The walk back felt endless.

The base pod glowed faintly in the distance — a small metallic silhouette half-buried in white, its emergency lights blinking red every ten seconds. Normally the sight brought relief.

Tonight, it looked like a warning beacon.

Aria walked at Mira’s right. Elias stayed in the center. Jonah and Soren kept switching sides like nervous birds. Vincent trailed behind, moving slower than the rest, his visor tilted slightly down as though afraid to look up.

Every thirty seconds, Jonah glanced at his seismic pack. The readings jittered erratically.

“Captain,” he whispered, “I’ve got movement… but it’s not directly beneath us anymore. It’s—” He swallowed. “It’s circling.”

Mira didn’t react outwardly. “Distance?”

“Hard to say.” Jonah tapped the screen. “It’s fast. Like it’s orbiting us.”

Elias frowned deeply. “Why would it do that?”

Soren broke the silence. “Behavioral mapping. Wolves circle prey before they—”

“Stop,” Mira said sharply.

This wasn’t the moment for analogies.

Aria scanned the ice. It had returned to its opaque, frost-blue sheen — thick and impenetrable. She saw nothing beneath it now. No silhouette. No glow. No ripple of movement.

But she felt something.

A prickling on the back of her neck.
A growing pressure in her ears.
And the faintest ringing noise — like someone dragging a metal wire across stone.

Vincent stopped walking abruptly.

Mira spun. “Vincent?”

He raised a shaking hand to his helmet.

“Did you… hear that?”

Everyone paused.

The wind was soft — barely a breeze. The world should have been silent.

But then they all heard it.

A faint whisper.

Not through comms.

Through the air.

It drifted around them, soft as breath, coming from everywhere and nowhere. Too low to understand, yet disturbingly human.

Jonah cursed. “How is it whispering outside the ice?!”

Elias’s voice trembled. “It’s using sound conduction through the surface layers… it’s learned how to project.”

Soren turned in a slow circle. “No. No, that can’t be possible. It was under the ice. It doesn’t know—”

The whisper grew louder.

Words didn’t form — but the intention was painfully clear.

Mira steadied her voice. “Do not respond. Do not acknowledge. Keep moving.”

They continued on.

The whispers followed.

A constant, eerie murmur — like someone trying to imitate human speech but failing, forming sounds that were almost right but always one degree wrong.

Shadows stretched over the ice as the moon lowered. The temperature dropped another six degrees, hoarfrost forming instantly on their suits.

Vincent slowed again.

He wasn’t shaking.

He was staring.

Straight down.

“Captain…” he whispered, “look.”

They gathered around him.

Below Vincent’s feet, barely visible, a faint black smear moved under the surface.

Slow.
Smooth.
Gliding parallel to his steps.

Mira’s pulse thudded once.

“We keep moving,” she ordered.

But Vincent didn’t move.

He crouched slightly, tilting his head like he was trying to listen through his feet.

“Vincent,” Mira said, sterner now. “Move.”

He didn’t.

Because he heard something none of the others did.

A voice.

A clear voice.

It wasn’t the mimicry.
It wasn’t the whispers.

It was familiar.

“…Vincent…”

He froze.

His breath caught inside the helmet.

“…Vincent… help me…”

He took one step forward.

Aria lunged instantly and grabbed his arm. “Vincent!”

He jerked away violently — too violently.

“Don’t—” he gasped. “Aria… it’s—”

He swallowed.

“—My sister’s voice.”

Aria stiffened.

Soren swore under his breath. “Hallucinations.”

Elias corrected him immediately. “No. It’s auditory memory extraction.”

Jonah stared at him. “It dug into Vincent’s mind!?”

“No,” Elias said. “It’s been listening to us. Our voices. Our speech patterns. Everything we’ve said since we landed. It’s building a language model—”

“Like an AI?” Soren said.

Mira finished the thought.

“Like a predator learning how to call prey.”

A tension rippled across the group.

Then the whispering stopped.

All at once.

