_Signal_
I didn't sleep that night either.
Instead I did what I always did when the world stopped making sense, I made a list. Not on paper, not on the slim datapad The Continuum had issued each of us, but in my head, where no one could read it.
Things I know for certain:
One: We were modified before launch. Not just vaccinated, not just optimized. Changed, at a level none of us were told about.
Two: The headaches are not atmospheric. They are a response. Something on this planet is talking to whatever was put inside us.
Three: Zael Orrin is not a pioneer. He is something else entirely. And he was placed here deliberately.
Four: Director Solen knows all of this.
Five: I am still missing the most important piece. The why.
I stared at the ceiling of my quarters until the artificial dawn cycle clicked on and pale light crept across the walls. Then I got up, dressed, and went looking for answers.
The settlement's data hub was in Block A, shared between the engineers and the communications team. At 0500 it was nearly empty, just one junior technician dozing at a side console, head propped on one hand.
I moved quietly to the central terminal.
The Continuum had given us access to mission files, approved ones, carefully curated, stripped of anything that might cause what Director Solen called unnecessary psychological burden. I had read them all during the voyage. I had memorized them. And now, standing at the terminal in the pale pre-dawn light, I started reading between the lines.
The terraforming schedule was eighteen months ahead of what any known technology should allow. I had flagged this during the voyage and filed it away. Now I pulled it back out and looked at it differently.
Eighteen months ahead didn't mean The Continuum had better technology.
It meant the planet was already being terraformed. Before we arrived.
I pulled up the atmospheric analysis from our descent. Kepler-9's oxygen levels were not the product of a planet slowly being made habitable. They were stable. Established. As if the process had been running for years, quietly, without us.
We weren't sent here to terraform Kepler-9.
Kepler-9 was already ready for us.
My fingers went still on the terminal.
Then why were we told we were terraforming it?
"Find something interesting?"
I spun around.
Director Solen stood in the doorway of the data hub, hands clasped behind his back, expression perfectly composed. He was a tall man, lean and precise, with the kind of face that revealed nothing because it had been trained for years to reveal nothing. His eyes, though, pale grey, almost colorless, moved over the terminal screen with sharp, practiced assessment.
I didn't move away from the console.
"The terraforming timeline is inconsistent," I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected. "By about eighteen months."
"Noted in the mission appendix," he said. "Section twelve. Prior automated systems were deployed before our arrival to accelerate the process." He crossed the room slowly, unhurried, and stopped a few feet away. "Did you not review section twelve, Pioneer Noor?"
I had reviewed every section. There was no section twelve.
I held his gaze. "Of course."
Something moved behind his eyes. Not anger. Closer to satisfaction.
"Good," he said. "Breakfast begins at 0600. I'd recommend rest before then, the first full work rotation starts today, and your team will need your focus." He paused. "You have exceptional instincts, Priya. That's precisely why you were selected." Another pause, weighted and deliberate. "It's also precisely why you should be careful about where you direct them."
He left without another word.
I stood at the terminal long after his footsteps faded, heart steady, mind running.
He didn't come here because he was passing by.
He came because he was watching.
I found Zael at breakfast, at the far end of the communal table, systematically not talking to anyone.
I sat down across from him and kept my voice low.
"The planet was already terraformed when we arrived."
He didn't look up from his food. "I know."
"How long have you known?"
"Since before we launched."
I stared at him. The communal hall was filling around us, pioneers carrying trays, voices low and still slightly dazed, everyone moving with that same faintly glazed quality I'd been noticing since the headaches started. Like people operating at ninety percent. Like something was running quietly in the background, using up processing power.
"You need to tell me everything," I said.
"Not here." He finally looked up. His eyes were steady, unreadable. "Tonight. Perimeter. After second moon rise." He picked up his cup. "And Priya, don't access the terminal again. Not without me. Solen will have flagged your credentials by now."
"He already warned me off this morning."
Something flickered in Zael's expression. Concern, maybe. Or something that functioned like it.
"Then we have less time than I thought," he said quietly.
The first work rotation was terraforming assessment, or what we were told was terraforming assessment. Our team of twelve moved across Kepler-9's surface in environment suits, taking soil readings, cataloguing rock formations, mapping terrain.
I did my work. I was meticulous. I gave them nothing to flag.
But I was also watching.
And what I saw troubled me more than the headaches, more than Solen's warning, more than Zael's impossible knowledge.
The other pioneers were happy.
Not relieved-to-be-alive happy. Not we-survived-the-voyage happy.
Genuinely, deeply, almost radiantly content. Moving across an alien world's surface like it was exactly where they had always been meant to be. Laughing. Touching the rust-red soil with something that looked like reverence.
Kai Marsh, a systems engineer from Mumbai who had spent the entire voyage anxious and homesick, crouched down and pressed both palms flat against the ground with an expression of pure peace on his face.
"Doesn't it feel right?" he said, to no one in particular. "Like coming home?"
I looked at the rust-red soil. The dark rock teeth. The violet sky.
It felt like none of those things.
It felt like a cage being mistaken for a sanctuary.
That night I went to the perimeter.
Zael was already there. He had something in his hand, a small device, flat and dark, that I didn't recognize. He was holding it close to the ground, moving it slowly across the soil.
"Signal locator," he said before I could ask. "Tracking the broadcast frequency." He stood. "It's coming from directly below us. About forty meters down. And it's been getting stronger since we landed."
"Stronger how?"
"More targeted." He looked at me. "It was broadcasting generally when we arrived. Now it's narrowing. Like it's found what it was looking for."
The wind moved across the plain. Iron and that other smell, the almost-organic one. Closer now than it had been two nights ago.
"Tell me what you are," I said. "All of it."
He was quiet for a long moment. The twin moons hung above us, one full and pale, one a crescent sliver of cold light.
"I was created by a faction inside The Continuum," he said. "A group that disagreed with the primary mission. They built me to observe, to protect, and if necessary", he paused, "to intervene."
"Protect who?"
"You." He met my eyes. "All of you."
"From what?"
"From what you're becoming." He looked back at the ground, at the signal locator in his hand. "The modifications made before launch, they're not enhancements, Priya. They're a conversion process. Staged. Triggered by the frequency from below." He paused. "The headaches are stage one. The contentment you're seeing in the others, that's stage two."
The cold settled into me, deep and absolute.
"What's stage three?" I asked.
He didn't answer immediately. The wind moved. The moons turned slowly overhead.
"Stage three," he said quietly, "is the point of no return."
I looked out across Kepler-9's vast, patient terrain.
A thousand humans, sleeping peacefully in their clean white quarters. Dreaming whatever dreams the frequency gave them. Moving closer, with every passing hour, toward something none of them had agreed to.
They sent us here to become something.
I had thought it two nights ago, standing at this same perimeter.
Now I knew what that something was.
And I knew one other thing with absolute, bone-deep certainty:
I was still in stage one.
Which meant I still had time
