The silence of that planet wasn’t just the absence of sound. It was something more... as if even the echo had surrendered to the desolation.

Mark carefully descended among the remains of what had once been a city. Towers split in half, collapsed floating structures, alien symbols etched into metal corroded by time. His communicator buzzed with interference. Emergency signal located. Frequency... civilian alien. Intermittent.”

"I already knew that, thanks..." He muttered under his breath.

There were no bodies. There were no voices left. Only the signal. What did you expect to find? Nothing. So why was I still here?

Guilt, probably. Or perhaps the small part of him that still believed something could be salvaged after the disaster. After everything his father had done. After all that he had inherited. A crack in the ground caught his attention. A spiral-shaped fissure. He approached, scanning with his visor.

“Containment chamber detected. Active biomass. Heartbeats... present. Mark’s eyes widened with a mixture of surprise and something more dangerous: hope. Without a second thought, he plunged into the rift. He spiraled thru collapsed structures, past shattered capsules and deactivated energy plates… and then he saw it. A metallic sphere, half-melted, cracked in the center. From it emerged a faint hum... and breathing.

It was there. A huddled figure, covered in dust, with skin stained by soot and dried blood. The sensors indicated unstable vital signs. Mark floated half a meter above the ground. He swallowed hard.

—“Hey..” He said in a low voice, almost as if he were afraid of breaking something else. —“You’re safe. There’s no one else here anymore.”

Silence.

—“I'm going to open this, okay? Just... don’t be scared. I'm Mark. I'm not here to hurt you.”

He extended his hand. The capsule creaked. The metal gave way with a crack that tore thru the dead air. And their eyes met.