Ethan burst into the wide-open chamber, legs screaming, lungs crying out for relief, but he didn't feel a thing. He had found her. She was here, that was all that mattered pain be damned.

  “Maria?” He shouted into the room, only to be dumbstruck in utter confusion. There was nobody there.

  He took in the room all at once. Wide, high-ceilinged, humming faintly with the sound of the lone workstation at the other end. It looked abandoned. Except, the floor was littered with old food, signs of machinery, and one brightly lit corner with what looked like a workstation and computer, so people had been here. Ethan just couldn’t tell how long it had been since they left.

  “...Five-minute evacuation window begins now.” He heard a voice that he couldn’t place, and then he heard a voice he knew all too well:

  “Oh god, oh god, we're out of time! Evacuate now!”

  “Maria!” he shouted again, already losing hope that she was here. The silence hit like the hammer he thought he had been hearing.

  Instead, he could tell what it was now. A small drone was stuck under the workstation, repeatedly hitting the metallic desk over and over in a futile attempt to free itself.

  Clearly, people had been here, but who knew how long ago? Then he heard Maria’s voice, he wasn’t crazy, but she wasn’t here.

  Maria: August 12th. It's my birthday, my first birthday without Ethan.

  She paused as she wiped a tear away from her eye. She tried hard for a second to breathe deeply and then composed herself. Something inside Ethan cracked.

  Maria: God, I feel so silly getting worked up over a birthday.

  It was her voice. Six months ago, she had been here in this cave. Ethan could hardly believe it. He stepped toward the workstation, and there was a video playing. Tears welled up in his eyes as he realized it was her. Brown hair matted with sweat. Sharp, golden-brown eyes just above her perfect button nose, reflecting the computer light. Ethan’s heart melted all over again.

  Maria: Anyway, small wins, we're not dead yet. From the moment we got here, there haven't been many. Same as the last message, here's the rundown in case someone’s foolish enough to try and rescue us. Somehow, that stupid AI was right.

  She scoffed, shaking her head slightly.

  She was still alive, or at least she had been six months ago. It had to be enough. If she could survive two months here, then she could survive six, right? Ethan burned the image into his brain, even as she continued talking.

  Maria: This planet did have it. The thing CelestiTech has been after. But CelestOS 4.1, he didn’t prepare us at all for the horrors of this place.

  Ethan leaned in, heart in his throat. Maria’s voice took on a dark tone.

  Maria: CelestOS 4.1 said there were no hostiles detected as soon as we landed, and he sent out his scouting drones, and yet that's all this planet has been is one hostility after the other. Sergeant Brown brought us to this cave because it's one of our best hiding spots given our current… predicament. You do not want to be outside at night. Especially when you’re as far as we are from a real base.

  She glanced off-screen, said something he couldn’t pick up.

  Maria: We learned that the hard way the day we landed. Hordes of creatures slamming themselves against the protective shield of our ship. You need to be prepared. If it's getting close to nightfall, either barricade yourself in one or have turrets ready. As for the reason we’re here? We already found it, or at least part of it.

  She paused to consider her words.

  Maria: Well, we found something, at least. An alien ore. Dr. Miro ran tests, and he thinks it’s alive. A living metal, can you imagine? It's self-repairing, self-adaptive. It changes everything we think we know about biology, chemistry, and metallurgy.

  It was then that Ethan realized something. She wasn’t wearing a suit. Did that mean the air here wasn’t actually hazardous? He stared at the video, trying to see if there was any telltale sign of an oxygen bubble or some other sort of giveaway. But the video was too focused to display anything around her.

  Maria: It was able to do insane things.

  She grinned the way she always did when she was excited about something. Her brown eyes practically ablaze and her voice went up an octave as she bounced from foot to foot unconsciously.

  Maria: Dr. Miro attached it to our power generator, and it quadrupled our production. It actually amplified the amount of energy produced by our solar panels and worked like a battery too. It felt like a miracle; within an hour, we were able to create everything we needed to survive. Within the day, we had an entire army of turrets to man the nightly onslaughts. In the next week, we produced our first three forward response bases. Even had CelestOS 4.1 map out the entire region and start mapping out the grand ravine. In fact, we were almost ready to begin our planned return three months early; this metal was so revolutionary.

  Maria blinked slowly, but her excitement faded as quickly as it had come.

  However, that's when the problems started. Something infected Miro. We've been calling it the Red Resin for lack of a better name.

  She cut herself off as she looked down, as if she was ashamed to say the next part out loud.

