Elara smiled. "Because you asked nicely. And because we're not ready for your answer. We haven't even learned to ask the right questions yet."
The signal, designated Ion265, wasn't a random burst from a dying star. It was a repeating, fractal pattern. A blueprint. The asteroid was a natural object that had been infected , its core overwritten by something from beyond the event horizon. A message etched in gravity and exotic matter.
"No," she said, and retracted the probe. ion265
"Singularity," she whispered, the word fogging her visor. "You're not a point. You're a design ."
The violet light flared, confused. Why? it seemed to ask. Elara smiled
The silence in Ion265 was absolute, a physical pressure against the eardrums. Not the silence of a dead ship, but the held breath of a waiting one.
Dr. Elara Venn floated in the central nexus, her tether to the research vessel Odyssey a thin, silver filament against the abyss. Below her, the asteroid wasn't rock. It was a skeleton. A lattice of carbon-silicon alloy, woven with filaments that pulsed a faint, sickly violet. Three years they'd tracked the signal. Three years of denying what it meant. We haven't even learned to ask the right questions yet
She initiated the failsafe. The Odyssey 's engines roared, pulling her tether taut. As she flew backward into the black, the Ion265 lattice pulsed one last time—not angry, not pleading. Curious.