Captain Day Renora leaned over the ops station, one hand braced against Kellan’s chair, the other stabbing at the comm panel.

“… Mehta, Loran, anyone, respond! Repeat, away teams, do you copy?”

Static… only static.

Day gritted her teeth, every second of silence making the knot in her stomach grow tighter. Both teams had gone dark. No life sign updates, no telemetry. For all she knew, they were gone…

Not again.

Not after everything this crew had already endured. Not after seventeen names had to be etched into cold metal outside the Back Nine. She was not losing more of her people. Not today.

Day faced Kellan.

“Tell me something, Lieutenant. Anything.”

Kellan’s finger worked frantically across the ops console. Sweat beading at her hairline as she worked, rerouting subspace channels, running signal inversions. The Ardanan science officer was nothing if not creative. “As far as we can tell, Loran’s team launched a shuttle from the derelict Vaadwaur ship descending toward the surface.”

The bridge crew had seen that with their own eyes…

“Projected landing zone based on initial telemetry before we lost them was… approximately to the area of the dig site. Fifteen kilometers west.” Kellan frowned as her voice cracked, but she forced it steady. “Before we lost readings, the vessel was stable… but there were readings we couldn’t identify.”

Too much guesswork. Not enough facts.

“What about Commander Mehta’s team? Can we contact Ensign Renn?” Day barked.

Vex’s voice cut in through the open comm channel with engineering. “No comms from the Ponderosa either, Captain. Surface scattering is getting worse. Electromagnetic, psionic, localized gravitational shear… It’s hitting all bands now.”

Kellan turned, brilliant green eyes dark with frustration. “We can’t hail Commander Mehta. We can’t raise the dig site team. We can’t even track the Vaadwaur shuttle after it entered low atmosphere.”

Day straightened slowly, breathing through her nose. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears.

They look to you for strength…

“Options,” she said coldly.

Again, Vex’s voice carried through the bridge speakers, already rattling off solutions as she worked. “I’m building a narrow-beam carrier wave… tight and encrypted. We should be able to tunnel it through the planet’s magnetic fields. Valis is going to be furious, it’ll burn out every transceiver we have under deck four, but it might punch a comms thread through to the surface.”

Day allowed herself a small smile of hope. “Do it.”

“Seventy-five seconds,” Vex grunted. “Maybe less if I don’t mind setting the EPS grid on deck six on fire.”

Day’s small smile grew. “I’ll authorize the fire.”

Around Day, the Bridge crew worked faster… tighter… no wasted motions. Even with fear for their crewmates clawing at the back of their minds, they moved like a single organism. Kellan evacuated sections of deck six, Rax sent teams to monitor transceiver arrays.

Everyone understood what was at stake.

_____________________________________

The crash didn’t kill him… not yet.

Lieutenant Loran forced his eyes open, his head swimming in a ringing agony, coughing against the smoke that filled the shattered remains of the small Vaadwaur craft. His muscles screamed in protest as he dragged himself free of a twisted bulkhead and stumbled out into the open.

The air outside the wreckage was thin, dr,y and… wrong.

It wasn’t the impact or the crashing adrenaline that made his hands shake… it was the silence.

A heavy, bloated silence that pressed against his chest, making it hard to breathe.

Beside him, Lieutenant Amir staggered upright, blood trickling from a small gash across his forehead. He was breathing hard, but her was moving and aware.

Wordlessly, Amir grabbed Bjornsen under one arm, helping Loran haul the young officer from the shattered wreckage.

Bjornsen’s eyes were wide and glassy, his feet dragging in the dust as his lips moved in some internal conversation only he could hear.

Nurse Torel staggered out after him, clutching her tricorder against her chest like a talisman. Her antennae plastered flat to her skull, her small frame trembling.

“We need to move,” Loran said hoarsely. “Cover now.”

Amir nodded in agreement, no questions, no wasted words.

They half-dragged, half-carried Bjornsen away from the smoking shuttle towards a low ridge of jagged stone. Crimson dust swirled around them, staining the air. Every breath still tasted wrong.

As they approached the ridge, Loran felt it.

The crushing pressure in his chest eased… just slightly.

The air, while still thin and sharp, no longer choked him.

Torel stumbled, blinking rapidly as if waking from a nightmare.

Bjornsen’s feet found a little more stability under him, his slack expression twitched with a flicker of recognition.

Amir slowed… glancing back at the wreckage.

His voice was a low growl. “Feels… lighter.”

Loran nodded. Whatever had been pressing on them, whatever had been suffocating their minds… it had moved away. Not gone… just leaving.

Heading somewhere else.

Deep in his gut, Loral knew where. The ruins… the dig site.

He squeezed Bjornsen’s shoulder hard enough to get a grunt of pain.

“Stay with me, Lieutenant,” he said roughly.

Ivar blinked, focusing for the first time since the crash.

Torel came up to his side, wiping the red dust from her eyes roughly. “It’s… It’s not in us anymore.”

