The Search for the Lost (FT Re-intro, open)

[Epsilon Reticuli]

The universe – our universe, at least – is an incomprehensibly ancient place, roughly fifteen billion years old according to the latest academically agreed-upon estimates, give or take a billion. And that's assuming that time was always linear, or that the Big Bang truly was the progenitor of all things, and there wasn’t something else here before that.

It is also unfathomably enormous. For all of the space-faring civilisations that live throughout the billions of galaxies of the universe, none have explored its every inch, touched its boundaries, and discovered all of its secrets. For all of their pomp and hubris, and despite all of the Dyson spheres, Death Stars and super-weaponry they built, for all of the power they thought they had, they were as ants.

And yet, life was perhaps the most incredible thing about the whole universe. It was everywhere, all the time, in every conceivable environment.

On Earth, life had been evolving for roughly four billion years. For the first two billion of those, it was nought but single-celled life – the microscopic ancestors of humans, whom they disdain to call cousins. After that, evolution exploded into a sprint; complex lifeforms rapidly took control of the seas and the land in an astonishingly short period of time, geologically speaking, and the process never seemed to lose pace. Indeed, it only seemed to accelerate. One species gave way to another; countless millions of species were made extinct only for new ones to take their place – there are many times more extinct species buried beneath our feet than there are alive today. The planet changed its very appearance over the hundreds of millions of years it took for the dinosaurs to rise, dominate, and then fall again, but life remained a constant.

Eventually, as we all know, evolution on Earth culminated in modern humans, about thirty or forty thousand years ago – a tiny fraction of time, geologically speaking. For a time, they thought themselves to be unique, special, as though they were the ultimate goal of evolution. Then, like so many other intelligent species throughout the cosmos, they discovered that they weren’t. War ensued.

A similar tale could be heard on countless different planets across the Milky Way, and even in neighbouring galaxies, for billions of lightyears around. It seemed that no matter the star system, no matter the planet, life in this region of the universe had found a way, and over the last four or five billion years it had exploded like a wildfire tearing across a sun-parched grassland. And after all those aeons of waiting, intelligent life has finally arrived. Some species may have attained intelligence a little earlier than others; sometimes hundreds of thousands of years earlier, but at least everywhere was starting to catch up.

And so the galaxy has become civilised. For the first time, countless interstellar empires have laid down laws, established governments, forged technology and spread their cultures far and wide. At long last, the animals have been relieved of their duties – the superior species have taken the reigns. They were proud.

But the universe is incomprehensibly ancient. To believe you are the ‘first’ at anything is woefully naive.

In fact, the idea of space-faring civilisations was not a new one at all, not even in terms of astrophysical time frames, let alone geological ones. Life had actually existed in the universe, in some form or another, for over ten billion years – more than five billion years before the Sol system was even formed. In that time, a number of intelligent creatures had risen from the gene pool long before primates had first dropped down from their trees and decided to stand upright. Many of them fell straight back into it again, either being rendered completely extinct by some calamity or another, or having evolved into something else entirely (intelligence of course, contrary to popular belief, was not actually the goal of evolution at all). Some may still exist however, in some form or another, somewhere.

Life, like the universe, was ancient.

---

For a long time now, there had been talk amongst various xeno-palaeontologists in and around the Orion Arm of the Milky Way and beyond of one particularly interesting sapient species, thought to have been made extinct a mere seven hundred million years ago. So far not a great many academics in the field had spent much time researching this ‘new’ species as yet, but a few dedicated professionals, using what resources they had, were beginning to notice the fossilised remains of a remarkable humanoid alien species on numerous planets across the Milky Way.

Many of these planets had been rendered uninhabitable millions of years before, but the fossils, for the most part, were safe and sound beneath the rock, waiting to be unearthed by curious diggers – or, at least, sufficiently high-resolution geo-sensors. That these fossils, so clearly all members of the same species, were found distributed across such wide swathes of the galaxy certainly indicated an advanced society capable of long-range interstellar transportation. Indeed, just when they thought they’d found the territorial borders of these long-dead aliens, a colleague ten thousand lightyears away alerted them to a new find that extended them even further. There seemed to be no end to the reach of their ancient empire.

What was curious, though, was that they had to assume they were technologically advancement based entirely on the distribution of their fossils. For, there was no trace of advanced technology anywhere. Interstellar civilisations, no matter their age, normally leave some trace of their technology behind, somewhere, but many of xeno-palaeontologists studying the ‘Tool-less Spacemen’ (as they had been dubbed in the scientific community) could find absolutely nothing but bones in the rock.

A few of the xeno-palaeontologists studying the subject – as no single name for this new species had been decided upon yet, it carried a different name depending on what nation you were in – had decided that the only way to have a chance at finding some of ‘Species X’s technology was to locate their homeworld, their originating star system. As with most space-faring species in the galaxy today, they felt it was likely that it would have been the focal point of their civilisation, or at the very least a reasonably important part of it.

Locating the focal point of such a widely-distributed species was difficult. The galaxy was large, and they couldn’t just limit their search to habitable worlds, for in the hundreds of millions of years since Species X seemed to disappear, their homeworld may no longer be habitable.

Some scholars decided that the species may have been extra-galactic – there had in fact been unconfirmed reports of fossils from Species X being discovered in nearby galaxies by those with the means to get to them – and given up. After all, if they had to expand the search to include entire galaxies, it brought a whole new meaning to the term ‘needle in a haystack’.

More pragmatic students of the alien fossils had tried a more reasonable approach, however. In a painstaking effort to collaborate with as many xeno-palaeontologists as they could on the subject, they tried to determine where the greatest fossil discoveries had been. By identifying which areas of the galaxy had seen the greatest concentration of fossils, they felt they may be able to use that information to triangulate the homeworld of Species X.

Four or five star systems were proposed, but they were dotted around the galaxy rather than focussed in a particular area. The G’goroth system, as it was known by locals, over in the Delta Quadrant was one possible location for their homeworld, which seemed unlikely as it was a blue supergiant star, and may not have even existed seven hundred million years ago. Another possible location was over in the Gamma, but it was already home to a space-faring race and unfortunately they were intolerant of foreigners and refused any academic access.

Two other star systems proposed were nearer to the Sol system; one was known as Aeleus by the neighbouring civilisation, for it was a binary star system which apparently looked exactly like one of their goddesses in the night sky. It did have a habitable planet of sufficient age in orbit to be a potential homeworld for Species X, but the thick foliage and vicious predators that now inhabited it made a research expedition difficult.

