Malik Rosen’s jaw was set in a hard, conflicted expression as he crossed the beach toward his lifepod. He’d spent the entire morning familiarizing himself with the lay of the land, and yet, he had more questions than answers when he returned home. Whatever secrets this land held, it would take more than the work of one morning to divine them.

*****

Malik pulled away the yellow fronds and used his vibroblade to carefully cut away the thicker pieces of undergrowth. Each minute he’d spent clearing away the woven layers of plant life had made it more and more difficult to dismiss the truth of what he’d accidentally unearthed.

All that work revealed a road. It couldn’t be anything else. No amount of mental gymnastics could change the truth laid out across the ground. The porous red stones were all a uniform shape, reminiscent of images he’d seen of 20th-century Earth’s brickwork. Each one was set flush against the ground with some sort of hard, smooth binding agent filling the gaps between the stones. The alien masonry measured five meters across and led deeper into the wild, untamed forest.

And a forest it was. For the first time, Malik found himself in an environment teeming with life. Tiny birds, barely bigger than dragonflies, zoomed through the air in streaks of scintillating color. While he worked, he’d seen brightly colored lizards clambering up and down the ominous black trees. Of the larger game, there was no sign, but he did stop twice and draw his pistol when he thought there was movement in the brush. Both times he holstered his weapon without firing a shot.

The last thing he did, on his return trip to the beach, was take a look at the large, ebony trees that dominated the landscape. Their smooth bark, if you could call it that, seemed to be a thin, clear coating. The only limbs they had were the black branches sprouting from their crown high overhead. Long, ropy vines hung from those limbs, similar to a willow tree. These, however, were thicker and held the buds of flowers that had yet to bloom.

He had to search for some time before he found one with a distinguishing feature. Its clear coating had split, lengthwise, from the ground to its crown of jagged black limbs. Viscous, white sap oozed out of the gap like infection leaking from a wound. Beatles, dragonflies, and a slew of insects that Malik couldn’t place were held fast by the pale slime. Even as he watched, more insects were drawn to the sap like bears to honey. His curiosity piqued, Mal stepped closer to examine the black tree in more detail. After a close inspection, what he'd first taken to be the usual whorls and imperfections you’d see in tree bark were actually blackened pieces of insect carapaces frozen forever beneath the smooth coating that covered the obsidian tree.

There was something about his inspection of the black trees that left Malik with an uneasy feeling as if he’d just overheard a conversation that wasn’t meant for his ears. Unlike the fronds and the small wildlife, there was something truly alien about the sinister trees. It made him uncomfortable enough to give up his exploration and turn back toward the beach.

He’d only taken two steps down the path before he’d glanced back over his shoulder. “I’m going to call you Gloam trees,” he’d said.

Without waiting for a reply, he turned around and started to make his way home.

*****

Malik’s conflicted feeling only grew after he checked the coordinates of his lost drone again. The recon tool’s transponder placed it somewhere well south of his current location. That, in itself, was not necessarily an issue. He’d known when he and Oscar made landfall that they were some distance from the drone.

The problem was that the road led west, deeper into the island’s interior.

So he had a decision to make. On the one hand, the drone was his most important exploration tool. A single day of aerial footage could answer numerous questions he had about this strange new land.

On the other hand, following the road deeper into the island could give him crucial intel about whatever took his drone. The presence of the road suggested intelligent tools using species. If they were smart enough to do brickwork and advanced enough to cut stone, then they were certainly capable of ambushing a lost traveler. He didn’t know whether the island was still inhabited, but he wasn’t especially keen on finding out after he’d walked into a trap.

Faced with a dilemma, Malik did what humans had done since time immemorial.

He asked his best friend.

Malik grabbed his rifle, checked his ammo, and then snatched one of his ratio bars from the survival kit. He visibly winced when he saw how much his supply of foodstuffs had dwindled.

I'll worry about it tomorrow, he thought as he hopped out of the pod, there’ll be plenty of time to terrorize the local wildlife after I make sure I’m not going to get attacked in the middle of the night.

The sun was high in the sky, bathing the water world of Ryujin in a sweltering heat that made Mal immediately regret moving out of the lifepod’s shade. His pride wouldn’t let him flee the noonday sun, so instead of slinking back into the pod like a sulking dog, Mal marched his way across the beach. A few steps later he was standing at the water line watching the lazy surf and the even lazier crocogator as it meandered back and forth through the shallow water.

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Oscar, the prehistoric crocogator in question, turned its amber eyes toward Mal as the human approached. The incredulous glimmer in those large eyes silently posed the question of Malik’s sanity. Who, in their right mind, would be out in this heat?

“Yes, yes, it's hot. I get it,” Malik muttered sullenly as he bent his knees to squat down on the sand. “Some of us have things to do other than laze about.”

Oscar’s eyes narrowed, obviously affronted by the human’s ‘what have you done for me lately’ attitude.

