The sunless sky of Mars stretched endlessly above the settlement, its reddish glow casting long shadows across the terraforming equipment. The crew had spent months establishing the first self-sustaining colony, but the constant feeling of unease never fully faded. There was something about Mars—a heaviness in the air, a sense that the planet itself was watching them.
Elara Winters stood at the edge of the colony, her boots crunching against the dust as she gazed out toward the horizon. Behind her, the colony's central hub hummed with activity as engineers and scientists continued their work. The terraforming process was on schedule, but the subtle disruptions of the past few days lingered in her mind.
"Captain," Shaw's voice called from behind her. "We need to talk."
Elara turned to face her lieutenant. Shaw's expression was grim, his eyes fixed on her. There was no mistaking the weight in his tone. "About what?" she asked, though she had an inkling of what he was going to say.
"More... anomalies," Shaw replied, glancing over his shoulder as if making sure no one else was nearby. "The data we're receiving from the surface—it doesn't add up. We've detected seismic activity under the crust. It's irregular, almost as if something... is moving down there."
Elara frowned. The idea of Martian tectonic activity was concerning, but not entirely unexpected. After all, Mars was not completely devoid of geological activity. Still, the timing felt off, too coincidental to ignore.
"How deep?" she asked.
Shaw hesitated. "Very deep. Too deep for any natural phenomenon we know of. We're talking kilometers beneath the surface. And... there's something else. I—"
A sudden shrill sound interrupted him. Elara's gaze snapped to the distant horizon. A thin, dark shape was flickering in the sky, a disturbance in the air, as if the very atmosphere was bending. It looked like a mirage, wavering and distorting in the heat of the Martian day.
"Is that...?" Shaw began.
"I don't know," Elara said, her voice low. She turned to Shaw. "Prepare a team. We're going to check it out."
---
The trek across the Martian terrain was uneventful, save for the eerie silence that hung over them. The land, barren and desolate, stretched out like an endless expanse of emptiness. There was no wind to stir the dust, no clouds to blot out the sun. Only the soft hum of their suits and the occasional crackle of static over the communication lines.
They reached the location in a few hours, and Elara stood still, surveying the landscape before them. What had appeared to be a mirage from a distance was now clearly visible—an old, rusted structure buried partially in the sand. Its shape was unmistakable: a dome, smooth and unblemished despite the centuries that had passed.
Elara's heart skipped a beat. It wasn't supposed to be here. This wasn't on any map. The anomaly wasn't a natural formation. This was something else—something ancient.
"Captain, look at this," Shaw said, his voice laced with disbelief. He pointed to the side of the structure. Strange symbols, almost glowing with a faint iridescence, were etched into the surface. They pulsed as if alive, a rhythmic, almost hypnotic pattern that seemed to shift when looked at directly.
Elara took a cautious step forward. The symbols were unlike anything she had seen before, neither Martian nor human. They were alien, but they felt... familiar. She could almost hear them, a faint whisper at the back of her mind, as though the symbols were speaking to her.
"Is it... some kind of signal?" Shaw asked, his voice barely audible.
Elara didn't answer. Instead, she crouched down, her fingers brushing against the smooth metal of the structure. The moment her skin made contact, the ground beneath them trembled. The noise was subtle at first, a low rumble, but it quickly grew into a loud, dissonant vibration that seemed to echo from deep within the planet.
"What the hell was that?" Shaw asked, his voice rising with alarm.
Before Elara could respond, the symbols on the structure flared brightly, casting an unnatural light across the barren landscape. The sky above them seemed to darken, though the sun still hung high. It was as if the very air around them had thickened, becoming oppressive, charged with an unseen energy.
Then, with a sudden, violent crack, the structure groaned, its metal plates shifting, and a low mechanical whine pierced the silence.
"Everyone, back to the ship!" Elara shouted, her voice urgent. "Move!"
They turned to run, but as they did, a shadow shifted across the sand. Elara's breath caught in her throat as she saw it—something moving in the distance. It was tall, gaunt, with a strange, angular figure that seemed to distort the light around it. It stood motionless, its gaze fixed on them, though there was no face to read.
The shape slowly lifted one arm, and the air seemed to crackle with an electric charge.
"Get to cover!" Shaw shouted, but Elara didn't need to be told twice. She darted behind a nearby rock formation, her heart pounding in her chest. She could hear Shaw's voice over the comms, urging everyone to retreat, but her mind was focused on the figure now standing in the distance.
The creature—if it was even a creature—didn't move. It simply stood there, like a monument, its presence enough to send chills down her spine. Was this... what was causing the disturbances? Was it connected to the strange anomalies in their data?
And then, just as quickly as it appeared, the figure faded, dissipating into the thin Martian air as if it had never been there at all.