The last system considered most likely to be the homeworld was Epsilon Reticuli. This system was much closer to Earth at only sixty lightyears.

The Epsilon Reticuli star burned a dull shade of red, bathing everything that came close in an eerie crimson glow. It was massive in size, several times the girth of Sol, but it gave off very little heat and its brightness was much diminished. This was a dying star – a red giant.

Two planets orbited; there was a gas giant at the farthest reaches of the star system, so colossal in size that Jupiter would be jealous, its own orange hue only accented by that of the dim glow of the distant, giant star. If it had any moons, they had long since gone – small asteroid belts orbited Epsilon Reticuli II, but they were curiously diminished of valuable metals.

The other planet was much closer to the star – dangerously close. A barren brown rock, perpetually bathed in the fiery red anger of its parent, Epsilon Reticuli I looked as though it could have been habitable at one point in history, but no longer. The expansion of the sun had scorched away the atmosphere, boiled away the oceans and vaporised anything that might have been living on it. Nothing could have been more arid, more inhospitable. From the ground, the sky was dominated by the massive red star during the day, so close now that it scalded the surface of the dead world, meanwhile at night, the temperature plunged into deep cold. If a civilisation had been on this planet in the past, there didn't appear to be any trace of it now - punished by the sun, and pockmarked by many craters since the atmosphere no longer protected it, there was nothing but rock.

Perhaps the system had more planets at one point in its past, and the Epsilon Reticuli star had simply swallowed them when it became engorged. For now, with no way to be certain if this even was the homeworld of Species X, the ‘Tool-less Spaceman’, nobody had really studied the system or its worlds to ascertain the truth. Starships never passed through the system for there was nothing there, governments were unwilling to give grants to those few xeno-palaeontologists who were interested in conducting more thorough studies of Epsilon Reticuli I, and the general public gradually lost interest in the subject as it faded from newsnet headlines.

Whatever secrets Epsilon Reticuli might have held for the last seven hundred million years, looked to be safe for millions more.

[Epsilon Reticuli]

(OOC: Bump for anybody interested in a little digging around! I realise there's no big space army of doom (yet), but I thought a little xeno-palaeontology would be a nice change of pace!)

[Arteria Zoness]

RESERVED!

[Epsilon Reticuli]

(OOC: I'll try again! As I realise I didn't really give much to go on last time (and gave up before the guy above became interested), I'll try and make it a little more engaging this time around with a 'filler' character.)

Well over two centuries had passed since the last time serious academic interest was taken in the xeno-archaeological potential of the Epsilon Reticuli system. One university on some relatively unknown world had even commissioned a study of the system, but so limited was their funding that it could only afford a small robotic probe; telemetry from which ended up being more focussed on the unusual – and possibly artificial – distortions in the lower atmosphere of the massive gas giant that constituted Epsilon Reticuli II. The government in charge of the university had gotten itself involved, and steered the project towards more commercial matters, such as helium-3 gathering from the unclaimed Jovian world. Study of the rocky world closer to the swollen red giant had been limited to a simple series of long-range compositional analyses, much to the chagrin of the scientists in charge of the project.

With the exception of that probe, which had mysteriously lost contact after a routine upper-atmospheric ‘skim’ manoeuvre, nothing of note happened to the system in generations. Indeed, research into the so-called 'Tool-less Spacemen', or 'Species X', had waned even more. Occasionally a minor fossil discovery was made on some obscure world, but all such discoveries accomplished was adding 'yet another' planet to a catalogue of planets that yielded similar discoveries, and was of little interest to xeno-archaeologists by that point. Eventually, the notion that the Epsilon Reticuli system was possibly the point of origin for the enigmatic, ancient species was lost to time, confined to old databases.



Until lately. Daniel Harrison had been visiting an Earth university three years earlier when he stumbled upon a reference to the 'Tool-less Spacemen' in an old database and was intrigued. He was technically a xeno-archaeologist by trade, but was rarely recognised as such by his peers - his tendency to posit bizarre theories with little concrete evidence earned him the ire of his disapproving colleagues, and he resided purely at the fringes of the science. His papers and ebooks received no peer review and sold poorly, mostly attracting conspiracy theorists, but they all held similar themes; ancient aliens had interfered in the development of all advanced civilisations, past and present, including humans.

Despite this zealous and somewhat naive belief, he had never before heard of Species X before his last visit to Earth, and they immediately caught his eye. That very day he had resolved to learn everything that was known about them, which wasn't much, and over the last three years had ironically become known as the leading authority on them - which didn't mean much, as the subject was largely ignored by modern academics, and his own reputation did nothing to change that. But he carried on his research, without external funding or support, regardless, and had come to the same conclusion that had been suggested by long-dead researchers countless times before.

All his calculations suggested that Epsilon Reticuli had to have been the home system of these ancient aliens. He had been trying to convince various researchers and universities that this was the case for six months now, even travelling hundreds of lightyears back and forth to make his case for an expedition in person, and was ignored. Each either cited his untrustworthy record, a lack of interest in the subject at hand, or specified that other priorities precluded their support. But Harrison was determined. This wasn't just about proving that Epsilon Reticuli was worthy of excavation, it was about proving all of his theories about Ancient Meddlers, as he called them.

Because having spent so much of the last three years engrossed in researching them, he was convinced, or rather had convinced himself, that these Tool-less Spacemen were those Ancient Meddlers.

And he had to find them.

That was why he was on Earth again, three years later. But this time he wasn't visiting a university or any particular researcher, but a businessman. Another thing he was convinced of was that the lack of interest in the subject had nothing to do with his unreliable record, but money. Governments had historically given funding to xeno-archaeological expeditions in the past, but lurking beneath the surface of curiosity there was always the hope that some ancient, advanced technology or data cache could be recovered, reverse engineered, and sold, or used to gain a military advantage, or cure disease, or whatever. There was always the promise of some kind of material gain, even if it never actually materialised. But the problem with funding expeditions to find the homeworld of the Tool-less Spacemen was, in his estimation, explained by their very nickname - Tool-less. No advanced technology had ever recovered. There weren't even any buildings or ancient data storage devices. Just fossils. This tainted the chance of any future expedition finding any either.

