The laboratory never slept.

It only hummed.

Low-frequency generators vibrated beneath polished steel floors, sending a constant subsonic thrum through the walls, the ceiling, the bones of anyone foolish enough to linger inside too long. Overhead, cold white surgical lights burned without flicker, reflecting endlessly off chrome tables, glass partitions, and the vast, impenetrable containment cube at the center of the chamber.

Inside that cube sat the meteor.

Or what had been classified as a meteor.

Dr. Elias Verne paced in slow, measured lines before the glass enclosure, barefoot in a pristine white lab coat that hung open at the throat, sleeves rolled neatly to his forearms. Faint purple shadows bruised the skin beneath his grey-blue eyes. He had not slept in four days. It showed only in the slight tightness at the corners of his mouth and the way his pupils occasionally dilated a fraction too long when the lights shifted.

In his left hand, he held a matte-black clipboard. In his right, a silver pen tapped softly against his lower lip in a slow, arrhythmic pattern.

Tap. Pause. Tap-tap. Pause.

The object inside the cube was roughly the size of a human torso—irregular, asymmetrical, jagged in places, yet disturbingly elegant in its geometry. It looked like a diamond that had been dragged through mud, its crystalline facets clouded with smoky impurities and veins of obsidian-black mineral that pulsed faintly beneath the surface.

Not glowing.

Not moving.

Yet unmistakably alive.

Elias stopped pacing.

He tilted his head slightly, listening.

There it was again.

A sound too subtle for any normal instrument to detect. Too slow to be mechanical. Too organic to be coincidence.

A heartbeat.

Thump.

…

Thump.

His dimples appeared faintly as his mouth curved, not in joy, not in triumph, but in something colder and far more dangerous: recognition.

“Fascinating,” he murmured to himself, voice hoarse from disuse. “No measurable thermal output. No radiation. No decay. Yet a rhythmic internal pressure wave at approximately thirty-two beats per minute.”

He scribbled something onto the clipboard without looking down.

Subject exhibits endogenous biological activity despite mineralized external morphology. Hypothesis: dormant organism in lithic chrysalis state.

He stepped closer to the glass.

The containment cube shimmered faintly as its layered energy fields adjusted to his proximity. Anti-teleportation mesh. Quantum isolation barriers. Gravitational anchoring. He had built this cage in a single night after the meteor impact, working with manic precision and surgical calm.

Because something that had a heartbeat did not fall out of the sky by accident.

“You survived atmospheric entry, kinetic impact, and thermal shock without structural compromise,” he said softly, eyes tracking a hairline fracture in one crystalline ridge. “That alone places you above every known terrestrial organism.”

He raised his hand and pressed two fingers lightly to the glass.

The heartbeat stuttered.

Just once.

Then resumed.

Elias’s breath slowed.

“…You can hear me,” he whispered.

He straightened, suddenly alert, exhaustion forgotten.

His pen began moving rapidly now.

Reactive bio-cognitive response detected. Subject demonstrates environmental awareness. Possibly auditory or electromagnetic sensory capacity.

He paced again, faster this time, boots whispering against steel.

“An extraterrestrial organism capable of long-term stasis in mineral form,” he muttered. “Self-contained life-support architecture. Internalized gravity stabilization. And a cardiovascular rhythm.”

A soft, incredulous huff left him.

“You are not a rock,” he said calmly. “You are a goddamn miracle.”

He stopped directly in front of the cube.

The heartbeat grew louder.

Not audibly.

But present.

As if it were pressing against the inside of his skull.

His lips parted slightly.

For the first time in days, genuine emotion touched his face.

Not empathy.

Not wonder.

Hunger.

“…What are you?” he asked quietly.

The lights flickered once.