged. Trees snapped under its weight. Arin fired a full power burst — the beam punched through its shoulder, but it barely slowed.
It grabbed Kai by the leg and threw him against a rock. Bones cracked. Lira screamed.
Arin sprinted, sliding under its swing, and shoved a plasma grenade into its chest cavity. He dove aside just as it exploded — a wave of light and burning flesh ripping through the clearing.
The mutant collapsed, twitching, its torso still glowing from within.
Silence again.
Only the rain of ash.
Kai lay unconscious, blood pooling under his head.
Lira knelt beside him, pressing a sealant patch over the wound. "Pulse weak but steady. He'll live."
Ren stood over the smoldering remains. "This isn't random infection. Something's controlling it."
Arin looked down at the black fluid steaming on the ground. Tiny motes of light moved inside it — microscopic, alive.
He picked up a fragment of his visor where the liquid had touched. The metal was melting.
"Professor…" he said quietly. "What if it's the sample?"
Ren's eyes met his. For a long moment, neither spoke.
Finally, Ren said, "We destroyed it during re-entry."
"Did we?" Arin asked.
Ren didn't answer.
---
They buried the bodies of the infected behind the ridge, though part of Arin wondered if burial even mattered anymore. The night dragged on, each of them listening to the forest whisper with the echoes of movement.
Near dawn, Kai stirred. "I heard… a voice," he murmured. "On the comms… just before it hit me."
"A voice?" Lira asked.
He nodded weakly. "Distorted. Said… 'Station Zero… still alive…'"
Ren turned sharply. "Station Zero? That was the lunar research relay. It shouldn't be transmitting from Earth."
Arin stared into the dark horizon. "Then maybe we're not the only ones who came back."
The wind shifted, carrying with it the distant sound of metal scraping against stone — like a signal, or maybe a warning.
Arin checked his weapon, the barrel still hot. His voice was low but steady.
"Pack up. We're moving at dawn. Whatever happened here… we're walking straight into it."
"The dead don't echo without reason — sometimes, they're answering a call."