image [https://i.postimg.cc/rwQ7ncnC/cygus-fruit.png]

The sun climbed higher, partially obscured by a stiff dust cloud blew over the alien desert. Otto piloted the hauler, sands and stone grinding under its massive tires. Otto gripped the controls tightly as he guided the vehicle through a field of boulders, weathered round by aeons of relentless storms.

He vaguely heared distant voice of ARI and its constant status updates, the subtle rhythmic sounds of small grit and gravel, and the hum of electrical systems. In his mind, thoughts circled. About the mission, the challenges ahead, and how he had ended up here in the first place.

Unlike most of the crew, Otto had applied to join the Centauran Resettlement Initiative out of his own volition. While others like Pom and Mei were drafted from their respective career tracks, Otto had chosen to leave Proxima behind—its meticulously planned cities, bustling orbitals, sprawling fleetyards, its suffocating societal norms, and the unyielding pressure to conform. Although vastly preferable over the decaying and stagnant Earth, Centauran culture had never suited him. Its rigid hierarchies and brutal competitiveness rewarded ambition at the cost of everything else: relationships, creativity, even compassion.

Otto had never been ambitious in the Centauran sense. He held little interest in climbing the corpocratic ladder or outmaneuvering his peers in endless political games. He longed for something simpler and more meaningful: discovery. Establishing a colony on an uncharted world was his way to contribute to something far greater than himself, to be part of humanity's first steps on a new frontier. It was a rare opportunity to start fresh.

He glanced at the dashboard where ARI's interface flickered softly on the screen. Sigrid's face came to mind—her calm, analytical demeanor and the rare moments when her guarded professionalism gave way to genuine curiosity. She was one of the few people he felt truly understood his reasons for leaving Proxima. Like him, she had chosen this mission voluntarily. She, too, had felt like an outsider in their homeland’s insular culture.

Back on Proxima, Otto had spent years working in high energy physics labs, quietly researching niche topics that rarely interested his peers. Though in the top cadre on Earth, on Proxima he had never been the best, never won the accolades that the Centaurans valued so highly. But he had found solace in his science, in the small victories of understanding the intricacies of life.

As the hauler rushed across the desert, Otto's mind went over what they had already encountered on this planet: the strange red plants, the crystalline substance, the beetles and their incomprehensible motivations. Every discovery came with more questions, more mysteries. This world was alive in ways they barely understood, and it was becoming increasingly clear that it wasn't going to yield its secrets easily.

On the other hand, the native alien plant species on Proxima had been primitive by most measures. Low to the ground, their shapes resembling intricate lacework made of semi-translucent fibers and stalks. Sparse, slow-growing, and seemingly resilient, they had clung to life in the barren soil of Proxima's surface, their existence shaped by eons of isolation, scarcity and the fickleness of their host star. They hadn't stood a chance in the face of humanity's arrival.

When settlers landed, the plants were little more than curiosities at first. Scientists cataloged them, took samples, and speculated about their evolutionary purpose and debated what this might mean for the potential of discovering intelligent alien life in an oddly quiet universe. But as the settlements expanded, those same plants became obstacles, clogging mining equipment and impeding the construction of pipelines and factories. The solution had been a straight-forward one: destruction.

But it had not just been the human machines that wiped them out. The bacteria and fungi that had been introduced by the settlers had found easy hosts in the Proxima plants. They spread like wildfire through the fragile ecosystem, decimating entire regions before the settlers even realized what was happening. By the time the Proxima governing councils ordered preservation measures, it was too late. The native flora went functionally extinct within a generation, unable to compete with Earth’s microbial invaders.

The Proxima plants had continued to exist solely as a cultivated specimens, preserved in sterile containers and controlled environments. They had become symbols of opulence for the rich, exotic ornaments displayed in glass cases in the atriums of Proxima's elite. What had once been a living part of the planet’s ecosystem was now nothing more than a curiosa, a reminder of what humanity had erased in its carelessness.

