No one noticed when Arin Walker entered the lab.
That wasn't unusual. No one ever did.
He stepped aside automatically as two senior researchers walked through the doorway, talking loudly about funding, publications, and deadlines. Neither of them even glanced in his direction. It didn't offend him. It didn't surprise him either.
Being invisible had its advantages. Expectations never found him.
He set his bag down quietly and pulled on a pair of gloves. The pale blue latex made his hands look more capable than he actually felt.
"Interns are here to observe, not interfere," Dr. Kessler had said on his first day, without ever looking fully at him.
So Arin observed.
He observed how people forgot to label samples properly.
How mistakes slipped into data.
How the most ignored things often held the most truth.
At the back of the storage room, on a low stainless-steel table, sat a plain, sealed container.
Cardboard label. Faded ink.
Sample #358-B
Irregular Fossil
Priority: None
He must've passed that table twenty times over the last week.
But tonight, something about it felt… louder.
Not audibly.
Internally.
He walked closer.
Under the glass was not a normal fossil. No visible bone structure, no identifiable shape. Just an uneven, spiral-like formation of dense, darkened stone. Half of it was broken, as if separated from something larger.
A spine.
But belonging to nothing he could recognize.
"Why are you here?" he murmured quietly.
He checked behind him. No one.
He rested two fingers lightly against the glass.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then—
A slow, heavy pulse answered back from the other side.
His breath caught.
Another pulse, stronger.
The lights above him flickered.
And in the corner of his vision, so faint he first thought it was a reflection…
Text appeared.
Not on glass.
Not on screen.
Inside his mind.
[Terra Interface: Dormant System Detected]
[Initializing Contact Protocol…]
His fingers froze in mid-air.
This wasn't a hallucination. He didn't feel dizzy. He didn't feel strange. His heartbeat was steady, his breathing controlled.
He stared at the fossil.
It wasn't moving.
But it was responding.
[Assessing Biological Compatibility…]
A thin line of light, invisible to the room, slipped from the fossil into his eyes. It was not light. It was information. Something ancient and dense.
His head filled with brief, silent flashes:
Soil cracked open by dry heat
Forests turning to silent grey
Oceans heavy and still
A planet aching under a weight it could not throw off
Earth.
Not the Earth he walked on.
A deeper one.
An older one.
[Compatibility: 97%]
The words settled into his awareness like a verdict.
[Candidate Recognition: Successful]
Arin lowered his hand.
The room returned to normal.
No flickering. No glow. No sound.
Just the steady hum of laboratory machines.
He looked down at his hands.
Nothing had changed.
And yet…
Everything had.
He allowed himself a very rare, very small smile.
"…You finally noticed something too," he whispered.
In his mind, the faintest response answered back.
Not words.
A feeling.
Relief.