Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The biting chill of the cold alpine night is the first thing that Kel notices. While home wasn’t exactly a tropical paradise this time of year either, something about the pitch-black darkness and lumbering pines made it feel colder than it probably actually was.

“So, do you know how many people are stationed at this observatory?" He asks his driver.

He soon realized, during his journey here, that his driver was a man of few words, preferring to grunt and gesture in response to any question rather than use actual words.

-Maybe I found the last living caveman.- Kel briefly thought to himself before the driver could form a response.

“No clue.”

…

-Well, at least he can talk. -he thinks as the driver opens the trunk to grab Kels' luggage.

Kel packed sparsely, only a few days of clothes, his laptop (with plenty of entertainment and useful apps pre-downloaded), phone, a few small necessities, his diploma, and a plush that he's had for as long as he can remember.

His new employers told him that everything he would need would be at the site or readily available for him, although they weren’t very forthcoming with details about his living conditions, just the nature of his work.

He was told that he would be stationed remotely in the alpine wilderness and would actively search for anomalous signals in the night sky. Exactly the kind of thing he got his astrophysics degree for. The pay isn’t half bad either, at least for a fresh graduate. On top of all that, he was stationed in the middle of nowhere, with nothing more than what his employers describe as a “minimal workforce” and the owls to keep him company.

-God, I still remember the hordes of unwashed masses that accosted me regularly back in school.-

A particularly nasty memory of a certain lab partner who was philosophically opposed to taking regular showers caused a shudder to run down Kels' spine as his suitcase is handed to him.

“Thanks, is the main base beyond that security booth?” Kel asks the driver.

“Yep” the driver so eloquently grunts

“Well, thanks for driving me all the way here.”

And with that, his travel companion of 6 whole hours gets back in his car and is gone from his life forever.

“Suppose there's nothing left to do but get walking” he states as he begins the hike of unknown length and difficulty in the middle of the night in unfamiliar woods.

-Why did I have to be dropped off in the middle of the night again?- he thinks as he continues past the guard booth until something catches his eye.

-And why the hell is the guard booth boarded up?-

Sure enough, a handful of planks stand on guard on the door frame. Kel turns on the flashlight on his phone to get a better look at the interior and finds it in a state of complete disrepair.

“It looks like no one has been in here in years. I guess minimal staffing might mean that they don’t hire a round-the-clock guard?”

Ignoring this red flag, Kel continues past the gate and makes his way down the gravel path. This turned out to be significantly more difficult than he had originally thought, as the small wheels of the suitcase did practically nothing, and he was forced to effectively drag it along behind him.

As he struggled his way towards the main base, he began to feel progressively more anxious. The pitch-black night, the wind howling through the valley, and the complete lack of any distinct noises like he was used to back home. Everything was coming together to creep him out; however, something else was contributing to his growing anxiety, something that he couldn’t quite pin down.

As he continues down the path, he finds a sign pointing in the direction he came, labeled as 'base', right next to a bridge that crosses the river flowing through the valley. Just beyond the trees, Kel thinks that he sees the vague outline of something big with a bright red light hovering at the top.

-Might be one of the satellites, the base is probably in the middle of the array.-

Looking back at the gravel path, he sees that it continues on in the same way he had been following and figures he should keep going the same way. So Kel begins his struggle down the road once again.

As he continues walking, the sense of anxiousness that started as an itching at the back of his mind has evolved into a small pit in his stomach, slowly growing with every step. Eventually, Kel begins to identify at least a part of what is making him feel this way: the loneliness. A loneliness that one can only feel when they’re walking through dark woods alone at night, and start to question whether they’re actually alone.

Quickening his pace, he finds another signpost with one arrow labeled 'gate', another as 'base', and a third arrow labeled 'whiskey'.

“I wish” he says as he continues down the path.

A short time later, he begins to see a shape forming in the darkness in front of him, along with another red light. Kel realizes that it looks a lot like that massive shape he saw earlier, and quickens his pace again to get a better look.

Finally, he reaches the base of the monolith of steel and concrete. A satellite dish, quoloqialy known as 'Juliet', according to the nameplate in front of it.

“Hot damn, I knew they were big, but it’s something else to be so close,” He thinks aloud as he thinks about the poor bastard who has to maintain these steel behemoths.

Just beyond the hill ahead of him, he thinks he sees the top of some other structure that was most likely the main base. His anxiousness had only grown worse over the course of his hike, and he would like nothing more than to get out of the open, but the opportunity to directly inspect the equipment he would be using to scour the stars was too tantalizing to give up. Besides, he would probably be cooped up in the base for most of his time here, so taking the chance to get a good look at one of the satellites would be a rare opportunity.

Beginning the climb up the obviously rusted metal stairs, he takes care not to walk too hard or fast in any one spot.

-God, this thing could use some maintenance. I can literally see the joints rusting.- Kel thinks as he moves as fast as he can along.

Reaching the top, he sees a double door made of steel with a button depressed into its center. Pressing the button, the doors open with the sound of hydraulics.

-Why does the satellite have such a heavy-duty door? Do they get trespassers here? Then why the button and not a keypad?-

Forgetting that line of thought, he walks into the room and finds a light switch to the side of the door. He sees one server rack and an integrated terminal. The server rack was alive with the sounds of cooling fans, hard drives, and countless electrical bits doing their job, whatever that is. A green light at the top of the server most likely indicated its operating status, which Kel could only assume to be functional.

After a quick inspection of the server, he turns to the terminal and turns it on with the power button. A debug screen is the first thing that pops up, with a list of commands to the right. Kel decides to test one of the commands and enters 'sv.ping' into the terminal. To his delight, a list of multiple satellites ranging from Beta to Zulu, all saying that they receive 4 out of 4 packages, which he hopes is a good thing.

With his first official act as Astronomer of this observatory finished, Kel turns to leave the satellite with a feeling of pride swelling up in his chest.

Turning off the light and leaving the small room, he is greeted by the same crisp air that he felt getting out of the car that brought him here.

*CRACK*

The loud snapping of a sizeable branch being crushed underfoot rang through the air.

Kel froze.

Swiveling his head towards the general direction of the noise, he holds his breath and feels his heart rate skyrocket. He scans the surrounding area with an attention to detail he hadn’t bothered with until the notion of something being out there with him had come up.

He stays as silent as he possibly can for 30 solid seconds as he waits for something else to happen and for his adrenaline rush to go away.

Eventually, after an appropriate period of careful attentiveness, he loosens his stance and tries to calm himself down some.

-God, I’ve been here all of 5 minutes and I’m already paranoid.- He thinks as he lets go of the breath that’s been building up in his lungs.

Chalking it up to some woodland creature bounding majestically through the woods, he begins to carefully make his way down the stairs of the satellite.

Once he reaches the ground, he continues with his walk towards the base at the same pace he had when he arrived at Juliet.

Meanwhile, an unknown observer thinks to themselves -Shit! This may complicate things.- as they slink back into the darkness as silently as they can manage.

Chapter Text

Approaching the Base, Kel can now make out more details through the darkness. The large metal structure that he saw from Juliet was actually a massive metal sphere on top of the building. The base itself is a roughly two-story concrete structure with a small handful of windows scattered seemingly at random.

Something that catches his attention, however, is the distinct lack of noise or lights coming from the base.

“I guess everyone must be asleep, it is almost midn-” He suddenly cuts off that line of thought when something occurs to him.

There SHOULD be lights and noise; this is a radio telescope, it SHOULD be operating 24/7. Either the staff were completely disregarding their duties, or there wasn’t anyone here.

Pushing that thought aside for the moment, he quickly makes his way past a large garage door and loading bay. Turning around the corner of the building, he finds himself in a small empty parking lot.

-Well, I guess if I was dropped off, then I'd bet no-one has a car, but…-

In the center of the lot was a large pile of mostly paper scraps, with other miscellaneous debris littering the ground near the building. It's a bit odd that there's a pile of trash in the parking lot, but it's possible that trash services don’t reach all the way out in the middle of the woods.

He then sees three large panes of glass on the other side of the building, and sure enough, all of the lights inside were out as well.

Walking up to the center pane, he tries to get a better view inside, but is unable to make out anything in the inky blackness.

Kel then makes his way towards the front door and finds a piece of paper taped to the side of the door with the words: 'password: 1111'

“Oh, thank god, I was beginning to think that I was sent out here alone, but there’s clearly a once-in-a-generation super genius stationed out here with me.”

Quickly punching in the so-called code, the doors open with the same hydraulic noises that the doors to Juliet had.

The smell hit him like a freight train. The unbearable stench of something that had been left to rot for far too long. Quickly turning around, Kel gets a few steps away from the door before spewing whatever was left of his last meal all over the parking lot.

It was the surprise that got to him the most. The smell of putrid rot was the last thing he thought would greet him as he entered. It wasn’t even bad enough for him to throw up, but the fact that it was there was enough for him to reach his limits.

“Ooh…*huff*... fuck man…*huff*...” he mumbles as he regains control of his bodily functions.

Spitting the residual bile and wiping his mouth some, he turns around to face the door again.

Then the realization hits him, there's no possible way that anyone has been here in months, if not years.

For a moment, Kel just stood there looking at the door, trying to wrap his head around the prospect.

“...oooOOH, WHAT THE FUCK!?!” he screams into the empty night

-WHERE THE HELL IS EVERYONE!?!-

A facility of this size should have at least 5 other people manning it at all times: 2 groundskeepers, 3 researchers (one of which was supposed to be Kel), and one on-site admin. Or at least that's what his professors told him during those long, boring lectures about radio telescope arrays. But it seemed like this entire array had been abandoned years ago. Why had his employers sent him to this site alone to do the job of an entire team? None of this made sense; the contract he signed very clearly stated that his role at the observatory would be as a technical astronomer.

Although now that Kel thinks of it, there was never any mention of his co-workers, and the contract only specified what his role and general tasks would look like, nothing that would indicate that he was going to be dumped in the middle of the forest on his own.

“Goddamnit. Gotta make sure though.” he says as he opens his suitcase.

He wraps one of his spare t-shirts around his mouth and nose to try and abate the smell somewhat, and walks through the front door.

While the room is too dark to see anything, he finds a light switch to the right of the door and flips it. To his surprise, the light that it produces does not come from inside the building, but outside of it. Pulling his head out of the doorway, he sees that the light it turned on was the patio light for the front door.

“Wonderful.” he states dryly as he pulls out his phone again for its light.

A quick look around the room reveals that it was once a welcome area, with a large, dilapidated mural on one of the walls, barely visible through years of neglect. What once would have been a nice reception is now a place you couldn’t pay most people to go into, as it was now being used as a storage area for a handful of massive wooden crates, and the ground was barely visible through the layers of garbage.

-On the bright side, I know where the smell is coming from. On the not-so-bright side, it seems like it’s coming from everywhere.-

Pushing on, he takes a look at the front desk to the right. Unfortunately, it's sealed with glass, and he’s not going to be squeezing through its gap anytime soon unless he turns into a smurf.

-Kel smurf.- he briefly thinks before turning around.

He finds a hallway with 4 doors, 4 on the right and 1 on the left. He walks up to the first door on the right and opens it. Inside is the garage that the loading bay outside leads into. Flipping the light switch by the door, Kel lets go of a sigh as it actually turns on the lights in the room. The garage is filled with just as much garbage and supply crates as the foyer, except a few items of note lie within. First is the quad that looks like a cyber truck for some reason. Then there’s a large workbench pushed up against a wall. There's also a large hole in the roof for no apparent reason. And finally, a small cargo elevator opens up from the second floor into the garage.

Walking up to the quad, Kel quickly inspects it and concludes that it looks like it's in working order, although he isn’t an expert. He figures he’ll just try to start it later. Moving onto the workbench, he finds a handful of tools, trash (because of course), and a notebook on top. Opening the notebook, he finds that someone has left him a series of recipes to turn garbage into slightly more useful scrap.

-Oh? But where will I get the trash?- he wonders sarcastically.

-But I suppose having an area to work on projects is nice.-

Looking to his left, he sees the cargo elevator and notices a small controller that he decides not to mess with for now.

Taking one last look around, he sees a door leading into what is probably the welcome desk. Walking over, he sees another keypad with its red light on, meaning it must be locked. Using the tried and tested code “1111”.To his utter shock and horror, it didn’t work. He figures that the same person who set the front door code probably set this one as well, and enters “1234” instead. Almost like the angels themselves had blessed the code reader, it flashed green and beeped a most gratifying beep.

“What's the point of having two easily guessed passwords?” he asks himself as he opens the door to reveal a small room with a desk, chair, some filing cabinets, a tacky 'hang in there' poster, and even more trash.

After turning on the lights in the small room, he finds two more switches under the desk. Flipping them on reveals that they activate the lights in the hallway and entrance. Looking around again, Kel finds that not all the random stuff lying in the room is garbage, with Batteries, a few military MREs, a data drive, and an emergency first aid kit lying around. Marking this location for later scrounging, Kel makes his way out of the room, through the garage, and back into the hallway.

Opening the second door on the left reveals a small break room with a vending machine, a couch, and a small table. Walking inside, it's still filled with as much garbage as the rest of the place, but something else catches Kel’s attention. A small stain just under the vending machine. A small red stain just under the vending machine. A blood stain just under the vending machine. A blood stain under the vending machine. A blood stain.

…

Why is there a blood stain?

The nervousness Kel felt outside begins to return, as the implications of this discovery roil in Kel’s mind. Something was going on here, as can be proven by the lack of any co-workers, but this blood stain brought into question what happened to the people who were stationed here before it was abandoned? Just what the hell kind of company was ASO? Surely, if it were caused by an accident, then it would have been cleaned up long before it could stain the solid floor.

Although with the state the rest of the building was in, maybe they did just cut themselves on something and never bother to clean it up.

Justifiably shaken by this discovery, Kel peeks into the hallway before walking towards the third room on the right. The way inside is blocked by a large wooden crate, but it looks like it's a storage closet. For now, Kel moves on since it would be a pain to actually get inside with the amount of trash in it. The final door reveals a staircase leading down to the basement and up towards the second floor, which Kel leaves for later. Instead, he approaches the final unchecked door in the hallway.

Taking note that the soda machine in the hallway only sells something called 'wug', Kel opens the final door to find a large room filled with equipment. In the center is a large control console with multiple stations, which Kel can only assume is the main signal terminal. To the left of that is a small terminal with a radar screen that occasionally blips. Further to the left is a stack of boxes on a desk nearly covering a large map of the array. Then to the right is an emergency shower filled with garbage, and another door.

Walking to and taking a closer look at the radar screen, Kel wonders -Why would this place need an active radar to analyze just the array? And what is it detecting? I’d bet that sphere on top of the base is the radar though.-

Moving onto the signal station, Kel sees an absolutely ancient desktop set up with a CRT and everything. Old tech wasn’t a surprise; it's usually easier to stick with older systems than to update a multi-million dollar system, but this thing looks straight out of the 80s. Booting it up only proves the point as it takes a few minutes for the ancient machine to rev up its engines. In the meantime, Kel familiarizes himself with the equipment around him.

He recognizes the four stations as a signal scanner, downloader, visualizer, and descrambler. But waits to test them out fully for later as the computer finally finishes booting up.

Shockingly, it took that much time just to boot an extremely cut-down OS called Meadow. The only functions available to him were: upgrades, modules, database, email, store, cameras, and photos. The email tab was blue while everything else was yellow, so he clicked on it first and revealed a message from his employer, Dr. Bao, and someone called Dr. Lea.

Reading the Message from Dr. Bao first, it told him that he is expected to manually send in drives with his data, and also retrieve codes from satellites in order to make sure that their data was accurate.

-Kinda weird that they don’t just send it through the network, but I guess with how remote this place is, a drone might actually be more reliable.-

Moving on to the email from Dr. Lea, it is a relatively straightforward welcome letter, but it also informs Kel about the points system that is his only source of supplies, and that he is expected to maintain the array while he is working here.

“What the fuck? That's not what I signed up for!”

He was supposed to be an astronomer, not a janitor. Why wouldn’t they hire an actual team? How is he expected to maintain the array, search for signals, and retrieve hash codes at the same damn time?

“Man, this is all getting to be way too much.” Kel exclaims as he sighs and massages his temple.

Deciding to leave this mess for the morning and find somewhere that he can finally sleep, Kel shuts off the computer and starts to leave the room. Before he does, he checks the second door to see that it leads to a server room with a few server racks already blinking red.

-Another problem for another day.- he thinks as he closes his door and makes his way towards the hallway.

