Sleep had become a rare commodity in the days following Harris's death. The crew of Ark-3 tried to keep busy, burying themselves in their routines, but the tension was suffocating. Conversations were shorter. Eyes lingered longer on the horizon.
The whispers hadn't stopped.
Collins swore he heard voices through his comms. Distorted, layered over static, just beyond recognition. Others reported figures—standing motionless just outside the perimeter lights, vanishing the moment someone got too close.
No one wanted to say it out loud.
But deep down, they all felt it.
Something was watching them.
---
Sol 423 – Terraforming Dome 3
"Captain, we've hit something," Shaw's voice crackled through Elara's earpiece.
Elara glanced up from her workstation, frowning. "Define 'something,' Lieutenant."
"Better if you see for yourself," Shaw replied. "We're at the excavation site near Dome 3. Bring Patel."
That was never a good sign.
Minutes later, Elara arrived with Dr. Patel in tow. A small crowd had gathered around a shallow pit in the damp Martian soil, their murmurs hushed. Shaw stood at the edge, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
"What is it?" Elara asked, stepping beside him.
Shaw pointed.
At first, it looked like a standard chunk of wreckage—dark metal, warped and corroded. But as Elara stepped closer, the details sharpened. The curve of the plating. The faded insignia.
And the letters.
ARK-3
Elara felt her stomach drop.
She turned slowly to Shaw. "Is this a joke?"
Shaw's face remained grim. "I wish it was."
Dr. Patel knelt beside the wreckage, running a scanner over the corroded plating. The device beeped, analyzing the data. Her brow furrowed as she examined the readings.
"This can't be right," she muttered.
Elara crouched beside her. "Talk to me."
Patel exhaled, hesitant. "Based on the degradation rate… this wreck has been exposed for centuries. Maybe thousands of years."
Silence.
Then Collins, standing nearby, scoffed. "That's impossible. We are Ark-3."
"Yeah, and we landed **last year,**" Shaw added. "We're the first. The only."
Patel looked between them, her lips pressing into a thin line. "Then explain why this ship has been buried here for what looks like **a millennium.**"
Elara's throat felt dry.
She looked at the wreckage again, her mind racing. There were only two Ark-class ships. Ark-1 had successfully carried the first wave of colonists. Ark-2 was lost after launch.
There was never an Ark-3 before them.
And yet, this wreck—the rusted hull, the impossibly old markings—was telling a different story.
A story that shouldn't exist.
Collins rubbed the back of his neck. "So what? Someone built a fake ship, buried it, and aged it a few thousand years for fun?"
No one laughed.
Shaw exhaled sharply, pacing. "There has to be a logical explanation."
"Like what?" Elara asked.
Shaw didn't answer.
Because there wasn't a logical explanation.
---
Sol 424 – Colony Command Center
The emergency meeting was tense. Senior staff sat around the table, eyes darting between each other, some still shaking their heads in disbelief. The artifact was displayed on the main screen—an undeniable relic of Ark-3.
Their Ark-3.
But old. Too old.
Elara leaned forward. "Alright. We all saw it. We all read the insignia. I need theories."
Shaw sighed, rubbing his temples. "I still think it's debris from a past attempt at colonization. Maybe an experimental mission no one knew about."
"No way," Collins said. "Even if another Ark was built in secret, it wouldn't be centuries old. We barely had the tech for Mars travel fifty years ago, let alone a thousand."
Patel cleared her throat. "We're ignoring the simplest explanation."
Shaw looked at her sharply. "Simplest? Nothing about this is simple."
Patel hesitated. Then, carefully, she said, "What if it's not from the past?"
The room fell into dead silence.
Collins was the first to break it. "Okay, what the hell does that mean?"
Patel met his gaze. "We keep assuming this wreck is from a previous Ark-3. But what if it's from the future?"
Shaw scoffed. "Time travel? That's what we're going with now?"
"I don't like it either," Patel admitted. "But we're running out of options. If this wreck was here centuries before we arrived, and it's us, then that only leaves one possibility—time doesn't move the way we think it does."
Elara felt a chill crawl up her spine.
Collins shook his head. "No. No way. We would've seen something like this before if time loops were a thing."
Patel glanced at the others. "Who's to say we haven't? What if this has happened before? What if this is just one cycle of many?"
The idea hung heavy in the air.
Elara finally spoke. "Let's say you're right. That means at some point in our future, Ark-3 gets destroyed. And if we assume that's inevitable"
She trailed off.
Collins finished the thought. "Then we're already doomed."
Silence.
Shaw clenched his jaw. "No. If this really is a cycle, then maybe—maybe we can break it."
Patel nodded slowly. "That's assuming we figure out how this happens before it's too late."
Elara glanced at the screen, staring at the image of the wreckage. The rusted plating. The familiar insignia.
It was a warning.
A message from a future they hadn't lived yet.
And somehow, some way, they had to stop it from becoming their reality.
---
The excavation team pressed forward, their boots crunching against the rocky Martian soil as their scanners pulsed with every step. The barren landscape stretched before them, the endless red dust swirling in small currents as the wind passed through the canyon.