The silence was suffocating.

Elias checked his scanner.

“…It’s stopped circling.”

Jonah looked up sharply. “Where is it then?”

Elias’s voice cracked.

“It’s underneath us again.”

A sharp BOOM echoed below the ice — not the slow heartbeat, not the deep pulse.

A sudden strike.

The ice vibrated violently.

“Move!” Mira shouted.

They broke formation and sprinted the final stretch toward the base pod — all training forgotten, instincts taking over.

The entity struck again.

BOOM—CRACK!

A fracture split across the ground, racing toward them like a lightning bolt frozen into the surface.

Soren barely jumped aside as the crack shot under his boots.

“It’s herding us!” he shouted.

Elias stumbled but kept running. “It wants us inside the pod!”

Jonah gasped. “Why would it want that?!”

Mira didn’t answer — because she saw it.

The silhouette.

Now visible under the ice.

For the first time, its shape was clear.

Not a creature.
Not entirely.

Something long.
Segmented.
Nerve-like tendrils fanned outward, pulsing through the ice like veins.
And at the center — a massive dark mass the size of a small vehicle.

The shape followed them in perfect sync.

Aria turned her head mid-run and her breath stopped.

It wasn’t mimicking their steps anymore.

It was anticipating them.

Every slight turn they took… the shape glided to cut them off.

Every stumble… it slowed in advance.

Every sprint… it surged ahead.

Like it already knew where they would go before they even moved.

“Captain!” Aria shouted. “It’s predicting us!”

“Then break pattern!” Mira yelled back. “Swerve!”

They scattered, forming unpredictable zigzags.

But the shadow mirrored every motion perfectly.

Elias gasped for air. “It’s reading our bioelectric signals—brain impulses—movement intent—”

“So it knows what we’re going to do before we do it!?” Jonah screamed.

The ice shook violently.

They were only twenty meters from the pod.

The silhouette sped up.

Faster.
Faster.
Faster.

The tendrils under the ice converged.

Mira roared, “GO!”

Ten meters left.

The shadow raced beneath Jonah — directly mirroring his steps like a ghost.

Five meters.

Three.

They all reached the pod — slamming their hands onto the entry panel.

The airlock slid open.

“Inside!” Mira barked.

One by one, they dove in —

Elias.
Soren.
Aria.
Vincent.

Then Mira shoved Jonah in and leapt through herself.

The moment the airlock sealed—

CRRRRAAAAAACK!

A massive sheet of ice erupted upward outside.

A pillar of frozen shards shot five meters into the air, twisting into jagged spirals.

The entire pod shook violently.

Snow and ice blasted against the walls like shrapnel.

Inside, the team pressed against the interior walls, panting, stunned, trembling.

No one spoke for several seconds.

Then—

Through the metal walls — faint, distorted, crawling with static —

A whisper seeped in.

Not mimicry.

Not noise.

A message.

“…hello…”

“…closer…”

“…closer…”

“…closer…”

Jonah choked. “It followed us. It followed us here.”

Elias’s voice trembled.

“No.”

They all turned toward him.

He stared at the floor, horrified.

“It didn’t follow us.”

He looked up at Mira.

“It sent us here.”

Silence.

Then the whispers came again.

This time, louder.

“…inside…”

“…inside…”

“…open…”

Aria’s skin crawled.

“Mira,” she whispered, “it wants in.”

The lights flickered.

The pod trembled again.

Something scraped across the ice outside—slow, deliberate, heavy.

Vincent whispered, “It’s testing the walls.”

Jonah fell to the floor, covering his head. “We’re dead. We’re dead, we’re—”

Mira snapped, “Quiet!”

The pod lights flickered again.

Then the emergency beacon outside lit up, bathing the pod in red.

The heartbeat resumed.

Slow.
Rhythmic.
Alive.

And directly beneath their feet.

Aria swallowed.

“It learned to speak.”

Soren nodded.

“And now…”

He looked toward the trembling door.

“…it’s learning how to knock.”