Lohengrin′s orbit (Lacaille 8760). On board NSG Chronos. Starscraper. Deep space transport vessel. Crew: 1,728. Passengers in hypersleep: 10,000. 16th October 2607 AD...

  Max Picard awoke with a start, his heart pounding. The cold sweat clinging to the sheets greeted him, along with the cloak of darkness. But it wasn't the eerie darkness of his usual nightmares, it was more familiar. A delicate fragrance of vender told him that he was in his cabin and that it had only been a nightmare. Like a drop of paint in a gss of water, the images faded. However, the feeling persisted and he continued to feel threatened.

  His mind still bounced with the remnants of the nightmare. The dark forest. The unattainable silhouette of Lay fading into the darkness. His sister's hair floating around her, slowly, as if she were underwater. A bulky, orange and dirty space suit wrapped around her. It seemed to devour her small body. A yellowish, sickly aura that followed her was the only light. And for every step Max took, it seemed to take two steps away.

  Like every night, he could not reach her. He stumbled and then his sister walked away. As if he were falling into a singurity, the light disappeared completely and he was engulfed in darkness. But he soon realised: He was not alone. Something was watching him. An imposing, immeasurable presence, the mere thought of which was enough to give him a headache. It was watching him, looking at him with a million eyes. At the same time, fireflies appeared, fluttering around him and passing through him like particles of ionising radiation.

  There was a presence in the woods. No. The forest itself was alive, and then he realised. The ground, the stumps, the surroundings were distorting and turning into an endless, gritty mass of flesh, with the faces of the swollen crew members screaming an order.

  —. Bring them back. — they commanded, howling together. Suddenly, the cacophony of tortured souls was all he could hear as he was transported to the ninth circle of hell. Max tried to hide. It was impossible. He was at the mercy of the indescribable being that haunted his dreams. The fireflies are coming. They are hungry. They wanted to emerge. And then there would be no more darkness. They all shone in the forest. For they will all be fireflies.

  Max didn't understand what that meant, and as he gasped and tried to sit up, the voices continued to murmur inside his head, growing fainter. The dream was becoming an elusive and unreachable lover for him and the rest of the crew. But the voices were something new. He thought about talking to Harding about it.

  —. Bring them back. — he reminded himself to write it down in his notebook. But as he thought about it and reached for the bedside table, he felt watched.

  A presence seemed to loom at the edge of his consciousness and beyond the reach of his vision. Max hesitated to turn around and face the unknown horror that awaited him. But he gathered his strength and, with his trembling hand, turned on the mp. A bright glow dispelled the darkness of his cabin. Sliding back into bed, Max let out a sigh he didn't realize he was holding.

  —. Damn, Naomi. You scared the shit out of me. —

  —. I'm sorry. — Naomi murmured in a soft voice, tinged with fatigue and embarrassment. She was curled up in the chair next to the bed, with her chin resting on her knees and her eyes shadowed by tiredness. She wore a huge bck t–shirt from a Punk–Rock band from Calisto, Poylo. It was so big on her that it sometimes looked like an improvised and careless dress.

  She was petite. Her skin was pale and her short, messy hair was bck as night. She exuded an aura of silent strength, and her mismatched eyes reflected an emotional depth that seemed to contradict her short stature. Strands cascaded over her forehead, slightly disheveled, covering her eyebrows, hugging herself, lost in her thoughts.

  —. I can't sleep. — she confessed —. I keep having ugly dreams. —

  Max nodded in understanding, though it was more of a gesture with his hands than his head. Something he inherited from his distant Martian ancestors to be seen with the spacesuit.

  —. Let me guess. Those fireflies too, right? — and unlike Max, she nodded, so subtle it would be imperceptible with a spacesuit on, but one that Max had learned to distinguish.

  With a blink, Max checked his Reality Extension Device and looked at the time. 4:32 AM. He sighed in resignation. He stretched with a long yawn and stood up. He melted into a hug with Naomi and pressed his head against hers. Then he kissed her forehead.

  —. Looks like we won't be going back to sleep, huh? — Naomi's response was to nudge him with her head —. What if I make us some coffee? — she smiled at him, highlighting the dimples in her cheeks.

  —. Sounds perfect. —

  Insomnia had turned into a familiar and unwelcome mate. It tormented not only Max but also Naomi and the entire crew for days. For him, each morning began earlier than the st, and he surrendered to the impeding wakefulness. Going back to bed was useless, and the specter of the fireflies lurked and burned the hopes of restorative sleep. So with Naomi, they resigned themselves to morning rituals as a distraction from endless sleepless nights.