Opening the door to the stairway, he figures the bedroom probably isn’t in the basement and decides to explore it tomorrow, and makes his way to the second floor.

There are only two rooms on the second floor. The first he finds is an empty room except for the massive piles of trash, and the other half of the elevator he saw in the garage. The second door leads to the personal area, with a small kitchen and sleeping area filled with bunk beds.

Unfortunately, the bedroom is filled with as much trash as the rest of the building. However, the smell wasn’t quite as bad, and the beds were at least free from refuse.

“Fuck it, I’m sleeping in the garbage.”

Dumping his suitcase on the ground, he opens up the door to the bathroom and finds it even worse than most of the building. And for some reason, a wooden mannequin is leaning up in the shower like it's about to bathe.

Carefully avoiding the garbage (and a hamburger on the toilet lid for some reason), Kel quickly relieves himself before leaving, removes his DIY mask, and flops down on the bottom bunk of one of the beds.

Unfortunately, his new bed is closer to a slab of concrete than something a human being would sleep on, and the aforementioned flop quickly translates into a concussion.

Trying to get as comfortable as he can into the bed, he carefully places his glasses on the nightstand next to the bed and begins to let his mind drift.

He begins to think about and slowly processes everything that had happened that day. Being driven to the middle of nowhere for his job, getting freaked out in the middle of a forest, the bloodstain in the break room, and the realization that he was alone out here. He thinks about how every new discovery in this place just led to more questions than answers, how everything about it just seems a little off. Just then, Kel realized the scope of his situation. He has been lied to, stranded in the middle of these weird woods, and is forced to stay in a horrifically dirty building with a questionable past.

He begins to feel tears form in the corners of his eyes, and a tightness in his chest begins to take root, before the sensation of losing consciousness dulls the pain of his emotions.

Chapter Text

Kel opens his eyes groggily, his head feels like it's filled with molasses, and his body feels light. Reaching for his nightstand for his glasses, he only feels the cold, hard ground. Jumping up, he finds himself in a cubic room with black and white checkered walls, ceiling, and roof.

Kel immediately starts to panic. He has woken up in an unknown place, and everything is hazy like he's been drugged. This can’t be good.

Looking around, he is barely able to make out a square desk in the center of the room. On top of the desk is an assortment of unintelligible objects which vaguely resemble office supplies.

As he takes a step towards the desk, he notices something else. The walls are slowly moving inwards.

With no obvious escape, his fight-or-flight response is triggered. He sprints to the desk to find something that might help. Nothing on the desk jumps out to him as immediately useful, and facing the walls once again, he finds them only a handful of feet away from the edges of the desk.

Panicking, Kel decides to hide under the desk, in the area where someone’s legs would normally go. He’s able to barely squeeze under, right as the walls reach the edges of the desk. He hears the wood of the desk groan under the pressure. The top layers of the varnish begin to splinter, with long strips of it jumping off every surface. One particularly long strip flies off like a whip and hits Kel squarely in the cheek.

Kel barely notices as he's occupied with the imminent threat of crushing. As the sounds of wood straining continue to grow in pitch and volume, he sees the top board begin to flex inward. The feet of the desk are lifted off the ground as the entire structure begins to flex upwards.

For a fleeting instant, the wood ceases creaking, the only noise being Kels' laboured breathing. The air is tense with the anticipation of what comes next. Kel can only imagine what will happen next and brace himself.

A final deafening crack fills the entirety of Kels’ being before-

…

Kel jumps as he’s suddenly awakened.

With his heart racing and his entire mind filled with the terror of the nightmare, it takes a few moments for him to become aware of his surroundings.

He was on the ground, right next to the bunk he decided to sleep in. He was covered in a cold sweat, like the nightmare had lasted hours before he finally awoke.

Reaching up towards the nightstand, he fumbles with his glasses before he’s able to get them in place on the bridge of his nose. Eventually, he can get control of his breathing and calm down some.

-What the fuck was that? Why did it feel so real?-

It didn’t feel like any dream he’s ever had. It was just all so real. That was genuine panic that he felt; he truly believed that he was going to be crushed.

“God, this new job must be getting to me if I have such an awful nightmare about a desk…” Kel says, as an alternative theory comes to mind.

“...ooooor I’ve finally manifested my powers as an oracle, and this is a vision of great tragedy in these most auspicious of times”

Kel chuckles to himself as he lifts himself off the ground and takes a look around. It was very early in the morning, still mostly dark out; however, the first of the sun's rays were beginning to peak over the horizon, giving the entire valley a slight red hue. There was just enough light to make out some of the more hidden trash that he had failed to recognize last night. Some garbage was hidden behind the desk, a few stains on the carpet and walls, and even more garbage was hiding in the corners of the cabinets. Kel lets out a sigh as he realizes that his day is going to be spent cleaning the entire base.

But first, he needs to try and reach out to his supervisor to figure out why the hell he has been abandoned in the forest on his own. Failing to notice the thin scratch on his cheek, he leaves his room to start his day.

Making his way through the halls and to the signal room, he boots the computer again. He had hoped that they would have sent another email better explaining his situation, but all he sees are the two emails he received last night explaining his role and tasks. The most obvious solution was to email them back, but Kel quickly found that there was no option to send an email. A quick look through the options on the OS proved that there was literally no way to directly contact his supervisors.

-What the hell, what am I supposed to do if I get injured or some crazy shit happens?- Kel thinks when he remembers a way he can contact them.

-Oh yeah, the drone. Still a shitty system, but at least I can send them a letter.-

Pulling up Bao’s email, he sees that he is supposed to attach a note to the drive box when he sends it in. he figures that he can use this to send him a letter asking why no one else was here and why the base was in such a state of disrepair. Finding a notebook next to the PC, he writes out his letter and rips out the page it was written on. As he walks out of the signal room, he grabs one of the drive boxes from a table in the corner.

As he’s walking towards the garage, he thinks it a little strange to send a whole box with nothing in it just to send the letter. Noticing an old banana peel that had been left for so long that it had turned entirely black, he gets a brilliant idea. Grabbing the peel and throwing it in the empty box, he continues to make his way towards the garage.

-If nothing else, it’ll make my point about the state of the base.- Kel rationalizes as he reaches the garage door.

Pressing the button on the side wall, the large metal shutters begin to screech open.

Kel immediately drops the box to cover his ears with his hands. It barely does anything to abate the sound. Eventually, the door finishes opening, and Kel adds lubricating the tracks to his to-do list.

Setting the box in the drop-off area in the loading bay, he calls the drone with the call box inside and waits. After a minute or two, he looks at the panel and realizes that it has an indicator that shows how far away the drone is. Realizing it will take a while for the drone to arrive and even longer for it to get back to headquarters, he makes his way back to the signal room.

“May as well try and get some signals going while I have the time.” he says as he sits in the swivel chair in the middle of the processing equipment.

Remembering his classes from his college days, in particular a class that taught some of the basic systems used in radiotelescopes, he recognizes how the panels are supposed to be used. First, the signal has to be locked onto, then downloaded by synchronizing the frequency of the signal with the equipment, and finally, the signal can be played and saved.

One of the panels, however, Kel doesnt entirely recognize. Taking a closer look, Baos' message comes to mind with how he may request different “levels” of drives.

“Ooh, it’s probably a denoiser. I’ve read about them, but Dr. Johansson said most radio telescopes don’t keep them on-site, so he didn’t bother teaching about them.”

Looking at the panel, it doesnt look so complicated that he can’t figure it out, but for now, he’ll focus on getting a signal before processing it.

At that moment, the radar announced the arrival of a new entity in the valley.

Kel freezes for half a second as he considers what or who could possibly be in the valley with him. Then he hears the distant whirring of propellers and remembers that the radar scans for “entities”, which probably just means it scans anything that moves.

As the whirs of the drone get louder, Kel walks outside and sees it hover over the base, slowly at first until it reaches the drive box, at which point it takes off faster than his eyes can keep up with and makes its way back to wherever it lived.

“Damn, it's got some horsepower to it.” He says as he makes his way back inside.

Sitting down again, he begins to lock onto a signal. It takes a few tries as a couple of signals fail to initialize, but he eventually locks onto one. Once he does, he hears the massive dishes of the satellites begin to turn in unison. A choir of steel titans obeying his every command. It was a feeling of power that made Kel feel like he should build himself a throne of the finest garbage he could find.

Eventually, the dishes finish their gargantuan movements, and the signal image begins to download on one of the screens. Remembering his education, Kel adjusts the polarity and frequency filters so that the signal can be cleanly downloaded. Getting both values as close to 100% as he can, he feels satisfied with his first real signal searching when the PC rings with the sound of a notification.

Another email from Bao reads;

Hello Dr Kel,

Thank you for reaching out to us with your concerns. While we understand your apprehension at taking on extra duties, we feel that we must remind you that the contract you signed clearly outlined all responsibilities that may or may not be expected of you during your time at the Alpen Signal Observatory. You will be expected to actively search for signals, and maintain the grounds and its equipment. While collecting daily hash codes isn’t mandatory, it is highly encouraged as it provides a significant points bonus. We feel that the compensation promised at the end of your time here is more than substantial enough to justify a workload of this scale.

Regarding the base, we were unaware that it was in such a state and have authorized the sale of waste in exchange for extra points. We ask, however, that you only send items you wish to sell in the appropriate packaging. Your daily tasks have been put on hold for today to allow you some time to clean and acclimate.

If you feel that you are unable to perform your duties at the Alpen Signal Observatory, then an appropriate replacement can be found and sent in your place.

Best,
Dr. Bao

With the mention of his compensation and the vague threat of replacing him, Kel remembered why he took the job in the first place.

He was a fresh graduate student in a highly competitive field. He was insanely lucky that Ena was willing to suggest him for such a well-compensated role. He knew he wouldn’t be able to find anything that pays nearly as well, and he had already spent many months desperately looking for a job. The only reason Ena suggested him was because he couldn’t find anything else. If this is what it took to be financially stable and start a real career, then he didn’t care if he was on his own. Hell, if he thought about it, his new job sounded almost like a vacation. Sit around all day looking for signals from deep space in a remote alpine forest with his necessities provided by his employer. He knows at least 2 other people who would jump on an opportunity like this.

Feeling much more confident in his new home, Kel then realized that they said they were going to pay him for his trash. Immediately realizing how profitable this could be given the sheer mass of waste in the base, he then thought about how he would sell it.

If he couldn’t sell it using the drive boxes, he needed to find out how he could. Bao hadn’t told him how, just that he could, so Kel assumed that there must be some way to do so. Deciding there might be some items he needs to sell, he checks the store.

Being the first time he sees what is available to him, he’s shocked at the variety and quantity of goods available. Some of the items were obviously for his job or decoration, but some seemed so specific that he couldn’t think of a situation he’d ever need any of them.

“Why would I ever need a radiation suit?” he says when he remembers the email from Professor Lea mentioning a future nuclear reactor. Maybe they were just preparing for it to be available in the future?

Deciding to shop later, Kel finds an item that might be what he needs; the sell gun. Unfortunately, it costs a whopping 2,000 points, far beyond anything he can afford with his current situation. Moving on, he finds a section labeled containers and sees an item box that only costs 50 points.

“That could work if I’m able to send it to HQ like the drive box.” He says as he adds it to his cart, along with as many trash bags as his meager starting budget allows.

Looking at the download screen, he finds that it is only 35% finished, and with his delivery going to take a while, he decides to get a head start on cleaning the base.

Starting in his living quarters first, since he doesn’t want to sleep in a pile of rotting garbage again, he makes his way upstairs and enters his room.

Beginning with the trash on the floor, he makes a large pile in the center of the room with all of the trash. Once that’s done, he makes his way to the deck outside and begins to collect the trash out there when he notices the parking lot. He realizes that while he cares about trash in his room, he doesn't care if there is any trash in the parking lot, so he quickly transitions the pile in his room to the parking lot.

With his room in a satisfactory condition for now, he turns his attention to the restroom. It was particularly nasty, with trash filling the shower and practically covering the floor. But it was no match for Kel’s ingenious waste management skills, and was quickly made into a significantly nicer area. He placed the mannequin on the outside deck before deeming his quarters worthy of his temporary residence.

-It’s still pretty bare, and I need to figure out what to do with the extra bunks, but at least the smell has started to dissipate and the room has started to resemble a place someone might actually want to live.-

Satisfied with the progress he’s already made on the base, and only somewhat worried by the growing pile of garbage in the front of the building (seriously, how did anyone even produce this much waste?), Kel makes his way downstairs to begin cleaning the terminal room when he remembers the basement.

“Oh yeah, I guess I should check it out” he says as he redirects down the second flight of stairs.

Finding a light switch, he finds the basement is divided by a wall.

-Kinda weird it’s just in the middle of the room, must be load bearing-

Turning the corner, he finds a cluttered room filled with storage crates, shelves with random scrap parts, some dividers, a breaker panel, a large furnace, a heavy bulkhead door, and, of course, a monumental quantity of garbage.

-Oh my god, it smells even worse down here-

It did indeed smell like something had been left to rot, but unlike the rest of the base, it didn’t just smell like a few scraps left in the open but like an animal had died somewhere in there. Trying his best to cover his nose until he acclimated to it, he moved around the room to inspect the areas of interest.

First was the massive furnace in the corner of the room. It was enormous for a building of this size, easily able to fit an entire person inside it. Then Kel considered that in a remote area of the Swiss Alps, it can probably get incredibly cold during the winter. On the side of it was a control panel with a few simple labeled controls and a gauge labeled “output”.

-Probably a temperature gauge, weird it’s not more detailed though- he thinks as he moves on to the bulkhead.

And bulkhead it was, a solid steel door with a window with glass so thick it could be considered bullet-proof. Glancing through the glass, Kel finds the source of the smell - a handful of carcasses hanging from the ceiling. It was a massive meat locker like you would find in a deli, and it was filled with what seemed to be rotting beef. Massive pools of various fluids stained the floor, and the meat itself had developed a sickly yellow-grey colour.

“Ah fuck.”

“The freezer must’ve broken down when no one was around.” Kel mutters as he considers why an industrial meat locker is in the base in the first place.

He’s going to have to remove the meat at some point, but if it smells this bad on the other side of the door, then it must smell like death inside.

Leaving that task for another day (it only really smells bad in the basement anyway), Kel goes to leave the basement, but stops just before turning the corner to the stairs. For a brief fraction of a second, he swears that he saw movement out of the corner of his eye coming from the meat locker. It was so fast that Kel could’ve written it off as his mind playing tricks on him, but just to be sure, he turned his head to face the meat locker.

He waits for something to happen for a handful of breaths until he’s assured that it was just his mind playing tricks, and continues up the stairs, shutting off the light as he leaves.

…

The drone with its sell box and trash bags had been delivered while Kel was in the basement. He thinks it would be easier to get all of the trash in the building in the parking lot first, though, so he leaves the box and bags on top of the workbench before getting back to cleaning.

The rest of the day was spent removing trash from the rest of the base and checking in on the signal room to prepare some signals for the next day. After checking out the basement, Kel looked into the supply closet and found some basic cleaning equipment. The most useful of which was a broom that Kel used to sweep everything on the ground from the rooms, into the hallway, and then out into the parking lot. The garage took a bit more time than the rest of the rooms since mixed in with the garbage were useful items like jerrycans filled with gasoline, some tools, and bits of old tech that Kel realized he should hold onto in case one of the things he couldn’t replace broke. He also pushed all the garbage in the second room upstairs and the front desk through the garage. For the room upstairs, he just called the elevator down to the garage and swept the garbage down onto the platform.

With the smell finally beginning to dissipate, Kel was finally satisfied with the progress he had made on cleaning the base. He would deal with the pile of trash tomorrow; for now, he would just review the signals he collected throughout his cleaning spree and eat something before ending his day.

Kel had been collecting anything he thought could be useful while cleaning throughout the day, and he had collected a not insignificant pile of hard drives that he knew he would need for signal downloading. Placing them on one of the desks in the room, he then walks to the signal station.

Sitting down, he began to play the signals he downloaded. He didn’t download them to the drives yet, so that he could review all of them before archiving them. He was able to get three finished while he was working, and a fourth signal was sitting at 87% and would be done once he finished listening to the first three.

The first signal was from mercury, a garble of electromagnetic static with no intelligible meaning. The audio itself was high-pitched, with the visualizer showing that most of the signal was within the high-frequency range. Most likely not a unique signal, but it still may be of value to the researchers back at headquarters. Saving a copy of this signal to his PC and labeling it ‘Mercury - 1’, he saved it to a drive and set it aside.