So Harrison did some research into more recent creatures for a change - rich people, to be specific. He dug through news articles and biographies until he found the richest, most eccentric man he could, who just happened to have an amateur interest in xeno-archaeology. After hurriedly grabbing his tablet and packing a few clothes, he chartered a cruise to Earth and now sat in an elaborately-decorated waiting room in the eccentric's offices. He had been waiting for nearly an hour, on the understanding that the billionaire tycoon was a 'very busy man' (despite having made an appointment a week ago), when an attractive brunette pulled his attention away from his tablet computer screen as she walked towards him.

She stopped ahead of him with a frown on her chiselled face, causing Harrison to realise he'd been staring and so averted his eyes and cleared his throat. Spending his life researching the fringes of an already obscure field of science had one unfortunate side-effect that often crossed his mind - a lack of intimate contact with the opposite gender, or the proper social skills to deal with them.

"Mr. V'Lon will see you now," she said, gesturing towards the large graphite doors at the end of the waiting room. He anxiously mumbled something that should have sounded like 'thanks', and followed her gesture towards the doors.

The office he entered was large, and had a high ceiling. It was decorated in an incredibly quaint and antiquainted manner, as one might expect from an eccentric, resembling an ancient English manor house than a modern company director's office, and was dominated by the large glass windows at the far end, overlooking the sprawling megacity that seemed to constitute most of modern Earth's surface. Just in front of the windows was a large, polished wooden desk, at which sat a green-skinned man from a species Harrison wasn't familiar with.

It was hardly uncommon to find aliens at various social levels of Earth these days. Humanity, much like the ancient aliens he had been studying for the last three years, had spread across most of the galaxy over the millennia and subsequently divided into thousands of distinct nationstates, but many seemed to maintain a presence on the homeworld. As a result, Earth was a formidable economic power in the galaxy and attracted as much alien interest as human. But while not uncommon, it was one of the things Harrison hated about the planet; it was far, far too crowded, to the point where trillions upon trillions of credits-worth of sophisticated technology had all-but taken over from nature when it came to maintaining its continued habitability.

V'Lon stood up from his chair as Harrison approached, smiling a sharp-toothed grin from an otherwise human-looking mouth, and Harrison realised how underdressed he was for such a meeting. A cheap, stiff-collared jacket and some synthetic black trousers constituted his outfit, in comparison to the expensive-looking black-and-white striped suit the alien businessman sported. Harrison's clothing wasn't even fashionable on his home colony, let alone cosmopolitan Earth, whereas V'Lon looked like something straight out of the latest fashion magazines, despite his bald green scalp and jet-black eyes. As he nervously rubbed his chin he realised he hadn't even shaved since leaving his home. He looked a mess.

"Dr. Harrison, it is good to meet you at last," V'Lon said, his flawless Terran accent hinting that he had been born on the human world, his tone suggesting extreme self-confidence. He moved to shake hands with the 'professor', and then sat himself back down behind his desk, hinting at Harrison to sit on one of the chairs on the opposite side. "You explained in your e-mail that you have something that might appeal to my interests. And my wallet!"

Harrison feigned a smile at the unfunny joke and nodded slightly, placing his tablet computer down on the desk as he sat. "I think so, Mr. V'Lon, yes. Have you ever heard of the Tool-less Spacemen?"

"Ah yes, one of the most enigmatic and least understood of the ancient spacefaring civilisations," V'Lon nodded. "As you no doubt know, I am a keen student of the ancient universe. How can we look forward without looking back, after all?"

"Well, yes," Harrison nodded, without really understanding what he considered a truism. The only time he ever looked forward was when he needed to plan an expedition or outlay a treatise, and obviously he needed to look back all the time - that was his job. But he pressed on. "Well, erm, if you have an even passing familiarity with Species X, you probably also know that nobody knows where they originated from. But I believe I can find out. But in order to do so, I need financing. I need a ship, a crew, equipment, err, provisions. You know, that kind of thing."

"Of course," V'Lon nodded. "And you have been refused such by the various universities you have approached. Presumably because of your lack of respect in the academic community."

Harrison was taken aback. He hadn't expected V'Lon to even know who he was, let alone what he'd been doing for the last six months. If V’Lon already knew that he had been rebuked by various universities, this plan could fall apart quickly. V'Lon smiled again, apparently quite adept at reading body language such as his uncomfortable shifting and blank expression.

"Dr. Harrison, I am a businessman," he said knowingly. "Whenever I meet with someone who wishes to enter into business with me, I always do my homework. I also have a sizable financial stake in several of the universities you have approached, and friends in some of the others. But you can relax - I am intrigued. Intrigued enough to meet with you, anyway. But I am also curious - nothing but bone has ever been recovered from the species you speak of. How exactly are we, as you put it, going to 'make more money than I can dream of' from locating their homeworld?"

"Ah, erm, well," Harrison stammered, recovering from his momentary setback. He wasn't in his comfort zone; he was an academic, not an entrepreneur. He could put together a workable hypothesis but not a business plan. "You are right that no technology or artefacts have ever been recovered, but my theory - and I have strong evidence to back it up - is that all of their technology resides on their homeworld, buried but there somewhere. If I am correct, well, erm, as you can probably imagine - a sizable cache of technology from what could have been an inter-galactic civilisation should be worth quite a lot. And I'm sure a man such as yourself can easily find ways to monetise that."

His theory was based on no evidence at all. He had simply manipulated all of the data he could to point to such a possibility, for the benefit of a naive businessman. He was hoping V'Lon was eccentric enough, flippant with his money, and sufficiently enthused about the subject, to buy into the notion without bothering to go through a lengthy peer review process. The plan was uncharacteristically manipulative for him, and would never work with any of the universities or even governments of the galaxy, but he was desperate. He didn’t even care what the aftermath would be if he did get the funding he needed, but discovered nothing of value to repay it.

V'Lon sat silent for a short while, nodding contemplatively. "Let me see your data."

Harrison gulped. It's not going to work, he thought to himself, but managed to retain his composure as he handed over the tablet computer with a pre-loaded presentation on it, summarising his erroneous theory.

***

Two months later Harrison was sat on the bridge of Mr. V'Lon's personal yacht, watching a true-colour display of the looming Epsilon Reticuli star growing larger as one of the planets could be seen passing by it. The billionaire had placed the yacht, inappropriately named Hedonist's Pleasure, into his care with very few stipulations - essentially it was Harrison’s yacht for the duration of the expedition. Essentially unlimited financing had been made available to him from V'Lon's personal fortune, and large amounts of money had been spent on retro-fitting the recreational vessel for a scientific expedition. Advanced sensor equipment, two well-equipped labs and various other tools necessary for an extra-planetary archaeological mission had been flawlessly installed by some of the best engineers on Earth, using some of the best scientific instruments available to modern science.

