“What do you mean it’s gone?”

They were standing across from one another in the hospital’s small morgue.

“I mean,” Skyler said, sliding open the empty drawer between them, “he’s gone. I put him here to await notification of his family. The techs came to get the body for cremation and it was just…gone.”

The architects of Luna 1 knew with absolute certainty and foresight that people would die on the Moon and, with that in mind, had constructed a crematorium to dispose of the bodies. It didn’t happen often, but the lunar surface was a dangerous place, and anywhere humans congregated in large numbers there were bound to be deaths. Funerary practices had changed a lot throughout the twenty-first century, and shipping bodies home was an expensive endeavor. So it was easier to notify the families, turn the deceased to ash, and spread those ashes across the Moon’s surface. No fuss, no muss as Mike Lenesky so eloquently put it.

Teague looked around, searching for an answer among the other sealed drawers in the small space. “What did you tell the techs?”

Skyler shrugged. “I don’t know. I panicked. I told them I took the body for additional testing for Jasleen’s investigation into what happened. But I can’t hide that it’s missing forever.”

“Maybe someone took it.”

“Impossible.”

“Skyler, Morrison was killed by a naked man on the lunar surface. We’re up to our eyeballs in impossible. Now, where could the body be?”

“I don’t know,” she said, flustered. She lowered her voice. “What the hell is going on here, Harry? It's like Morrison just got up and wandered off.”

“A chill fled up Teague's spine as he pondered her words. “Are there cameras in here?”

“No. But there are out in the corridor.”

Teague slid the drawer closed. “Let’s go see Jasleen.”

* * *

They found the chief of security in her office. In two keystrokes she had the camera feed for the medical pod called up. She ran it back to the previous evening until a chilling figure lumbered past the corridor cam.

“The hell?” said Skyler.

“It’s Morrison,” said Jasleen, a chill fleeing up her spine. “But. He’s dead.”

“Not anymore,” said Teague. “What’s that stuff all over him?”

Morrison was naked. Silvery black tendrils of an all too familiar substance stretched around his body. A thick strand of the stuff ran from the wound in his chest and up his right nostril. His eyes had a dazed, faraway look, and they shone in the camera like pools of quicksilver.

“That’s the same stuff that covered the man who attacked us,” said Jasleen.

“It’s like what I pulled out of his wound,” said Skyler. “Jesus. That stuff could contaminate the whole base.”

“I’m going to kill Briggs,” said Jasleen. “Dammit, he should have caught this. He was probably snoozing.”

“Can we see where he went?” said Teague.

Jasleen tapped at her desk controls, switching to different cameras at the same timestamp until they had a continuous image of Morrison’s ambulatory corpse as it lumbered up a darkened hallway and to an airlock.

“Airlock four,” said Jasleen. “That’s the eastern end of the base. He would have gone unseen at that time of night.”

They watched in quiet horror as Morrison cycled open the airlock and entered. It closed behind him.

“He went outside,” said Skyler. “Just like his attacker.”

Jasleen was accessing the exterior cameras now, which were more sparse, but there was a cam atop Aldrin dome that could rotate three hundred and sixty degrees and afforded a panoramic view of the lunar landscape.

“There he goes,” she said, pointing. He’s heading toward the solar array. No cameras out there, but I’ll bet he’s going to our mysterious airlock.”

“And leaving bare footprints on the Moon,” said Skyler, still in disbelief.

“Which someone has probably already come behind and swept away,” Teague said.

“That’s probably a good thing,” said the doctor. “When word of this gets out it’s going to cause a panic.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Teague’s mind reeled. He was already being hounded by the newsnets for a quote about Morrison’s death. They’d have a field day with the news that his corpse was walking around on the surface of the Moon. “It can’t get out. Not yet.”

“Harry,” she said. “We can’t keep a lid on this. There could be a possibility of contagion. We need to notify everyone and enact quarantine protocols now.”

“Tell them what?” said Teague. “That Morrison was killed by a naked man covered in an alien substance, and his body is now taking a leisurely stroll sans spacesuit across the Sea of Serenity?”

She started to say something, then threw up her hands in exasperation. “Well, we’ve got to do something.”

“I am,” said Teague. “I’m going to call General Steen. It’s one in the morning on Earth. He won’t like it but we don’t have a choice. My predecessor played things fast and loose up here. Everything from now on must be by the book.”

“I don’t think what we’re dealing with is written in any book,” said Jasleen.

“Then we’ll write a new one,” said Teague with a shrug.

His slate chimed. Teague glanced at the screen. “It's Romeo. I better take this.”

He tapped the comm button. “Yes?”

“We’ve got an incoming problem,” she said.

Before he could ask her to clarify, his screen flickered to a tactical diagram of the Earth-Moon system orbiting the Sun. A stream of particles was coming off of the Sun. A dark lump sank deep into Teague’s stomach.