The console beeped, pulling Otto from his thoughts. It was ARI's voice. "Current distance to the away team: 4.3 kilometers. Please maintain your current heading."

"Good," Otto muttered, though his chest tightened as he thought of Mei and Pom. Mei's condition sounded dire, and Pom might be close to being incapacitated as well. He couldn't shake the image of Sigrid's voice, frantic and strained over the comms. He needed to reach them, and fast.

Otto adjusted the hauler's speed, mindful of the treacherous, rocky terrain. As much as he wanted to push the vehicle to its limits, a breakdown out here would be catastrophic.

He thought of Maximilian, stoic and unyielding. While Otto disagreed with the man's methods and often felt uneasy around him, he respected Maximilian's ability to make hard decisions under pressure. Out here, that kind of resolve was a lifeline.

But more than anything, Otto thought of Sigrid. She was out there, and she was the only family he had left. He was not going to let her down.

===

Inside the rover, the atmosphere was tense and heavy, punctuated only by the sound of Mei’s ragged breaths. She lay slumped in her seat, her face pale and clammy, her eyes half-lidded as she fought waves of nausea.

Sigrid crouched beside her, a comforting hand on Mei’s shoulder. "Just hold on a little longer," Sigrid murmured, her voice as soothing as she could manage. "Otto is almost here. He'll know what to do."

Mei tried to respond, but a fresh bout of retching overtook her. She turned to the small container Sigrid held, vomiting weakly into it. Sigrid frowned as she held Mei steady, her own stomach twisting in sympathetic discomfort. "You're doing great," she said softly. "Just stay with me, okay?"

At the wheel, Pom struggled to control the vehicle. His eyelids felt heavy, and the world beyond the windshield seemed to blur and shift unnaturally. He shook his head sharply, trying to dispel the growing fog in his mind. "We need to stop soon," he muttered, his voice hoarse. "I can barely see straight."

Sigrid glanced his way. "You've been feverish for hours. When Otto gets here, one of us will take over."

"Yeah, yeah," Pom said, blinking hard. "Just need to keep us moving..."

The rover hit a shallow dip, jolting everyone inside. Mei groaned weakly, and Sigrid steadied her. "Pom!" Sigrid snapped. "Focus!"

"I'm trying!" Pom barked back, frustration showing through his exhaustion.

Ahead, the faint outline of a vehicle appeared, carving deep tracks in the rugged sand. Sigrid's heart leapt. "That’s Otto!" she said, relief washing over her. "He made it."

Moments later, Otto’s industrial hauler pulled up alongside the rover, its larger size dwarfing their vehicle. The hauler came to a stop, followed shortly by Maximilian’s toploader. Otto jumped out of the cab, his expression tense but determined as he approached the rover.

"How bad is it?" Otto called out, climbing into the rover's side door.

"Mei is barely conscious," Sigrid replied. "She can't keep anything down. Pom's feverish."

Otto reached into the hauler and began hauling out a medical kit, but Maximilian stepped down from his toploader, his imposing figure cutting through the stark light of the desert. "You don’t have time for that," he said flatly. "We will move Mei to the hauler and abandon the rover. It is faster to move her than move all the equipment and treat her here. I have critical components in the toploader that must be returned to base, so I will take the rover's drones and weapon and drive the toploader back."

Otto hesitated for only a moment before nodding. "You’re right. Sigrid, ARI, help me."

The three of them worked quickly, carefully unstrapping Mei and moving her to the hauler. Mei groaned weakly as they lifted her, her body limp and unresponsive. "Hang in there," Otto murmured, his voice steady but urgent.

With Mei secured in the hauler, Otto turned to Pom. "You're riding in the back too. Sigrid, you'll treat them. I'll drive."

Sigrid helped Pom climb into the hauler, his movements sluggish and unsteady. He collapsed into a seat, his head leaning heavily against the side.