The pleasure yacht with the silly name now rivalled some of the best privately-owned science vessels, and was crewed with various specialists hired from the private sector - geologists, astronomers, astrophysicists, a pair of mining experts, and even a couple of armed bodyguards in case of trouble. All of them mocked Harrison and his ideas, but all of them had been paid a lot of money to follow his lead no matter how little respect they had for him.

Harrison didn't care why they were here, or what they thought of them. All he cared about, as the Hedonist's Pleasure approached the outer planet of Epsilon Reticuli, was that they were all here. And Dr. Daniel Harrison, mocked, scorned and abhorred by his peers, was about to be proven right. About everything.

[Epsilon Reticuli]

"What were you doing before?" Jack Parsons asked. He sat in the small canteen aboard Hedonist's Pleasure, at a small but smart wooden table. Opposite him sat the mission geologist, a woman named Jenine Morris. Ostensibly English, on modern Earth such distinctions made little difference anymore.

"I was studying the unusual rock formations in the Vergo cluster," she responded in a tired voice. "They looked like man-made cairns, but they were completely natural."

"Sounds interesting."

"More interesting than this," she sighed. "Epsilon Reticuli I is just a standard dead planet. Might have been interesting once, but now it's about as interesting as Mercury. It's a rock."

"I thought geologists liked rocks," Parsons sneered.

"I thought astronomers liked space," Morris retorted. "We've been in space for months now and you're as bored as I am."

The Hedonist's Pleasure had been in orbit of Epsilon Reticuli I for nearly four months now, under the command of the smarmy Daniel Harrison. His obsession with the mythical 'Tool-less Spacemen' had been amusing to the scientists aboard for the first couple of weeks, especially when coupled with the fact that he was a disgraced scholar searching for something that he had no evidence existed, at least not here. At first they had suspected the journey would last a couple of weeks, they'd find nothing, Harrison would grow bored, and they'd leave - making this an easy pay cheque, and one they didn't need to include in their CVs.

But for all of the discredit he'd received, Harrison had insisted on the proper academic standards any scientist would adhere to when beginning the study of a new planet. And those standards took a long time. To make matters worse, Harrison's obsession made any chance of him growing bored with finding nothing unlikely at best. The man was convinced that his unidentified species of galaxy-spanning ancients had called this planet home, and it was beginning to look like they wouldn't leave until he'd pulled the crust of the entire planet apart to look for them. And they wouldn't get paid the exorbitant fees they'd been promised if they took the shuttle and left prematurely.

"Well as much as I'd like to go and study some new spatial phenomena, I like money more," Parsons shrugged. "And I need it to fund my next project."

Morris frowned. "Don't you think you'd be able to earn more money by taking lots of smaller, more legitimate, jobs? I mean, I could have completed a few mining surveys in the time we've been here. If I wasn't so invested now I'd leave..."

"Oh, it'd take a lot of jobs to make what I'm making for this," Parsons chuckled.

"How much are you getting for this?" Morris asked, suddenly suspicious that she was losing out.

"Same as you I expect, but astronomers don't earn as much as geologists," Parsons said.

They both looked around, frowning in unison, as Harrison entered the canteen. They watched him as he took a packed lunch from one of the fridges and sat down at the most isolated table in the room.

"Maybe we should talk to him," Morris suggested. "Try to reason with him, get him to see how much of a waste of time this is."

"Heh, you go for it," Parsons nodded. "The guy's obsessed. I'm just hoping that billionaire investor gets bored and pulls funding to the guy before we all get space madness."

Morris shrugged and looked back at Harrison, who was now gingerly unpacking his lunch, as though he were afraid of damaging it. She didn't know him particularly well, and frankly didn't care to, but she couldn't help but wonder just how important this expedition was to him. Perhaps, in his mind, it was his last chance to gain credibility in his field? Morris had experienced a similar problem in her early years, after all - few people believed her when she postulated that a large cavern of crystals existed beneath a colony on Geralt Prime, but at least she had a scrap of evidence to support her claims. It had been important to her to prove everybody wrong, because it meant she was taken seriously, but she doubted she would have spent four months and millions of credits in the process.

"I'm going to talk to him," she said finally. She stood up, standing a little over five feet in height, and dismissed Parsons with a wave of her hand when he shook his head. Wandering over, she stopped next to Harrison's table. "Is this seat taken?"

Harrison looked up at her with a mixed expression of shock and confusion. He had sat alone in the canteen every day since they'd boarded the ship, and was no doubt surprised that suddenly somebody wanted to sit next to him. The fact that he seemed to have an issue with women, or at least talking to women, wasn't helpful. She wasn't particularly attractive, but she certainly wasn't unattractive either - at least, she thought so - and it seemed to throw him off.

Eventually he seemed to shake himself back into reality and nodded overly enthusiastically. "Please, go ahead. Where's your food?"

She realised that she'd left her plate on the table with Parsons, but it didn't matter - this wasn't a social visit. "I'm not staying, I wouldn't want to disturb you," she said tactfully. "I just wanted to ask you how you think this expedition is going so far?"

"Ah," Harrison said, wiping his mouth after taking a bite of a sandwich. "I think it's going very well so far. Why, don't you?"

Biting her lip, she tried to find a diplomatic answer. "Well... we've been here for four months now. I'm not one hundred percent sure what you're looking for exactly, but, if it's here, shouldn't we have found it by now? We've been scanning and surveying and taking samples and analysing the scans, surveys and samples and haven't found anything you'd expect to find on a classic, old, dead world."

"On the contrary," Harrison said. "You yourself noted an unusual lack of heavy metals in the upper crust not two weeks ago, and you said that it is indicative of long-term, highly-advanced habitation of the planet."

"I said it may be indicative of long-term habitation," she corrected him. "I also said it could just be a result of the planet's early formation taking much longer than most planets of this size... or a long-term lack of geological activity... or..."

"The planet is still geologically active," Harrison pointed out. "There are no active volcanoes at the moment, but it possesses a strong magnetosphere. No, I believe the metals were mined."

"Perhaps, but not necessarily by a race that lived on the planet... it could have been mined by several races over the course of millions of years, or..."