  As he stepped into the shower, the hot water offered a brief respite from the exhaustion that clung to their bodies like leeches, sucking their energy. Refreshed but still tired, Max focused on the new task at hand: breakfast.

  As the Executive Officer of a Starscrapper, he enjoyed certain privileges, the main one being privacy. The cabin was a modest but functional space. A bed for two occupied one corner, and nearby was a small living area, with a compact bathroom. And of course, there was the kitchen, where they couldn't miss out on simple pleasures even for a moment.

  The aroma of coffee filled the air. Grown in the Hydroponics of the ship, it was real coffee. Its smell carried a rich essence of roasted grains with slightly fruity undertones. With practical precision, Max filled the coffee maker with fluid and resolute movements. He ordered an espresso for himself and Naomi.

  When the coffee maker began to hum, a stream of bck liquid gold started to pour into the cup. Max diverted his gaze to the bedside table, suddenly realizing an unexpected absence. With his pulse racing, he took two strides and grabbed his pack of martian Joey Jim's inside a white and red wrapper. Real tobacco, grown in the vertical farms on Hels Basin, and not that polymer loaded with artificial nicotine they printed aboard the Chronos. He tucked them into his pocket as if they were a sacred treasure.

  —. It's too early to smoke, isn't it? — Naomi asked him. She had already gotten out of the shower and was drying her hair with a towel. Max stuffed them into his pocket.

  —. I was just keeping them close. — he lied. Naomi had opened the balcony that led to the inner garden, and in the meantime, she was carrying two chairs to take them outside.

  —. When we get to Mars, I'll throw them away, I swear. — Naomi decred in a pyful tone, but with a hint of reproach.

  —. When we get to Mars, I'll leave them. I promise. — Max replied. The weight of his words had a much deeper meaning than just quitting smoking. Since Chronos slowed down near Lacaille 8760, thoughts of settling on the red pnet had consumed their thoughts.

  Though calling it the red pnet was pure irony. For years, Mars had not been the desote wastend of yore. Terraforming was already bearing fruit. Green, blue, and white patches could be seen from orbit. There was liquid water, and in some regions, you could breathe without a suit. Lake Galle had a certain special allure, and its shores beckoned them as if it were a siren's song. A cabin facing it seemed a dream worth pursuing.

  But as if fate conspired against him, that stretch was becoming particurly difficult. As soon as the Chronos transited through Percival for its final thrust, they received a message from the satellite network. Lohengrin was in quarantine. There was a flight ban. No ship was taking off. None was nding. There was no authorization to leave or receive passengers. The order was clear. They had to turn back.

  But Chronos had never left a mission unfinished. So they continued on their way. The first batch of 200 passengers was already awake, and they couldn't put them back into hypersleep. They hadn't crossed the abyss being frozen for 15 years for nothing.

  And with that, the fireflies appeared. One by one, the crew members of the Chronos saw their dreams become tainted with those visions. A dark, impenetrable forest. Ghosts of their loved ones, their dead, or someone important to them, amidst the glow of those bugs, who in that brightness called them to come with them, or slipped through their fingers, as always happened with Lay.

  The Chief Engineer, Dmitry Daimonji, saw his biological father. The old bastard was well dead, part of the closed ecosystem of some dome in the Othelo Crater. And every time the subject came up when they were in the dining room, he always said the same thing; that old fucker should not rise from the grave. And like Daimonji, almost everyone saw their deceased. Except Max, because as far as he knew, Lay was not dead.

  They st saw each other when the Chronos finished the shield repairs, and they headed for their routine flights between Solsis and Lacaille 8760. Now twelve light–years separated them. And as the Starscrappers could not overcome that insurmountable barrier, neither could the news, which traversed the void barely faster than the ships. A paradox in every sense. The fastest speed humanity had ever reached, and yet, gcially slow.

  Max couldn't stop wondering what those visions meant. Did he miss his sister? Of course. Since the Psma Saw incident, they promised never to separate again. They would be there for each other. They would be a team, as they always were aboard the Atomic Crab, and then on the Chronos.

  But she had decided to leave the crew. During the repairs, she met a couple, a Martian engineer named Matías Nakamura. Madly in love, and after those two years, they decided they wanted to build their life together in Argyre, Matías's hometown. If something happened in between, Max had no way of knowing until the news reached Lacaille 8760, decades ter. By the time they saw each other again, they might have started their own family, or one of them, if not both, might be dead. A knot formed in his throat just thinking about it.

  Another doubt haunted him. The nightmares seemed a curious case of collective hysteria, and there had to be some expnation. A radiation leak? Unthinkable, they would have been a radioactive mush before reaching retivistic speed. Suggestion? It seemed possible, but what triggered it? And then he remembered. Along with the quarantine, reports were coming from Lohengrin. Colonists were reported to be having simir nightmares, just before the Chronos crossed Percival.

