It was the discovery of the century, perhaps even the millennium. Hidden beneath the dusty and hazardous wastes of this planet was a massive subterranean system. Its’ discovery had been pure luck. A once-in-forever earthquake had shattered the mass of rock that had kept it sealed for what her colleagues in Carbon Dating believed to be millions of years. Dr. Solaris Khorana, a biologist from the Martian capital city of Olympia, was absolutely enthused that she could work here.

For a biologist of just about any focus, there was work enough for many lifetimes. The caverns had teemed with life. An entire ecosystem had developed, split from the surface-dwelling life millions of years ago. There were libraries’ worth of dissertations that could be written about the way that life had adapted and developed in these caves. And even more about how that impacted the modern-day understanding of more familiar life-forms.

But unfortunately, most of it was dead.

The original earthquake itself killed off much of the subterranean population, but what followed after was even more devastating. Exposed now to an environment much harsher than the protected and sealed caves’ environment, thousands of species died as their million-year-old isolation bubble collapsed. They left only their corpses behind.

It’s such a shame to have lost these fascinating creatures, Solaris felt, but despite death, we can discover their stories.

And if the biological wonders weren’t enough, they found a series of massive stone monoliths. These monoliths were at first considered a natural, albeit strange, part of the geology. This was disproved, or at least made less likely by the discovery that they were placed with extreme regularity. There was almost precisely the same distance between each unit. Such accuracy could hardly be natural and if random, exceedingly rare. Some theorized they had been placed or carved by something, or even someone. The latter assumption was widely dismissed as wild conjecture, but it’s implications excited Solaris’ mind. It would completely up-end everything they understood about how life developed on this planet.

The first few monoliths found at the new collapsed entrance had been damaged by the earthquake. As surveyors ventured further in, they found a trail of undamaged ones that were wrapped in some sort of vine-like organism which glowed faintly with a purplish light. Just one of the many mysteries waiting to be unraveled.

At the deepest point of the cavern system -at least the deepest yet surveyed- was the Henge. Named for its similarity to the famed Stonehenge, it was a massive chamber filled with shallow water. Arrayed within was a ring of the strange monoliths. In the center of the lake was a small island, surveys showed it to be in the mathematical center of the circle. It’s central location, as well as the large amount of still-living flora and fauna in the chamber made it Solaris’ primary worksite. Solaris found it eerily beautiful.

Early in the mornings, she would leave the little village the researchers had established by the cave entrance and head into work. They’d set up camp about 5 kilometers away from the caverns. If there was another cavern-collapsing quake, the thinking was that the distance was enough to ensure the safety of the scientists. Sometimes she’d catch a ride from a coworker in their ATV, other times when she was working on a problem or wanted to be left alone, she would hike the distance by foot. Ever since her new boss, Murphy, had arrived Solaris found herself walking to work more often. He wasn’t a terrible boss, but he was what one might call intense.

Murphy wasn’t a scientist. He wasn’t even science-adjacent. He was a security contractor who had been given the post because the university didn’t have a very wide pool of experienced middle management to pull from. He had a military background and not a lot of patience for those who wasted his time, which in his book were most of those he worked with. To remedy this, he had set out on his first day to instill some discipline into the ranks of those he managed.

He’ll probably be transferred before long, Solaris felt sure, someone’s going to complain.

It wouldn’t be her. Solaris would sooner eat her boots before rocking the boat here. The thought of having to leave this scientists’ paradise for any reason was unthinkable. Solaris could easily spend the rest of her life here.

The caverns this morning glistened in the pale sunlight that filtered through the noxious clouds. A light acid rain had fallen this morning, so at least the dust levels were pretty low. The rain had already weathered away at some of the surrounding limestone. This was one of many reasons working here was so frustrating. Important evidence would be washed away if they weren’t able to keep up with the weather. It was a race that nature tended to win.

The surface atmosphere on this planet – while technically breathable – was always full of corrosive dust and oxygen-poor. It was best to have a full EVA suit, but on a less dry day like today just a respirator would work. Solaris’ university-provided EVA suit was probably older than her, constructed more of patches than actual suit. It still smelled of whatever cleaning solvent they soaked them with between assignments.

Once Solaris got down into the deeper parts of the cavern the air quality would be better, and she could go with just the respirator while she worked. Technically, the air down there was perfectly breathable, but there was always the concern of discovering a new pathogen that was more than ready to make the jump to humans after its million-year isolation. It was just best to at least keep a filter between her and the air here.

At the entrance of the cavern was a temporary monorail-type elevator that would take her the rest of the way down to the Henge. It made a few stops in between at the different levels of the system, and Solaris hoped she wouldn’t see Murphy at one of them. He seemed to know she wasn’t one to push back, it must make her look like easy prey. Her hopes were dashed as she drew near to the entrance station, Murphy was already standing there, clipboard in hand and an impatient expression on his face.

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“Ah, Dr. Khorana, I was wondering when you’d eventually make your way to work. Had a nice long lie-in?” Murphy asked with mock interest.

“I wish. I spent all of last night reorganizing the sample collection paperwork for my section because someone insisted that was off-hours work”, Solaris smiled back at him.