The second and third signals were equally as mundane, being a signal from an asteroid and another signal that the equipment couldn’t label, so it was just named ‘unknown’. The signal picked up from the asteroid was mainly in the lower frequency range and was relatively uninteresting. The Signal from the unknown object was slightly more interesting, with variations in its pitch making it sound warbly, with the visualizer spiking at random points with the audio.

Perhaps once he can process the signals further, he might find something worth sharing with his colleagues.

Just as Kel finishes saving the signal to their respective drives, the fourth signal finishes with a ding from the terminal. Turning to face it, he absentmindedly saves the signal to the console and goes about finding another signal to let download while he rests. Locking onto a particularly strong signal, he waits for the dishes to turn and then locks the polarity and frequency into place to let it download.

He’s about to stand and leave the room to head upstairs when he remembers the final signal.

Turning towards the visualizer, he selects the only signal still on it and presses play.

…

That’s not right.

…

Something must be wrong with his equipment.

…

Why would there be two Doritos in space?

…

Kel takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes; maybe he’s just too tired from cleaning all day.

Looking back at the screen, he sees the same thing as before: two grey triangular objects floating among a black background.

Then the audio picks up, with a flurry of unintelligible noises, garbled by the emptiness of space.

This sudden discovery sends his mind into a state of analysis and rationalization. These are clearly not naturally forming shapes. Their proximity and relative stillness imply intentional grouping. The audio sounds like some sort of language, however garbled and unintelligible it may be. It sounds like there are two voices given the difference in pitch between sentences. Was it a conversation? Were they communicating over radio? Are these satellites? Why were they so close? Why would satellites have a conversation? Kel’s never seen anything even resembling them. Could they be military?

As the perspective of the object changes, he sees that they are closer to an elongated pyramid. What are they? Where are they? Why are they here? What are they talking about?

Then Kel notices something he was too distracted to notice earlier. Instead of the usual [no text data found], a string of letters formed to make unknown words in the text visualizer, disrupted by occasional hashes, most likely caused by data loss.

œhæs #### hœœd æn ###### katu ######## #### ge #### æn ezin liut ##### nogeoz ki riuk ro ÆkÆg #### ke ezin de #### #### ### iz #### ##### œg #### ##### æk el læ ######## luohœg ########## æg se akœdru ni θœ ægsu ###

Outside the base, lounging in one of the tall pines, an observer has been watching the human all day. The observer had already been inside the base once before (they haven’t been since because of the smell) and knew the layout, but even still, it was hard to keep track of the human if he wasn’t outside or near a window.

The human had been cleaning all day, intermittently going to the large room with big windows and messing with his equipment.

The observer had been told the purpose of the facility: to search the stars for electromagnetic signals. They figured that the human must be the facility's new operator and caretaker. The observer had been assured that the facility had been abandoned for years, so why was someone here now?

Lazing in the trees all day quickly became boring, and the observer had already fallen asleep a couple of times.

Now it seemed like the human had finished his cleaning for the day and was working with his machinery. Believing that nothing of note was going to happen for the rest of the day, the observer stood and prepared to return to their shelter.

Before they did, they took one last look at the human. He was frozen, staring at one of the screens of his device. He had gone pale, and his extremities began to shake as though he were shivering.

This was far from the relaxed and focused image he presented throughout the day. The angle the observer was at gave them an unobstructed view of the screen, so they focused on it to see what had stopped the human in his tracks.

The observer then froze too, and began to shake as much, if not more, than the human.

-OH FUCK-

Chapter Text

All Kel could do was sit and stare at the visualizer screen. For a solid 5 minutes, he couldn’t even bring himself to think about it; he was just staring at it, unmoving, without a single thought in his mind. Slowly, a loud buzzing had entered his peripheral hearing. His heart rate began to increase subtly, and he broke out in a cold sweat. Tremors slowly rocked through his body, several muscle groups tensing from the sheer anxiety alone.

By the time he’s aware of his surroundings once again, he finds himself in a full-blown panic attack.

-Oh god oh god oh god oh god this is bad really bad oh fuck man I gotta get myself under control first then deal with the… oh fuck me...-

His breathing had been even and measured until Kel realized his state, at which point he devolved into ragged breaths interrupted by the tensing in his chest and the quiet sobs stuck in his throat. He found himself hyperventilating uncontrollably.

He felt a primal fear rack him, suffusing the entirety of his being. It felt like his fight-or-flight response had been hijacked. He has some experience with panic attacks before. While he was in school, more than one had occurred while preparing for particularly difficult finals. As far as he knew, they were entirely uncontrollable, but the inability to control his own feelings on such a scale still scared him.

It felt like the weight of the entire universe was crushing him. He felt it in his chest, like an invisible force was coming from every direction, focused entirely on his heart.

Everything came together to make him feel both overexposed and unable to move.

Somehow forcing himself to sit back in his chair, he begins to focus on his breathing. Every time he thought that he had finally reached a steady pace, tension would build up in his chest until he was forced to go back to hyperventilating. His heart rate was too high, and no matter how much he tried to calm down, it only seemed to beat faster and faster.

-Okay. Okay. Okay, if I can get the muscles in my chest to loosen, maybe my heart will stop trying to explode, and I can get my breathing under control.- He thinks as he begins to massage his chest.

After some time, he can feel the muscles surrounding his lungs and heart begin to relax. With the pressure in his chest also starting to recede, he is able to regain control over his breathing. Focusing on taking deep, steady breaths, he continues trying to lower his heart rate.

…

It takes even longer for his heart rate to return to a normal level. By the time Kel is able to breathe normally again, it is already dark outside. Checking the clock, He sees that it had been 2 hours since the final signal finished downloading.

He was exhausted. Every muscle in his body had been tensed for who knows how long. It felt like he was thrown into a saltwater taffy puller and stretched and pulled until he was nothing but mush.

The fear still lingered, as was proven by his paranoid stares into each dark corner in the room every 10 seconds, but it wasn’t quite as potent as it was a while ago. Even the buzzing in his head had started to dissipate.

“Oooh god…” he says with a deep sigh.

-Fuuuck, that was really bad, haven’t had an attack like that in a while. I should probably go to sleep, it's already late enough anyway.

After taking a few minutes to collect himself, Kel started to shut off the computer when he remembered the signal. after the first half hour, he had somehow forgotten about it entirely. Something like this is exactly the sort of thing his employers would lose their shit over. He considered sending it in right now, but his sore body recoiled at just the thought of doing any more than the bare minimum. Besides, with how much of a hardass Bao was in his email earlier, he would probably berate Kel for sending in a drive he didn’t explicitly ask for. Quickly saving it to his computer and naming it ‘unknown_2’, Kel puts it onto a drive and shuts the computer off before leaving the signal room.

The Stairs presented a daunting task to Kel in such a state. However, inspiration struck Kel as he was leaving the terminal room. Instead of turning left in the hallway towards the stairs, he heads right towards the garage. Heading to the lift, he gets on it and lets it carry him up to the second floor.

-I’m so smart- he thinks to himself with a flat smile as the lift reaches the second floor.

Stumbling off the lift and trudging his way towards his bed, he tumbles into the room through the hydraulic door. Briefly looking at the fridge, the idea to eat something comes to mind, but the thought alone is enough to make him nauseous. No, he is sleeping now, whether it’s on his bed or on the floor. Barely keeping conscious as he takes the last few steps toward the bed, he falls straight into it. He doesn’t even stay conscious long enough to feel the impact; he falls asleep mid-fall.

Finally, the lonely astronomer could escape into the void.

The observer had suddenly become incredibly invested in the actions of this unknown human and the equipment they used to intercept an alien message. That had been two Short warp arrows in orbit. They should be completely invisible on even the most modern Ariral systems, but somehow, he was able to intercept part of a conversation and even a complete image of the ships.

However, the contents of the message were what was most disturbing to the observer.

Most of the words were garbled beyond comprehension by distance, but what was there told them everything they needed to know.

The Shorts were looking for someone on Earth, and if they had to bet, they were looking for the observer.

This revelation was disturbing, but orbital analysis can only reveal so much. Still, the fact that they knew they needed to look off-planet meant they were much closer than the observer ever thought they would get. Luckily, it would still take them some time to find anything substantial, and a more pressing issue presented itself. An earthling just found undisputable evidence of intelligent life.

This was an unacceptable outcome. The Ariral government had taken extreme measures to ensure that Earth's natives would not discover their presence in the system. Huge operational budgets had been established just for the sake of keeping their existence a secret. Millions of man-hours have been dedicated to the subtle research of the human race. It was only a temporary measure; first contact had been their long-term goal, and their leaders had claimed that initial reconnaissance would be critical in ensuring a peaceful first contact.

But this human not only knows about their presence, he has hard proof of it. This could destroy everything they had worked towards for years, even lead to an aggravated first contact. That could not come to pass under any circumstances.

Something would have to be done.

That’s when the observer made the decision to delete any data the human had gathered so far, and, if necessary, eliminate the human if he proves to be a threat.

The Observer did not have any time to contact their superiors, and besides, the observer doesn’t believe they would have an issue with them prioritizing the elimination of such delicate information. For now, though, the observer would wait and watch the human's reaction. It could provide some invaluable data on how humans would react to the existence of extraterrestrial beings.

…

For some time, the human had just stood there looking at the screen, with only the most microscopic movements. He had stopped blinking for 3 minutes and 14 seconds, and his breathing had become incredibly shallow. The Observer's helmet was able to display some of the human's basic physiological states, including heart rate, body temperature, and even had an AI-assisted analysis of their most probable actions.

The suit itself was an advanced stealth recon model, with light indis plating, active camouflage, noise suppression, and a million other functions intended to allow someone to maintain long and unsupported scouting actions. It had been gifted to them before they left for Earth.

The AI had been working as intended all day, analyzing the human and predicting where they would clean next given their previous actions, but now it was having a difficult time figuring out what the human would do next. It would predict that the human would run out of the building screaming one minute, then that they would just go back to work the next. But the only thing the human did was stand there.

At some point, the human began to show signs of life. Erratic twitches travelled across his whole body. The heart-rate monitor showed a steady increase in his BPM, and eventually, they sat down in the chair in the center of the equipment and clutched their chest.

This behavior confused the observer.

-What is the human doing?-

They could tell that the human was clearly in distress, but why? The situation was fairly intense, but there wasn’t really anything to think over. He should send the data to his supervisors, but he hasn’t. Why was he just sitting there? Why was he so visibly distressed when there was nothing he could do about his situation? Why wasn't he doing anything? Doesn’t he know that he needs to take action at such a critical moment?

But the human just sat there, breathing heavily with his eyes closed. If he weren’t so tense, the observer might think he would fall asleep right there. Hadn’t he been trained for crises?

As a child, the observer had the tenets of logical problem solving and task prioritization drilled into them through children's games. Their society greatly valued self-reliance and the ability to act quickly. The games they played in their youth had been specifically designed to train their decision-making abilities. What humans would call riddles and “would-you-rather’s” had been popular pastimes of the observer, with a quick response always being more impressive than a witty one.

The indecision and emotional state of the human displayed such a difference in culture that the observer struggled to understand the thought process of the human they watched.

-Is this how all humans act?-

There they sat in a one-sided stalemate, the observer waiting for the human to make their next move and the human struggling to do so.

…

Eventually, the human seemingly calms down and gets up from their desk. The observer tenses their entire body as they prepare to rush in and intervene, depending on what the human decides to do. Instead of compiling the data they’ve gathered, though, the human just fiddles with their computer some, leaves everything in its place, and exits the room.

The observer wasn’t worried about the human sharing data via the computer. The location was so remote that it didn’t have cable-based communications, and the transmission tower was only capable of low-bandwidth data transfers. The human would have to physically share the data with other humans, which was probably what the drone that had appeared in the valley earlier that day was for. However, for some reason, they weren't making any effort to share their discovery.

Having lost visual of the human, the observer scours the building to see where the human appears from next. The observer sees him appear in the windows on the second floor, from one of the storage rooms that they remember avoiding because of the mess.

-How the hell did he get up there? I thought the stairs led directly to the hallway?- the observer wonders before straining their eyes to get a better view of the human. They saw the human was dragging their feet and barely keeping their eyes open.

-Oh, that must mean they’re tired, but are they really just gonna go to sleep?-

Looking through one of the windows into the bedroom, the observer saw the human walking into the room with all of the beds made of metal tubing in it. The human briefly stopped to look at a white box in the corner of the room, before shuffling towards the window the observer was using to spy. The observer then jumped as they watched the human collapse onto what they assumed to be the floor.

“Oh shit!” The observer said as they dropped from the tree and sprinted towards the human structure, activating their suits noise suppression as they ran

-Was the strain of whatever that was really enough to give them a heart attack!?!- they thought as they reached the stairs leading into the base's front entrance.

Instead of forcing their way in, they get the idea to just look in through the window they saw the human collapse from. Using their long legs to jump an entire story, they got a solid grip on the safety railing of the balcony and pulled themself up. Crouching low and allowing their equipment to keep them unseen, they slowly approach the window.

The interior of the room was revealed as the observer drew closer. A thought of how much better it looked, not covered in refuse, briefly distracts the observer before they’re able to get closer. Their attention was immediately drawn to the human sprawled on a bed once the observer had gotten less than a foot away from the window.

“Oh good, they just fell asleep.” The observer whispered.

-Wait, I was ready to silence him if he tried to share that data. Why do I care if he’s alive?- The observer stopped to think.

The most immediate threat the human posed was immediately sending the data to whoever he worked for. Since he decided not to do this for whatever reason, that means he will be the only person who will see the signal. There have been plenty of humans who claimed to see aliens, some of them even had seen some, but no one ever believed them due to the lack of substantial evidence. This lonely human stranded in this forest would be no different.

As long as the observer deletes all of the data, there will be no need to eliminate the human. Besides, they were under strict orders to remain inconspicuous and avoid any unnecessary conflict. And it's not like the observer wanted to harm the human, but if he became a threat, then they would have had no choice.

“Lucky you, little humie” the observer said under their breath as they started to back up from the window.

Before they left the window's field of view, an item captured their attention.

A piece of paper was set on the desk on the other side of the room from the human. It was decorated with some fancy designs and read:

University of Djavulen
By the authority of the University of Djavulen, Upon recommendation of the faculty and approval of the board of trustees and by virtue of the authority invested in them hereby bestows upon

Kel

Doctorate Degree in Physics Astronomy

-Huh, this…-

They stopped for a moment to read the name again.

-...Kel may be smarter than he looks- The observer thinks as they smirk under their mask.

Continuing to back up from the window, the observer turns around and throws themself off the balcony. Landing gracefully thanks to the inertial dampeners within their boots, they then turn towards the front door.

It was locked with an electronic keypad that required a specific 4-digit code. The last time the observer had been here, they found a note saying it was 1111, but maybe this ‘Kel’ had changed it since he had arrived.

Inputting 1111 again, they were disappointed to discover that it still worked.

-.....Maybe he isn’t as smart as I thought-

With the door unlocked, the observer opened it with a push of a button and entered the building.

The human had made incredible progress on cleaning the building. It didn’t smell nearly as bad as it had the last time the observer had been in it. And they could actually see the floors now!

Making their way through the halls to the room with the large windows, they enter and immediately scan the room for the data they are looking for.

It takes a few seconds to look over the entire room, but a small pile of white objects made themselves apparent to the observer thanks to their bright indicator lights.

They looked like the data storage devices that humans used to interface with their digital computers, but the number of devices and the red indicator lights led the observer to quickly move on.

-If I remember right, humans associate the colour red with negative connotations. The red lights probably mean that they are empty- The observer thinks as they move onto the equipment station, the human had been sitting in.

Having a quick glance at the technical instrumentation, they noticed four hard drives with green lights on top of them.

“Bingo” The observer says as they scoop the drives up and turn to leave.

As they’re walking toward the exit of the room, they think about the pile of unused drives in the corner. What if the red light doesn’t indicate a lack of data? What if the indicators have some alternative use other than showing if they have something on them? After all, this is entirely alien technology. Ancient by the observers' standards, yes, but alien all the same.

-I don’t want to take anything I don’t absolutely have to, but better to be safe than sorry with such dangerous information- they rationalize as they approach the pile of drives.