“No,” Loran said. “But it’s not done.”

He turned his gaze east, across the broken landscape where the dig site lay beneath the dust.

“Move,” he barked.

Amir slung Bjornsen’s arm across his shoulder again, Torel falling into step behind them, and the battered remnants of Loran’s team pressed forward… Shaken, bloodied, but no longer drowning in terror.

The real danger was heading for the dig site.

_____________________________________

Commander Arjun Mehta paced the crumbling edges of the ancient structure, phaser in hand, eyes constantly sweeping the perimeter.

The ruins pulsed faintly now, almost like a heartbeat. He could feel the pulsing in the soles of his boots.

He didn’t like it… not one bit.

Vama Dar knelt over a section of glyphs, her hands moving carefully across the blackened stone. She was muttering to herself in a half-audible mix of Federation Standard, Trill, and something else… a Xenolinguisticist’s prayer for understanding.

“How’s it coming?” Mehta called.

Dar didn’t look up. “Not well.”

Nearby, Valis stood, tricorder held steady, recording as many readings and details as possible, her Vulcan features taut with, what for her, must have been deep concern.

“This structure,” she said quietly, “is not a monument. It is a dimensional containment matrix.” Valis stated logically.

Mehta felt his chest tighten. “Containment for what?”

Valis tilted her head once. “Unknown.”

Dr. Pell moved from team member to team member, her medical scanner constantly sweeping the away team. The normally gruff doctor was pale, her mouth set in a grim line.

Ensign Jeremy Ryan hovered nervously by the entrance, checking the same half-ruined tunnel again and again, phaser clutched tightly in his hand. Since the chamber began to fill with fog, he had become more and more uneasy.

Something was coming… everyone felt it.

The air had shifted, not thinner like before, but charged. Heavy. Oppressive.

Dar brushed another layer of crimson dust off the structure and gasped.

Mehta dropped down beside her instantly. “What?”

She pointed. “The glyphs… look.”

Not words… not prayers… instructions.

Lines and spirals representing energy flow. Focus arrays.

And in the center… a figure. Twisting. Shifting. Black.

Valis’s tricorder whined sharply. She looked up, eyes narrowing. “Incoming.”

Dr. Pell went rigid. “No life signs detected.”

Ryan took an involuntary step back from the entrance to the chamber. The dust in the tunnel started to swirl in low, whispering eddies.

The temperature dropped by several degrees.

Somewhere, just beyond hearing, there came a sound… not a voice, not a language… but a feeling.

Pain.

Hunger.

Mehta raised his phaser, setting it to maximum. His voice cut through the rising fear like a knife.

“Defensive positions!” he snapped.

Ryan scrambled to the left flank. Dr. Pell pulled her tricorder closer to her chest. Dar backed away from the exposed glyphs, regret heavy in her eyes.

Valis alone stood steady, her gaze locked toward the darkness at the tunnel’s mouth.

It was coming.

Whatever had been buried… imprisoned here.

It was coming for them.

_____________________________________

In the sickbay of the USS Vallejo, Lieutenant Jorath’s body convulsed on the biobed. He gasped, eyes flying open, sitting bolt upright.

The world around him slammed into his senses all at once. Sounds, feelings, terror,r and agony, all clawing at his mind from those around him. His crew… his family.

He choked, curling in on himself, breathing hard.

No.

He forced down the fear.

“Jorath!” Marin stood quickly, reaching for him. “Easy… you’re safe, you’re…”

But Jorath was already moving… not wild, but driven, shoving himself to the edge of the bed, clutching his head to hold the thoughts inside.

“I can feel it…” Jorath whispered. His voice shook with terror, but also with understanding.

Marin stepped closer, keeping his voice gentle. “What do you feel? Can you tell me?”

Jorath gritted his teeth, forcing the images flooding into his mind into words.

“It’s not alive… not like us. It was made.”

He saw flashes in his mind.

A mighty civilization… desperate… a weapon born of emotion itself.

“They made it to destroy their enemies. It fed on fear, pain, and guilt. It grew too strong… turned on them.”

Marin’s brow furrowed, horror gripping his chest. “They buried it here?”

Jorath nodded sharply. “Can’t kill it, only trap it. That’s what this world is… a prison. It’s been starving… sleeping… until now.”

He could feel it moving across the surface of Nerathis IV, sliding into the minds of the away teams, savoring their fear, preparing to feast.

“It’s still weak,” Jorath rasped.

Marin gripped his arm firmly. “Then we stop it… How?”

Jorath steadied himself, breathing through the storm pounding within his skull.

“It feeds on emotion… strong emotion. I can draw it to me. I can make myself louder than the others. It will come.”

“And then?” Marin asked, voice low.

Jorath’s eyes gleamed with desperation. “Then we trap it again.”

He turned, limping toward the sickbay exit, Marin right behind him.

They had to warn Captain Day, they had to reach the away teams.

Jorath knew he would have to be the bait.