The screaming started at 0400 hours.
Captain Maria Santos was already awake when the first distress call came through—she'd learned to sleep light in the three years since the sky split open and humanity discovered it wasn't alone. The comm unit beside her bunk crackled to life with Sergeant Kim's voice, tight with the kind of fear that came from seeing something wrong.
"Command, this is Recon-Seven. We have a situation at the Chen farmstead. Multiple civilian casualties. Requesting immediate extraction and medical support."
Maria was pulling on her tactical vest before he finished the sentence. Commander Morrison's voice came through a moment later, already in the operations center.
"Recon-Seven, specify casualties."
A pause. Too long.
"Sir, we have... we have four confirmed dead. Three wounded. And one—" Kim's voice cracked. "Sir, you need to see this. We need a medical team and a science officer. Now."
Medical team meant wounded. Science officer meant something else.
Something the aliens had done.
Maria grabbed her rifle and headed for the motor pool, where the rest of Alpha Squad was already assembling. Chen checked his ammunition. Okoye tested her weapon's sight. Rodriguez adjusted her tactical harness with hands that only shook slightly—she'd been on the last science officer call, to the Peterson settlement.
She hadn't spoken much since.
"Mount up," Maria ordered. "Kim's team needs extraction. Chen family farm, grid coordinates are already uploaded. Morrison's sending Dr. Yates with us."
"Science officer?" Chen asked quietly. His face had gone pale. "That's not—the Chens aren't my family, different Chens, right?"
"Different Chens," Maria confirmed, though she wasn't entirely sure. There were a lot of Chens in Settlement Alpha. Before the invasion, it had been a major metropolitan area. Now it was forty thousand people crammed into whatever structures still had walls and something resembling a roof.
Dr. Sarah Yates climbed into the transport, her medical kit secured to her back and something else in her hands—a sealed containment case. The kind they used when they thought someone might be contaminated.
Or changing.
The drive took twenty minutes through the ruins of what used to be suburban Denver. Dawn was breaking, casting long shadows through the skeletal remains of houses where families had once lived normal lives. Now the homes were empty, windows dark, some collapsed entirely. Others had been repurposed by the resistance, reinforced with scrap metal and hope.
The farmstead was on the outskirts of Settlement Alpha's protected zone—one of the small agricultural operations that kept the resistance fed. The Chens had been growing real food in soil they'd spent two years decontaminating after the initial terraforming pulse.
When they arrived, Maria understood why Kim had sounded scared.
The farmstead was still standing, but the fields were wrong. The crops—corn, from what Maria could tell—had changed overnight. The stalks were too tall, bending at angles that defied normal plant structure. The leaves had taken on a bioluminescent quality, pulsing faintly with that same sickly green light the alien technology emitted.
"Jesus Christ," Rodriguez whispered.
"Stay sharp," Maria ordered. "Okoye, perimeter. Chen, with me. Rodriguez, cover the transport."
Sergeant Kim met them at the farmhouse entrance. He was young—maybe twenty-five—and he'd seen plenty of combat since the invasion. But his face was sheet-white, and there was something in his eyes that Maria recognized.
The look of someone who'd seen something they couldn't unsee.
"Captain," he said quietly. "The family was inside when it happened. Some kind of localized terraforming pulse. We think it came from beneath the property—maybe an alien device buried during the initial invasion that just activated."
"The casualties?"
Kim swallowed. "Mr. Chen, Mrs. Chen, and two of their workers. Dead. Looks like the pulse hit them directly. Their bodies are..." He trailed off.
"Show me."
The interior of the farmhouse looked normal at first glance. Then Maria's eyes adjusted to the dim light and she saw them.
Four bodies on the floor, arranged as if they'd simply fallen where they stood. But the bodies themselves were wrong in ways that made Maria's stomach turn.
The flesh had crystallized. That was the only word for it. Their skin had transformed into something translucent and geometric, like organic matter trying to become something else. Underneath, Maria could see what remained of their internal organs, suspended in that crystal matrix, perfectly preserved but fundamentally changed.
