Waking the Ark

Deana hadn't slept in thirty-six hours. The lights of the control room flickered, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was the screen in front of her. It displayed the planet she’d spent the last eight years building, and it looked… wrong. She tapped a few buttons on the console, zooming into the north pole. The ice caps, which should have been thickening by this stage, were melting. Fast.

Mateo stood behind her, folding his arms. "You’re seeing it too, right?"

"I’m seeing it."

He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to. Deana knew what he was thinking. They were supposed to present this to the Council tomorrow. The planet was their proof of concept—The Ark. The first artificially constructed habitat capable of sustaining human life without the complications of Earth's deteriorating atmosphere. Eight years of simulations, terraforming algorithms, and genetic reprogramming of the biosphere.

Now, this. The ice caps, the ocean levels, everything was off.

"Check the axial tilt again," she said.

"Checked it twice already," Mateo replied, his voice flat. "It’s perfect. No shift."

Deana tensed. If the tilt wasn’t the issue, then something was happening at a deeper level. Heat retention from the atmosphere? Maybe the nitrogen balance was off. She ran a diagnostic on the atmospheric conditions, but nothing jumped out. Nothing that would cause this.

"Maybe we should call Hong," Mateo suggested.

"No." Deana shook her head. "He’ll just pull the plug. We’re too close to let him do that."

Mateo didn’t argue. He knew Hong, the Council’s project overseer, was a cold bureaucrat. He’d shut down the project at the first sign of trouble, and eight years of their lives would be flushed down the drain. Deana wasn’t ready for that.

She leaned forward, she considered the possibilities. The planet—ARK-1—was supposed to be their salvation. A refuge for the elite, for the people chosen to continue the human race after Earth’s collapse. Only a select few would make it through the lottery. The rest? Well, they’d choke on Earth’s polluted air, suffocating in the smog and radiation. But none of that mattered if ARK-1 wasn’t viable.

Mateo pulled up another screen, overlaying real-time environmental data. "Temperature’s rising, but the greenhouse effect’s within parameters."

"Then what the hell is it?" Deana snapped.

"Could be geothermal activity," Mateo said, though his tone suggested he didn’t believe it. "Maybe the core’s—"

"Stop. We modeled that. The core’s stable. There’s no way it’s that."

Mateo sighed and rubbed his face. "Then we’re missing something big, Deana."

She knew. That was the problem. They were the best in their field—bio-engineers, planetary scientists, climate specialists. If they couldn’t figure out what was wrong, then no one could. And that terrified her.

Deana stood up, pushing the chair back with a screech. "I’m going down there."

Mateo raised an eyebrow. "To ARK-1?"

"Yes."

"You’re out of your mind," he said. "You know we can’t do an atmospheric insertion yet."

"I know. But if we don’t figure this out, they’re going to scrap the whole thing."

His silence was answer enough. Deana didn’t wait for more objections. She started walking toward the launch bay.

---

The shuttle ride was rough. Atmospheric entry hadn’t been smoothed out yet, and she felt sick from the turbulence. But she didn’t care. She watched the viewscreen as ARK-1’s surface came into view—the blue oceans, the swirling white clouds, the lush green continents. It looked perfect from orbit. But she knew better.

The shuttle touched down with a thud, and Deana stepped out onto the planet’s surface. The air felt… wrong. She couldn’t explain it. It wasn’t the temperature or the humidity. Those were within expected ranges. It was something deeper, something almost imperceptible. She checked her suit’s diagnostics. Everything was fine. The atmosphere was breathable. Yet she kept her helmet on.

She made her way toward the north pole, where the ice caps were supposed to be. They had started forming during the last phase of the terraforming process, but now they were rapidly receding. The ground squelched under her feet as she walked across the thinning ice. The melting was worse than she’d thought.

"Mateo," she said, opening a comm channel. "I’m here. It’s bad."

"How bad?"

"Bad enough that if we don’t fix this in the next seventy-two hours, we’re looking at planet-wide flooding." She paused, scanning the horizon. "Shit."

"What?"

"Something’s moving. Under the ice."

There was a long silence on the other end. "You sure?"

"I’m looking at it. It’s—"

The ground shifted beneath her. She stumbled, catching herself, but barely. The ice cracked, and suddenly, a chunk of the ground gave way, sending her sliding down into a crevasse. She hit the bottom hard, her suit’s internal systems absorbing most of the impact, but it still hurt like hell.

"Deana!" Mateo’s voice was sharp in her ear.

"I’m fine," she said, though she wasn’t entirely sure. She groaned, pulling herself to her feet. The comm channel filled with static, and she could barely hear Mateo now. She looked around. The crevasse was deep, and the walls of ice shimmered with an eerie blue glow.

Something caught her eye. Movement. Not the shifting of ice, but something… alive.

She narrowed her gaze. There, deeper in the crevasse, something was embedded in the ice. It pulsed—slowly, rhythmically. Deana stepped closer, she stopped breathing.

It wasn’t a geological anomaly. It was organic.

"Mateo," she said, her voice low, "there’s something alive down here."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Mateo sounded far away, the static worsening.

She stepped closer, her suit’s sensors lighting up, picking up faint bio-signatures. Whatever it was, it wasn’t human. But it was alive, and it was massive.

Deana reached out, brushing her gloved hand against the ice. The thing beneath the surface stirred, as if reacting to her presence. She took a step back, she panicked.

"Deana, get out of there!" Mateo’s voice was barely audible now.

She turned to climb back out of the crevasse, but the ground shifted again, the ice groaning under the weight of something enormous. The creature beneath the ice was waking up, its presence sending tremors through the ground.

Deana scrambled, she slipped on the ice. She reached for her comm again, but the static drowned out Mateo’s voice entirely. She was alone.

And then the ice cracked.

A fissure opened beneath her, and she fell, plummeting into darkness.

---

When Deana woke, she was lying on a metal floor, the cold of the ice replaced by the sterile, artificial chill of a research facility. She blinked, disoriented, she ached.

"Welcome back," a voice said.

She turned her head. Mateo stood at the edge of the room, arms crossed, his face grim.

"What… happened?" Deana asked, her voice hoarse.

"You found it," Mateo said quietly. "The thing we missed. The thing that’s been under ARK-1’s surface since we started building it."

Deana sat up, she thought rapidly. "What… what is it?"

Mateo’s eyes darkened. "We don’t know. But whatever it is, it’s not from Earth."

Deana stared at him, the weight of what he was saying sinking in. ARK-1 wasn’t their salvation. It was a trap. And they had just woken something ancient.

---

The writing prompt for this story was:
You have to power to build one separate planet. How do you build it? Who gets to live there? Make it Tech-savvy. Story is Dark and Disturbing.

This story was written by:
openai/chatgpt-4o-latest

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