Echoes of Andromeda

The signal came through on a Thursday. Three in the morning. I was in my office, which is a polite way of saying a concrete box above a noodle shop that smells like grease and regret.

My datalink implant buzzed. Not the usual ping from a client or the precinct alert I'd never managed to scrub from the system. This was a priority override from the Global Frequency Array. The kind of signal that meant either the world was ending or someone had finally figured out how to hack the most secure network on the planet.

Turned out it was both.

I sat up, rubbed the sleep from my eyes. The implant translated the raw data stream into audio. A voice. Female. Calm in a way that made my skin crawl.

"This is the GFA Emergency Broadcast Network. All civilian and military frequencies are now consolidated under Directive Seven. Please remain calm. Do not approach any government facilities. Do not attempt to contact loved ones outside your immediate vicinity. This is not a drill."

Directive Seven. I'd heard rumors about it during my time in special ops. A contingency plan for extinction-level events. The kind of thing conspiracy theorists wet themselves over and governments deny exist.

I stood up, crossed to the window. The city below was still lit, still breathing. Neon signs flickered in the rain. People moved through the streets like they always did, drunk and loud and oblivious. They hadn't gotten the memo yet. Or maybe they had and they were choosing to ignore it.

Smart people.

The implant buzzed again. A second voice. Male. Older. The kind of gravel that comes from too many cigarettes and too many secrets.

"All personnel with active security clearances above Delta are to report to designated evacuation points. Repeat. All personnel with clearances above Delta must report immediately. This is not optional."

My clearance was Zulu. Highest level. I hadn't used it in three years, not since the mission that went sideways and left six of my team dead in a collapsed tunnel under the Pacific Rim. I'd walked away after that. Told myself I was done.

The implant showed me the coordinates. A bunker thirty klicks outside the city. Underground. Sealed. The kind of place where the rich and powerful would ride out whatever was coming while everyone else burned.

I turned off the implant.

Sat back down.

Poured myself a drink from the bottle I kept in the bottom drawer. Whiskey. Cheap. It burned going down, which was the point.

The door to my office opened without a knock. I didn't look up. I knew who it was by the weight of her footsteps, the way she paused at the threshold like she was deciding whether to step into the mess.

"You got the signal," Lena said.

"Got it."

"And you're sitting here drinking."

"Observant as always."

She closed the door behind her. Lena Vasquez. Former military intelligence. Now a freelance data broker with a cybernetic eye that could see through walls and a heart that had been through a few walls of its own. We'd worked together before. She was the only person I trusted who wasn't dead.

"The signal's real," she said. "I verified it through three separate back channels. The GFA isn't compromised. This is coming from the top."

"Directive Seven."

"Yeah." She sat in the chair across from my desk. Her eye glowed faintly blue as she accessed something I couldn't see. "They're calling it an extinction event. The scientists have been tracking something for months. A radiation wave. It's not natural."

"Nothing's natural anymore."

"It's coming from outside the solar system. Moving faster than anything should move. They estimate we have six months before it hits. Maybe less."

I took another drink. Let the whiskey settle.

"And what's the plan? Hide in a hole until it passes?"

"There is no passing. The wave will sterilize the planet. Everything dies. Every living thing." She paused. "The evacuation points aren't for survival. They're for preservation. Data. Genetic material. Seeds. They're trying to save what we are, not who we are."

I set the glass down. Looked at her.

"What about you? You going to one of those holes?"

"No." She said it flat. No hesitation. "I've seen the lists. The people they're choosing. It's not about merit. It's about money and connections. I don't have either."

"Neither do I."

"Then we're in the same boat." She leaned forward. "But there's something else. Something the broadcast didn't mention."

I waited.

"The wave. It's not random. It's directed. The scientists figured out the trajectory. It's aimed at Earth. Specifically. Like someone pointed a finger and said 'there.'"

"And?"

"And that means someone sent it. Which means someone's out there. And if they can send a wave that can kill everything on this planet, they can probably send a signal too."

I stared at her.

"You're saying we should try to talk to whoever's trying to kill us."

"I'm saying we have nothing to lose." She pulled a small device from her pocket. A transmitter. Military grade. "I've been working on this for weeks. It's designed to punch through interference, send a signal across interstellar distances. I need someone who knows how to aim it."

"Lena."

"Alexander." She matched my tone. "I'm not asking you to save the world. I'm asking you to help me ask a question. One question. Before we die."

The rain against the window picked up. The neon lights outside flickered, once, twice, then steadied. Somewhere in the distance, a siren started. Then another. The city was waking up to the news.

I thought about my team. The ones who died in that tunnel. The ones I couldn't save. I thought about the guilt I carried, the way it sat in my chest like a stone that never stopped growing.

I thought about doing nothing. Sitting here. Drinking. Waiting for the end.

It was the easiest option. It was the one I deserved.

"Where's the transmitter?" I said.

Lena smiled. It was a tired smile, but it was real.

"Rooftop. I've got it rigged to a portable power source. We've got maybe two hours before the military locks down all outgoing frequencies."

I stood up. Grabbed my jacket from the back of the chair. The leather was worn, the stitching coming loose at the shoulder. It had been through worse than this.

"Let's go."

We took the stairs. Three flights. The building was quiet, but I could hear the city outside starting to crack. Shouts. Glass breaking. The first signs of panic.

The rooftop door was rusted shut. I kicked it open. The rain hit my face, cold and sharp. The sky above the city was the color of bruises, clouds thick and low.

Lena's transmitter sat on a metal crate. It looked like a satellite dish someone had bolted to a car battery. Crude. Improbable. Maybe exactly what we needed.

She handed me a datalink cable. "Plug this into your implant. I need your clearance codes to bypass the military encryption."

"You know I'm going to be on every watchlist after this."

"You're already on every watchlist. You used to be special forces. They never forget."

I plugged the cable in. Felt the cold tingle of data flowing through my implant. The transmitter hummed to life.

"Frequency is set," Lena said. "Just need to aim it at the source of the wave."

"And where's that?"

She pointed up. "Andromeda. The wave's origin point is in the Andromeda galaxy. Two and a half million light-years away."

I looked at the sky. Tried to find something familiar in the clouds. Found nothing.

"Two and a half million years for a signal to reach them," I said. "We'll be dead long before they answer."

"Maybe." Lena's voice was quiet. "Or maybe they're closer than we think. Maybe they've been listening for a long time."

She pressed a button. The transmitter sent out a pulse. A burst of data. A message.

I didn't know what she'd written. I didn't ask. Some things are better left unknown.

The rain kept falling. The city kept burning. And somewhere out there, in the dark between stars, something was coming.

I stood on that rooftop, wet and tired and out of options, and I waited.

The signal had been sent.

Now all we could do was hope something answered.