Dr. Yates was already kneeling beside the nearest body, scanner in hand.
"Cellular restructuring," she said clinically, though her voice wavered. "The terraforming pulse rewrote their biology at the molecular level. They were dead within seconds—the human body can't survive this kind of transformation. But the process continued after death, trying to convert them into..." She gestured helplessly. "Into something compatible with Rymian environmental parameters."
"Can you stop it?" Maria asked.
"It's already stopped. The pulse was short-range and brief. But Captain..." Yates looked up at her. "This is different from the other terraforming events we've documented. This was surgical. Precise. Like they were testing something."
"Testing what?"
"I don't know. But I need to take samples, document everything. If the Rymians are refining their terraforming technology, we need to understand how."
"Do it fast. We're exposed out here."
Kim cleared his throat. "Captain, there's more. The three wounded—two field workers and one of the Chen kids. They were in the barn when it happened. The pulse caught them on the periphery."
"Where are they?"
"Barn. But ma'am..." Kim's voice dropped. "One of them is changing."
The barn was worse than the house.
Two workers lay on makeshift cots, unconscious but breathing. Dr. Yates's medical team was already working on them, running IVs and checking vitals. Their skin showed early signs of the crystallization—patches of translucent tissue spreading slowly across their arms and torsos.
"Can you treat them?" Maria asked.
"We're trying," one of the medics replied. "If we can stabilize them and get them back to base, maybe. But I've never seen a terraforming exposure this severe where the victim survived."
"Keep trying."
The third victim was in the corner of the barn, restrained to a reinforced chair with heavy-duty straps. A girl—maybe sixteen years old. Annie Chen, according to Kim's report.
She was conscious.
And she was screaming.
Not in pain. In rage.
Maria approached carefully. The girl's skin hadn't crystallized like the others. Instead, it was changing in a different way—patches of gray-green discoloration spreading from her extremities toward her core. Her eyes had begun to shift, the whites taking on that bioluminescent green glow.
Her fingers were elongating. Joints popping and reforming.
Early-stage mutation.
"How long?" Maria asked Kim.
"Started about an hour ago. She was normal when we arrived, just scared. Then the changes began." He looked away. "She's still in there, Captain. She keeps saying her name, asking for her parents. But it's getting worse."
Dr. Yates was scanning the girl with handheld equipment, taking readings that made her frown deeper with each passing second.
"The terraforming pulse didn't just restructure her cells," Yates said quietly. "It introduced foreign genetic material. Rymian DNA sequences, but modified. She's not crystallizing like the others—she's mutating. Transforming into something new."
"Can you reverse it?"
"I don't know. We've tried radiation therapy, genetic inhibitors, everything we have. Nothing stops the mutations once they start. Best case, we can slow them down. Worst case..." Yates met Maria's eyes. "She becomes like the others. The class-3s. The ones that hunt in packs and eat anything warm-blooded."
Maria looked at Annie Chen. The girl's face was still mostly human, but her jaw was beginning to distend, teeth elongating into something predatory.
"Help me," Annie whispered, her voice already taking on that characteristic rasp. "Please, I don't want to—I can feel it, I can feel myself disappearing—"
"We're going to try," Maria said, keeping her voice steady. "We're taking you back to base. Our doctors will do everything they can."
"Liar," Annie hissed. Then her expression softened, briefly human again. "I heard the soldiers talking. Nobody survives this. Nobody comes back."
Maria wanted to argue. Wanted to promise this would be different.
But Annie was right.
In three years of war, Maria had never seen anyone survive a mutation. Once the transformation started, it didn't stop. The person might linger for hours, days if they were unlucky, slowly losing themselves as their body became something else.
The resistance's policy was clear: mercy killing before the transformation completed.
But they'd never killed someone who was still begging for help.
"Load everyone into the transport," Maria ordered. "We're taking them all back to base. Morrison can make the call."
The drive back was tense.
Annie Chen's screaming had devolved into animalistic snarls. The restraints were holding for now, but Maria could hear the metal creaking as the girl's strength increased with each passing minute.
Dr. Yates sat beside her, monitoring the readings on her scanner.