"No, somebody lived here," Harrison interrupted. "We haven't found anything yet for the same reason we've only found fossils of them elsewhere in the galaxy - somebody removed, or destroyed, all traces of their technology. Perhaps they took it all with them to wherever they went. Or they used something exotic that didn't stand the test of time. Now, I have isolated several locales on the planet where I believe more in-depth study will be beneficial. And tomorrow, we shall prove once and for all that this is the world Species X called home, I am sure of it."

Morris furrowed her brow. She was certain he'd said the same thing two months ago to another member of the team, and nothing happened that next day. It was clear that the man was set in his ways. No amount of arguing with him would change it. So she gave up. She'd finish the conversation and walk back to her table.

"What make you think that?" she said, her combative tone subsiding.

"I believe there are subterranean passages beneath the surface that our ship's sensors can't properly detect, so we're going to go down there and begin extensive GPR surveys of three regions to gain better results," he said.

Morris furrowed her brow yet again. Ground-penetrating radar was useful in a lot of ways, such as small archaeological digs or for locating underground pipes or cables during construction, but not for surveying large swathes of a planet's surface. Even with the most advanced equipment, it usually worked best in direct contact with the ground, if not burrowed in a little. "Won't that take a very long time?" she asked.

"You'll see," Harrison shook his head.

"Well... I'll look forward to it then..." Morris said sarcastically. "Anyway, Jack'll be pining without me, I'd better get back."

***

Two weeks later, and Dr. Daniel Harrison stood in an EVA suit on the rocky surface of Epsilon Reticuli I in front of a large door constructed from alloys unknown to their science. According to the 3D models they'd constructed from ground-penetrating radar, it was the entrance to a long, steep, diagonal passageway that led deep underground, beyond the ability of their GPR to detect. It had taken the small team a fortnight to carefully excavate it, and so far they had no idea how to open the door, but Dr. Daniel Harrison stood in front of it, basking in its mere presence.

He stood victorious.

The planet was now home to a small camp, made up of pre-fabricated units, where the team now resided, protected against the tremendous heat of the planet's surface by a small shield. The Hedonist's Pleasure still orbited above, but only the mission astrophysicist remained aboard. Their camp surrounded the large crater they'd carved into the rock, at the bottom of which was the huge doorway. It was a dull metal grey in colour, and had alien writing on it, but no apparent means of opening it.

But the fact it was here at all was enough for Dr. Harrison, even if they never managed to find out what was inside. It was here.

[Epsilon Reticuli]

(OOC: Last bump for anybody that thinks they can get involved. )

[The Polis]

"Are you sure this will work?"

The question echoed softly throughout the bridge. Marius' voice had quavered slightly, though he desperately hoped Abigail didn't hear it.

"I said, are you sure this will work?" He repeated, more forceful this time.

"Of course it will work. The ship's operating system double-checked the numbers itself and verified them. Check them yourself, if you'd like."

A tinge of annoyance had entered her voice, though her demeanour denied any perturbation. She merely stared straight ahead, transfixed at the sight. A holographic representation of the inner portion of the Epsilon Reticuli system floated before them, slowly rotating in real-time; a perfect miniature of the system they traversed. Well, almost perfect; the FTL-capable single-use mapping probes had yet to plot the photosphere of the star to a reasonable degree, and their target, the system's solitary terrestrial world, was a blank wire-frame, still obscured from view as a consequence of their motion.

Their ship, the Neon Lotus, had decelerated from interstellar speeds on the far side of the system, gravitic drives twisting space-time to slow the vessel to a manageable clip, acting according to a course plotted out hundreds of light-years away. That course, however, had not taken into account the tempestuous nature of the Epsilon Reticuli primary, necessitating a risky maneuver in order to make orbit around their target planet; a close-in slingshot around the star, skidding through the dangerous layers of off-gassed plasma and radiation. The Lotus, while built to withstand such conditions, could not do so without raising its shields, however; a move that would instantly demonstrate to anyone within light-minutes of the solar system of their arrival, whilst leaving them sitting ducks behind the shield's radiation-blocking canopy. Thus Abigail had plotted the only possible route; an unshielded, quiet run through the corona of the star.

"Watch." Abigail intoned.

A bright blue dot swung in close to the star in the hologram, drifting in slow motion through the puffed layers of gas. The star's data briefly updated as one of the drones made a pass using its sensors over the region, incidentally resolving the featureless blue icon with a realtime image of the craft, albeit time-delayed and low-resolution. The Lotus shone alabaster-white in the inhuman glare as the ship's hardy chromophores adapted its colour for maximum reflection. At this distance, little detail of the ship itself was visible, but its flowing and fluted blown-glass shape stood out.

As the ship passed through a particularly dense field of gas, a subtle, deep vibration flowed through the ship, causing the hologram to flicker for a tiny fraction of a second. He turned to her, about to express his concern, when she interrupted.

"It's fine. Energy distribution is just slow thanks to the cooling systems running at full-tilt. Nothing to worry about."

She managed to glance briefly in his direction before pulling herself back to the hologram; the slightly glazed look in her eyes suggested she had, even now, a massive torrent of data flowing in through her retinal implant and overlaying itself upon the display. A true engineer at heart, she was, he thought, with years of experience running ships throughout Politan space and beyond; unlike him, the stuffy archaeologist with no experience outside of his comfortable existence in a quiet university.

Grants being grants, however, and when presented the opportunity to lead an expedition to investigate the mysterious fossils which lead to this system, he leapt at the chance, perhaps not knowing fully what he was about to become involved in; he certainly had not expected to be alone but for an engineer.

As he thought, the vibration became an audible rumble, and the resolution of the holographic solar system crashed, replacing smooth textures with jagged polygons for a brief, worrying moment.

"We're almost through." Abigail smiled, and took her gaze fully off the screen and looked at him, her green eyes aglow with information. "Just a few more minutes and we'll be in range to begin scanning the planet itself."

The holographic Lotus, having returned to its blue icon, finally rounded the corner of the star, breaking for the cooler, more hospitable stretch of space between them and the planet. The hologram then shifted, flying towards the planet itself. Several of the drones flew towards the planet proper, their tiny gravitic drives sending them on ballistic courses; just enough time for a fly-by scan.

Before their telemetry came in, however, a chime rang through the bridge, signifying that the ship's active sensors had detected something in orbit.

"Interesting." Abigail said, turning back to the display. "There's already a ship in orbit."