Scooping up as many as they can with their hands and then looping their tale around two that they couldn’t fit in their hands, they make their way as quietly out of the base as possible. Once they had closed the front door and locked it back up, they broke into a sprint across the parking lot, over one of the trails that scattered the property, and into a particularly dense patch of forest. Once inside the forest, they used a trail of UV markers they had placed to find their camp.

Finally arriving, they dropped the pile of drives as their arms and tail had grown tired of carrying so many small items at such strange angles.

Their camp itself wasn’t much of a camp at all. At least not the bottom of it, which was just a small pile of some of their equipment and their warp arrow in stealth mode. Their real camp was in the canopy itself. A one-room tree-house nearly 50 feet in the air. It had taken the observer a full two months to build it. Not because it was incredibly complicated, but just making sure that it was secure in the trees and getting all of the materials in place at strange angles. Plus, preparing all of the raw materials using the small matter converter on their ship ended up taking forever. But it was worth it for a secure, safe place for them to stay. It also gave a fairly good view of the valley, which is how they saw the human vehicle approaching from the lonely gravel road that dropped off their new human neighbor.

Disengaging the warp arrows' stealth mode, they pick up one of the drives from the ground and use a scanner in their suit to analyze the technology. Thanks to how simple most human technology is, their ships' matter converters can create an adapter that the warp arrows onboard computer can interface with. After waiting a few moments for the converter to assemble the adapter, they plug it into one of their ship's ports and plug the drive into the adapter. The contents of the drive are then displayed in the observer's helmet's HUD. The only thing on the drive was a signal from one of the solar system's planets, Mercury, and it wasn’t much more than a garble of noise.

-Huh, I guess this is the usual stuff he finds out here.- The observer thinks as they grab one of the drives with a red indicator light.

The observer's initial assumption that the red lights mean nothing is on them is proved right as they see the empty drive. Plugging the rest of the drives with green lights, they eventually find the drive with the signal of the ariral ships.

“Finally,” they say as they download the signal to their ship's computer, remove the drive, and snap it in half with their bare hands. They do the same with the rest of the drives, even the empty ones (they already stole them, might as well be sure), and begin feeding the scraps into the ship's small matter converter.

Suddenly, a loud voice and a huge face that abruptly enters their entire field of vision causes the observer to jump a clear 6 feet into the air.

“ROTZELI ARE YOU OKAY!?!”

Chapter Text

Argemia, the leader of the Tall Arirals, had been elected by popular demand. Throughout her life, she had proved herself to be the most devoted, caring, compassionate, and intelligent leader at the disposal of the Tall government. When the time came for the previous senate leader to be replaced, it had been a landslide election that led to her taking up the mantle as the leader of her entire society. Since then, she had led with grace and elegance, proving to the entire universe the capacity of her people.

At the moment, however, she was appearing as a disembodied head screaming about 2 inches away from Rotzeli’s face. 

“GAAHHH! ARGE! Tœœg! Why would you call me like that!?!” Rotzeli screamed at her suddenly bashful leader.

Backing up a bit from her camera, Argmeia replied, “Oops, sorry sorry sorry, but are you okay!?! I was just notified of short activity in the system. Has anything happened down there?” The worry in her voice is evident. 

“Well… it’s kinda hard to explain but…” Rotzeli began to explain

“WAIT DID SOMETHING ACTUALLY HAPPEN OH FUCK ARE YOU OKAY PLEASE TELL ME THEY DIDN’T HURT YOU NARU I SWEAR I’M GONNA GUT THAT DICT-” 

“STOP, I’m fine, and I already know about the shorts in orbit.” Rotzeli is forced to interrupt her impatient leader. 

“Wait, what!? How? Your warp arrow doesn’t even have the equipment to detect other warp arrows. Even I didn’t know about it until just now.” Argemia asks.

“Like I said, it’s kind of hard to explain, but I’ll try to as best I can.” Rotzeli says before diving into the events of the past 2 days.

She explained how a human had arrived in the forest and how he had taken residence in the old building at the center of the valley. How he had arrived unannounced in the middle of the night, how Rotzeli had nearly been caught immediately because of a stupid stick, and how he had a bit of a freak out when he arrived at the building. Quickly summarizing how he had been cleaning the whole day, and how he had ended up in one of the rooms with the station's signal equipment.

Rotzeli then explained what she knew about his work, which was admittedly not much, just that he had been searching for deep space signals, and the archaic equipment looked like it needed manual operation to function. She eventually got to the point where the human had intercepted a conversation between two warp arrows in orbit. 

“Whoa wait, a human with what is effectively a box full of copper wires detected a warp arrow? How is that even possible? Even our most advanced systems can only detect warp arrows under certain conditions.” Argemia stated, shocked. 

“I have no idea, I’d say I was almost as shocked as the human when I saw what he had found.”

“I’ll have to discuss this further with the defense minister, and potentially begin an inquiry, but regardless, is the human still in possession of the signal?”

“No, I was able to retrieve all of the data he has gathered up to this point. I have a copy of the signal and destroyed all physical traces of it.” Rotzeli reported.

“Good, but how did you get the data from the human?”

“I snuck into the main building once he had gone to sleep. The data was stored on analogue drives, which I just grabbed and ran with.” 

“Hmpf, while I wish you had consulted me before putting yourself at unnecessary risk,...” the last part tinged with genuine worry, “...I’m glad you were able to secure the data without putting the human at risk.”

The last part of that sentence stood out to Rotzeli.

“Why is the humans well-being of such great concern?” Rotzeli asked with a slight tilt of her head. 

“What do you mean? You know that you aren’t to place any humans in a position of danger, you were told that before you were sent to Earth.” Argemia said.

“Even if said human poses a threat to our efforts at staying unknown to the rest of the humans?”.

“Yes, even then.” Argemia punched back.

“I…see.” Rotzeli says as her ears flatten to her skull.

“Rotzeli. Did you do something to the human?” Argemia asked in a flat tone like that of a parent trying to figure out what exactly a disobedient child had done while they were away. 

“No, the human didn’t even know I was there.” Rotzeli defended herself.

“Oh thank the stars.” Argemia said while releasing a held breath.

“...But I was prepared to silence him if he tried to share the data with someone else.” Rotzeli admits. 

“Oh for fucks sake.” Argemia says with a slight smack of her head.  “What did I tell you to do if you came in contact with a human?” 

“...To maintain a safe distance, avoid them if at all possible, and not cause any harm.” Rotzeli recites as though she were being tested.

“Exactly, while I understand the weight of the situation, that order still stands. We can’t afford our first contact with the humans to be built upon a stage of blood.” 

“Alright, I can’t hurt the human, but I’m not staying here for long anyway, so what does it matter?”

“Why do you think you’re leaving?” Argemia asks with a slight tilt of her head.

Rotzeli just looked at Argemia with a blank face for half a second before saying; “Because the shorts know where I am? I can’t stay here.”.

A short sigh escapes Argemia’s mouth before she says; “They only know the planet you are on, they still don’t know exactly where you are.”.

Rotzeli is stunned. Surely Argemia can’t think it's a good idea for her to stay on earth. If they already know what planet she’s on, who knows how much more they’ll be able to figure out. The shorts are feared across the galaxy for their intelligence-gathering capabilities; that’s why she had to leave her home in the first place. 

“If they know that I’m here, then how do we know they won’t be able to find me! What good will keeping me here do?! Why can’t I just come back and hide somewhere on Iedra?” Rotzeli explodes at Argemia.

Caught somewhat by surprise, Argemia is forced to quickly recompose herself before responding.

“A number of people were involved in the process of bringing you to earth. With how the shorts operate, I’m not surprised that they discovered the planet you are on. Your exact location, however, is only known to myself and one of my most trusted aides. The location itself was also chosen for the simple fact that the shorts would never even think that we would hide you there. Earth is a big planet. It would take them decades to analyze the entire surface, and even then, they still wouldn’t think to look for you where you are. I beg you to trust me when I say they don’t know where you are.”.

The explanation was logical and made sense, but something other than logic was pushing Rotzeli to want to leave.

“I’m sick of this planet, I’ve been stuck in this god forsaken forest for 3 months now. I want to go home.” she says, starting to choke on her words. 

A pang of guilt shoots through Argemia as she sees the now tearing up ariral in front of her. She knows that everything has been hard on Rotzeli and would love nothing more than to bring her home, but…

“Listen, Rotzeli, you are the last surviving witness of a serious international crime. You have no idea the impact your discovery has had on our society. You would just be in more danger here.” Argemia tries to explain to her friend

“I don’t care! I don’t want to sit here doing nothing! I want to fight the shorts with you!” Rotzeli cried, now fully embracing the tears that came to her. 

“Do you have any idea the state we’re in?! The Shorts are working with the Rozitals to develop their own wormhole stabilizers! They shot down a whole cruiser to keep it quiet! Now they’re scouring the known galaxy to silence you! The only survivor of the attack! We are on the brink of war, for God's sake!” Argemia exploded.

This brought Rotzeli back to her senses. That’s right, she’s not the only person her time in the forest is impacting. She isn’t just here for her own safety but for the sake of her entire society. If she were to die, she couldn’t testify against the shorts. They might get away with everything they’ve done so far.

-I won’t let that happen.- she thinks as her resolve returns to her. 

“Oh shit, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.” Argemia says with a deeply apologetic tone. 

“No, you’re right. I was being selfish. I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not being selfish, you just want to come home. You’ve suffered the most out of anyone throughout this crisis. It’s not fair, but I promised to keep you safe, didn’t I?

“Yeah.” Rotzeli plainly states as she fully gains control over her emotions.

After the incident, Rotzeli had been interviewed by every high-ranking staff member there was. It had taken days for them to finish with their questions, and throughout it all no one even thought to make sure she was okay. She found herself collapsing into a never-ending pit of misery. A deep depression made it hard for her to continue answering questions. The officials interviewing her had sent her to a psychiatrist to get her talking again, which only proved to Rotzeli that no one cared enough to actually talk to her. That was until she met Argemia, who was the first person she had met to offer her condolences. She was the first person in days to talk to Rotzeli, not about the incident, but about how she was doing. It was such a sudden and needed relief that she broke down in Argemias' arms right then and there. After that day, Argemia would meet with Rotzeli to simply talk. Rotzeli never dreamed that she would be casually conversing with the leader of her entire society, but Argemia was the only person to reach out to her when she needed it most. 

Nearly a week after first meeting Argemia, a staff member at the hospital she was being kept at was caught trying to sneak into Rotzelis' room. They were equipped with a dagger, las-pistol, and a needle filled with enough neurotoxins to kill everyone in a 1-kilometer radius. Once discovered, the spy had injected themselves with the toxin, dying near instantly. 

That’s when it was decided that Rotzeli needed to be put in an informal witness protection program. It had taken only a day for the location to be decided upon, supplies gathered, and a system in place to avoid as many people as possible from knowing her final destination. Rotzeli still isn’t entirely sure why this forest in particular was chosen, but she trusted Argemia. 

“I trust you, Arge, I know this is what’s best. It's just hard.” Rotzeli tells her only companion. 

With as gentle a tone and look as she could muster, Argemia said; “I know. I’m doing everything in my power to bring you back, but for now that forest is still the safest place in the galaxy.”.

The genuine care her now closest friend was showing for her brought a warmth to Rotzeli. 

“So I’m sticking around for the foreseeable future, right?” she asked.

“Yes, I’m sorry, but there's nothing more we can do right now.” Argemia answered.  

“Guess I’m stuck sitting around for a while then.” Rotzeli says with a light snort. 

The boredom of being stuck in the forest had been something Argemia had tried to consider, sending Rotzeli away with some light entertainment. Just then, a thought occurred to her.

“If you’re so bored, why don’t you keep tabs on the human. Most of our knowledge of them is from listening in on their communications. We haven’t had many chances to observe them directly yet.” Argemia proposes. 

“Why? It’s not like he will be doing anything of interest.” Rotzeli responds

“Well, I’d say discovering an alien species is something of interest, and besides, you were already spying on him without me asking you to.” 

“I wasn’t spying on him! I was making sure he wasn’t a threat!” Rotzeli argues with a defensiveness that Argemia wasn’t expecting.

Although it does give her an idea.

“Hmm, yeah, a human shows up in your forest, and the first thing you do is stalk him for a full day. Yeah, you’re not interested in anything he does.” Argemia says, with a monumental amount of mischievousness lining her tone. 

The tips of Rotzel's ears shift to a reddish hue as they lowered towards the ground. 

“A-anyone would have kept tabs on him.” Rotzeli defends herself.

“Yeah sure sure.” Argemia says, waving a dismissive hand.

…

“Do you know his name?” Argemia asks.

“What”

“Do you know his name?” she asks again.

“Why would I know his name?” Rotzeli asks.

“I don’t know, but do you know it?” Argemia says.

“What would it even matter if I knew his name?” 

“Do. you know. His name.” Argemia asks, drawing out each word to emphasize her question.

…

“Kel” Rotzeli states flatly as she looks away from Argemia. 

Argemia makes absolutely no effort to hide her shit-eating grin.

“Oh fuck off, I’ll keep tabs on him, but only because you asked me to.” Rotzeli states, asserting the end of the topic. 

“Of course, stay safe out there.” Argemia says, only dropping the look of glee from her face for the last part. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll call you if anything happens. I was going to anyway once I destroyed the evidence.” Rotzeli says.

“My line is always open.” Argemia says

With that, the line is disconnected, and Rotzeli is left alone once again. 

-Damn, she can be a pain- she thinks as she packs her warp arrow back up and activates its stealth mode. 

Climbing the limbs of the tree, she hoists herself into the treehouse that was her home for the foreseeable future. 

Changing out of the indis stealth suit and into a more comfortable lab coat, grabs a pack of nutrition paste from one of her storage crates and eats it while lounging on the cushion she uses as a bed. 

Once she’s eaten, the day catches up to her, and her eyelids grow heavy. Just as she’s about to drift to sleep, an errant thought enters her mind before she can even think to censor it.

-I wonder what Kel is dreaming about?-

Chapter Text

A vague memory of a summer afternoon. A hazy idea of bright flowers and birds chirping. 

It felt good. Kel didn’t want to leave even when he felt a chill shudder through him. 

He tried to ignore the feeling and bask in the sun's rays, but another, more intense, shudder racked his body. 

Confused as to why he was so cold on such a beautiful day, Kel looks around. He sees a massive thunderhead in the far distance. 

Once he sees the rain falling from under it, he begins to feel it. A pitter-patter of freezing droplets. 

A final massive shiver runs through him.

And he awakens. 

It had been a pleasant dream, but Kel unpleasantly finds that he has woken up in the parking lot in front of the base. 

It was the middle of the night, and a freezing rain fell around him. A storm must have rolled in while he was asleep, but how did he get outside in the first place?

-What the hell? Did I sleepwalk or something?- He thinks as he lifts himself off of the wet ground.

As he is rising to his feet, he notices something off.

Or rather, the lack of something.

The parking lot was completely empty. Not a single speck of the garbage he had collected there remained. 

Kel’s fight or flight response was triggered once he noticed the absence of refuse. Something was deeply wrong. He shouldn’t be outside. The parking lot should be filled with garbage. Something is happening and Kel hasn’t got a clue what it is. 

Looking around with greater attention than before, Kel notices a handful of things that shouldn’t be the way they are, such as the quad sitting near the entrance. 

-I definitely haven’t touched that yet, it should still be in the garage!-

He turns quickly to see more of his surroundings when he feels something heavy tugging on his back.

- A backpack!?- He thinks as he reaches towards the straps on his shoulders. 

Sure enough, a backpack he doesn’t remember bringing with him to the valley is nestled upon his shoulders. Pulling his arm out of one of the bands, he angles it so that he can see what’s inside. He opens the zipper to the main pocket and finds…

“Beer bottles and pipes?” he questions aloud. 

Bewildered by the discovery, he takes off the backpack and sets it aside to inspect later. Right now, he still needs more info on his surroundings. 

Looking around once again, he tries to identify anything that is different from what he remembers. 

It didn't take long for him to see a 3-foot-tall structure made up of looped copper piping standing on top of the concrete shed he saw on the other side of the parking lot while he was cleaning. It had a set of heavy cables leading from the device into the forest behind the shed. 

“What the hell is going o-” Kel begins to say before a bolt of lightning strikes somewhere in the forest. 

In that brief moment, his immediate surroundings are illuminated. Kel sees everything around him in excruciating detail. Among a handful of new discoveries, something more immediately worrying demands Kel's attention. 

The rain falling around the radio tower looked wrong. 

The subtle pattern of rainfall hitting the tower didn’t match the actual structure. 

