The Aegis-7 hadn’t been destroyed. According to the "ww" logs—the black box transmission data—the ship had found something at those exact coordinates. The screen flickered, rendering a jagged, wireframe 3D map of an object the ship had pulled into its cargo bay. It wasn't an asteroid. It was a perfectly smooth, geometric monolith that emitted a localized field defying standard laws of mass.
The last file in the directory was an audio log, heavily corrupted but still intelligible. A voice, brittle and terrified, filtered through Silas’s speakers. 488122.930_52b5daef_139445_ww
But as the final data packets began to unpack themselves on his screen, Silas realized the official story was a lie. The Aegis-7 hadn’t been destroyed