He scratched his beard thoughtfully. "Does it match anything in our database?"

She shook her head. "No. Not yet, anyway; not enough resolution. It looks fairly small, though; maybe a frigate?" She glanced back to him.

"Maybe. I can't think of a reason why a frigate would be way out here, though; I always thought this part of the quadrant was quiet. No Nascent-level civilizations for dozens of light-years around."

"In any case." Abigail noted. "It'll know we're here soon enough. I'll definitely have picked up those drones, and, depending on their sensor capabilities, we should be getting pinged any moment now."

"We should send out a general hail; make sure they know we're friendly." Marius said.

"Agreed. Hopefully they return the favour."

The Lotus then began broadcasting, sending out a powerful transmission in the absorption band of hydrogen - a sort of standard frequency used by most advanced civilizations the Polis knew of. It broadcast a message, repeating for 30 seconds before changing languages and encoding, cycling through the dozens of trade languages and pidgins the Lotus' databanks contained;

Hello! This is the Politan survey vessel Neon Lotus; we mean you no harm, and are on a peaceful mission of exploration and scholarship. If you are able to or wish to, please respond; we would like nothing more than to seek a constructive dialogue with you and/or your civilization or polity.

[Ikarus Dominion]

Several Years Before
Ikaran Dominion
Excavation site Alpha
Gamma Quadrant

The brush cut delicately into the dust and sinew that caked the ancient symbols that lay beneath it. Following the presumptuous curves and flicks of the Ancient long deceased language, following each and every intricate line as if it was the life essence of the Empress her self. Flowing along the contours until the brush reached the end of the archaic scripture set into the stone, no one knew its meaning but it was proof that Lai'Ki had settled the world long ago. To the great surprise of many Ikaran Scholars and Overseers, the young woman smiled as she brushed away the last of the dust with her brush and ran her fingers across the lines in the stone. Miri had pushed and pushed the council to back her plans to excavate the world. The tails of the Lai'Ki and there fossilised remains on a hundred different worlds warranted study, but with only fossils many had given up all hope the Scholars and Academics resigning it to the chorus of unanswered questions the universe offered up.

But like to many the Lai'Ki where a juicy mystery waiting to be solved and now they had taken the first steps. Using contacts out side of the Ikaran Sphere and indeed the Virpan Sphere of influence Miri and her enthusiasts had come across the academic reports from across the galaxy, that matched reports generated from various different academic studies made by Ikaran Authorities. Tool-less Spacemen as they where refereed to in many places where apparently present all over the galaxy something that had been theorised along time ago by Ikaran theorists, but never actually proven. What astonished Miri was the proposed sites of the Lai'Ki's homeworld, several worlds spread across the galaxy. One of which was precariously placed only 42 light years from the Ikaran Border.

Months and Months of pushing the Overseer Council saw the System closed off to anyone but Ikarans, and several more months to gather enough capital and interest from Academics to make a proper attempt at finding these Tool-less Spacemen. A Ship equipment and crew later here Miri was wiping away the dust and sinew just a few meters in from the massive gateway that they had uncovered several days earlier. The sounds of more archaeologists at work further down the tunnel filtered through the lit chasm. Miri sat back and smiled looking up the the intricate works on the ceiling of the tunnel, fondly remembering the first excavation into the tunnels letting loose the first wave of sensor drones, watching from her holo display as they shot down the hallways and grand halls in search everything.

"Hey... Hey Miri can you hear me damn hate these ear pieces can never tell if its working or not!" Jolems voice forced its self over everything else as her own earpiece.

"yeh I hear you Jolem what you got?" Miri replied smirking at the though of Jolem fidgeting with his ear piece.

"You will want to see this Miri, they found something in the main hall" Jolem replied before the earpiece went dead.

Dusting her self off Miri looked around the the harsh lighting from flood lights didnt do her any favors like always people where moving back and forth taking rubble and interesting artifacts out to the camp to be catalogued and studied further. She shrugged and shivered slightly remembering how cold it was in the tunnels he made her way to the main hall. The hall was a huge dome feature right bang smack in the centre of the complex they had discovered. The entire structure was to small to be the actually home world of these Tool-less Spacemen as so many liked to call them, that had been discovered on the first internal scans of the structure. It was on outpost of this races long lost and far flung empire and the fact it was still here hidden away was a testament to them or at least it was in Miri's eyes.

The hall its self was intricately detailed ancient symbols spread everywhere, flowing patterns in the centre several men and another woman stood looking over something obscured by there forms. The remaining slaves still working away at there equipment watched over by the armoured guards. The others made way for Miri to see the artefact they had uncovered, a dark cold slab of rock inscribed in many unknown symbols and runes. the rest had been brushing off the dirt smiling as they uncovered more and more of the astounding alien artefact.

Miri could only smile.

"Do you know what it is Miri?" the other female asked still brushing off more dirt.

Miri ran her fingers over the symbols running over the several dots in the centre of the slab.

"Is it what we have been looking for?" Jolem asked rather excitedly.

"It is"

All of them turned around to the new voice and there she stood an aura transfixed around her like a shimmering light emitted around her, the room seemed to warm with her very presence yet remain starkly still as if it awaited her very order.

"O..Overseer Lyrianna" Miri muttered before placing her hand to her chest and bowing her head quickly followed by the others arrayed around the table.

"Please Miri there is no need for such pleasantries we are not in the audience of dignitaries of the council's spies for moment, this is your project and the council has respected that." the Overseer smiled softly pushing a lock of golden blonde hair behind her ear. "Now would you please tell the others exactly what it is we have found."

Miri gulped and stood tall once again looking to the Overseer then to her party. "Co-ordinates"

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

Now

Miri stood looking out at the swirling mess colour that was Tierspace, they where currently travelling along the 4th tier, the quickest known tier of space that Ikaran ships where capable of reaching with their current drives they had been on the move for about two weeks now and they, where finally coming up on there destination. Miri smiled inwardly everything she had worked for was culminating, her big break into the Academics and it was all only a few light years away. Years of careful planning and information gatherers had allowed Miri to collate all the data available, and pin point the exact system the co-ordinates pointed to.

"Overseer Laxana we will be arriving at our co-ordinates within the next 30 minutes, im initiating Tier emergence procedures now." The Helmsman spoke as he in putted commands into his console and started to slowly pull back on a lever.