A roughly 1-meter-wide area on the side of one of the steel beams had no rain falling through it. 

Kel froze. That brief moment of light didn’t last long, and he could barely make anything out in that brief time, but he could swear that something was on the side of the tower. 

Straining his eyes against the now returned dark, he struggles to make out the shape again. He then sees a trail of water trailing to the ground from the bottom of where he saw the shape. Like the water was collecting under something physical and falling to the ground in a stream. 

-a force field?????- He wonders in utter shock. Of course, nothing like that existed, but what else could it be?!

Kel stares at this phenomenon for some time, dumbfounded. 

His staring is suddenly interrupted when the shape moves. 

Jumping in shock, Kel tries to track the shape through the rain, but it is impossible to make anything out and quickly loses sight of it. 

He then hears what sounds like quiet footsteps on wet ground. Focusing on the noise, it sounds like it’s coming from the radio tower. Kel panics once he hears the footsteps get slightly louder and the clack of something hitting concrete. 

Falling backwards, Kel can only watch in horror as the abstract shape reappears 5 feet in front of him. He can see the shape getting closer faster than he can react; it quickly shifts to one side before…

BANG

“FUUUUUUUUUCK!!!” Kel screams as tears stream down his face. 

He had smacked his head into one of the metal bars of the top bunk with enough force to instantly give himself a headache. Falling back to the bed, all he could do for several seconds was hold his head as he teared up. 

Eventually, the pain had subsided enough to drop his hands and open his eyes. The sun was streaming into the room through the window. It had been another dream. 

“Hmm, my oracle powers are starting to get a little weird.” Kel says to no-one in particular. 

-God, seriously, is there a gas leak in this room? Why have my dreams been so fucked up?-

Looking at the clock on the nightstand, he sees that it is already 12 PM. He had slept through half of the day. The worst part was that he was still tired. His muscles were still sore from his panic attack yesterday, and he can’t imagine that the nightmare helped his overall rest. 

“Uuugh” Kel groans as he begins to stretch his body towards the end of the bed. Instead of actually getting up like a normal person, he decides that wriggling his way towards the ground like a worm is the better option. He eventually reaches the precipice of the mattress and feels his left half fall with the right half following shortly after. He promptly lands on his face and yelps as his still tender head is smashed on the concrete floor. He then rolls over onto his back and stares at the ceiling.

“...Did I give myself a fucking concussion?” He asks, trying to rationalize whatever the hell he just did. 

Leveraging himself to his feet with his elbows, he begins to plan his day. 

-First, I gotta shower and clean up, then I should eat something. One of the MRE’s should do. I can clean up the base some more throughout the day, but Bao has probably already asked for completed drives. I can start looking for signals immediately, but the drives I got yesterday should…-

Kel stops just as he passes under the doorway to the restroom. 

-Oh shit…. That’s right...-

In the glorious few minutes after he awoke, Kel had completely forgotten about the alien signal he discovered yesterday. Once again faced with the reality of his situation, he sees himself in the bathroom mirror. He splashes some water on his face both to clean it and to clear his thoughts. Unfortunately, it does little to quell his growing annoyance. 

“Goddamnit. The discovery of a lifetime, and I just freaked out and went to bed. I should’ve sent it to headquarters the second I figured out what it was.” He berates himself. 

Deciding that his morning routine was less important than the discovery of a deep-space UFO, he wipes his face off with one of the grimy towels on the wall and makes his way to the signal room. 

Thanks to the signal searching the day before, he has already developed a quick routine when entering the signal room. Walking to the instruments and turning on the computer, he sees that the email tab is blue. Clicking on it, he finds a new email from Dr. Bao. It reads;

There is a task for today:

You need to bring us these signals:

1 signals of level 1

Reward: 35

And check these satellites and make a report:

Kilo

Foxtrot

“Heh, oh you’ll get a signal all right.” Kel says.

Reaching to the left of the computer where he had left the drives yesterday, he finds…

…Nothing…

Blindly feeling around the area to no avail, Kel turns his full attention to the spot where the drives should have been. 

For a moment, Kel just sits staring at the spot as though the empty space itself had done something to offend him. 

-What? I thought I left them right here?- He thinks as he begins searching the rest of the station for the missing drives. On the desk, the stations themselves, on top of the station. He begins to stalk the room looking for the drives when he notices something else is gone. 

-Wait, where are all of the empty drives?- he thinks as he approaches the table that he had dropped all of the empty drives on the night before. 

That’s when the idea of losing the only evidence of alien life brutally forced its way into his head. 

-There’s no fucking way I lost the drives.- He thinks as he begins to search the room frantically. Moving every piece of furniture that can be moved, he desperately searches the room from top to bottom. Breathing heavily and unnerved, he thinks -Maybe I moved the drives and forgot, yeah, I should look around the base just to make sure.-  

He makes his way through all of the rooms that he has been in so far, excluding the basement. From the break room to the bathroom, he searched every corner he could think of where the missing drives might be. At one point, he thinks he found a clue outside of the garage where a single empty drive and MRE sat waiting for him, but he quickly remembered that his employers said they would supply him with the bare minimum essentials and figured that the MRE and drive must have been delivered in the night. Only after checking every room once more and doing a full walk-around of the base does he conclude that the drives are truly gone. 

“FUCK!!!” he yells into the air. 

-What the hell could have happened to them?!? I can’t tell people I found aliens when I don’t have any- He begins to think when he cuts himself off.

-Oh shit! I downloaded it to the computer!- Kel thinks before practically sprinting back to the signal room, but not before veering off and swiping the drive from the loading dock. 

Entering the signal room and sitting back at the computer, he finds the signals tab and sees the signal named ‘unknown_1’.

“OOOHHH Thank god!” he cries as he selects ‘play signal’ and listens to the alien words. 

After confirming that it was in fact the earth-shattering discovery that he thought it was, he plugged in the last drive he has, uploads the signal from the pc to the visualizer, then from the visualizer to the drive. Holding the data drive now worth its weight in anti-matter, he feels a prickle of fear over something that means so much to not only himself, but to potentially the entire world.

He’s about to pack it in a drive box and send it off to Bao when he remembers the email. He is supposed to send two hashcodes with the signal. Considering whether he should just ignore that and send the signal immediately, the thought that Bao might disregard the signal because he couldn’t verify that the satellite dishes were working properly convinced Kel to grab the codes before sending in the drive.

-Hell, I can use the extra points anyway.-

Throwing the drive in his pocket, he grabs a notepad on the desk, writes down ‘Kilo’ and ‘Foxtrot’ with space for the code as well as a quick reminder for himself that he needs to enter ‘sv.hash’ in the satellite terminals. Walking to one of the tables in the room, he pulls out a framed picture he saw briefly in his search for the drives. He thought it looked like a map, and lo and behold, it was. A simple black and white image of his surroundings from a top-down view with multiple locations marked with single letters. Given the names of the satellites, he figures they must use the NATO alphabet for naming. He quickly finds Kilo to the west and Foxtrot to the east. 

Making his way out of the building, he begins to walk towards foxtrot first. As he walks, he begins to think about the missing drives. Where could they have gone? He would understand if he had misplaced one or two in the confusion of last night, but every single one?

“And why specifically the drives? Nothing else is gone.” he thinks aloud. Most of them were empty anyways.

As he walks, he thinks about this mystery more. The path splits at multiple locations, each time directing him to a different satellite with the same green signs. Foxtrot ends up being on top of the hill next to the main base. The short hike leaves Kel short of breath and distracts him from his thoughts long enough to reach the satellite. Walking up the rusty steps, feeling just as uneasy as when he climbed Juliet, he makes it into the satellite and enters sv.hash into the terminal. 

After copying the code, he leaves the building. Stepping out into the brisk autumn air, Kel feels a chill run down his spine. A sense of deja vu from his first night here. He feels the hair on the back of his neck bristle as he remembers the snapping he heard in the forest when he had left Juliet. 

A thought occurs to him then.

-What if someone stole the drives?-

The thought alone was enough to get the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. The revelation that he was alone was shocking enough, but the idea of someone stalking through the forest he thought he was alone in was far more concerning. 

-But why would anyone steal the drives? Would someone have known what I found? If so, why didn’t they check my computer?-

He makes his way down the metal stairs and towards Kilo, all while trying to understand why someone would be out here and why they would steal his drives. He was so engrossed in his thought process that he barely even noticed as he passed the main base. 

Once he had made it to the bridge behind the base, he had to pay attention to the trail again to make sure he was going in the right direction. But that didn’t stop him from asking himself even more questions. 

-Where would they even be staying? Surely I would have noticed something if someone was living in the valley with me. Could they be the government? Maybe I’m a part of a cover-up now.-

That last thought of some shady organization or even ASO themselves covering up the existence of aliens excited Kel, but that might just be because he loves a good conspiracy theory. In the end, there are too many unanswered questions to come to any reasonable conclusion. But…

“...The drives are gone” He mumbles to himself as he makes it to the bottom of Kilo. 

That was an irrefutable fact. For one reason or another, all of the drives he had collected had disappeared. Whether a man-in-black snuck into his base or Kel buried them all in the forest in his sleep, they were gone. 

He walks up the stairs and into Kilo, he retrieves the hashcode, writes it down, and then leaves. 

On his way back to the base, he still tries to think over the situation with the drives, but just runs into more and more logical dead ends. He has no leads, suspects, evidence, timeline, nothing. Just the fact that the drives are gone and the idea that someone might have known what was on them. 

-Then why wouldn’t they check the computer?- he thinks with a tinge of annoyance from coming to the same conclusion once again. 

Reaching the base, he heads to the signal room and quickly adjusts the equipment to search for a new signal. Checking the signal that had just finished downloading, he sees that he found an uninteresting patch of noise coming from the asteroid belt. Pretty boring compared to the signal he’s been keeping in his back pocket, but maybe Bao will pay him more for extra drives.

“Might as well test out that theory.” He says as he retrieves a drive box from a table in the room. 

Packing both drives in, he then tears the page with the hashcode from his notebook and slaps it on the box. Carrying it to the garage, he hits the button to call the drone. While he’s waiting for it, he thinks that he should send a message with his first delivery, regardless of what he’s sending. 

He finishes writing his message right as he hears the whine of the drone's motors. He rushes to place the box in the delivery area and swipes the MRE he forgot to grab before the drone begins to lower itself. He watches as the drone gently floats down to the box like a whimsical fairy, before quickly latching onto it and launching itself into the atmosphere. Standing for a minute as he watches the drone leave the valley, Kel thinks about the message he left for his bosses.

I’m starting to think I’m not getting paid enough

He smiles to himself as he walks back to the signal room. Sitting down, he lets himself do nothing for the first time in what feels like weeks but has really only been two days. He sits with nothing but the beeps and whirs of the machinery around him for entertainment until the computer chimes with the sound of a notification. 

-That must be Bao.- He thinks as he straightens up in his chair, excited to see what his employer thinks of his discovery. 

It turns out to be two emails. One from Bao and one from Enara. Ena’s reads; 

You did a good job Kel, this piece is very good and the data is very clear. Congratulations on your first signal!

-What?- was the only thing Kel could think. 

If she saw what he did, she would lose her shit almost as much as him. And why did she make it sound like she only saw one signal?

Clicking on Bao’s message, Kel quickly realizes why. 

Nice job. 35 points have been awarded. 

And I just got the report and checked it, seems fine

+50 points

As a quick reminder, please refrain from sending in any unnecessary letters or data.

…

“Son of a bitch” Kel says aloud.

“He’s pretending that the signal doesn't exist.”

Chapter Text

Kel awakes with the vague memory of running away from large boulders. As he wipes the sleepiness from his eyes, he forces himself out of bed with a groan. Grabbing his glasses from the nightstand, he shuffles his way towards the restroom so that he can start his day. 

It has been two weeks since Kel discovered the alien signal. In that time, he had developed a daily routine. 

The first thing he does is wake up from whatever nightmare he was having that night. Every night is a new terror, whether it's running away from 8-foot copies of the mannequin he found in the shower or being sent on a fetch quest for endless hamburgers. Kel is no stranger to weird dreams, but there hasn’t been a single night when he hasn’t been accosted by the horrors of his mind. He can’t explain how or why, but he feels like he has some specific goal that he can’t quite pin down until he’s already awoken from it. Whether it's staying out of the grasp of the mannequins for long enough or collecting a certain number of hamburgers, He never really knows until he’s achieved the “goal”. 

-At least I haven’t messed up in any, don’t wanna know how much worse I’ll feel if I wake up thinking I’m dying.- He had thought after waking up from a dream where he was running a seemingly endless hallway. 

There have even been a few repeat dreams. He swears he’s had the nightmare where boulders chase him around a room at least three times right now (including last night). His least favourite, however, is still the dream he had on his first night. The one with the walls closing in on him. Luckily, he hasn’t had that one again yet, but the sensation of being crushed wasn’t one Kel would like to repeat anytime soon.

Ena had always talked about how dreams were your connection to the aetherial, but Kel was never convinced by her rants. Some class that he can’t remember the name of taught that nightmares were the byproduct of some sort of stress, and he’s put far more stock into that theory than whatever Ena had tried ot convince him of. 

He can’t exactly control what he dreams about, though, so he’s gotten into the habit of taking cold showers as soon as he wakes up to try and get himself in gear for the day. At first, he tried to tell himself it helped with the rough mornings, but that was most likely just him trying to convince himself he liked the cold showers. In reality, the base had no hot water, an unfortunate fact he discovered the hard way. Thinking back, he couldn’t remember seeing any water heaters, but he knew that once winter came, he’d have to find a way to clean himself without catching hypothermia. 

After cleaning himself, he leaves the restroom, clothes himself, and gets straight to work. Every morning, Kel would spend roughly a half-hour or so saving the signal he would leave to download overnight, and start downloading a new one that could download while he retrieved hash codes. Last night's signal turned out to be noise from the asteroid belt. A quick listen revealed nothing of note, so he saved it to a drive and stashed it with his growing pile of signals. 

Looking at his pile of stashed data, Kel is reminded of the alien signal he had found. No one had acknowledged the existence of the signal, especially not Bao. After thinking about it some, Kel couldn’t blame anyone. It was most likely classified as soon as he sent it in. 

Just statistically speaking, if he had somehow managed to capture an image of an alien spacecraft within his first two days of working at a satellite array, then surely plenty of other people have found evidence of extraterrestrials, too. If anything, Kel would bet that intercepting and classifying stuff like that was an everyday occurrence for whoever had stopped his signal from reaching his higher-ups. 

The thought alone of an all-powerful organization controlling the knowledge of aliens was enough to reignite Kels' fascination with conspiracy theories. In his spare time, he would try and research his discovery on his own with the meager resources at his disposal. Granted, the only real resource he had was an app that let him download everything on Wikipedia and bring it with him into the forest. It wasn’t a perfect solution, as more than once he found the remnants of an internet argument that had leaked into forums, but the ability to bring the entirety of human knowledge with him on his laptop still impressed him. 

He had even started his own little conspiracy board in his room. Purchasing some red string from the store and a camera that was able to print an image from his computer, he was able to put together a few connections. It was still comedically small, but it made him feel like he was a part of something bigger. Otherwise, he couldn’t really do anything about the situation. He might be able to leak the signal to the press, but he figures if someone was able to stop his colleagues from seeing the signal, then they would have a way to stop him from sharing it with everyone else. 

For now, the signal sits in a few drives that he has stashed around the base, with one being buried behind the bunker in the parking lot. The bunker that no matter the codes he input or cards he scanned would open. Not even smacking the door with his bare hands opened it, much to Kel’s dismay. 

Refocusing on his morning task, he searches the open sky for a new signal to download while he runs his errands. After he finds a signal and the satellites begin to rotate, he checks his email for the daily email from Bao. The email with his daily tasks is sent at exactly 12 AM every night. Kel briefly considered whether Bao actually stays until midnight to send him his tasks, or just schedules the email for that time. His train of thought is interrupted when the realization that he doesn’t actually care about what Bao does hits Kel. 

Today’s list of tasks included two drives and the hashcodes from Romeo and Xray. The list of satellites Kel would have to visit had expanded to include even the furthest locations from base. 

“The satellites had better be randomly selected. If I find out Bao is sending me to the furthest ones on purpose, I’ll send him more trash,” Kel says as he finishes writing the satellite names in one of the notebooks he found around the base. 

