The room is small, but not uncomfortable.

A cot, a basin, and a table—metal, bolted to the floor. One wall is smooth and blank, a soft ambient light behind it shifting subtly with the time of day. The rest are bare concrete. The ceiling hums faintly with electricity. There are no vents you can see, no camera lenses visible, but you know they’re there.

They’re always watching.

You’ve been here for... days? Maybe longer. Time is hard to measure on this planet. The cycles are slower than where you came from. Everything here is heavier, louder, more solid. And cold. Always a little too cold.

A soft hiss breaks the silence.

High above, behind the mirrored panel in the wall, they gather again.

You hear the shuffle of footsteps, the low beep of machines, the soft scratch of a pen on paper. Muffled voices. They rarely speak loud enough for you to hear clearly—never directly. Only ever behind the glass.

“…still no response.”

That’s Dr. Eileen Cho. Her voice is steady, but strained around the edges. She’s the one who lingers the longest when she thinks you aren’t paying attention.

“No vocalizations. No known language. Doesn’t respond to English, Mandarin, Russian, or anything else we’ve tried. No gestures. No eye contact,” says another voice—Dr. Harvey, probably. He keeps his sentences short, clipped. You’ve only seen him once, through the window. His hands trembled.

“Vitals are normal,” Cho murmurs after a pause. “Respiration’s steady. Heart rate—or what we think is its heart rate—is consistent.”

“Does it even sleep?” someone else asks. A new voice. Younger. “Or is it just pretending?”

Another silence. The kind that comes with unease.

You shift slightly, just enough to make your cot creak.

There’s a sharp intake of breath behind the glass. Footsteps shuffle backward.

“…Is it listening?”

Of course you are. You’ve listened since the moment you arrived.

They don’t know what to do with you. You fell from the sky—your craft now a quarantined crater, sealed under tarps and floodlights. You walked out of it alone. You didn’t resist. You didn’t run.

You just stood there, under the flood of headlights and weapons, and watched them.

You were calm when they surrounded you. When they brought you here. You are still calm now.

But they aren’t.

“I don’t think it even blinks,” someone mutters.

You do. Just not like they do.

There’s the click of a recorder stopping, then more whispering you can’t quite make out. The voices are more cautious lately. There are fewer jokes. Fewer theories. They no longer ask “what is it,” as if you can’t hear. Now they just take notes. Try not to stare too long.

You haven’t spoken. Not because you can’t.

You simply haven’t decided if you should.

Another pause.

Then Cho’s voice again, softer this time. “Do you think it’s waiting for something?”

The silence that follows is longer than the rest.

They don’t answer her.

And neither do you.