6868c

The hum spiked. The lights went out. When they came back on, Dmitri and Park were gone. Elara stood alone, touching the warm casing of 6868c-2. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. Then the Odyssey 's main screen lit up with a single line of text, repeated in every language on Earth's database:

ANSWER ACCEPTED. UNIT 6868C AND 6868C-2 NOW SYNCHRONIZED. NEW QUESTION: WHAT WILL YOU BECOME? The hum spiked

To the public, it was a failed climate satellite, a half-billion-dollar piece of space junk tumbling through low orbit. To the three-person crew of the Odyssey , it was a ghost. For six months, they had tracked its erratic path, a silent reminder of the mission before theirs. No one spoke of what had happened to the crew of the Venture . Officially, it was a "communications malfunction." Unofficially, every astronaut on the Odyssey knew the rumor: 6868c hadn't failed. It had changed . Elara stood alone, touching the warm casing of 6868c-2

The designation was .

She led them to the cargo bay. There, behind a sealed panel, they found what the Venture 's crew had hidden: a second, smaller satellite. Identical to 6868c in every way except one. This one was labeled , and its casing was warm. Active. Transmitting. UNIT 6868C AND 6868C-2 NOW SYNCHRONIZED