Making his way to the garage, Kel finds the quad that has become a necessary tool now that he has to travel to the edge of the property regularly. The device wasn’t too complicated; two gears to go forward and backward, a parking brake, a single button to start the engine (not a key, which Kel was expecting), and a gas tank that would have to be filled regularly. While not too difficult to learn, Kel still found himself nearly getting thrown off every time he tried to drive it to the satellites. With his poor eyesight, Kel had a hard time gauging the terrain in front of him, which made it hard to figure out the appropriate speed. At one point, he had nearly driven straight off a cliff on his way back from a trip to Satellite November. Luckily, a glint of light in the trees ahead of him caused him to stop and get a better look. Only when he came to a full stop did he realize that the earth would have fallen out from under him only 15 feet ahead.

After that day, Kel decided to always go a bit slower when he couldn’t drive on the trails. 

Starting the Quad with a puff of smoke, Kel carefully leaves the garage and drives towards Romeo.

The property itself was nowhere near as big as Kel had thought when he had first gotten here. On a trip to Tango, he had seen a fence not too far away in the forest. Getting a bit closer, he saw a long fence topped with barbed wire that seemingly travelled the length of the northern portion of the valley. Given the dispersion of the satellites and the distance from base, Kel guess-timated that the Gated off portion of the forest he called home was only about two square kilometers. 

“Well, at least I don’t have to worry about wild animals ringing my doorbell in the middle of the night.” He had said to himself as he was inspecting the fence.

As he drove off the marked trails and crossed the hill that the observatories' windmills stood atop, he saw the smoke of transformer 3 billowing in the distance. Kel assumed that the windmills provided all the power to the array, and the substations were used to power the satellites. On one of his earlier expeditions across the property, he had stopped at transformer 3 to inspect the site. It was in an even worse state than the base had been, with the trash of the floor so dense that it was spilling out of the front door and into the forest. It was a quick stop just to see what the building that had smoke coming from it was, but once he saw the electrical equipment, he decided not to test his luck and just leave it alone. 

Driving past the transformer, he winds up at Romeo, where he climbs the rickety stairs. Inside is the usual console where he enters the commands and writes down the code. Leaving the room, he’s left feeling somewhat dissatisfied coming out this far for such a simple and easy task. 

-There had to have been a better way of setting this system up.- he thinks as he mounts the quad and makes his way to Xray. 

As he’s driving through the forest, he finds himself in a tract that he hasn’t been through yet. Subconsciously trying to pay more attention to his surroundings, he spots something through the trees that catches his attention. A short section of gating that seemed too far from the edge of the property to be the perimeter fence. Altering his trajectory, he makes his way to the fence.

Lying at the top of a hill just behind satellite Yankee, an abandoned camp lay dormant. On one side was a handful of temporary buildings with two ancient excavators lying in a state of disrepair. Just behind those was a large pile of gravel and stone. And finally, a small fenced-off section with a concrete foundation had a selection of equipment lying around. 

Setting the brake on the quad, Kel first looked through the temporary buildings. They were mostly empty save for some scattered garbage and a large number of bunk beds. As Kel is leaving the last building, one that had been stacked on top of another, he sees a small pile of even more bunk beds sitting around in the open.

-With the number of beds here, this place could’ve housed at least 16 people. Was it for construction workers?-  

Leaving the buildings, Kel heads for the gated-off section. A quick inspection reveals that a portion of the fence had collapsed in on itself after years of neglect. Carefully crawling over the mess of metal, Kel is able to look closer at everything within the fence. There was a handful of supply crates, some scattered MREs, a handful of jackets that looked suspiciously like his own, and a variety of tools surrounding him. 

But the most attention-grabbing part of the area was the grated barrier that covered a hole in the earth. Leaning over to get a better look, Kel finds that he can’t see the bottom of the hole. Looking away from it, Kel realizes what the pile of gravel is. It’s trailings from whatever ASO was trying to do here. Given the diameter of the whole (only about 1 meter in width) and the size of the gargantuan pile, Kel wouldn’t have been surprised if the hole went down for a few kilometers.

“Well, now being the scientist that I am, I have to test how deep it is.” He said, trying to justify his ancient instincts telling him to throw something down the deep hole. 

Grabbing a piece of rock from the ground, Kel dangles it over one of the holes in the grate and tries to keep his hand as still as possible before he lets go. He watches as the small stone is swallowed whole by the unyielding darkness. He focuses his attention on the sounds around him. The wind whistling through he trees, A bird singing its song not too far away, the sound of his own heart beating in his chest, but he never hears the sound of the stone hitting the bottom. 

“Damn, must be at least two kilometers deep.” He said with absolutely no evidence to support his claim. 

Looking around once more, he sees a piece of paper sitting on one of the workbenches. Approaching it, he finds that it has been ruined by exposure to the elements, but the words are still barely legible. It read;

Day 41

We finally got more financial support for our mission

We can go deeper this time.

But today i noticed something interesting, the hole made one deep bassy sound. 

Couldn’t record it and i don’t know if it was naturally made sound, but it sounds like really deep metal squeak. 

This hole is pretty weird.

“Wait, did they try going down this hole?” He asks, shocked. 

It was so far down, what could anyone even be looking for down there? And why were they worried about funding? Was it not ASO doing this?

Looking to the ground, Kel finds a winch that supports the idea that people were trying to go down into the hole. Kel wasn’t able to make too much sense of it, but given the untouched condition of the camp, he started to get a little unsettled by being there.

He folds the paper and is placing it in a pocket on the inside of his jacket when he steps on what he assumes is another piece of trash. Looking down, however, revealed that it was in fact not a piece of trash, but a drive.

Specifically, it was a drive with a green light.

That was the last thing he was expecting to see out here. Picking it up, Kel looked at it with a perplexed expression for a few seconds before throwing it in his pocket. 

Hopping out of the fenced area, he starts his quad and continues onward to Xray. 

As he was leaving, Kel was reminded of another strange area that had been fenced off was a large aspen grove near satellite Oscar. When he first saw it from the trail, Kel had driven the Quad to the edge of the fence and tried to look inside the grove. From his perspective, however, He wasn’t able to make out what was in the grove from outside the fence. He had tried to find an entrance to the area, but instead just ended up walking around the grove for half an hour. To his despair, no matter where he was, he couldn’t see into the center of the trees. Deciding that he can come back to try and trespass later, he continued with his hashcode collection for that day. 

The drive from the gated off hole to Xray only took a few minutes. Once there, he entered the satellite's server room ready to get the hashcode and leave when an unusual sight stopped him. Instead of the usual green of an operating server, the rack was imbued with the dreaded red of failure. 

-Wait, the satellite servers can fail?- He asked himself internally. 

Up to this point, Kel was under the assumption that only the servers at the base could fail. He had tried to avoid messing with anything that was too technical, but was forced to learn how to fix them after one of the larger signals took an entire day to download. Luckily, it wasn’t too hard to reset them; he just had to answer a handful of simple math questions, and the server would go back to being functional once again. He had actually felt a bit ashamed that it had taken him so long to figure out how to reset them when he could’ve had the array running perfectly the entire time. 

“I guess they just needed a recalibration for their calculations, wish I knew that earlier.” Kel had said after restarting all the failed serves in the base. 

But the servers in the satellites failing presented a new challenge.

-How am I supposed to know when they need to be restarted?- He queries when he remembers his first night at the array.

When he was checking out Juliet, he entered one of the commands on the side of the screen. It showed him whether or not the satellite was sending or receiving packets. That night, everything was green and working, but maybe he should’ve been using that command more regularly. 

Walking up to the terminal, he finds the command he had used his first night, ‘sv.ping’, and enters it. Sure enough, Xray and a couple of the other satellites showed that zero packets were getting through. 

“Damnit, now I feel stupid.” 

He may have been, in fact, stupid. But now that he knew, he restarted Xray’s server and recorded the hashcode. For now, the signal download speed wasn’t too bad, so he would try and get to the failed satellites tomorrow during his hashcode run. 

Now armed with the dreadful knowledge that there's one more thing he needs to manage while he’s here, Kel leaves Xray and drives back to his base. Being so far away, he’s a little lost, but he knows, based on where he is, if he heads East, he’ll eventually find the river, which will lead him back to base. 

And sure enough, driving west through the forest, he eventually finds the river. He followed it to the north until he saw the bridge he had walked past on his first night. Crossing the bridge, the rest of the way back is the same trail he’s been traversing while working in the forest. Reaching base, he puts the quad away, refills its gas for the next time he needs to go out, and empties everything he found in semi-organized piles around the garage. 

…

The rest of the day is spent like any other. He sends in his daily report and revels in the points that inundate his account. Some time is spent cleaning a few stubborn stains in the server room. At one point, he tries to crack open another supply crate in the hallway. He had been trying to open them up with some rocks he found in one of the lockers, with little success. He was able to clear out everything in the garage so far and separate the goodies from them, but there were still a lot scattered around the base. He’s able to open one more in the foyer, but the effort just to open one of them left him too tired to even look through the contents of the crate. 

By the end of the day, Kel finds himself in the signal room, chilling out with a TV show he had downloaded to his laptop. As he was messing with it to select the next episode, the entire room went suddenly dark. The lights had gone out completely, and all the noise of the base was gone, replaced by the somber sounds of the forest surrounding him. The shock from the base going dark was as startling to Kel as the absolute silence that followed was disturbing. After checking the signal terminals and confirming that the power was in fact out by flipping the light switch multiple times, Kel thought about what could have gone wrong. 

-I remember seeing a substation in the forest just outside the base, but I can check that out after taking a look at the electrical breakers in the basement.-

Using the flashlight on his phone to make his way down to the basement, Kel was once again hit by the stench of the meat locker as he made it down the stairs. 

For weeks, he had been trying to avoid the fact that he needed to clean it out, but just the thought of the massive slabs of meat that had been left to rot was enough for him to put it off another day. 

-I really got to figure out a way to get rid of that mess.- he thought as he turned the corner and faced the breakers. 

Taking a look, all of the indicator lights were off. Not a good sign, but an even worse sign was that nothing happened when Kel hit the reset buttons. 

“Shit” Kel hissed. 

-Guess I need to check out the substation after all.- He thought as he turned to leave the basement. 

However, a thought occurred to him that stopped him in his tracks. 

-The furnace!- he thought as the connection between burning stuff and hot water was made. 

While the cold showers certainly cleared his mind, He would give his left ass cheek just to not freeze it off whenever he needed to clean himself. With a newfound pep in his step, he walked up to the furnace. It was still as big as he remembered it being, with its massive bulkhead of a door separating its working parts from the outside. 

“If it runs off gas, it should still work even in a blackout.” he thought as he inspected the control panel. 

From what he could tell through the darkness, the only controls he needed to care about were the knob labeled “flame control,” which he assumed was meant to control the temperature, and an ignition switch. Turning the knob as far clockwise as it would go, he hit the switch and listened as the sound of flames burst to life within the furnace. 

Taking a step back and attempting to inspect the furnace for a potential water-heating module, a thought occurs to him.

-I… really shouldn’t be able to look into a furnace… should I?-

The size of the furnace was always a little strange to Kel, but it hadn’t occurred to him that the door to it shouldn’t be that big either. Even if the furnace needed to be as big as it was, surely a smaller door would be a lot safer. A furnace someone could realistically crawl into was a major safety concern. 

With his curiosity piqued, Kel opened the furnace door. As he did, the flames lit up the basement around him. The glowing blue and orange flames gave the room a surreal feel as he inspected the interior of the furnace. But what he saw just didn’t make any sense. Most of the interior was just empty space. A series of burners filled the bottom of it, but a solid ¾ of its volume was completely empty, separated by a grate. 

“Well, this doesn’t look like a furnace at a-” He mostly gets out when it clicks.

It wasn’t a Furnace.

It was an incinerator. 

One big enough to hold an entire person. 

As Kel stood there processing the implications of this new discovery, the warmth of the flames had seemingly been snuffed out by the chill that he felt slowly entering the basement. 

-Why would they even need this? Did they use it to burn trash? If that’s the case, why didn’t Bao tell me to just burn the trash when I first got here? Maybe they just needed an excuse to give me some points early on?- He thought as he stood before the now far more concerning piece of equipment. 

Shaking his head, he closed the incinerator's door and turned the flame control to zero. Once he heard the flames die out, he moved to leave the basement. He could swear that the basement was colder than when he first came down. After taking one last look at the electrical breakers and the incinerator, he makes his way out of the basement and up the stairs to the rest of his base.

Deciding that he has bigger fish to fry at the moment, he makes his way outside to the substation. Approaching it, he finds the station surrounded by a small enclosure of fencing, with a work table like the one in his garage right next to it. Examining the substation, he finds that it has three indicator lights, two green and one red. Each light has a corresponding electrical cable leading in different directions. 

“Bingo, looks like the transformer by Papa to the east.” He says, thankful that he doesn’t have to go off the path right as the darkness was beginning to take hold of the valley. 

Deciding he’d rather check out the transformer while it was still light out than fumble through the forest in the dark, he made his way back to the base and towards the garage. After opening the garage door that was still too loud for him to think and open it at the same time, he checks the fuel and starts the engine. Now having some experience with driving through the valley, Kel was confident that he could navigate the roads even if it did get completely dark before he could reset the transformer. 

During his short drive, he was still thinking about the incinerator. If there really weren’t trash services all the way out here, then maybe an incinerator really was the best option for getting rid of trash. The more he thought about it, the less unsettled he was by the prospect. He never did get entirely comfortable with the idea, but it at least didn’t cause him to question its purpose anymore. 

Once he had made it past the final hill to Papa, he parked the quad in front of the transformer building and entered it. Having already been in one of the transformer buildings, he was expecting it to be a complete mess, but was pleasantly surprised to see that it wasn’t in as bad a condition as he had thought it would be. Although he still wasn’t sure why they were about as messy as the base was. 

-It’s not like anyone would be living out here like they would have in the base, right?- he thinks as he walks through the garbage cluttering the entrance. 

Once again using his phone as a flashlight, he finds the large piece of electrical equipment that took up most of the room quite easily. The reset button, a big red button with a counter that currently read zero, was conveniently placed right in front of him. Pressing the button once, the lights in the station were restored to their usual fluorescent beauty. 

“Ooh… wunderbar,” He exclaims as the soul of a German doctor who lost his medical license briefly manifests in Kel.

-Might as well look around while I’m here- He thinks as he begins to make his way around the machine. 

The room that it took up so much space in was filled with miscellaneous tools, garbage, and equipment. It wasn’t as dirty as Transformer 3 had been, but there was still enough to make Kel question whether someone planted all of the garbage there just to fuck with him. 

Kel found some empty drives that he stashed in his back pocket and enough fuel tanks to collect them all into one full tank of gas. There was even more scrap littered throughout the room, but with how dirty it was and the sun going down soon, Kel decided to just check out the office attached to the side of the building before going back to base. 

The office was in about the same condition as the transformer room, with a few chairs stacked in a corner and a desk at the end of the room. Walking up to the desk, he finds nothing of interest until he sees a small pile of papers stacked underneath the keyboard. 

Taking a look, most of the pages are filled with what look like chicken scratchings, but enough is legible to tell a strange story.

“Being chased…complaining about someone…sniper towers? Bottle…gasoline…paper… Is this a recipe for a Molotov?!?” he exclaimed. 

The letters read like the ramblings of a paranoid schizophrenic, with half of the sentences sounding like threats aimed at some unknown thing. But the recipe, why would someone need to make a Molotov cocktail? Had someone been fighting something in the forest before him?

“Maybe someone picked a fight with a pack of wolves, although how would they even get on the property with all the fences?” Kel wondered as he set the papers back down. 

Turning to leave the office, Kel fails to recognize a pile of ancient bones lying just beneath the desk. 

Leaving the office and returning to his stash of scavenged items, he’s about to grab the gas canister and leave when he sees the indicator on the transformer only reads 10. Seeing that the indicator had room for 3 digits, Kel pushes the button once more, and the indicator instantly changes to 100. 

“Guess I gotta hit it twice, glad I saw that before I left.” Het thinks aloud as he grabs the gas can. 

-As long as I drive slowly, I should be able to get away with using one hand.- He thinks as he leaves the transformer building and walks to his quad. 

As he’s walking out, he realizes it is just barely too dark to drive safely without headlights. He vaguely remembers a switch labeled ‘lights’ on the handlebars. Looking ahead to check and see where the lights are, he sees the two oblong lights attached to the front of the quad. The thought of confirmation flashed briefly in his mind before a more pressing thought presented itself.

“Why does it look like me?” he asks, somewhat dumbfounded. 

