Kell woke to voices.
Not one. Not two. A layered chorus of overlapping whispers, each speaking in a rhythm that felt like numbers… or prayers… or commands. The sound slid through the air like breath from lungs he could not see.
He opened his eyes.
Dim light pulsed along the walls, rising and falling in a slow, tidal rhythm. The surrounding chamber stretched wide and windowless, shaped from stone that shimmered between jade and marble. Every surface rippled with veins of pale green, as if the walls themselves held frozen currents.
He wasn't alone.
Survivors clustered in the far corner of the room. Ten, maybe twelve. Shadows swallowed their faces. Fear bent their spines. Kell pushed himself upright with trembling arms and joined them, instinct driving him toward the herd. No bars confined them. No doors he could see marked an exit. The stone stretched smooth and seamless.
A sound hit the air—a low, rising hum—and the "others" entered.
They were human or had been once. Men and women wore transparent fabric that clung close enough to reveal silhouettes but concealed nothing. The fabric frightened him more than their hollow eyes or shaved scalps. When their hearts beat, a faint red glow bloomed beneath the gauze, pulsing like a warning light. Each breath drew a blue shimmer across their ribs, brightening and fading in a mechanical cadence.
A transparent helm sat over every skull. Yellowish energy pulsed above the crowns of their heads, flowing in slow spirals, as if something inside the helm was feeding or monitoring them.
They moved with silent precision. Their feet made no sound on the jade-marble floor.
Someone near Kell whispered, "Acolytes."
The word didn't help. The aliens entered next.
Kell froze. His breath thinned to a thread.
Without their suits, they looked even more impossible. He recognized the gray, smooth planes of their bodies from movies and conspiracy theories, but gill-like structures fluttered. Their limbs were too long. The joints did not align properly. Their skin held a wet sheen, like creatures dragged straight from the sea.
Each alien wore a metal collar at the base of the neck. When an alien's mandibles opened, its voice spilled out as a series of rapid clicks… which the collar translated into flat, synthetic English.
"Bring the prisoners forward."
"Discard expired matter."
"Clean the examination table."
The acolytes obeyed instantly.
They dragged the bodies into neat lines. Dead ones moved like broken dolls. Living ones whimpered or sagged, too exhausted to stand. Kell pressed deeper into the corner, heart thundering so hard it shook his hands. Panic clawed at his throat.
Along the walls, carved reliefs twisted through the stone. Tentacled shapes curved in spirals. Eyes stared in clusters from impossible angles. Beings carved with wings, horns, and coils rose from the ocean depths. Kell's stomach twisted. He had seen images like these in old paperbacks. On internet threads. In fiction. Only this time, the carvings looked older than any myth he had ever read.
A sound drew his focus to the acolytes.
One of them carried a child.
A little girl curled in her mother's arms. The mother screamed and fought, nails biting into the acolyte's arm. The little girl sobbed so hard she couldn't breathe.
"No," the mother cried. "No, not her. Please, she's only seven. She's only—"
Two aliens approached. Their mandibles clicked, and the collars translated.
"Suitable age. Bring forward."
The mother shrieked. With calm, mechanical strength, they pulled her arms away. The girl reached toward her mother's hair, tiny fingers slipping through strands.
Kell felt something snap inside him. He surged forward on instinct, arms outstretched. His voice ripped from him before he could think. "Stop! Stop, please. She's a child. Take me instead. I'll take her place."
Silence descended upon the room.
The acolytes paused. The mother's cries cut through her choked gasps. Kell stood shaking so hard he felt his knees might fold. The aliens turned their heads toward him in unison. Their faceted eyes reflected him in fractured pieces.
One clicked its mandibles. The collar translated… "Volunteer identified."
Another alien approached him slowly and deliberately, as if unsure whether this was a trap. It reached out. Kell didn't pull away. His body trembled, breath fluttering.
"Accept," the collar translated.
Cold hands clamped around his wrists.
He let them. He swallowed as the mother clutched her child and sobbed into her hair. Kell didn't look back. "If you ever get free, find my parents! My name is Kell Sterling. Tell them I died to do the right thing!"
The aliens marched him through a narrow corridor of green stone. A faint pulse moved through the walls, alive with currents. The deeper they went, the louder the chanting voices became—those layered whispers that had greeted him when he woke.
A ritual chamber was the room they dragged him into.
He felt it instantly.
A table rose at the center, carved from the same jade-marble stone. Strange machines wrapped around it—metal limbs, needle-filled scaffolds, glowing conduits that pushed and pulled in steady rhythm. They looked alive.
Kell's breath hitched. He shook his head.
"No, no, please, I—"
Claws pinned him to the table.
Straps tightened across his arms and legs.
A needle plunged into his forearm. Another stabbed into his ribs. Something cold pressed into the back of his skull.
He screamed.
Pain raked through him, tearing along every nerve. His vision stuttered. His spine arched. Machines hissed and clicked. Metal arms adjusted their angle like curious predators.
He screamed again.
He jerked his arm. One cable snapped free from the port buried against his skin. Blood spilled across the stone in a fast ribbon.
The stone drank it.
Red light flared beneath him, pulsing outward from the point where his blood touched the altar. Lines carved into the surface ignited, glowing brighter, brighter, brighter—
Kell's vision exploded white.
The scream stopped.
Silence rushed in.
When he opened his eyes again, the world sat still.
The surrounding machines stood dark and dead. Frozen mid-motion. Needles hung suspended inches from his skin. The straps lay loose across his arms.
Kell pushed himself upright. His breath scraped through his throat. The bodies filled the ritual chamber. Each acolyte. All aliens. Each prisoner.
Dead.
The child he saved was gone. Her mother gone.
The others from the holding room lay collapsed on the jade floor, limbs tangled, faces slack. Kell's lungs tightened. His vision blurred. The silence pressed closer, too close. They did not select him. He did not receive mercy.
He was the only one left alive.