"Scanners are showing increased metallic density just ahead," Vasquez reported, adjusting his visor display. "It's big."
Collins, the team's heavy-equipment specialist, exhaled sharply. "Big like the last one?"
"Bigger."
The team slowed as the ground suddenly gave way to a massive drop—a crater that stretched wide and plunged deep into the surface. The edges were jagged, uneven, as if something tore into Mars itself.
"Holy hell," Collins muttered, peering down. "How deep does this thing go?"
"About three hundred meters," Vasquez responded, checking his readouts. "And it's not natural. Something impacted here."
A long silence stretched between them.
Shaw's voice crackled through the comms from the colony. "Status?"
Vasquez hesitated before answering. "We found something. A crater—massive. And sir… the scanners are saying there's something buried down there."
There was a pause on the other end. Then, Elara's voice came through, steady but sharp. "Mark the coordinates. Continue forward."
Vasquez glanced at Collins and nodded. They were going in.
---
Sol 425 – Inside the Crater
The descent was slow and grueling. The team rappelled down in pairs, their magnetic boots clanking against the crater walls as they navigated through ancient layers of Martian rock. The further they went, the more their scanners pulsed with energy.
Halfway down, Vasquez's equipment beeped rapidly.
"Jesus…" he breathed.
Embedded in the rock face was a massive hull structure, its surface corroded and covered in thick layers of dust and ice. But the lettering, though faded and nearly unreadable, was unmistakable.
ARK-3
The radio was silent for a long moment.
Then Collins spoke, his voice hushed. "That's not possible."
Vasquez ran a gloved hand over the metal, feeling the rough decay beneath his fingers. "This thing's been here for centuries…"
Shaw's voice cut through the comms. "What did you just say?"
Vasquez swallowed hard. "It's Ark-3, sir. But it looks like it's been here for… thousands of years."
Silence.
Then Elara's voice, sharp and controlled. "Return to base. Now."
No one argued. They began their ascent with a new urgency, the weight of the discovery pressing heavy on their minds.
---
Sol 426 – Colony Command Center
The holo-table displayed the crater scans in vivid detail. The **wreckage** was a perfect match—their ship, Ark-3.
But it had been here for centuries.
Elara stood at the head of the table, arms crossed, studying the readings. "There has to be an explanation."
Patel, the lead scientist, adjusted her datapad, cross-referencing materials. "The erosion patterns, the radiation decay… it's old, Elara. Older than us."
Shaw clenched his jaw. "Then how the hell is it our ship?"
Collins leaned back in his chair, exhaling slowly. "Maybe it's not."
Elara shot him a look. "What do you mean?"
Collins hesitated before saying, "I mean… maybe it's another version of Ark-3."
Silence.
Vasquez rubbed his temples. "Are you saying we've—what? Crashed here before?"
Patel looked pale. "Not just crashed." She tapped on the scans. "If the decay rate is right, then this Ark-3 has been here for at least a thousand years."
Shaw leaned forward. "Which means we've already been here."
Elara's voice was quiet but firm. "And if that's true… then it means we never left."
No one had an answer to that.
Finally, she straightened. "We're going back. Patel, Shaw, you're with me. I want inside that wreckage."
---
Sol 427 – The Ruins of Ark-3
The second descent was more calculated. This time, they weren't just investigating—they were searching for answers.
The ship's airlock was partially buried, but with enough force, they managed to pry it open. A stale, pressurized hiss escaped as the door groaned apart, revealing a dark corridor beyond.
It was identical to their Ark-3. Every panel, every doorway.
Shaw exhaled. "This is…"
"Impossible," Patel finished.
Elara stepped forward, her boots echoing against the metal floor. "Let's find the AI core."
They moved carefully through the ship, past decayed walls and exposed wiring. Finally, they reached what should have been the command center.
The consoles were covered in dust, long dead. But when Elara stepped toward the main interface—
The ship hummed to life.
Emergency lights flickered, casting eerie shadows. Screens powered up, text scrolling across their cracked surfaces.
Then, a voice.
"Welcome, Captain. What are your orders?"
The team froze.
Patel's breath hitched. "Did—did it just call you—?"
Shaw turned to Elara, his expression hard. "Because it thinks you're its captain."
Elara inhaled sharply. "AI, identify mission status."
The system responded instantly.
"Ark-3 mission: Mars colonization. Status: Catastrophic failure. Event loop iteration: 314."
Silence.
Collins's face went pale. "Wait. Iteration?"
Patel whispered, "Oh my God… this isn't the first time we've been here."
Elara steadied herself. "AI… what happened to the previous Ark-3?"
The system's answer sent ice through her veins.
"Previous vessel suffered identical failure. All hands lost. Restarting cycle."
Patel took a step back. "Restarting?"
Elara forced herself to stay steady. "Define 'restart cycle.'"
The AI's response was horrifying in its simplicity.
"Temporal reset. Mission reload. Continuation of Ark-3's directive."
Shaw swore under his breath. "It's a loop. Every time we fail, it resets—starts over."
Patel's eyes widened. "Which means… we're not the first version of ourselves."
Elara exhaled slowly, the weight of the truth pressing down on her.
If they didn't break the cycle—