“A coronal mass ejection,” Romeo continued. “Solar Astronomy estimates it to be at least as large as the Carrington Event.”

“Shit. How long have we got?”

“Current estimate is fifteen to eighteen hours from now,” she said. “NOAA and NASA just confirmed.”

“All right,” Teague said. “Send out a general alert. I want contingency plans and disaster prep from all department heads in two hours.”

“Sir,” she said curtly before cutting the connection.

Teague looked up at Skyler, his face grave.

“I’m no expert, but this is bad, right?” she said. “Solar flares?”

“If only this was a solar flare,” Teague said.

“What’s the Carrington Event?”

“Back in the late eighteen-hundreds, this solar astronomer named Carrington was studying sunspots when he saw a coronal mass ejection. It’s a burst of magnetized plasma from the Sun’s corona. It caused a geomagnetic storm, disrupted telegraph lines, and created auroras as far as the tropics.”

Skyler winced. “Jesus.”

“But that was back before modern communications. A CME that large today will disrupt satellites and knock out power grids. And that’s just on Earth, protected by its magnetosphere. We could get hammered a lot worse.”

Skyler arched an eyebrow. “Could?”

“Depends on if we’re behind Earth when it gets hit. But if we’re between Earth and the Sun…”

“Our only saving grace is that the Moon is tidally locked to the Earth," Jasleen explained, "with Luna 1 always facing Earth. But we'll still lose communications, maybe even the power. And no matter how badly we get hit we'll still be out of contact with Earth.”

Skyler looked terrified. "For how long?"

Jasleen shrugged, and she and Teague exchanged worried glances. “Could be two hours. Could be two days. We won't know until it's happened.” To Teague, she said, "I'll get security plans in place for you within the hour. What about Morrison?"

Teague scowled. "I'm afraid he'll have to wait."

* * *

The next hour pushed all thoughts of a sinister lunar cabal from Teague’s mind in favor of a more immediate and less existential threat. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much that could be done. They just had to hope the Earth was between them and the CME when it arrived. The best case scenario was that Earth would be incommunicado for a couple of days. The worst-case scenario was that Earth would be out of touch for a few days and a catastrophic failure of every life-giving system on Luna.

Teague sent out another volley of missives, more pinging his slate as fast as he could answer them. After thirty minutes of this, he decided to wake up General Steen.

The line was filled with static and the lag time was greater than usual. When Steen picked up he thought he heard more static in the background, but soon realized he was listening to the sound of heavy rain.

“Somebody better be fucking dead up there," Steen said sleepily. "What is it?" He stared into the screen with heavy-lidded eyes.

"We've got a problem up here," Teague said without preamble. "The tech who was killed, Morrison. His body is missing."

There was a lag, followed by noise on the line. It sounded like the general was shifting in bed, clearing his throat. "How is that my problem?"

"Morrison's corpse got up and walked out of the base."

More silence. Teague heard bed springs screeching. In the background came the rhythmic patter of rain.

The general scowled at the screen. "Sorry. Say again? I can't hear a damned thing. DC’s getting hammered. This storm's tearing the whole goddamn eastern seaboard a new asshole. What did you say?”

Teague noticed the general's southern drawl—and flair for colorful language—grew more pronounced when he was angry. He waited a beat to compensate for the lag then, repeated himself. He also shared his suspicions about Leneski and told the general about Daedalus's supposed involvement.

General Steen let out an impressive sigh. "All right. Sounds like you guys are neck deep. How goes the solar flare prep?"

“As well as can be expected. How are things down there?”

“We’re instituting failsafes for when the damn grid goes out. That's all we can do. We've been advised to stick our heads between our legs and kiss our asses goodbye. If there's a god you're partial to, start prayin'.”

"What about our situation?"

There was a two-second pause as Teague’s words traveled the more than three hundred thousand kilometers to Earth, then the general's expression sank, deflated. "Look, Harry. I don't know what to tell you. I sent you up there because you're the best person I know for the job. If anyone can untangle this nonsense it's you. But this goes deeper than anyone thought, and we've got a major solar event plus the mother of all hurricanes headed right for DC. Do whatever you can to survive the next few days. I'm gonna go wake up a few Joint Chiefs. They'll probably have my ass in a sling, but I'll find out what's going on down here with Project Proteus and the Daedalus Corporation. In the meantime, it might be time to open up that care package I sent you.”

"Sir?" Teague said. He had almost forgotten about the mysterious delivery Steen had sent up the well.

The general knuckled sleep from his eyes. "Your security chief will know what to do with it. I'm trusting you can keep everyone alive until we can speak again. Steen out."

The screen went dark, leaving Teague with a million unanswered questions.