Marcus’s hand went to his sidearm. The ship’s alarm wasn’t sounding. The corridor outside his quarters was silent. Too silent.
The lights flickered. The hum of the ship’s engines changed pitch. And then the file opened on its own. The screen blazed to life not with a menu, but with a raw, shaky feed. Italian subtitles burned into the bottom— “iTA” —but the audio was battlefield English, ripped from a source that sounded like it had been recorded through a dead trooper’s helmet mic.
The file expanded. The X... at the end of the filename began to multiply: — like legs. Like chitin.
“What is this?” he whispered.
The footage was from Station Titan. The Invasion . Marcus had heard the stories—the lost outpost, the breached quarantine, the betrayal that the Federation never officially acknowledged. But this... this was different.
Marcus’s hand went to his sidearm. The ship’s alarm wasn’t sounding. The corridor outside his quarters was silent. Too silent.
The lights flickered. The hum of the ship’s engines changed pitch. And then the file opened on its own. The screen blazed to life not with a menu, but with a raw, shaky feed. Italian subtitles burned into the bottom— “iTA” —but the audio was battlefield English, ripped from a source that sounded like it had been recorded through a dead trooper’s helmet mic.
“The extraction was a lie. The bugs aren’t the only ones who can burrow into history.”
“They’re inside the perimeter!”
“Marcus. You were not supposed to find this.”
The file expanded. The X... at the end of the filename began to multiply: — like legs. Like chitin.
“What is this?” he whispered.
The footage was from Station Titan. The Invasion . Marcus had heard the stories—the lost outpost, the breached quarantine, the betrayal that the Federation never officially acknowledged. But this... this was different.