How had he not seen it earlier? The lights with their large housing at the front of the vehicle gave the distinct impression of a cartoon character with comedically large glasses. The same kind of glasses that Kel had used since he was a child. He used to hate them when he was younger, but he eventually learned to live with them and even leaned into the bit whenever people brought them up. 

-Omg he’s literally me- He thought with a slight giggle under his breath as he once again mounted the vehicle. 

Driving as carefully as he could with one hand, it took more time than it would normally have to reach the base. Kel tried to use the time to organize his tasks around the base. One task he needed to get done was to clean out the basement, but with the state the meat was in, he couldn’t exactly leave it outside, and trying to sell it to Bao might make the rest of the base smell like death as well. As he reached out to hit the garage door button, a thought occurred to him.

-Wait, could the furnace burn the meat?- He asked himself right before the screeching metal of the door once again distracted him from all thoughts. 

Once it was done, though, Kel considered whether the furnace could be used to get rid of all the meat. Incinerating that much flesh would take forever, but if he ran the furnace at max heat and only put a little in at a time, he might be able to completely incinerate everything in the meat locker. 

“It’ll take a few days, but if it means I get to finally completely clean the base, then fuck it.” He says as he empties his pockets on the workbench and sets the fuel can underneath with the rest he had been able to find.

The rest of the night was spent searching for signals, planning the logistics of moving that much putrid meat, and eating a stale MRE once Kel eventually realized he hadn’t had anything to eat that day. Kel fell asleep that night thinking about what he might be able to use the basement for.

Chapter Text

Chapter 8: Dire Consequences

Rotzeli was lounging in one of the pine trees that surrounded the human building. She was braiding some long grass she had collected from the ground to keep her hands busy. At first, it was pretty difficult with the active camouflage making it harder to tell exactly where her fingers were. After some practice, though, she found that she could braid roughly 5 feet every hour using a pattern she was forced to learn in a terrestrial survival class. 

In the time since Argemia suggested that Rotzeli keep an eye on Kel, Rotzeli added the task of watching the human to her incredibly short list of things she can do. With the alternatives of sitting around in her treehouse or patrolling the forest, documenting the doctor became her new favourite pastime. 

Argemia had also started checking in on her on a daily basis, asking for updates and chatting with her before her duties called her away. Rotzeli gets the feeling that the scare with the Shorts in orbit was probably the cause for Argemias' increased contact, not that she was complaining. A few times, Rotzeli was even able to share a live feed from her helmet and show Argemia what she was doing.

“What is he doing now?” she had asked the first time she saw Kel at his post in the room with the signal equipment in it. 

“Looking for signals, that’s where he found the signal with the Short warp arrows.” Rotzeli responded. 

“Ah, you’re lucky the equipment is at an angle that you could see.”

“Yes, I was lucky. By the way, has anyone figured out how he was able to detect them?” Rotzeli asked.

Argemia sighed, “I’ve discussed it with the minister of defense, but given the circumstances surrounding the discovery, we can’t start a full investigation without the Shorts finding out where you are. However, he did confirm that, and I quote, ‘The chances of a human detecting a warp arrow are about on par with a Gray inviting you to a picnic.’”.

The mention of the Grays briefly brought her out of the conversation. She never directly fought in any conflicts with the Grays, but she met some pilots who had. Every single one of them had a look in their eyes that said everything she needed to know about them. 

They were an ancient species, estimated to have been a major civilization well before Arirals or Humans even existed. However, little else was known about them, as it’s somewhat difficult to research a species that is universally trying to kill everything it comes into contact with. 

Some of the first Xeno-anthropologists sent to study human culture were actually surprised when they found out that humans had a stereotype of ‘grey aliens’. It was proposed that humans had somehow come into contact with the Grays in the last 100 years, but given their track record, Rotzeli didn’t want to know the details of that encounter. 

-We may have saved humanity just by finding them before the Grays did.- Rotzeli thought grimly. 

“So we have no idea how he was able to get that signal, and we have no means of finding out why?” Rotzeli asked to confirm the situation. 

“Pretty much.” Argemia said with a shrug of her shoulders and a tinge of exasperation in her voice. 

That conversation had ended with both of them watching Kel work, with Argemia piping up with questions about what Kel was doing at any given moment. It wasn’t long before her duties pulled her away, and Rotzeli was left alone watching the human for the rest of the day. 

Now she was watching and waiting for something interesting to happen. Yesterday and today were even more boring than usual, as Kel had seemingly been working on a project in a part of the base where she couldn’t watch him. What the project was, however, Rotzeli couldn’t quite pin. 

He was wearing a plain white lab coat that resembled the one that she wore in her spare time. When she first saw it yesterday, it was completely clean and spotless, as any respectable scientist would keep it. However, as two days passed, she noticed that the coat was becoming more soiled by the minute. The stains were a mix of crimson and a yellowish-beige, scattered at random across the front of the coat. Kel was also wearing large yellow gloves and a piece of cloth across his face. Both were just as filthy as the coat by now. 

The cloth across his face would normally imply he didn’t want to accidentally ingest any of whatever he was working with, and the mess that it made almost looked like he was hauling large amounts of meat. 

-Humans don’t need to eat that much meat, do they? And some of the stains don’t look like blood. What is he doing?- She had thought to herself on the first day. 

Eventually, though, Kel left the base without the protective equipment. As he walked toward one of the trees next to the base, the wind changed direction, and Rotzeli smelled exactly what he had been working with all day. 

“Ohmygod” she muttered as she struggled not to gag at the offense to her sensitive olfactory senses. 

If not for her helmet actively dampening her voice, Kel might’ve heard her at the distance she was at. She smelled an all too distinctive and memorable smell of rotting meat. 

-Guess I know what he was doing, but how much is there for him to be dealing with it all day? And how did I not find it when I went through the base?- she thought with some indignation at missing something that should have been obvious. 

Once Kel had reached the base of the tree, he lay down on his back and just stared into the sky. He spent a good hour just lying down. She had noticed that he was breathing a little deeper than he normally does.

-Suppose I’d have wanted to get some fresh air too. Wonder if he’ll stay out here today too?- she thought as she was brought out of her trance by a now finished series of grass braids.

Today was the same as yesterday, with Kel spending most of the day cleaning up whatever mess was in the building. It left her alone with her thoughts for the most part. Earlier in the day, she had gone on a ‘patrol’, which was mostly just her excuse to go for a walk. Of course, she stayed vigilant throughout them, but it’s not like there's anything in this forest that could harm her in her armour. And if the Shorts did somehow find her, they would probably ambush her before she could do anything about it. 

She still didn’t like the idea of staying in a stagnant position with no way of knowing whether or not she’s been found; it went against her training. But in this case, the best defense was staying put where she was, so for now she would. 

It was now getting dark, and Kel hadn’t shown his face in a few hours. She makes the decision to go back to her treehouse for the night and starts to stretch the stillness out of her limbs when a commotion in the building puts her senses on edge. 

Crouching low and preparing for immediate action, she stills her breathing and watches for movement from anywhere within. 

Every muscle in her body stiffens when the front door opens, and a panicked Kel comes spilling out like an uncontrolled animal. 

She calms herself somewhat when she sees that it is just Kel, but the dramatic exit raises more questions than his appearance answers. 

He’s running barely faster than a light jog (compared to an Ariral) with how much he’s tripping over himself, but the look in his eyes put Rotzeli back on edge.

He was terrified.

Whatever had happened to him had clearly put him into a state of panic. She immediately starts to scan the building for any signs of disturbances, but can’t find any. She even tries using the object-penetrating vision function of her indis suit to try and see as much as she could, but there was no movement, no noises, nothing that should’ve scared him so much. 

In the time that it took Rotzeli to scan the building, Kel had reached the treeline and kept on running. 

“Fuck, I can’t see anything. I should follow him and make sure he doesn’t do something stupid.” she tells herself as she begins to bound from branch to branch, keeping pace with the distressed human. 

It had taken two days to clear the locker of all the meat. 

In total, Kel thinks he pulled out roughly 10 cow carcasses, each weighing at least 50 pounds. 

The first day of the cleanup started with Kel quickly running and grabbing hashcodes for Bao, before suiting up and getting started in the basement. 

The method he devised to transport them included a large knife he found in one of the drawers in the kitchen and a whole lot of patience. By cutting the meat into smaller chunks, he could carry them over to the furnace on a flat metal tray he found. He thinks it came from one of the servers, but it has a new purpose of minimizing Kel’s contact with the horrifically rotted meat. 

And minimizing contact was essential. Kel hadn’t fully realized the extent of the decay the carcasses were in until he opened the heavy metal door for the first time. He had tried to prep for it with a t-shirt he sprayed with deodorant and tied around his face, but the makeshift gas mask was no match for the overwhelming odor. 

The smell was so overwhelmingly awful that he couldn’t stop himself from vomiting in a nearby bucket. That bucket actually ended up being one of the most useful tools in the basement throughout the entire process, as anytime the smell became too much, he would be forced to empty his roiling stomach.

Eventually, he did get somewhat used to the smell, or at least as used to it as he could. Once he trained himself not to breathe through his nose under any circumstances, he got to work cutting up the meat and carrying it to the furnace. 

The smaller chunks of meat would also burn more easily than if he just threw one carcass in at a time. But the extra work that cutting them up required wasn’t a very appealing prospect to Kel. 

The process was just as disgusting as he had thought it would be. Pockets of pus had grown throughout each carcass. Every time he cut into one, there was a chance that it would start oozing a slurry of microbial waste. At one point, a pocket opened up while Kel had his arm at an awkward angle, and the rot had fallen straight into his glove. It was enough to make him nearly cry. But he realized that by that point, he was already covered in every disgusting fluid that was present in the meat locker.

He had found a lab coat in one of the lockers and some rubber gloves in the storage closet, which he hoped would help to keep him somewhat clean. Unfortunately, they didn’t protect him from the mess as much as he had hoped they would. About halfway through the first day, he stops caring about making a mess and just prioritizes moving the meat. He had hoped that he could download signals while he cleaned, but the thought of making his work station smell like the basement was too much, and he abandoned that hope.

He was making significantly faster progress than he thought he would with the furnace. He expected it to take a lot longer to burn each batch of meat, but he was able to clear about one whole carcass every hour. 

“Either the carcasses have lost most of their mass to decomposition, or the rot burns way easier than the meat.” 

-Or both.- He thinks as he suppresses the need to vomit once again. 

The process was actually going so fast that he ended up getting through 7 of the slabs of meat in the first day. While he was proud of his progress, he couldn’t handle the stench anymore and fled to the outside after shutting the metal door for the day. 

After taking off his makeshift biohazard suit and throwing it in an empty supply crate, he leaves the base. Walking outside, he saw a patch of grass under one of the pine trees surrounding the parking lot and walked over to it. In an attempt to rub off some of the filth on him, he threw himself to the ground. The smell of the grass helped to cover the stench of the meat that clung to him.

Then he just stayed there, taking deep breaths. He could still smell the awful cacophony of smells that clung to him like Velcro, but at least the fresh forest air helped clear his head. 

As he was unwinding, he thought about what he could do with the basement. It was big enough that he could use it for storage and open up the other rooms in the base to whatever he wanted. Or maybe he could set up a small recreational area down there. He didn’t think he could get the smell out of the meat locker, but it should at least not penetrate the metal door once all the meat is removed. 

-Maybe I should look for decorations in the store.- he thought as he stared at a low floating cloud. 

The first day ended with a vigorous freezing shower, and some time spent in the signal room making up for the fact that he couldn’t search while he was cleaning. 

…

The next day, Kel awoke with dread at the task in front of him. He knew if he started, he could get everything finished that day, but another day of being stuck in the stink room would still suck. 

“Guaahhh! Fineeeee.” He groaned after a few minutes of stalling under the sheets of his bed. After another shower in preparation for the task ahead and a quick trip for more hashcodes to get Bao off his back for the day, he equipped the horribly stained lab coat and gloves and got to work. 

The work was still as gross as it was yesterday, but at least he only had to throw up twice throughout the process. And as minor a change as it was, the room did smell slightly less worse compared to when he started. 

That fact alone was enough to keep his pace up. He continued cutting the meat while trying to avoid the fluids that never seemed to end. 

In between batches of meat being put into the furnace, he started cleaning the tiles of the floor and walls. 

He decided that one of the old sponges he had been using to clean stains around the base would be sacrificed to clean up the walls and floor. Grabbing a container of bleach from the cleaning supply closet and a bucket of water from the garage, he scrubbed the mucus-like substance that had been dripping from the carcasses. 

“We are gathered here to remember our friend, Bob the Sponge. He was a tireless worker, and he fought hard to make the base a better place. May his final sacrifice be remembered by all. Amen and God bless.” Kel said in a final show of respect for the sponge before putting it to work. 

By the time sunset had arrived, Kel had finished cleaning out the meat locker. It still smelled bad, but he was able to take off his makeshift mask without losing the contents of his stomach. Looking into the furnace, he found nothing but the vague smell of burning flesh and a pile of charred bones, and the light remnants of the incinerated meat. 

Collecting what couldn’t burn into a trash bag, Kel threw it into a sell box and called the drone to pick it up. He sent a note with it that simply said;

Meat went bad.

In his final act of cleaning for the day, he rinses off the rubber gloves as best he can before walking back into the basement. Throwing the lab coat, sponge, and shirt he was using as a mask into the incinerator, he watches as the soiled clothing curls over the flames. 

-No way I was saving those- He thinks as he looks around the basement.

With the meat locker finally cleaned up, he can finally clean out the basement. The locker does still smell kind of bad, though, so he decides to keep the door closed until he can find a way to remove the smell completely. 

As he’s picking up the trash in a corner, though, he starts to smell the rotten meat once more. 

“The hell? The door is closed; it shouldn’t still smell this bad.” He says as he begins to sniff the air around him. 

He notices rather fast, however, that the area to the right of the door smells significantly worse than the left side of the door. As he expands his search area to find the source of the smell, He winds up at a pile of supply crates stacked on top of each other in a corner to the right of the metal door. A few quick tests confirm that the smell was indeed coming from the crates.

-Goddamnit, was one of the carcasses left outside of the meat locker?- he thinks as he begins to heave against one of the crates.

“Man, and I already burnt the lab co-” He begins to say just as the crate on top shifts enough to reveal what it had been blocking.

A pile of bone in a puddle of dried blood. 

The bones still have small, ragged strips of flesh left on them, which had been left to rot like the carcasses in the meat locker had. 

But the most alarming part was that on top of the pile of bones, a fully intact human skull sat, its hollow eye sockets staring straight at Kel. 

“What the fuck…???” Kel said, barely a whisper. 

He had frozen stiff, staring at the grotesque display in front of him. He was in shock. 

He had always conjectured about the bases' past, daydreamed about what it would’ve looked like, or what happened to the people who were here before him. 

But this was not a vague or uninterpretable sign; this was a very clear and dangerous message.

-Someone died here, horribly.- He thought. 

Something about the bones looks off, though, leaning in to get a better look, Kel sees why.

They were not smooth like you would expect; they were rough, with small holes perforating the surface. And another fact presented itself to Kel when he changed the angle he was looking at the pile. One of the bones, a femur from the size of it, had been snapped in two. The marrow within was gone.

“something…..something ate them?!?” He uttered, completely horrified. 

It was at that moment, in Kels' moment of pure terror, that he saw it. 

Slight movement coming from the meat locker. The door had come unlatched, its bulky frame moving ever so slowly until a thin space had opened between the wall and the edge of the door. 

Through that opening, Kel saw something straight out of a nightmare.

It was hunched over as it looked through the door, but it was already as tall as Kell. 

The entire thing had no skin, the muscle and inner tissue of a normally healthy being on display for the entire universe to bear witness. 

The skinless surfaces were instead covered in blisters and boils, all scabbed over and leaking plasma down the creature's body, giving it a sheen in the dim lighting. 

A single, digitigrade leg stood a few inches in front of the door. It stood upon a jet-black hoof that looked twice as large as it should have been. 

Its body was gaunt and sickly, with outlines of the creature's bones visible through the slight muscle and fat that adorned it. 

A deep gash tore through its hip, Maggots visibly consuming the rotted flesh and pus surrounding the wound. 

Through gaps in its stomach muscles, its intestines could be seen as a dark grey mass. 

It had a ribcage like a man's, but the beast was so sickly that its stomach appeared to be sucked into it, giving it a nearly hollow visage.

An arm that extended from its all too thin shoulders was stabilizing it against the wall.

