Two years before the fated arrival of the void presence that swept through the solar system. The blue planet known as Earth is enjoying an absolute pinnacle of technological achievement.

The final goal is to subjugate a sister planet within its solar system known as the planet Mars. With the advent of specific technologies, Many corporations lobbied the most powerful nations to embark on this unprecedented project simply because they believe that it is now economically viable to do so.

In a seven-phase plan, the engineers and scientists on Earth believe that they can terraform the other planet in a span of only a hundred years.

The first step is to create the necessary industrial and infrastructural base in space so that they can build the essential capabilities to go to Mars, while simultaneously sending increasingly sophisticated and complex probes to the planet itself. The cornerstone of the entire plan is to create a massive space station in the future that will then eventually build the necessary spaceship that will send the first humans into mars.

To do this and to study the long-term effect of space travel on humans, the first phase of the plan is to build the first base station on the moon.

A fleet of robots descended on the Moon. It started manufacturing the foundation for a moon base colony, which in the future will then create the necessary facilities that will build the space station and then the starship that will travel to the distant planet.

That phase took 18 months, and then a group of astronauts, led by Major Lawrence Walker, finally left Earth to land on the Moon and use the newly constructed base in the surface, plus the Moon orbital, as their primary new home for the next 3 years.

Like the robots before them, their job is to outfit the even larger infrastructure being prepared so that a small army of more astronauts, engineers, biologists, chemists, physicists, and other specialists can be accommodated in the near future.

Unfortunately, this is the time when the void descended on Earth. It was actually Major Walker's team that first detected the anomaly coming to Earth and warned the leaders below.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

When the void awakening happened, NASA lost contact with the people in the moon base. For days they continued to contact Major Walker and his people. Still, after two weeks, they assumed that the astronauts in the moon base all were affected by the awakening, and all succumbed to coma. There are 6 astronauts, including Major Walker, that are a member of that first team. If more than half of them succumbed to the void awakening, then the rest might have a hard time operating the facilities by themselves. The worst-case scenario is that all of them succumbed to the void, and then something catastrophic happened in the facility like a problem with the air filter and killed them all off. Until now, no one knows what happened to the astronauts, but either way, the entire team in the moon facilities was all considered lost.

There were preliminary investigations done on Earth, but of course, since no one can go to the Moon, nothing conclusive can be given by the investigator about the assumed death and the cause of that death of the astronauts. Then the issue of the newly empowered beings grabbed the full attention of most nations, not only by the government but by the media itself, in the next few years.

It took more than 3 years for NASA and its supporters to received the go-ahead and resume the Mars project. Naturally, the first step is to find out once and for all what happened to Major Walker and his people at the moon base.

A new team of 12 astronauts, including 2 empowered beings, were sent to the moon base to see what happened to the first group and, if possible, retrieve the dead so that they can be given a proper burial on Earth.

That is when the new horror started.

The new team landed properly on the moon base, and with their satellite videos, we're able to transmit their last moments on the station. The videos were grainy, but it was clear that unknown entities attacked the new arrivals. After the brutal screaming and horrific sounds of breaking bones, searing skins, and the splattering of blood, the videos were able to see a few glimpses of the attackers before they deliberately destroy the cameras the second group of astronauts brought with them.

A few of the videos show a stone-faced Major Lawrence Walker and a few of his men killing the newcomers. It turned out that the first group survived, but was changed somehow by the awakening.

NASA sent their findings to the Whitehouse, who then studied the pictures and sent the info to ISSUE in the United Nations. After multiple meetings and backdoor discussion, the powers that be decided to cover up the info and suspend the mars colonization indefinitely. They simply could not afford another scandal right now.

All the leaders can think of is that there is a threat to them now living in the Moon just above them. And it scared the living shit out of all of them.

No one at the time could have known how right they were.