"Transformation is accelerating," she said quietly. "She's got maybe six hours before the process completes. After that..." She didn't finish.
"After that she's not human anymore," Maria finished. "She becomes a threat."
"Yes."
Chen—the squad's Chen, not the family's—sat across from the restrained girl, his expression unreadable. "What happens if we can't cure her?" he asked.
No one answered.
They all knew.
Settlement Alpha - Medical Center - 0800 Hours
Commander Morrison stood in the observation room, watching through reinforced glass as Annie Chen thrashed against the restraints. She didn't look much like a sixteen-year-old girl anymore. The mutation had progressed rapidly during transport—her bone structure had fundamentally changed, her spine elongating, her limbs taking on the digitigrade configuration common to class-3 mutants.
Her face was the worst part. Still recognizably human, but wrong. Eyes too large, jaw too wide, teeth sharp and numerous.
She was still conscious. Still aware.
Still begging.
"Options," Morrison said to Dr. Yates.
"We can try experimental gene therapy. Might slow the progression, buy us time to study the process. But sir..." Yates pulled up a holographic display showing Annie's cellular structure. "The Rymian genetic material is integrated at the fundamental level. Reversing this would require rewriting her entire genome. We don't have that technology."
"What about amputation? If the mutation started in her extremities—"
"It's systemic. Started at the exposure point but spread through her bloodstream. Cutting off her arms wouldn't help at this point."
Morrison was quiet for a long moment.
"How long before she's no longer human?"
"Four hours. Maybe less."
"And after that?"
"After that, she's a class-3 mutant. Aggressive, predatory, and strong enough to tear through reinforced doors given enough time."
Morrison looked at Maria, who'd been standing silently in the corner.
"Recommendations, Captain?"
Maria had been dreading this question. She looked through the glass at Annie Chen—at what remained of her—and tried to find the right answer.
There wasn't one.
"The policy is clear, sir. We can't risk a mutation completing inside the settlement. Too dangerous."
"The policy was written for people who were unconscious or already lost," Morrison said quietly. "She's still talking. Still asking for help."
"I know, sir."
"If we terminate her now, we're executing a scared kid."
"If we wait, we're risking everyone in this facility when she breaks free."
Morrison closed his eyes. "Get her family on comms. They have a right to say goodbye."
"Sir, her family is dead. We brought them back in body bags."
"Then find someone who knew her. A friend. Anyone. She doesn't die alone."
In the holding cell, Annie Chen had stopped thrashing. She lay still on the reinforced table, breathing hard, her changing body exhausted from the effort of fighting restraints she couldn't break.
Not yet.
A young woman entered the cell—Rebecca Martinez, one of the settlement teachers. She'd taught Annie in the makeshift school they'd set up last year.
"Hey, Annie," Rebecca said softly, sitting in the chair beside the table. "It's Ms. Martinez. Do you remember me?"
Annie's eyes—too large now, reflecting green in the harsh lights—focused on her.
"I remember," she rasped. "You taught... history. Before. When there was... history."
"That's right." Rebecca reached out carefully, taking Annie's hand. The fingers were too long now, the joints wrong, but she held them anyway. "I wanted to tell you that you were a good student. Smart. Kind to the younger kids."
"I don't... feel kind anymore." Annie's voice was degrading, the words coming harder. "I feel... hungry. Angry. Like there's something inside me that wants to—" She cut off, shuddering.
"I know. But you're fighting it. That takes strength."
"I'm losing."
"I know."
They sat in silence for a moment. Then Annie spoke again, her voice barely recognizable.
"Don't let me... turn into one of them. Please. I don't want to be... a monster."
Rebecca's eyes filled with tears. "Okay. I promise."
"Thank you."
Commander Morrison authorized the termination at 1100 hours.
Dr. Yates administered the injection herself. A massive dose of sedative, followed by a paralytic agent, followed by something that stopped the heart.
Annie Chen died without pain, still mostly human, still herself.
They burned the body immediately. Standard protocol for mutation cases—couldn't risk the Rymian genetic material spreading.
