08 / 9 articles
Stories & documents
Short stories reconstructed from logs and testimony, and documents recovered from Asterion’s archive. Read them in any order.
ARCHIVE STORYEleven minutes earlyKhepri Basin, 2189. A survey crew lowers a probe into a hole that should not exist, and it answers before they ask.
ARCHIVE STORYThe warm relay2192. A relay that should be cold comes back warm, and something has grown inside it.
ARCHIVE STORYThe empty lift2214. Yara Demir runs the console while Ilyan Venn calibrates a shard nobody sent down. Then the cameras go dark for nine seconds.
ARCHIVE STORYSix words03:17, the night of the blackout. Sana Okafor is alone at the relay desk when eleven lights go out at once.
RECOVERED DOCUMENTThe recall order04:01–04:19. Commander Graf tries to stop the C-9 before it clears the rim lock. Reconstructed from the command channel.
ARCHIVE STORYFloor tenFloor 1-10. The C-9 meets its first guardian, and Marek learns what the scars on the walls were.
RECOVERED DOCUMENTNotes on an immune responsePages from Ilyan Venn’s working notebook, 2211–2214. The source of the theory the Directorate still refuses to adopt.RECOVERED DOCUMENTUpper relay transcriptsFragments of conversation between Asterion and the C-9, as caught by the rebuilt upper relay. Most packets arrive late. Some arrive early.
RECOVERED DOCUMENTDirectorate memorandum on cachesAn internal memo from Commander Graf to the Directorate council, 2216, on supply caches nobody admits to placing.