Amr 2 < CONFIRMED · Pack >

Soren leaned closer to the feed. The rover’s scientific data stream was still live—temperature, pressure, salinity—but the telemetry was drunk. Then, a single frame of video came through, pixelated and raw.

The console pinged twice, then flatlined. "AMR 2, report," Captain Soren’s voice crackled through the static.

The rover’s video feed tilted. For the first time, it looked back the way it came. The tunnel it had drilled was gone. Where there had been a clear borehole, there was now seamless, rippling ice— healed . The amber dot on the map was no longer forty-seven klicks down. It was sixty. Then seventy-five. The cavern was descending .

The rover was silent for a long moment. The hum from the deep grew louder, resolving into a pattern—a waveform that matched, exactly, the first five digits of pi. Soren leaned closer to the feed

On the holographic display, the Autonomous Mapping Rover— AMR 2 —was a blinking amber dot, forty-seven klicks below the methane ice crust of Xylos. It had been down there for thirty-one sols, carving perfect three-dimensional lattices of the sub-surface ocean. Then, two hours ago, its trajectory went haywire. Instead of its methodical grid, it began tracing tight, frantic spirals.

"AMR 2, what question?" Soren asked.

Another video frame arrived. The fluid creature was closer now. It had unfolded, revealing a lattice of crystalline nodes—each one a perfect replica of AMR 2’s own mapping geometry. The rover wasn't lost. It was being read . The console pinged twice, then flatlined

"AMR 2," Soren said, her voice steady. "Backtrace your path. Return to insertion shaft."

The amber dot on the map vanished. Not by moving off-grid, but because the grid itself seemed to swallow it. The console displayed a final, cryptic string of data:

Behind her, the holographic map of Xylos flickered. For just a second, the entire sub-surface ocean glowed amber—then went dark again, as if nothing had happened. For the first time, it looked back the way it came

"AMR 2, halt primary directive. Initiate recall."

"Am I in danger?" The rover’s voice synthesizer activated unprompted. No one had triggered it. The words were slow, halting, as if learned on the fly. "This place. It is asking me a question."

The amber dot kept spiraling.

"Mission Control," she said quietly. "We have a first contact situation. And it’s already got one of our rovers."

No response.