Miri had been made an honorary Overseer by Lyrianna just after she had found the tablet, the very same tablet that now sat in her quarters like a fine bit of art on her side desk. Becoming an Overseer was hectic to say the least having to find time for the new roles and to work around her career, Miri was glad she had Jolems and Lyianna with her just to keep her focused, it had been allot to take in at first. But Miri thought now she had finally adjusted to the responsibility a Overseer possessed.

Miri nodded watching the swirls change and as they began to move up into tier three. "Ill let Overseer Lyrianna know" Miri was about to turn and walk off as Lyrianna walked onto the bridge causing the two marines guarding the hatch to snap to attention.

"No need im here, wanted to see this system with my own eyes." Lyrianna smiled before standing next to Miri.

Slowly the vessel progressed up the tiers the colours of hyperspace changing as they did so. It took the full 30 minutes before they had arrived back into tier one hyperspace the stars just visible behind the swirling icey blue colours the heavy thrum of the Tierspace generators had dissipated just before the Ship burst from Tierspace back into normal space. In a brilliant flash a bright light the 250 meter carrier appeared in orbit around the Jovian planet on the far reaches of the system. The carrier was heavily modified most of its main armaments had been removed replaced with ground penetrating sensor systems and surveying equipment, its hangar bays adapted to carry and hold a multitude of drop ships and large and small. Very little of its original design was left in place.

The Carriers engines flared to life forcing it into the system taking it towards the closest planet to the sun.

ooc: Finally got this post up took me for ever to write!

[Epsilon Reticuli]

(OOC: I suck at keeping myself alive. Sorry. If either of you still want to participate in this thread (one that is growing to be as ancient as the fossils it mentions) be my guest - I'll edit in a reply to your comms if you do!)

"We've tried prying it open, and the tools broke. We've tried digging around the door, but the walls of that corridor are made of the same alloy as the door - and the tools broke. We tried drilling and cutting it open - and the tools broke. It's the only option!"

Harrison shook his head and paced from side to side in his EVA suit so much that he might have dug his way down without any tools.

"No, no, no, NO!" he said at last, gesticulating wildly. "This is MY mission, and I say NO!"

"I heard you the first three times," Adrian Beck sighed audibly. As one of the expert miners on the team, he had been tasked with finding a way through the door that now impeded their progress - because opening ancient alien doors was clearly something he'd know about. He had tried all of the tricks he could think of, bar one. "Explosives are the only way we've got left to try. I've exhausted all of the other options, and you don't have any alternatives either!"

"That door is older than our civilisation," Harrison spluttered. "Suppose it's the only thing left of Species X? And we BLOW IT UP? I won't have it!"

Beck sighed again and threw his arms up in despair. "Why would such an advanced and ancient race of aliens build a door that leads to nothing, you dolt? The chances of you finding something infinitely more interesting than a door are higher than that being the case!"

"Besides, is our employer going to be satisfied with just a locked door in return for his investment?" Jenine Morris chimed in. She was growing impatient of the childish bickering. After a long pause, that she felt made her seem wise and mysterious, she added: "are you?"

Harrison stopped pacing and looked at the door thoughtfully. He was terrified that they may be about to destroy the only shred of civilisation that the Tool-less Spacemen had left behind for them to discover - for all they knew, this door could simply be blocking an abandoned mine shaft or something equally mundane. But... Morris was right. Damn it.

"Fine." Harrison said, reluctantly. He glared at Beck through his suit visor. "For all we know, our explosives won't penetrate that alloy anyway. We still don't know what it's made from."

"There's only one way to find out," Beck said, relieved. He gave Morris a thankful nod, then looked back at Harrison. "I'll set it up. Everybody get back."

The miner pulled out a series of explosive charges from a nearby pack and set about placing them on the door. He wasn't sure if the door had any structural weakpoints, but he made his best guess. Then he hurriedly ran across the crater and took cover with the rest of the team.

"Fire in the hole!" he yelled, and slapped a button on his wrist computer.

They watched as a series of explosions silently engulfed the door, the fireballs lasting only a fraction of a second as they were quickly extinguished by the lack of oxygen. Stones and clouds of dust spread out all across the crater, and when they fell back down to the ground again they looked to see - nothing but some light scorching and small pockmarks. The door was intact. The entire team wandered back to it, defeated.

"That was our entire supply of explosives," Beck said in confusion. "What's it going to take?!"

"Wait, look!" Morris shouted, and pointed at one of the indentations the explosives had left behind in the seemingly-indestructible metal. Sure enough, it was shrinking, and then it was gone, followed quickly by the scorching. The same happened at all of the other explosion locations, until the door looked as though nothing had ever happened to it.

"Did... did that thing just repair itself?" Beck stammered.

"Incredible..." Harrison said simply. He looked around for some kind of explanation, but he had none. "Some kind of nanorobotics incorporated into it, perhaps?"

A few moments later, something unexpected happened. As though alerted to their presence by the minor damage they had inflicted upon it, the door suddenly split down the middle and both halves slowly began to pull inwards. As they opened, the team switched on a series of flashlights which were attached to the helmets of their EVA suits and cast hazy beams into the dark opening ahead of them. Another set of identical doors lay ahead of them - some kind of airlock system?

The primary doors completed their opening process and stayed wide open, beckoning them inside.

"Jenine, stay here."

"Why?"

"We're going in, and we need somebody to stay outside in case we get stuck in there," Harrison said ominously.

"What the hell am I supposed to do if that happens? I don't have a nuke handy!"

"Just... wait out here. I'll keep you updated as to our progress over the radio," Harrison said dismissively. "Everybody else - follow me."

Harrison stepped bravely through the gaping doors and into the darkness. His team, less bravely, followed suit. As soon as they were all inside and Morris stepped away from the opening, the doors sealed themselves shut again, plunging the team into darkness. Quite quickly they began to hear a feint hissing sound, gradually getting louder, and they felt the pressure of atmosphere pressing against them. As they looked around, the inner doors of the 'airlock' opened, revealing yet more darkness.

"I'm reading atmosphere," Harrison announced after looking at a device hooked onto his belt. He boldly reached up and unclicked his helmet, pulling it clear from his head. "Stale... but breathable. Amazing how all of this technology still functions after all this time..."

"Not really, if it all repairs itself like that door," Beck shook his head as he removed his own helmet, as the rest of the team did the same. He shone his wrist-mounted flashlight through the newly-opened doors - nothing but bare rock and a steep descent downwards. "Looks deserted. And very dark. Shall we?"