Otto strapped himself into the driver's seat and started the engine. The hauler roared to life, and they were moving again, the crater that held the base a distant but hopeful goal. The interior was cramped but secure, filled with the hum of medical equipment Otto had brought along.

"Sigrid," Otto said as they sped through the desert. "I need you to take blood samples from Mei and Pom. Use the scanner to check what Mei has been vomiting up. You should check if it contains microorganisms and known toxins."

Sigrid nodded, grabbing the sample kits and setting to work. She took a blood sample from Pom first, the process slowed by his groggy, uncooperative state. "Stay still," she muttered, her frustration giving way to concern as she felt the heat radiating from him.

She moved to Mei next, gently drawing blood from her arm. She stirred weakly, her body twitching involuntarily as Sigrid worked. "Almost done," Sigrid said softly, though she wasn’t sure whether Mei could hear her.

Once the samples were secured and inserted into the diagnostic equipment, Sigrid began scanning the contents of the container Mei had been vomiting into. Her stomach churned as the scanner’s light illuminated the murky liquid. "It's… thick with something," she said, frowning at the display.

"What do you mean?" Otto asked, his eyes fixed on the terrain ahead.

"I don't know, I will take a sample and check it under the microscope."

She took a sample stick and smeared some of Sigrid's sick on a slide, then had ARI place it into the microscope.

"It contains large amounts of microbial material, both dead and alive" Sigrid said, her voice tight as she looked at the images. "It's almost like her microbiome is collapsing."

Otto’s jaw tightened. "It has to be something from the plants. Maybe some kind of antimicrobial toxin they release…"

Sigrid realized the significance. "It must be an immune response from the plants... they are releasing some compound to defend themselves from our bacteria... we have to find out what exactly it is that they got into Mei."

Sigrid worked quickly, carefully swabbing Mei's mouth, collecting samples of saliva and any residue that might provide a clue to what was happening. Mei stirred weakly, her lips dry and cracked, but Sigrid murmured softly to her, "It’s okay, Mei. We'll find what is going on..."

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Putting the sample onto a slide, Sigrid handed it to ARI.

"ARI, bring up the chemical analysis," Sigrid instructed. ARI’s drone arm swiveled, extracting a portion of the sample for automated testing and placing the remainder on a slide for the microscope.

ARI analyzed the results "I am cross-referencing the observed bacteria with known human microbiota. My initial identification suggests that these are common bacteria found in the human oral cavity."

The microscope's small monitor changed to display the new input, revealing a chaotic scene of microbial life. Bacteria, human cells, and other familiar organisms floated in the sample.

Sigrid looked at the data on the screen. "No sign of anything alien?"

"Negative," ARI replied. "I am not detecting any alien organisms. However, there is an anomaly: certain bacteria are thriving instead of succumbing to the conditions that have eliminated others. These organisms appear unusually robust."

"That doesn’t make sense," Sigrid murmured. "If something alien is attacking Mei's microbiome, why would any bacteria thrive?"

Otto replied. "It could be that some of her bacteria have evolved to become resistant."

ARI agreed. "The bacteria which are now thriving may have developed a resistance to whatever is killing off the rest of Mei's microbiome."

Sigrid turned back to the screen, her heart racing. "ARI, can you sequence the DNA of the bacteria which are thriving? If we can find the genes that make these bacteria resistant, we could genetically modify the rest to share that trait.

"Understood," ARI said. The drone arm moved, siphoning off a small part of the thriving bacterial sample into the DNA sequencer. The machine whirred into action, its processor humming through the cabin.

As they waited, Sigrid leaned back and began running through her mind. "If these bacteria are evolving, what does that mean for Mei? Her microbiome is integral to her health. It's tied to everything: digestion, immunity, even brain function."

The sequencer chimed; it was done. ARI flashed onto the screen the DNA sequence that was taken and ran it against a database of known bacterial genomes. Everything had seemed fine-exactly like bacteria that looked just like any standard human strain. Now, the anomalies became clear.