The arm had one too many joints to have been a humans, and its hand looked far too large as it spread its palm across the wall. 

Each finger was at least a foot long, with the finger tip being split into two sub-digits with three joints each. 

Every subdigit had a short fingernail that looked like they were barely hanging onto the flesh surrounding them, as though they would fall out at the slightest resistance. 

The creature's head looked like an elongated goat's, with only one visible short horn sprouting from its smooth skull. 

The horn had cracks originating at the tip and cascading down its length, creating a scattered lightning pattern. 

In place of its nose, a crater consisting of cartilage and bone sat.

It breathed through said crater heavily, with the sound of fluid-filled lungs constantly hitching its breath, and giving it a slight gurgling sound. 

Its mouth was easily a whole foot long, almost following the entire length of its head, ending just below the eyes at the very back of the skull. 

The only visible eye was huge and resembled a goat's, with a single horizontal iris.

The eye itself was a deep crimson red, as though the aqueous fluid had been drained and replaced with curdled blood. 

The pupil was the same sickly yellow that the mucus coming from the carcasses had been. 

Its teeth were a mix of predator and prey, in no particular order, and sprouting from every angle conceivable. 

One tooth of a predator had split a prey in two, and grew in its place, surrounded by the remnants of the one that came before it. 

The entire mouth was curved into a sickly, menacing grin.

A grin aimed straight at Kel. 

…

…

…

He couldn’t move. 

…

He couldn’t think.

…

All he could do was stare. 

It did not move either, preferring to sit and watch him with those sickly eyes. 

Kel knew he had to do something, but what could he do?

His back was mostly turned to the creature, and whatever it was, he didn’t stand a chance if it chose to attack.

…

But he has to do something. 

He can’t just sit there.

He needs to move.

To do anything.

Please.

Please Move!

PLEASE DO SOMETHING!!

PLEASE DON’T JUST SIT THERE!!!

RUN!!!!!

In an adrenaline-fueled decision, he shifts his entire body as fast as he can to face the creature. 

But he moves too fast; his eyes can’t keep themselves trained on it as he moves as quickly as he possibly can.

In the fraction of a second that it took for him to face the door, the beast had disappeared. The door was closed, and the only proof that it had ever been there was Kels' racing heart. 

He stared at the door.

And then he ran.

And ran.

And ran.

And ran. 

And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran….

Chapter Text

Kel’s breath shook in his chest. 

He stared unblinking at the door to the satellite dish’s server room. 

A sudden whirring from the server on the other side of the room caused him to flinch and briefly take his eyes off the door before quickly returning his attention to the entrance. 

He was straining his hearing to try and listen for anything moving outside. Every trembling breath he took was as quiet as he could manage. 

He barely remembers his flight from the base, only recalling the sheer terror and faint feeling of his legs hitting the ground. At some point, he had glimpsed a satellite dish through the trees 

-Too exposed … need to ….. to hide.- he had barely managed to think as he altered his trajectory towards the dish. 

After a brief scramble up the staircase, he had slammed his fist on the button to open the door and threw himself in as the door was still opening. After slapping the lights on, he took a sitting position next to the terminal with his back against the wall and his legs held against his chest. 

He didn’t know how long it had been since he fled, nor did he particularly care. Based on the loss of feeling in his ass and legs, it had to have been at least a handful of hours. 

With no windows in the satellite server rooms, he couldn’t tell whether or not it was still dark outside. 

That was fine, as he probably couldn’t bring himself to look out of a window even if there was one. 

For now, all he could do was sit and stare, waiting for something to happen. 

…

Kel jolted awake as he heard a disturbance outside. Heart still, he listened closely until the noise returned. 

A high-pitched, warbly chirping that he had heard from a certain species of bird in the valley before. 

Releasing a held breath and feeling his pulse return, he slumped back into his position next to the terminal. 

-Ah shit… I fell asleep….- He thought grimly

Between the physical exhaustion from cleaning out the basement the day before, his midnight sprint through the woods, and the mental exhaustion from the constant paranoia, his body eventually couldn’t keep up and had slipped into unconsciousness. 

Luckily, tonight was the first night he wasn’t tormented by the nightmares, so there was at least that.

Now, Kel could only assume that it was morning thanks to the birds outside acting as a natural alarm clock. 

“Well fuck, I can’t stay here for the rest of my life.” He mutters to himself as he tries to wipe away the bags under his eyes. 

-But what the hell am I supposed to do now!? There's a goddamn goat thing in my house!-

With his mind now on whatever he saw in the basement yesterday, the cogs in his mind start turning at an impressive speed. 

It definitely wasn’t human, but it had opposable thumbs. It had a goat skull and horns, but it was bipedal. It had a mouth full of jagged teeth in no particular order. It had no skin but looked like it should have. There were so many parts of it that were familiar, but assembled in such a completely unnatural way. It looked more like something out of ancient folklore than any animal that could actually exist.

-And how the hell did it disappear? Nothing should be able to move fast enough to leave my field of vision in the blink of an eye. And how was the door closed once I did see it?- He asked himself when a more worrying thought came to mind.

-Was… was it even real?-

By no means should anything like that ever exist in the natural order. The simplest explanation was that Kel had gone insane and hallucinated a demon from his subconscious. 

The idea that he had hallucinated it worried him for a few moments before he thought more critically of what he had actually seen. He maintained his view of it for a considerable amount of time, even seeing a few small movements such as a twitch in its split fingers or the heave of its chest. He’s not even sure he could imagine such an awful sight with such clarity. 

-Okay, I would have to have developed an extreme and sudden case of paranoid schizophrenia to hallucinate something like that, so whatever it was, it probably wasn’t me seeing things.- He rationalized. 

The revelation that he probably hadn’t gone insane wasn’t much of a consolation. If something really was there, there were no natural explanations for it, which left Kel with nothing but supernatural explanations. 

-Wait, what about the alien signal? Was that an alien?-

That thought was immediately thrown out when he remembered what it looked like. While it was a mismatch of animal and human body parts, everything he saw was still familiar. If it were an alien, he figures there would be at least a few physical properties that he wouldn’t recognize.

-Probably, an alien might be able to change its shape, but that sounds more like a bad sci-fi than an actual theory.- 

With the theories of it being an animal, a hallucination, and an alien ruled out, that left only one thing Kel could even imagine it being.

-A demon?- 

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.” He groaned loudly 

He had learned all about the occult from Ena while they were still in school. She could go on for hours about how ancient civilizations worshiped their different gods and demons. While Kel cared more for the extraterrestrial than the Supernatural, he always listened intently to whatever she had to say. She was the only person who had ever listened to his own rants about aliens, and he wanted to do the same for her. Their whole relationship started as two nerds nerding out to each other. 

The thing he saw in the basement looked a lot like something that she would show him from one of her ‘grimoires’. Plus, how it disappeared in an instant felt more like something supernatural than just being really fast. 

Kel never actually believed in the supernatural. He always figured there would be some sort of tangible proof that they existed if they actually did. 

-But I can’t think of anything else it could be.- he tells himself. 

“Whatever it was, I’m not sure as shit not gonna stick around to find out.” he says as he starts to stretch the stillness from his legs. 

As he stood, the primal fear of whatever was outside returned. As he forced his legs to move towards the door, he quickly developed a strategy to see what was outside. 

He would first turn out the lights, with one of his fingers placed on the doors’ button. Once he hit the light switch, he would press the door’s button and run back behind the server. From behind the server, he would survey the outside as much as he could before the doors closed automatically. 

If something was waiting for him outside, it hopefully wouldn’t be to see him with the lights off. 

After placing both hands on their respective switch and button, he plunges the room into total darkness and takes a large breath before hitting the door’s button. 

As soon as he does, he’s scrambling behind the server. Once everything but his eyes is hidden from anything outside, he focuses on his surroundings. 

The sun had not yet fully risen, with the whole valley drowned in a pale blue light. Kel’s eyes frantically scanned the woods. As he searched, his arms shook against the server, and a pressure welled up from his stomach. 

After a short period of time, the doors closed, and Kel was left in the darkness once again. After fumbling towards the door and flipping the light switch, He takes one final deep breath before opening the door once again. 

Slowly walking through the entrance, Kel swiveled his head back and forth as he moved fully into the open. 

Taking a deep breath to calm his nerves, he started back towards the base.

As it turned out, he had spent the night in Uniform. A fact that he only realized once he saw the sign at the bottom of the stairs. 

The walk back to base was completely uneventful, but Kel was on edge the whole time. What would have normally been a ten-minute walk took half an hour with how often he stopped to listen to the forest. In that time, the sun had fully risen to wash the valley in a golden-red glow. 

As his shoes hit the parking lot pavement, he stopped to think about what needed to be done. 

He didn’t like the idea of going back into the haunted base, but he needed to access the drone and computer to get out of the forest. Plus, if he had to be in there anyway, he may as well grab his stuff before he leaves. 

First, he had to make sure the skinless demon wasn’t just walking around the base. He’s not sure if it even had a physical body, but he probably would have noticed it was at the base in the last few weeks if it had a normal body. The first thing he needed to do was a sweep of the building. 

After that, he can send a letter to Bao demanding to get him the hell out of here. In the time it takes for Bao to respond, he can pack his stuff back in his suitcase. Once he gets the confirmation email, he’ll wait at the guard booth until the driver arrives. 

With a plan in mind, he starts towards the base once again. Stopping in front of the front entrance, he takes a few minutes to calm the tremors racking his body. 

Once he’s calmed down as much as he can, given the situation, he opens the door. 

The entrance is exactly as he left it, still in the process of having the crates opened with their contents scattered around them. The first room he checks is the garage, partially because it's the closest to the entrance, but mostly because he needs to grab something before scouring the rest of the building. 

As he swivels around the door to the garage like he’s a soldier clearing a room, he sees what he needs. 

A hammer with a red handle is sitting on top of the workbench. 

“Now if only I had some holy water, I could really show that demon who he fucked with.” Kel told himself with a strained chuckle as he grabbed the hammer and tested its weight in his hand. 

Now armed and ready to give the demon hell, Kel starts to sweep the base. In each room, Kel quickly opens the door, briefly holds an angle that would allow him to smack anything that might come running out, and then slowly makes his way inside while holding the hammer at an angle that would allow him to strike at any moment. First, the break room, then the storage closet, the signal room, and finally the server room. 

Deciding to leave the basement for last, he returns to the garage and uses the cargo lift to enter the upstairs storage room. But not before throwing a random piece of scrap metal to try and scare anything that might be up there before going up there himself. 

Leaving the storage room, he enters the upstairs hallway before turning towards the bedroom. 

If there was one room in the base he didn’t want to find the demon, it was where he had slept. 

Entering the room like he had every one before, he finds it empty of supernatural forces… or at least he hopes it is. 

After checking the bathroom (because why wouldn’t a demon be in there), he takes a look around the bedroom. 

He hadn’t realized how comfortable he had become in the base. Little signs of his life were everywhere, from the laptop charger plugged in behind the desk to the pile of dirty clothes at the foot of the bunkbed. For half an instant, a pang of loss hits him at being forced from what he thought would be his new home. 

That feeling is quickly lost once he remembers why he’s leaving. The only thing that matters now is getting out as fast as he can, and he can’t do that until he sweeps the basement. 

Steeling his resolve, he makes his way back to the hallway and towards the stairwell. At the top, he swears he can feel a faint draft coming from the bottom. 

Walking down the first flight, he feels the pressure in his chest rise. By the time he reaches the top of the stairs that lead from the first floor to the basement, the tremors return in force and he’s shaking every limb violently. He stands there staring at the darkness ahead of him for what feels like forever. It’s only when he could swear that the very air in front of him is taunting him that he feels his right foot take the foot step as though it had a mind of its own. 

Every step down was heavy and shook the metal stairs under his admittedly unimpressive weight. Reaching the bottom, it feels like his heart is about to burst out of his chest. Walking down the short hallway, he tenses every muscle in his body, ready to either come out swinging or run as fast as his legs will allow, given their current jelly-like nature. As he reaches the corner, he slowly rounds it in the prepared stance he had adopted for every other room until…

…nothing.

Nothing happened. 

The basement was empty. The meat cellar’s door was shut. Everything was exactly as he had left it the night before. Even the bones in the corner had been left undisturbed. 

Keeping his hammer raised, he approached the meat locker’s circular window. After very slowly angling himself around its border, he sees that it is as empty as he had believed it was. Lowering his hammer, He slowly made his way out of the basement. 

Only once he had made it back to the first floor did he allow his resolve to falter. 

Hunching over, he uses his knees to stabilize himself as he greedily sucks in breaths. 

-godfuckingdamnitIdontwannadothatagain-

Uprighting himself, he feels the tension that had been suffusing his entire body lessen somewhat.

“Alright, almost done.”

… 

Kel entered the signal room with his suitcase in hand. The letter he had sent to Bao 20 minutes earlier read;

Dear Dr. Bao,

Given recent events within the observatory, I formally submit my resignation as caretaker. 

I understand this may be unprofessional, but the situation here has become far more extreme than I am capable of withstanding. 

I ask that a driver be sent as soon as possible, as I am no longer willing to reside within the base. 

Best,

Dr. Kel

Once the letter was taken away by the drone, Kel packed everything into his suitcase. After taking some time to relieve himself and clean up some in the bathroom sink, he forced himself to down one of the MREs.

-As much as I hate to admit it, I actually feel much better with something in my stomach.- He thought as he left the bedroom.

Now seated at the signal terminals, he boots up the computer.

“Alright, is there anything else I should take?” He asks himself as he swivels the chair around in a full circle to look around the room.

As he completes the full circle, he can’t think of anything he would need from the signal room. He had tried to keep everything important in the bedroom so nothing got lost in the huge base. As he’s returning his attention to the computer, he sees a drive set to the side of the monitor. 

It was one of the drives he had put the alien signal on. He had made a ton of copies to stash around the base, one of which he set next to the computer so that he could have one close at hand. Now he was considering whether it was even possible for him to take it with him. 

-If someone really was censoring what I submitted to Bao, then they’d know I have proof and might just confiscate everything I have to be safe. If they found out I was trying to smuggle the only evidence, I’m not sure what they would do to me.- 

The data was too valuable to just leave it, but the consequences of being caught with it could make everything so much worse than it already was. 

“Damnit, maybe I could smuggle it out.” he says as he cups his own chin. 

His suitcase would be the first thing they check, so it would have ot be somewhere on him. As he’s considering where he could hide it on his person, a childhood memory comes back to him. 

Picking up the drive, he takes off the large beanie that he was wearing. Holding the long hair aside, he places the drive on top of his head and puts the beanie back on. Just like that, the drive was gone. With how large the beanie was and how unkempt his hair had become since his graduation, he doubted anyone would be able to see anything wrong just by looking at him. 

It was an old trick he used to hide his Game Boy from the other kids when he was younger. It was actually what originally got him to start wearing that style of beanie. He ended up wearing them so often that he became accustomed to wearing them, even after he had outgrown his old handheld. 

“Well, well, well,” He proudly smirks, “Looks like a childhood spent ostracized from everyone else finally paid off!”

His smirk falters, and before he has the chance to process that horrifically depressing statement, the computer comes to life with the audio declaring it’s finally ready for work. 

Glancing at its screen, Kel can see that the email tab is a bold blue, indicating that Bao has already responded to his letter. 

-Finally, I can get out of this building.- he thinks as he clicks on the tab and opens Bao’s newest message, which reads;

Good morning Dr. Kel,

We are sorry that you no longer feel comfortable performing the tasks required of your position.

Unfortunately, we are unable to approve your resignation. 

Simply put, you are aware of far too many anomalies present in the forest. The signal you discovered of our ‘visitors’ has been highly classified and is still being studied by our top minds. To let you roam the world freely with such dangerous information would put more organizations than our own at significant risk. 

That's not to mention the impeccable quality of the data you have collected thus far. You have proven to be an invaluable asset that we can no longer afford to lose. It has been decided to keep you on site until such a point when you no longer provide the same quality of data. 

An advance team has been dispatched to ensure that you continue to fulfil your duties as caretaker. The team will not initiate contact, and we highly suggest you avoid seeking it. They tend not to be terribly talkative anyway. 

Should you fail to meet our expectations, this team will be permitted to remove you from the site in any manner that they see fit. 

-Bao

Kel was still trying to process the message when a ping from the computer signaled the arrival of a second message from Bao. Clicking on this new message, Kel saw it read; 

Also, take that drive off your head. You look ridiculous.