"One minute," Harrison said and clicked on his transmitter. "Dr. Harrison to Dr. Morris - are you receiving me?"

Static.

"I was afraid of this," Harrison sighed, glancing back at the now-sealed outer doors. Given the thickness and density of the metal used in their construction, he doubted he could tap out a Morse code signal to Morris even if there were an atmosphere out there for her to hear it with. "Adrian - stay here and see if you can get back out again to let Dr. Morris know that we're OK - then come back inside. The rest of us will proceed deeper - see what we can see. Our radios should work within the tunnel, so we'll stay in touch."

"Gotcha," Beck nodded.

"Let's go then," Harrison said, excitedly. The two bodyguards they'd brought with them took up the lead, and the team began plodding further down the tunnel that seemed to lead to the centre of the planet. Beck watched the light from their flashlights gradually get dimmer and dimmer, before disappearing completely.

"Now, how do I open this thing without using a bomb...?" Beck said to himself thoughtfully as he looked back at the door that once again blocked his path.

***

"Hello! Dr. Harrison! Can you hear me?!" Morris shouted into her suit radio, but got no reply. She hammered on the enormous door, before cursing her own stupidity at the notion of trying to communicate using sound in a vacuum.

She suddenly felt very alone - even their ship in orbit was out of communication range, as it was currently orbiting on the far side of the world. She helplessly looked around at the desolate, silent surface that surrounded her, wondering what she was going to do next.

[Epsilon Reticuli]

The team had been walking for what seemed like hours. In fact, given that nobody had actually bothered to time their journey, it could well have been hours. They made numerous stops along the way to rest and refresh, and Harrison was growing worried that they would run out of rations before reaching anything interesting.

Because so far, they hadn't found anything interesting. The descent had offered them no rewards as of yet - a steep decline, bare rock walls, no traces of technology of any kind. The rock was smoothly cut, clearly by advanced tools of some description, but it was unremarkable and featureless. Not quite what Harrison was hoping for. It certainly wasn't a cramped passage, by any means - the ceiling was a good five feet above their heads, and the side walls seemed far enough apart to accommodate vehicles, let alone the handful of people that wandered down it now - it was simply boring, and there was no sign of this changing. They had no idea what lay ahead, nor how deep into the surface they'd gone so far, as none of their sensor equipment functioned properly down here, so whether anything interesting was going to present itself at any point remained a mystery.

This problem had been raised several times by the rest of the team, most vocally by Jack Parsons, who had always been sceptical of the mission since they arrived in orbit, and showed no signs of becoming any more amenable now. But Harrison shot him down each time - with the promise that they would turn around and head back if their rations reached a point of no return. They had come too far now to turn back until they absolutely had to.

Fortunately, their flashlights were much more effective this far down. While dust and debris had lingered in the air back near the door, presumably disturbed by their entrance, clearly nothing had been in this passageway to disturb anything for a very, very long time. The air was clear, and the light from their flashlights unobstructed. And, finally, one of the bodyguards - Arnold, or something like that, Harrison thought his name was - called back.

"The ground looks to be flattening out further down!" he said.

Harrison squinted, following the beam of light from his torch and quickly saw what he meant - the steep incline they were walking down now did indeed seem to be levelling off quite quickly. He panned his torch around and saw that the walls seemed to abruptly come to an end too.

"Looks like this is it, folks - the discovery of a lifetime!" Harrison yelled excitedly, picking up the pace. The rest of his team followed suit, and they quickly burst free from the passageway they'd seemingly lived in for an eternity and into... well, they weren't sure.

Everything was pitch black, as it had been in the passage. But whatever cavern they had emerged into must have been vast - their flashlights simply didn't have the range to illuminate anything ahead of them, above them, or to either side of them. It wasn't until Harrison turned around and aimed his flashlight back in the direction they had come from that he noticed any sign of structure to the expanse they found themselves in.

The mouth of the passageway emerged from some underneath kind of colossal building that had literally been carved out of the rock. Its height was impossible to determine, for again, the light simply wouldn't go that far, but as Harrison panned the beam to the side it revealed more of the ornate structure - plastered in elaborate carvings, unintelligible writings, and flowing, curvaceous architecture, the building was a beautiful, alien skyscraper carved out of the side of the cavern. Further along they saw yet more buildings carved into the rock, all different shapes and sizes but no less impressive. More panning yielded no further success, for the buildings seemed to go on forever and remained plunged in darkness.

"This is incredible," Harrison said.

"Yeah..." Parsons agreed in awe, finally impressed by something. "It's like that Petra thing they had back on Earth, but... well, better. And bigger. And miles underground."

"It's ingenious," Harrison said. "I wonder how big this cavern is?"

"My scanner is still acting out," Parsons replied, glancing over at Dave Meadows - the second mission geologist they'd brought along with Morris - for confirmation. "Yours work?"

"Nope," he shook his head, scratching his goatee. "Some kind of interference. We'll have to do this the old fashioned way."

They began unpacking various tools from each other's backpacks, while the two bodyguards spent most of their time looking at the architecture that loomed above them.

"Isn't rock a bit... primitive for buildings like this?" Arnold asked. "I mean, I'm no scientist, but ain't all the buildings back home made of fancy metal and stuff nowadays?"

Harrison snorted. "Clearly this isn't what their proper cities would have looked like," he scoffed. "No, I imagine this was built in a hurry, or with limited resources - maybe like a bunker. And it's far simpler to simply cut the buildings you need out of the rock than it is to clear space, mine minerals and build them from scratch. Judging by their size, the precision the rocks have been cut with, the elaborate architecture on display, and the simple fact that they've survived in such good condition for so long - they're certainly not 'primitive' structures by any stretch."

"If this is a bunker, they clearly intended to be down here for a very long time," Parsons chimed in. "Bunkers don't generally have skyscrapers in them."

Harrison mumbled thoughtfully as he set a pack of digging tools down on the ground. "You have a point, doctor..."

"Has anybody seen Dave?" the second bodyguard, whose name escaped Harrison, suddenly asked.

"He was here a second ago, must've wandered off," Parsons said. "Dave! Doctor Meadows!" When he didn't reply to Parsons' summons, they all began shining their flashlights around wildly and calling his name out, but he was nowhere to be seen, and didn't reply. They began to worry - god help anybody who got lost down here on their own, as there was no telling if they'd ever be found again.

Until he screamed, a brief, blood-curdling scream, from somewhere in the darkness.