  The other option sent chills down his spine. What if it was something alien? It wasn't unthinkable either. Since the discovery of the Farmers' ruins in the local neighborhood, humanity had been getting the idea. Space turned out not to be a wastend, but a graveyard. Everything indicated that the Orion Arm was once full of life, worlds, terraformed gardens, where their creators shaped life and themselves at will. And then they suddelny disappeared. Ruins and fossils were one thing. A living specimen, something entirely different. Max wondered if humanity was truly ready for real contact. When it would happen was the right question.

  The click of the coffee maker pulled him out of that daydream. His coffee was ready. He took them with him and headed to the balcony, where Naomi was waiting for him sitting down. Max offered it to her, and she accepted it with a slight smile. For a few minutes, they just drank in silence, accompanied by the smell of coffee, the petrichor of the inner garden, the faint hum of the systems, and the smoke from a freshly lit cigarette. A fragile peace that shattered into pieces.

  —. I dreamed about Sixta again. — Naomi dropped in a low voice, almost sounding like an apology. The snap of the irrigation systems crackled throughout the module, while a mist of water and nutrients slowly fell from nozzles in the ceiling onto the pnts that danced in the currents of wind that swirled around the module.

  Max stared into nothingness, exhaling that st puff of smoke that had suddenly taken on a bitter aftertaste. The cortisol injected into his blood suddenly sent a chill down his spine. The cold, whitish light of the sor lights trying to mimic the glow of a full moon had given Naomi a deathly pallor, like that of a corpse, like that of a Bck Shadow. Then he swallowed hard, putting on the best poker face that the rush of nerves allowed him.

  —. How long has it been? — he asked. Max was surprised at how sharp and pathetic his voice sounded. And he couldn't hide it no matter how hard he tried. Naomi noticed the sudden fear in her beloved, and then she shrugged, trying to hide her face behind her knee.

  —. Two days. — and it only took a little more for everything to go to hell. Slowly, Max nodded. Two days since that ghost had started to rear its ugly head again. Years of work, and four trips, threatened to go overboard. Max felt his head spinning, and he didn't know if it was from the dizziness of that revetion, or if it was the Coriolis effect of the habitat drum, —. I'm scared. — Naomi's voice broke as she said it —. What if I kill someone this time? What if I hurt you again like that time...? —

  —. That won't happen. — Max hurried to say, taking her hand thight, locking his eyes on Naomi's that were trying to avoid his —. Naomi, listen to me. It's just a nightmare. Sixta doesn't control you. She never has. We drop off these passengers and it's all over. When we reach Solsys, when Mars appears in the windows, I promise you Sixta will never show up again. —

  —. That's not what scares me, Max. — she replied, her voice breaking —. It's that she shows up right now, and that everything we've imagined for so long is no longer possible because... — no words were needed to know what she was referring to. The Bck Shadow was taking control again. The Naomi that Max knew, the woman he loved, was disappearing. Only the killing machine was left unleashed. The mere thought sent chills down his spine and tore at his heart. A nightmare scenario, one that Max was determined to avoid.

  —. Naomi. — he insisted. He wanted to give her safety, certainty that everything would be fine. But also that she wouldn't slip through his fingers, that ghost wouldn't snatch her away. And Naomi wanted to believe him —. Whatever happens, we will be together. Sixta won't be able to hurt you anymore. And if she tries, we will send that demon back to hell, where it belongs. — Naomi let out a sad ugh and managed to smile.

  The shrill sound of an arm pierced the air. Sharp. Shrill. In an instant, their entire universe turned to noise. The calmness shattered like a porcein vase smashed on the floor. An orange light flooded the entire residential module, and the vibration through the walls revealed that it was sounding throughout the ship. It merged with a voice.

  —. This is Sayuri Sawatari from Comms. All crew to their workstations. I repeat. All crew to their workstations. This is not a drill. Bridge crew report to the Flight Deck at 0530 hours awaiting instructions. Over and out. — and then, a deafening silence. The residential module was filled with an unsettling calm.

  —. What's happening? — Naomi asked. One by one, the lights in the cabins began to turn on, like stars during the night. A tacit murmur was beginning to be heard through the walls.

  —. I don't know. — Max managed to say. And before he stood up, a horrible sense of foreboding formed in him like an emptiness in his chest. A chill appeared at the base of his head and slowly traveled down the rest of his body. It was like an unspoken warning, or rather a certainty, that from that moment on, nothing would ever be the same again.