Prologue: Impact Vector
The Aurora died screaming.
One moment, Jonathan Evans was reviewing cetacean gene-splicing sequences on his PDA, the sterile glow of his lab module a familiar comfort. The next, the universe tore open.
Violent torsion slammed him against his harness. Metal shrieked like a dying leviathan. Alarms howled, red lights strobing, painting his porcelain skin crimson. Emergency protocols flashed across his screen—COLLISION IMMINENT. BRACE. BRACE. BRACE. G-forces crushed the air from his lungs, his spiky black hair plastered against the suddenly sweating glass of his viewport. Through the chaos, his bio-engineer's mind registered the impossible: outside the fractured window, an energy beam, alive and predatory, lanced from the planet below. It struck true.
Then, the fall.
Consciousness returned in shards of agony. Every nerve screamed. The acrid stench of burnt wiring and ozone choked him. He was weightless, strapped into a shuddering metal coffin—Escape Pod 5. Hydraulic fluid and seawater sloshed around his boots. Emergency lighting flickered, casting jagged shadows that danced like grasping claws across the dented hull. His scanner, miraculously intact, lay humming on his lap. His survival knife was still strapped to his thigh. The PDA glowed weakly beside him, displaying a cracked schematic of the pod and a single, pulsing line of text:
> LIFE SIGNS DETECTED IN POD: 1
Alone. The word echoed in the sudden, deafening silence after the pod's systems settled into a low, ominous hum. Ryley Robinson... the others in his section... gone. Erased by that beam. He was Jon Evans, 27, specialist in marine mammal biology, and he was utterly, terrifyingly alone on an alien ocean world.
He fumbled with the harness release, his long, slender fingers trembling. Every movement sent fresh pain radiating from his ribs. Peering through the spray-streaked, salt-caked viewport, his blue eyes widened.
4546B.
It wasn't space-blackness outside. It was ocean. An impossible, vibrant, terrifying blue. Sunlight speared down through crystalline water, illuminating swaying forests of crimson kelp taller than any redwood. Strange, bioluminescent fish darted like living jewels through shafts of light. The beauty was staggering, primal. His biologist's mind instinctively cataloged: Photosynthetic efficiency off the charts. Unidentified species exhibiting convergent evolution with Terran reef fish... but those mandibles...
Then the pod groaned, tilting violently. Something massive and dark slid past the viewport, a shadow blotting out the sun. A low-frequency thrum vibrated through the hull, resonating in Jon's bones. It wasn't mechanical. It was organic. Living.
Panic, cold and sharp, cut through the scientific detachment. He scrambled for the PDA, activating the scanner with shaking hands. It whirred, projecting a shaky holographic display. The readout was nonsensical, flickering with energy signatures and biological markers his terrestrial database couldn't parse. > UNKNOWN ORGANISM. CLASSIFICATION: LEVIATHAN?
Leviathan. The word felt like ice in his veins. His expertise was in gentle giants – dolphins, whales, manatees. Not... this. Not predators in an alien abyss.
A new sound sliced through the water – a high-pitched, chittering screech, impossibly close. He spun, pressing against the cold metal. Outside, clinging to the pod's hull with needle-sharp talons, was a creature the size of a large dog. Its skin was translucent, revealing pulsating internal organs. Four lidless, black eyes fixed on him. It shrieked again, a sound that scraped raw nerves.
Stalker. Territorial. Carnivorous. His mind raced, overlaying alien horror with cold biological deduction. His hand closed around the worn grip of his survival knife. It felt absurdly small.
The PDA chimed, a new message cutting through the dread:
> VITALS STABILIZING. MINOR FRACTURES DETECTED (RIB 4, 5). ADMINISTERING ANALGESICS.
> POD INTEGRITY: 87%. OXYGEN: 98%.
> PRIORITY: ASSESS SURVIVAL PROFILE. SCAN ENVIRONMENT. LOCATE RESOURCES.
> CAUTION: BIOSIGNATURES INDICATE MULTIPLE UNKNOWN PREDATOR-CLASS ORGANISMS IN VICINITY.
Resources. Predators. Oxygen ticking down. The crushing weight of the ocean above, and the unfathomable depths below. The comforting certainties of gene sequencing and marine conservation were light-years away. Here, survival was measured in breaths and heartbeats.
Jon took a shuddering breath, the air tasting of metal and fear. He wiped salt spray from his eyes, his gaze fixed on the monstrous crustacean scraping at the viewport. The knife felt heavy in his hand. The scanner hummed, a lifeline to understanding this lethal paradise. The PDA's glow was his only companion.
He wasn't a researcher anymore. He was prey. And his laboratory was an ocean filled with teeth.
The prologue ended. The horror began.