  Maria: It was my fault. We were investigating the forest beyond the ravine, trying to figure out why none of the creatures would pursue us across the bridge we had made. But the answer was right there in front of us the whole time. I had been arguing we needed to study the plants and trees of the forest, especially those covered in the Red Resin. I was adamant that the origin message, the reason Celestitech is so fascinated by this planet, had come from the forest. The triangulation CelestOS gave us told us it was there, too.

  She paused again.

  Maria: Finally, Sergeant Brown and Doctor Miro agreed to take back clippings of one of the trees. The bark was covered with a waxy, red resin, almost metallic, and covered in these twisted thorns like a velociraptor's claws.

  She looked down, jaw tight, pain clear in her face.

  Maria: Doctor Miro got scratched while packing up the sample. Just a tiny puncture, which CelestOS immediately disinfected with CelestiMed. We thought nothing of it.

  A beat passed, but she didn’t look back at the camera.

  Maria: Within a day, he had changed. By the end of the the week…

  Her voice went monotone, as if the will had been drained from her body. She shuffled lightly before staring back at the camera. There was no more joy in her eyes.

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  Maria: He started muttering about Entropy. How the natural state of everything was to decay. He stopped sleeping. Stopped speaking in complete sentences. Just sat in place, eyes fixated on the alien ore.

  She rubbed her arm as if rubbing away phantom pain.

  Maria: His eyes changed. God. You should have seen it. His eyes were the first to go—those ruby-red irises, like something inside was boiling through. And then it spread. Blood-red vines, or tendrils, or… I don’t know what to call them. They sprouted from his eyes, wrapped around his head, his shoulders, like creepers, you know, vines. Like something was weaving itself into and around him.

  She was full-on sobbing now, and Ethan could feel the effects of his own tiredness bearing down too. And by this point, she had been through eight weeks of this torture.

  Maria: There was no blood, or at least, it didn’t look like blood. Just this alien trail, like Miro had dragged himself out of the observation room. A streak of red resin smeared like pollen across the walls and floor. The cameras caught it all…

  A pause. A breath. Then,

  Maria: I—I thought he was still in there. But… oh god, oh god it wasn’t him. He was dead. When Crimson creepers had fully enveloped him like a silken cocoon of blood, something ripped itself free from inside of his skull. Long and wet and wrong. All bloodred, spindly limbs and tendrils glistening with the same Red Resin covering all the trees. It sprayed the stuff as it moved, like a dog marking its territory. The creature slithered over Miro’s back and wrapped around his headless body as if he were at the end of a puppet's string. The monster simply walked into the power room, grabbed the alien ore, and left.

  When we woke, it was to monsters prowling around the lab. Sergeant Brown made quick work, but we knew we couldn’t stay here anymore, not after watching the security tape and watching what happened to him, not where he could find us. So we packed up and started hopping from base to base, no longer staying in place longer than three nights in a row. And we never ventured into the forest again.

  Whoever is watching this, be careful. Be wary. We’re leaving you a trail. You’ll find it. The beacon at the entrance will link you to the next one.

  And then he heard it. Faint, in the background of her recording. A chipper, male voice:

  CelestOS 4.1: WARNING: Cave stability compromised. Five-minute evacuation window begins now.

  Maria: Oh god, oh god, we're out of time! Evacuate now!

  The message repeated itself

  Maria: August 12th. It's my birthday, my first birthday without Ethan.

  Ethan stood for a long moment, frozen to the spot as the cavalcade of emotions hit all at once. She had been here barely six months ago, in the same spot he was. It felt so surreal to know she was here, to be able to hear her voice, but not know if she was truly safe.

  He felt like a ghost in her shadow, playing catch-up. Then the thing she described, The monster that man had become, and that Red Resin covering everything, rose in his mind like an insidious whisper. Had he been infected? He had wounds all over from where his shitty suit had been pierced by things. He shuddered involuntarily.

  He lowered himself to the floor, elbows on his knees, head cradled in his hands. This was the first time he had seen her in months, heard her voice in months. Sure, it was just a recording, but it was her. She was alive. Yet it made the distance feel worse, not better. She had been alive six months ago, but a lot could have happened since then. The monster, for one thing, could have gotten to her.

  His mouth was dry, though from the emotional pain, fear, or his impending dehydration, he didn’t know. But there was one thing he knew. He was going to find her, no matter what happened next. Of course, that was when CelestOS dropped the bombshell.

  CelestOS 4.2: Warning: cave stability compromised. Two-minute evacuation window begins now.

  He didn’t have the five minutes from the video. He only had two.

  Maria Log 001 Full Transcript

  [BEGIN TRANSCRIPT]

  Maria: August 12th. It's my birthday, my first birthday without Ethan.