This was impossibly complex DNA, far beyond anything that should have belonged to such simple organisms. The structures mirrored the intricate patterns they had seen in the alien plants, displaying the same excessive redundancies and layered coding that defied evolutionary logic.

Sigrid's hand shot up to her mouth. "No way," she whispered. "These bacteria. they aren't just thriving. They have been transformed. This isn't human anymore. They have the same alien DNA we saw in the plants and beetles."

ARI's voice cut in. "Conclusion: the bacterial organisms seem indistinguishable from human microbiota in terms of structure and function but with highly altered genetic material. Hypothesis: the alien influence is replacing Mei's native microbiome with an alien analog, using her own body as a host."

Otto slowly blew his breath out as his mind raced. "That is why her immune system can't stop it. To her body, they are normal. But they are not-they're part of the very same alien ecosystem trying to take over."

Pom opened his eyes. "That's impossible. How would an alien ecosystem even know how to recreate human bacteria?"

Sigrid shook her head. "I don't know. But if this spreads-if this alien microbiome takes over completely-it could alter everything about the way her body works. Maybe even her biology.

As Otto began the climb up the crater slope, the last obstacle to reaching the base, his mind was a maelstrom of possibility. Finding out that Mei's microbiome was being completely overwritten by alien biology answered one question but begged another: was it stopping at her microbiome? Or was her body itself being altered?

"ARI," Otto said, "we need to sequence the DNA from Mei's blood sample. Let’s see if the alien influence is affecting her own cells.”

ARI’s drone moved efficiently, drawing a sample from the vial Sigrid had taken earlier and inserting it into the DNA sequencer. The machine whirred, its faint vibrations adding to the tension in the cramped hauler.

"While you're at it," Otto said, "I think you sequence Pom's DNA as well. We need to know if it is affecting to him too."

"Understood," ARI replied while readjusting the input to process both samples in tandem.

Pom was leaning back against his seatback, watching them work with growing apprehension. "What if it's already got me?" he asked, his voice hoarse. "What's going to happen to us?"

"We're trying to figure that out," Sigrid answered.

The beeping of the sequencer drew their attention back to the monitor. First out of the gate was Mei's blood; what Sigrid saw made her stomach drop. Her DNA was riddled with the same alien complexity they had encountered in the transformed bacteria. The double-helix structure of human DNA remained intact, but was interwoven with alien sequences, redundant, layered, and impossibly intricate.

"It has altered her cells," Sigrid said in a near-whisper. "The alien DNA isn't just taking over her microbiome. It's rewriting everything."

"What about me? Pom said as he leaned closer, grasping the edge of his seat.

Silence ensued as the sequencer processed Pom's blood sample. Finally, the screen displayed the results. Unlike Mei's, Pom's DNA was still wholly human. There was no sign of the alien sequences percolating into his cells—yet.

"It hasn't spread to you," Sigrid said, letting out a sigh of relief. "Your cells are still original. But if your microbiome starts to change, it's only a matter of time."

Pom's face darkened. "Then you gotta stop it now. I need antibiotics. Wipe those alien fudtukkers out before they take over."

Sigrid hesitated. "Antibiotics might kill off the alien bacteria, but that would also destroy the rest of your microbiome. That will leave you completely vulnerable to all kinds of secondary infections."

Pom glared at her, his voice rising. "And what choice do you think I've got? If we wait, those things are going to rewrite me from the inside out! I'd rather take the risk now while my body's still mine."

Otto nodded slowly, understanding Pom's desperation. "He's not wrong. If the alien DNA is isolated to his microbiome, antibiotics might still be able to put a stop to this."

"We don't know if this will work. It is a gamble," Sigrid said.

"It's my gamble," Pom shot back. "Just do it before it's too late!"

Sigrid nodded reluctantly. She fished the broad-spectrum antibiotics from the medical kit, preparing the dose. "I don't know if this is going to make things worse," she warned, filling the syringe. "And we'll have to monitor you closely for side effects."

Pom held out his arm. "Do it."