---
Elara stood frozen, her breath ragged. "What the hell was that?" she whispered to herself, her mind struggling to comprehend what she had just witnessed.
She didn't have an answer. But one thing was certain—Mars was hiding something. And they weren't the first to try and make it home.
--------
The trek back to the colony was silent. No one spoke of the figure they had seen. No one dared to. Even Shaw, usually quick to analyze and question, kept his thoughts to himself. But Elara could feel it—the weight of unspoken fear settling over the team like a thick Martian dust storm.
As soon as they returned, she ordered a lockdown on the findings. Until they understood what they were dealing with, there would be no unnecessary panic. The structure, the symbols, the apparition—they had to figure out what it all meant before the rest of the colony caught wind of it.
Inside the colony's command center, Elara leaned over a console, reviewing the data Shaw had pulled from their scans. The seismic readings were still there, erratic and unnatural. But now, something else had surfaced—anomalous radiation spikes emanating from beneath the ground, directly below the structure.
"It's almost like a power source," Shaw muttered, staring at the display. "But this… this shouldn't exist here."
Elara tapped a finger against the console. "What about the symbols? Have you been able to analyze them?"
Shaw exhaled sharply. "That's the thing. They don't match anything in our database—not from any known civilization. But here's where it gets weird…" He hesitated, his fingers hovering over the interface.
Elara gave him a sharp look. "Weirder than what we saw out there?"
Shaw swallowed and nodded. "I ran a pattern analysis. The symbols aren't random. They have structure—almost like a language. But when I ran it through decryption models, something odd happened." He pulled up a new screen, displaying a side-by-side comparison of the glowing symbols and human script.
Elara's stomach clenched. The resemblance was unmistakable. The shapes, the flow, the structure—these symbols were eerily similar to ancient Earth languages.
"Latin?" she breathed, reading some of the closest matches.
Shaw nodded. "Not just Latin. A mix of ancient dialects from multiple civilizations—Sumerian, Egyptian, even some lost scripts we've only found fragments of." He ran a hand through his hair. "It's like… someone—or something—collected pieces of our history and left it here."
Elara's thoughts raced. "You're saying these markings could be of human origin?"
"I don't know," Shaw admitted. "But if they are, then we have a bigger problem than we thought."
A flickering notification appeared on the screen—an incoming message from Dr. Helena Patel, the colony's chief exobiologist. Elara tapped it open.
"Captain, you need to come to the medical bay. Now."
---
### **Medical Bay – Mars Colony, Sol 417**
Dr. Patel met them at the entrance, her usual composed demeanor fraying at the edges. "We have a situation," she said without preamble, motioning them inside.
Elara's eyes fell immediately on the figure lying on the examination table. It was one of the expedition crew, Harris. His face was pale, his breathing shallow, his eyes darting behind closed lids as if caught in some unseen nightmare. The monitors around him beeped erratically.
"What happened?" Elara demanded.
Patel adjusted the settings on a nearby display. "He collapsed an hour after your team returned. At first, we thought it was simple exhaustion. But then…" She gestured toward Harris's arms.
Elara stepped closer and froze.
His skin—normally a healthy shade beneath the artificial lighting—was shifting. Dark, faint markings had begun to spread across his forearms, eerily similar to the symbols they had seen on the structure. They pulsed faintly, as if alive, as if something beneath the skin was trying to emerge.
Elara forced herself to stay calm. "Is he infected?"
"I don't know," Patel admitted, frustration clear in her voice. "His vitals are erratic, his brain activity is off the charts—almost like he's experiencing multiple states of consciousness at once."
Shaw swore under his breath. "The structure. He touched it before we left."
Elara's thoughts raced. This wasn't just a discovery anymore. It was a warning.
Harris suddenly gasped, his body arching violently. His eyes snapped open—except they weren't his eyes anymore.
They glowed with an unnatural, silver-blue hue, and when he spoke, his voice was layered, as if a hundred whispers echoed beneath his words.
**"You should not be here."**
The lights in the room flickered. Elara instinctively reached for the emergency alarm, but Harris—or whatever was inside him—suddenly turned its gaze directly to her.
**"You are not the first."**
A deep, guttural hum filled the room, reverberating through the very walls of the colony. Monitors spiked, alarms blaring as Harris convulsed. The symbols on his skin flared one last time—
And then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped.
Harris went limp. The glowing marks faded. The alarms died down. The only sound left was the ragged breathing of those in the room.
Elara stared at the lifeless body on the table.
Shaw was the first to speak. His voice was hollow. "What the hell just happened?"
Dr. Patel took a slow, unsteady breath. "I don't know."
Elara clenched her fists. The figure in the desert. The ancient symbols. The words spoken through Harris.
**You are not the first.**
A sickening realization settled in her gut.
This wasn't just the first time humans had come to Mars.
This had happened before.
And somehow, it was happening again.