Maria watched from the observation deck as the flames consumed what remained of a sixteen-year-old girl who'd done nothing wrong except be in the wrong place when the aliens decided to test their new toys.
"This is the third one this month," Morrison said beside her. "Targeted terraforming pulses. Small-scale, surgical. They're testing something."
"Testing what?"
"I don't know. But they're getting better at it. More precise. The first few incidents were crude—entire areas transformed, everyone died. Now they can target individuals, control the transformation." He gestured at the medical bay. "Those two workers Annie was with? They're stabilized. The crystallization stopped. They might actually survive."
"And if they do?"
"Then the Rymians will have successfully transformed humans into something compatible with their environmental parameters. They won't need to terraform the entire planet—just the population."
The implications of that settled over Maria like a shroud.
"They're not trying to destroy us," she said quietly. "They're trying to convert us."
"Looks that way."
"Sir, we need to find where these pulses are coming from. If the Rymians have devices buried around the settlements, if they can activate them at will—"
"I know. I'm organizing deep reconnaissance sweeps, starting tomorrow. We need to map their infrastructure, find the devices, disable them if we can." Morrison turned to her. "Alpha Squad is on point. You leave at dawn."
That night, Maria couldn't sleep.
She kept seeing Annie Chen's face. The desperation. The awareness that she was losing herself piece by piece.
At 0200 hours, she gave up and headed to the operations center.
Kim was on duty, monitoring the perimeter sensors. He looked up when she entered.
"Can't sleep either?" he asked.
"Not after today."
"Yeah." Kim pulled up the tactical display. "Been reviewing the sensor logs from the last month. All the terraforming incidents, mapping them."
"Find anything?"
"Maybe." He highlighted several locations around Settlement Alpha. "Look at the distribution. They're not random. The incidents form a rough perimeter around our position, about five klicks out."
Maria studied the pattern. He was right—it was too organized to be coincidence.
"They're surrounding us," she said. "Testing their devices in a ring formation."
"That's what I thought. But there's something else." Kim zoomed in on one section of the map. "This area here—the eastern wasteland. Three months ago, we started getting reports of alien patrols going missing in that sector. No distress calls, no evidence of what happened. They just disappeared."
"Could be equipment failure. Navigation errors."
"Maybe. But two weeks ago, one of our recon teams found the remains of a Rymian patrol in that area. Eight soldiers, all dead. Torn apart."
"Mutants?"
"That's what we thought. But the pattern was wrong. Mutants are messy, chaotic. These kills were efficient. Surgical, almost." Kim pulled up photographs from the scene. "And there's this."
The images showed the alien bodies. They were indeed torn apart, but not randomly. Specific wounds—throat, major arteries, precise trauma to vital areas.
Like something had known exactly where to strike for maximum lethality.
"What are you thinking?" Maria asked.
"I don't know. But whatever killed them knew Rymian anatomy. Knew their weaknesses." Kim looked at her. "Captain, what if there's something else out there? Not aliens, not mutants. Something different."
Maria thought about the stories she'd been hearing. Whispered conversations in the mess hall. Settlers talking about something in the wasteland that hunted at night.
Ghost, they called it.
She'd dismissed it as panic and paranoia.
Now she wasn't so sure.
"Add it to the mission brief for tomorrow," she said. "If there's something in the eastern sector, I want to know about it."
"Yes, ma'am."
Maria headed back to her quarters, but sleep still wouldn't come.
Because in the back of her mind, a question had formed:
What if the aliens weren't the only thing they needed to be afraid of?
Somewhere in the Eastern Wasteland - 0300 Hours
Dark crouched on the roof of a collapsed warehouse, watching the settlement lights in the distance.
He was hungry.
The alien patrol he'd killed two nights ago had sustained him temporarily, but alien blood was poor nutrition. Thin. Chemical. It kept him alive but barely.
He needed better.
His senses picked up movement—a human, alone, walking through the ruins about half a klick from his position. A scavenger, probably, looking for salvage in the dangerous hours when most people stayed inside.
Stupid.
But convenient.
Dark moved.