Sigrid injected the antibiotic, the liquid flowing into Pom's bloodstream. He winced but said nothing, his focus sharp despite his weakened state. Now all they could do was wait.

===

The midday sun cast long shadows over the base as the hauler rolled to a stop. Maximilian parked his toploader beside it, while Elisa and Ervin emerged from the base to meet the returning team.

"You made it," Elisa said, her voice breaking with emotion. "How is everyone?"

Otto climbed out, his face lined with fatigue but resolute. "We’ve got a lot to explain," he said, motioning to Sigrid, who began recounting the events of the past hours.

She explained the alien bacterial transformation, Mei's condition, and the antibiotics used to arrest Pom's infection. "We think the infection may have come from the giant mushroom-plant Mei touched in the grove days ago," Sigrid said. "It would be good if we go there to see if we can isolate the vector, find out if we can reverse the condition..."

Mei, still pale but conscious, leaned on ARI's drone as she climbed down. Elisa hurried to support her other side. "Mei..." Elisa said, her eyes scanning her colleague. "You look better than I expected."

Mei returned a small, tired smile. "Still alive, thanks to everyone."

Inside the infirmary, Sigrid explained the details to Elisa and Ervin, describing the alien microbiome and the bacteria that had transformed with alien DNA. She concluded with a suggestion that set everyone on edge.

"We should get a sample from the grove," Sigrid said. "From the plant Mei touched. It could hold the key to understanding how this infection started."

Elisa frowned. "Are you sure that is a good idea?"

Sigrid nodded firmly. "If we can isolate the vector, we might be able to prevent this from happening again—or worse, spreading to the rest of us. ARI and I can handle it."

After some hesitation, Elisa agreed. "Be careful. Don't take unnecessary risks."

===

Sigrid's nerves tingled as the now-familiar red plants came into view. The grove was unnaturally quiet, the strange atmosphere thick with the scent of alien growth. She guided ARI toward the spot where Mei had touched the mushroom-like plant days prior.

As they drew closer to the plant Mei had touched, Sigrid stopped dead in her tracks. From the exact spot where Mei's hand had touched it days earlier, there had sprouted a new growth of some sort. A slimly stalk rose from the plant, capped with strange blue fruit.

"That wasn't here before," Sigrid said, feeling curious despite her growing unease.

ARI analyzed the newly appeared stalk, scanning and probing it.

"The plant may be exhibiting adaptive behavior," ARI said. "Hypothesis: the fruit's appearance is linked to the human contact days prior."

"We should take some back for analysis," Sigrid replied.

Back at the infirmary, Sigrid was met with an unexpected sight. Mei was sitting upright on her cot, her face no longer pale and her eyes clear.

"You shouldn't be up," Elisa said, folding her arms. "Lie down and rest"

"I need water," Mei replied, her voice weak but firm. "From the pools in the grove."

Ervin frowned. "Mei, that is how you ended up into this mess in the first place."

"No, I don't think it is," Mei said, shaking her head. "I think it may be the opposite. Trust me."

Otto handed her a small flask of the water they'd gathered for samples, and Mei took it, her hands shaking ever so slightly, and drank. Everyone watched, tense and waiting, but in an unexpected turn of events, she did not vomit.

Sigrid exchanged a glance with Mei. "You're drinking the pool water and it is staying down?

Mei nodded. "It's like… my body has adjusted to this planet's ecosystem. I think the plants are benign, maybe even trying to help."

Sigrid shook her head, skeptical. "How can you say that after everything you've been through?"

"Because of this," Mei said, gesturing to the fruit ARI had brought back. "Look at what the plants are doing. They produce water. Metals. Fruit. They are concentrating resources and offering them to us. But our microbes are a threat to their ecosystem..."

"Like what happened to the plants on Proxma...", Otto said.

"Correct," Mei answered. "If two biomes clash, the strongest overtakes the weaker, until there is only one biome remaining."

"But this time around, we are the weaker one...", Sigrid whispered.