“Hey now, I’m not trying to start a fight here.” Malik lifted a hand in a placating gesture to forestall any further outbursts from the leviathan. “You worked really hard getting us out here so you deserve a couple of days off. I’m just saying there are other things we need to get done. Should we go after the drone? Or explore the road? We can’t do both at the same time.”

Oscar lifted itself out of the water and snorted a blast of water from its nostrils.

Malik felt like the spit-take was warranted. “Yeah, buddy, I agree. It's hard to believe that there could be people here. Not people like me people but...," Malik made a frustrated groan, "...You know what I mean. Anyway, that’s why I’m having such a hard time with this. I’m not O’Brian or Mullins. Hell, even Catherine would probably have a better understanding of the implications of finding evidence of a civilization.”

“Which is a whole other issue, right?” Malik said, lifting his gaze up to the clear sky. For his part, Oscar, the ever-patient listener, meandered back and forth through the shallow water with one amber eye trained on the human.

After searching the heavens for an answer, Mal continued haltingly, “What if they’ve met whoever built this? It was one thing when we assumed that the only thing we’d have to contend with is other humans. Now there’s another angle to this that I am totally unqualified to process.”

With a sigh like Atlas’ when he accepted the weight of the world, Malik looked away from the heavens to find Oscar’s orange eyes offering an encouraging look.

“You’re right, buddy. You usually are. I can’t do anything to help them until I’ve solved our problems.” A wistful smile tugged at the corner of Mal’s lips as he tightened his grip on the rifle to use it to lever himself up off the sand. “The drone is more important, but it's also farther away. Whatever took it, I don’t want to run into it after the sun goes down. I’ll spend the rest of the day working on the road and then head for the drone at first light.”

Oscar sank back into the water and turned out toward the ocean. A mighty swing of his enormous tail propelled him out toward the open water. The ensuing splash scattered drops of water that twinkled in the sunlight like uncut diamonds all across the beach’s white sand.

And all across Malik.

“Asshole,” Mal grumbled, flipping his friend the finger as he wiped his face off. He made a show of wiping his arms off, just to amuse the prehistoric alligator, before he pocketed his ration bar for later. A casual, well-practiced motion slung his rifle over his shoulder as he smoothly turned toward the waiting forest.

Now that he had a plan, there was no reason to stand around and fry on the beach like a rasher of bacon tossed onto a hot skillet. A quick jog had him fleeing from shimmering sand like a cheating lover rushing into the forest’s waiting embrace. While the Gloam trees, with their strange structure, would offer very little by way of shade, some of the fronds further inland had grown taller than Malik.

I think I just want to be surrounded by the familiarity of the forest, Malik admitted to himself as he pulled fronds with one hand and sliced through thick, gnarled vines with the vibroblade in his other. The Gloam trees are creepy as hell, but otherwise, I could close my eyes and imagine Earth back when it still had rainforests. Humans haven’t had an opportunity to roam through nature like this in centuries.

I just hope nothing tries to eat me.

Mal spent the next two hours working his way into the interior of the island. The further he went, the higher the elevation climbed. He knew he had to be significantly above sea level, but the dense foliage prevented him from enjoying a clear view. Despite that, Malik refused to be denied the panorama that he’d spent most of his day working for. Determined steps carried him to the edge of the road and beyond, into the living heart of the forest. His vibroblade had to work overtime to carve away plant life with every step. In the end, his stubbornness paid dividends when he came upon a small rivulet that emerged from beneath a loose formation of white boulders.

Ah ha! Fresh water! Malik danced a quick, clumsy little jig as he raced over to the rocks and began scaling them. The large boulders proved to be a simple challenge and soon enough Mal stood at the precipice of the small formation. With a huge grin on his lips, Mal turned to face the sea from his new vantage point.

And he saw nothing but fronds, vines, and the massive trunks of the Gloam trees.

“Goddamnit,” Mal murmured, his shoulders slumping like a kid being sent to their room at bedtime.

A loud crunch made Mal spin on his heel, one hand effortlessly drawing his pistol in one smooth, deadly motion.

The low, dangerous whine of the gun’s capacitors filled the small clearing as Mal pointed the business end toward a creature that stood at the edge of the tiny creek ten meters away. It had a long, fluffy fox-like tail that calmly waved from side to side. The tail was attached to a body the size of a St. Bernard, it's every inch covered in fuzzy green fur that reminded Mal of the pipe cleaners that his grandfather had used when he was a kid. Upon a short neck sat a round head with long, floppy ears and a face that looked like a bear’s, but with a much more compact nose and jaw. Slitted green eyes that held a tiger’s confidence watched Malik with the patience of an apex predator. It held a dark green fruit with the long, curved claws sprouting from its front paws. Two more sets of paws shuffled against the ground to keep the creature directly facing Mal as its sharp canines sank, with an audible crunch, into the rind of the green fruit it held.

A sigh slipped from Mal’s lips as he found himself negotiating with yet another native creature at gunpoint.

“Please don’t try to eat me. I’ll feel terribly guilty about shooting something this cute.”