  Maria: God, I feel so silly getting worked up over a birthday.

  Maria: Anyway, small wins, we're not dead yet. From the moment we got here, there haven't been many. Same as the last message, here's the rundown in case someone’s foolish enough to try and rescue us. Somehow, that stupid AI was right.

  Maria: This planet did have it. The thing CelestiTech has been after. But CelestOS 4.1, he didn’t prepare us at all for the horrors of this place.

  Maria: CelestOS 4.1 said there were no hostiles detected as soon as we landed, and he sent out his scouting drones, and yet that's all this planet has been is one hostility after the other. Sergeant Brown brought us to this cave because it's one of our best hiding spots given our current… predicament. You do not want to be outside at night. Especially when you’re as far as we are from a real base.

  Maria: We learned that the hard way the day we landed. Hordes of creatures slamming themselves against the protective shield of our ship. You need to be prepared. If it's getting close to nightfall, either barricade yourself in one or have turrets ready. As for the reason we’re here? We already found it, or at least part of it.

  Maria: Well, we found something, at least. An alien ore. Dr. Miro ran tests, and he thinks it’s alive. A living metal, can you imagine? It's self-repairing, self-adaptive. It changes everything we think we know about biology, chemistry, and metallurgy.

  Maria: It was able to do insane things.

  Maria: Dr. Miro attached it to our power generator, and it quadrupled our production. It actually amplified the amount of energy produced by our solar panels and worked like a battery too. It felt like a miracle; within an hour, we were able to create everything we needed to survive. Within the day, we had an entire army of turrets to man the nightly onslaughts. In the next week, we produced our first three forward response bases. Even had CelestOS 4.1 map out the entire region and start mapping out the grand ravine. In fact, we were almost ready to begin our planned return three months early; this metal was so revolutionary.

  Maria: It was my fault. We were investigating the forest beyond the ravine, trying to figure out why none of the creatures would pursue us across the bridge we had made. But the answer was right there in front of us the whole time. I had been arguing we needed to study the plants and trees of the forest, especially those covered in the Red Resin. I was adamant that the origin message, the reason Celestitech is so fascinated by this planet, had come from the forest. The triangulation CelestOS gave us told us it was there, too.

  Maria: Finally, Sergeant Brown and Doctor Miro agreed to take back clippings of one of the trees. The bark was covered with a waxy, red resin, almost metallic, and covered in these twisted thorns like a velociraptor's claws.

  Maria: Doctor Miro got scratched while packing up the sample. Just a tiny puncture, which CelestOS immediately disinfected with CelestiMed. We thought nothing of it.

  Maria: Within a day, he had changed. By the end of the the week…

  Maria: He started muttering about Entropy. How the natural state of everything was to decay. He stopped sleeping. Stopped speaking in complete sentences. Just sat in place, eyes fixated on the alien ore.

  Maria: His eyes changed. God. You should have seen it. His eyes were the first to go—those ruby-red irises, like something inside was boiling through. And then it spread. Blood-red vines, or tendrils, or… I don’t know what to call them. They sprouted from his eyes, wrapped around his head, his shoulders, like creepers, you know, vines. Like something was weaving itself into and around him.

  Maria: There was no blood, or at least, it didn’t look like blood. Just this alien trail, like Miro had dragged himself out of the observation room. A streak of red resin smeared like pollen across the walls and floor. The cameras caught it all…

  Maria: I—I thought he was still in there. But… oh god, oh god it wasn’t him. He was dead. When Crimson creepers had fully enveloped him like a silken cocoon of blood, something ripped itself free from inside of his skull. Long and wet and wrong. All bloodred, spindly limbs and tendrils glistening with the same Red Resin covering all the trees. It sprayed the stuff as it moved, like a dog marking its territory. The creature slithered over Miro’s back and wrapped around his headless body as if he were at the end of a puppet's string. The monster simply walked into the power room, grabbed the alien ore, and left.

  When we woke, it was to monsters prowling around the lab. Sergeant Brown made quick work, but we knew we couldn’t stay here anymore, not after watching the security tape and watching what happened to him, not where he could find us. So we packed up and started hopping from base to base, no longer staying in place longer than three nights in a row. And we never ventured into the forest again.

  Whoever is watching this, be careful. Be wary. We’re leaving you a trail. You’ll find it. The beacon at the entrance will link you to the next one.

  CelestOS 4.1: WARNING: Cave stability compromised. Five-minute evacuation window begins now.

  Maria: Oh god, oh god, we're out of time! Evacuate now!

  [END TRANSCRIPT]