Murphy looked like he’d swallowed something sour. He had gotten onto his unit for doing what he called ‘office work’ instead of what he considered ‘lab work’. He seemed to have this ill-conceived notion that scientific work involved more laboratory exercises and ‘eureka’ moments than the mundane reality of it being mostly data entry and ‘that’s weird…’ moments. Solaris boarded the monorail and fought looking over her shoulder for Murphy. He might not be the most technically knowledgeable about the scientific process, but he was always watching for weaknesses to exploit for office politics.

The monorail hummed as it began to roll down the track, Solaris took her work tablet out to see what she needed to do at the Henge when she got there. There was data to be collected, sensors to check for calibration, samples to be taken then stored…

She had only just started reading when everything shuddered and the monorail halted. A quake. It had been like someone had reached down and shook the monorail like a tin can, causing its occupants to fall into one another with a steady stream of expletives darkening the air. Not too severe then.

What the hell?

Solaris pushed past her slowly recovering coworkers in order to look out the window. They were a little over halfway down to the Henge and the monorail’s emergency power lights flashed. Solaris disengaged the door lock. She had to get down to the Henge to check on the equipment down there. There were a lot of delicate sensors and machines recording the environmental conditions that would need to be reset after the jolt that had just happened. Sure, she probably should have waited for everything to settle, but in the moment the thought of dealing with an increasingly longer gap in the data felt more inconvenient than being swept up in a rockslide. She grabbed an extra respirator on the way out, it was possible one of her co-workers already down there had theirs damaged in the quake.

Solaris ran down the caverns towards the Henge. As she approached it, she noticed that the normally glowing vines on many of the monoliths had gone dark. Maybe the quake had damaged them and that was their reaction to trauma. But as she drew nearer to the bottleneck that led to the Henge she saw light streaming through the opening, a purplish light. More of it than usual. She slowed, then ducked through the entrance to find the Henge transformed.

Instead of the ordinarily darker cavern, the room was bathed in a purple glow from the dozen-or-so monoliths arranged around the lake and its island. The vines seemed to have spread, covering the stony faces of the monoliths, and some sort of glowing spore floated in the stagnant air. It gave the cavern an otherworldly appearance. There were new vine growths that reached into the lake and emerged on the shore of the small island where a dark shape could be seen surrounded by the vines. That was new.

Solaris waded through the shallow pool being careful not to trip on the mass of vegetation that now grew beneath the water. Had the water level gone down? It was impossible to tell what was in the center island until she was on it, and the vines receded with a rustle as if in response to her presence. She gasped. What lay in the middle of the island was a person. A man.

The man lay curled on the ground, he was tall, thin, and pale – the perfect stereotype of a spacewalker: someone who’d grown up or spent most of their lives in less than a quarter G. He was wearing a very old flight suit that was stained with blood. The man wasn’t breathing. Was he dead? Or maybe just very still?

Solaris knelt down next to him, but even with a closer view she still couldn’t tell if he was dead or not. Perhaps because of the darkness, or the odd lighting. Behind her she could hear footsteps, then Murphy’s voice called out from the other side of the water.

“Dr. Khorana, what’s going on? Why the fuck did you run out in the middle of a quake?!” he said as he crossed the water, “You could’ve gotten caught in a rockslide!”

Solaris turned to answer but her attention was caught by something else. The man had moved!

He had rolled onto his back, gasping in the hostile atmosphere. His face was gaunt and he stared at Solaris with an expression of absolute terror and pleading. She grabbed her spare respirator and fitted it over the man’s face and his breathing settled into a more normal rhythm. Something about his face and his expression reminded her of something she’d seen a long time ago. He looked like he was going to say something to her, then Murphy caught up to them and the man’s eyes went wide with panic.

“Dr. Khorana, move out of the way”, Murphy said, his voice like jagged glass.

Solaris glanced back at Murphy and saw that he was holding an orange taser. Where had he gotten it? Had he always had it? Did the university know? And why did he feel it was necessary to point at the strange man?

“This man obviously needs medical attention, we need to get him back to the camp”, Solaris asserted.

The strange man still lay frozen, staring at Murphy and his taser with the same expression a cornered animal might have. He hadn’t even tried to get up from where he was laying on the floor. Was he injured?

“Dr. Khorana, please, get up”, Murphy repeated his voice icy, then his face changed to warmer expression, “Please, so I can help him get back to the camp”.

His tone had become friendlier, placating. Hearing Murphy sound almost personable for once was so unnatural that Solaris paused for a moment, then stood up and stepped aside.

“I know some first aid”, she began, “I took a cert course over the summer, how can I he-“.

Her request was cut short as the man on the ground started to get up. Murphy shouted something but gave no time for the man to respond before he tased him in the chest. The stranger fell back down.

“Hey! What did you do that for?!” Solaris yelled at Murphy, “He was only trying to get up!”

“If you have a problem with how I handled this, you can write it up in the incident report. Until then, we both have our own jobs to do”, Murphy waved her off dismissively and opened up his radio to his security team.

There was nothing else that she could do. Murphy was pretty obviously done with the discussion, so Solaris trekked back up to the cavern entrance alone. It unsettled her deeply that what could have ended peacefully had taken such a turn for the violent. She hoped the man wasn’t too hurt, he’d looked almost ill. How had someone in such a condition managed their way into the caverns anyways?

Solaris spent the rest of the day utterly distracted. The violence of the morning had been disturbing to watch and every time she thought she’d gotten past it the memory would surface again. For the rest of her shift, she worked in a haze of stress and curiosity. Who was that strange man? How had he gotten to the caves? And why had Murphy chosen to react so violently?