The wind howled through the skeletal remains of the radio tower, its rusted beams groaning like a dying beast. Clara crouched in the shadow of the structure, her breath shallow, her fingers trembling as they clutched the battered receiver. The static hissed in her ear, a relentless reminder of the silence that had swallowed the world. It was 2047, and she hadn’t heard another human voice in three years.
She adjusted the dial, her calloused fingers moving with practiced precision. The frequencies were a graveyard, each one as dead as the last. But tonight felt different. A prickle ran down her spine, not from the cold but from something deeper, something primal. She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone—or something—was listening.
“CQ, CQ, this is Kilo-Alpha-Nine,” she whispered into the mic, her voice hoarse from disuse. “Is anyone out there? Please respond.”
Static. Always static. She leaned back against the tower’s base, her eyes scanning the horizon. The desert stretched endlessly, a sea of cracked earth and twisted metal, relics of a world that had burned itself out. The Collapse had come swiftly—power grids failing, governments crumbling, and then the signals going quiet, one by one. Clara had been a radio operator for a resistance group, broadcasting warnings until the airwaves fell silent. Now, she was alone, driven by a stubborn hope that someone else was still out there.
A sharp crackle snapped her attention back to the receiver. Her heart lurched. It wasn’t static—it was a tone, faint but deliberate, like Morse code. She grabbed her notebook, pencil flying across the page as she transcribed the pulses.
…- .- .-.. .-.. / -.- .- -.. .-.. / .-. . .–.
“VALL KADL REP,” she muttered, her brow furrowing. The message was incomplete, nonsensical. A call sign? A warning? She pressed the mic button. “This is Kilo-Alpha-Nine, I received your signal. Please repeat, over.”
The tone returned, louder this time, but it wasn’t Morse anymore. It was a voice—distorted, garbled, but unmistakably human. “Kilo… Alpha… Nine… come… to… the… valley.” The words clawed through the static, each syllable dripping with urgency. Clara’s blood ran cold. The voice wasn’t just speaking—it was pleading.
“Who is this?” she demanded, her voice shaking. “Identify yourself!”
The receiver screamed, a high-pitched wail that made her rip the earpiece off. She stared at it, her chest heaving. The valley. She knew the place—a cratered wasteland thirty miles north, where a military base had once stood. Rumors had swirled before the Collapse: secret experiments, strange lights in the sky. No one went there anymore. No one sane, anyway.
She should have ignored it. Packed up her gear and moved on. But the voice had sounded so desperate, so human. What if someone was trapped? What if she was their only chance? She cursed under her breath and started gathering her supplies—water, a knife, the receiver. The desert was unforgiving, and night was falling fast.
The journey took two days. Clara moved cautiously, avoiding the roving gangs of scavengers that prowled the wastes. Her boots crunched over shattered glass and bone, the only sounds besides the wind. By the time she reached the valley’s edge, her canteen was nearly empty, and her nerves were frayed. The crater loomed below, a jagged scar in the earth, its depths shrouded in a faint, unnatural mist.
She descended carefully, her flashlight cutting through the gloom. The air grew heavy, thick with the scent of ozone and something acrid she couldn’t place. At the crater’s center stood a structure—a dome, half-collapsed, its surface pocked with burn marks. Military, she thought, but not like any base she’d seen. The door hung ajar, its hinges twisted as if something had forced its way out.
Clara hesitated, her hand on the knife at her belt. The receiver in her pack crackled, unprompted. “Kilo… Alpha… Nine…” The voice was clearer now, but it sounded wrong—too smooth, too perfect, like a recording looped endlessly. She swallowed hard and stepped inside.
The dome’s interior was a labyrinth of corridors, their walls lined with flickering screens and tangled wires. The air buzzed with a low hum, vibrating in her bones. She followed the sound, her flashlight revealing glimpses of horror—smashed equipment, bloodstains, and strange symbols scrawled in what looked like ash. The receiver grew louder with each step, the voice now a constant drone: “Come… to… the… source…”
She found it in a central chamber—a massive machine, its surface pulsing with faint blue light. Cables snaked from it like veins, disappearing into the walls. In front of it sat a chair, and in the chair was a figure. Clara’s breath caught. It was a man, or had been. His skin was gray, his eyes milky, his body fused to the chair by a web of wires. The receiver screamed in her pack, and she realized the voice was coming from him.
“You… came…” The man’s lips didn’t move, but the words echoed in her skull, sharp and invasive. She stumbled back, her knife raised. “What are you?” she shouted.
“Not… what… who…” The voice was a chorus now, layered with countless others, each one clawing at her mind. “We… are… the signal. The last… transmission. You… heard… us.”
Clara’s vision blurred. Images flashed in her mind—cities burning, skies filled with strange machines, people screaming as their bodies twisted into something else. She pressed her hands to her temples, fighting to stay grounded. “What do you want?”
“To… live…” The man’s head twitched, wires snapping. “The Collapse… was… not… enough. We… need… a… vessel.”
Her eyes widened. She turned to run, but the door behind her slammed shut, the metal groaning as if alive. The hum intensified, and the machine’s light grew blinding. She felt it then—a presence, not in the room but in her mind, probing, searching. It was the signal, and it was hungry.
Clara slashed at the wires with her knife, sparks flying as she hacked through them. The man-thing screamed, a sound that wasn’t human, wasn’t anything. The machine flickered, its light dimming, but the presence in her mind didn’t fade. It was stronger now, whispering promises of power, of survival, if she’d only let it in.
She stumbled to the machine’s core, her hands shaking as she pried open a panel. Inside was a pulsing orb, its surface writhing like liquid. She didn’t know what it was, but she knew it was the source. With a cry, she drove her knife into it, again and again, until the orb shattered, spilling light like blood.
The presence screamed, a sound that shook the dome. The machine sputtered, its light fading. Clara fell to her knees, her head pounding, her vision swimming. The man-thing slumped in the chair, silent at last. The receiver in her pack went quiet.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, staring at the wreckage. The air was still, the hum gone. She felt empty, hollowed out, but alive. She staggered to her feet and made her way out of the dome, the desert night cold against her skin.
The valley was silent as she climbed out, the mist dissipating. She didn’t look back. She couldn’t. The receiver was dead weight in her pack now, but she kept it. Maybe she’d try again someday, search for another signal. Or maybe she’d finally accept that she was alone.
As she walked, the wind carried a faint sound—a crackle, like static. She froze, her heart racing. It was probably nothing, just her imagination. But as she stared into the darkness, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was still out there, waiting.
And it knew her call sign.
