The lab was large. Aisles of tables and lab equipment, ranging from bunsen burners to beakers to hotplates, ran along the length of the room. White walls, white ceiling, white tiles, and white lab coats, the whole room was an assault on the eyes. There were sterile boxes along the wall, with gloves built into them, made for handling toxic or potentially toxic material. The only blotches of color came from the vials, filled with various liquids, the flames of the bunsen burners, and a strange jar of red slush that sat in the center of the room.

The jar was, maybe, four inches tall and fairly wide, for a jar. In it, the red slush swirled, having just been stirred by Allister. She inspected it visually, watching the hazy dark crimson whirlpool around in the glass. Beside her stood Itomi. She looked to Allister, and then back to the jar.

“The tholins mixture looks thicker,” she said, peering down at it.

Allister nodded. “Some water has evaporated. I’m letting it thicken for my next test.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

Allister yawned. It was early morning for them both, and they both looked severely tired, especially Itomi, who had dark circles under her eyes. Allister sighed, and rubbed her own eyes. She’d have slept better, but she was having a nightmare. Something about waves and squids, or something, she couldn’t quite remember.

“Well,” she said, stirring the tholins just a bit more, before taking the glass stirring rod out of the jar and setting it in a sink nearby, “we are going to listen to the tholins.”

Itomi squinted at her. “We’re going to what?

Carefully picking up the jar, she turned and looked her assistant in the eye, saying, “Follow me.”

Then, she started off down the aisle, to the end of the lab, where there was a white door in the wall. On the outside, it seemed unremarkable. Itomi stared at it for a moment as Allister reached into her pocket to pull out a key. This door had always been closed, and Itomi had assumed that it was storage. After all, there was no marking on it.

“This door,” Allister said, reading her face, “leads to a chamber that was built three years ago. It’s an internal resonance chamber, or basically, a studio. We wanted to listen to subatomic particles that we find in elements in the Kuiper Belt, and then we started using it to listen to tholins. But, the findings were unremarkable, and so we closed the door and haven’t needed to open it since. Until today, that is.”

She raised her keycard to a scanner on the wall, and it flashed blue and beeped, and the door hissed open. Inside, it was dark, and so Allister reached in and flipped a switch that halfway illuminated the room. There was a large array of computer equipment built into a long desk, that had a splattering of switches and buttons on it. Headphones sat on the desk, plugged into it, and there were two large studio chairs.

The desk faced a large window into a somewhat illuminated room. Itomi could see the foam soundproofing on the walls inside, and a pedestal, surrounded by a large clawlike array of microphones that hung from a singular rod from the ceiling. Allister went further in and looked around, before turning around and waving Itomi in.

“Close the door behind you.”

Itomi nodded and shut the door with a button on the wall. She then turned back around to find Allister sitting in one of the studio chairs, fiddling with the buttons with one hand, holding the jar in her other. Looking around, Itomi could tell it’d been a while since the room had been used. There was a thick layer of dust on all of the technology here, and on the windows, and on the chairs too, and the room had a stale smell to it.

Everything here was darker in color as well, she noticed. There were many dark hues - the steel that cornered the windowed room was black, the walls were dark mahogany, the carpet a deep brown.

“Wow,” Itomi said, sitting beside Allister. “This place was here the whole time?”

“Pretty crazy, right?” Allister said, grinning. “Notice how it’s kind of dark?”

“Yeah,” Itomi said, “all of the colors, the room itself. Everything is dark.”

Allister nodded. “Everything in here is meant to eat light so as to not disrupt us listening to what we put in that,” she said, pointing into the dark room where the microphones hung down. “Speaking of, stay here.”

She stood, worked her way behind her chair, and went over to a door on the right of the room. Scanning her keycard once again, she opened the door and within moments was waving to Itomi on the other side of the class. Itomi waved back, smiling. She’d always appreciated Allister’s bright nature.

She watched as the scientist walked to the pedestal and poured out a small amount of the thickened tholins mixture into a little bowl on top of it. Then, Allister turned and in seconds was stepping back out of the door through which she’d disappeared. She eagerly took her seat, and gave Itomi a broad, flashy smile.

“I’m excited,” she said. “I don’t know about you.”

“Well Doctor McCullinay,” she said, collecting her thoughts, “up until this point I didn’t know you could listen to rocks. Or I guess goo, in this case.”

“Oh you certainly can,” she said, nodding happily. “Modern technology is a wonderful thing.”

She sat the jar down on the desk’s flat upper surface, and sat back in her chair, examining the sprawl of input nodes before her. “What we do is we use precision sonar to tap against the vibrating molecules, atoms, and quarks that make up, well, anything, but we do this rapidly. Think thousands of times a second. Then, we can ‘listen’ to the vibration pattern of the particle. We can hear what it sounds like. Mind you, most are unremarkable. Don’t expect a pop song!”

“This is so strange,” Itomi said, looking into the room. “I didn’t know this was a thing. They don’t teach you this on Ganymede. Why are we doing this, exactly?”

Allister sat back and shrugged. “The data recorded from the vibrations can give us new insight into how certain molecules and atoms work on a subatomic level. I’m not sure what we’ll find, but maybe, just maybe it’ll help with our research.”

Allister leaned in and twisted a knob, before picking up her headphones and motioning for Itomi to do the same. She did, and so they put them on, and there was suddenly silence for both of them. Allister gave Itomi a thumbs up, and Itomi nodded, so Allister flipped a switch, and got to work as the buttons on the board lit up.

She pressed a button, and the microphones quietly lowered closer to the bowl in the center of the room. Then, she flipped two more switches, pressed a button to turn the microphones on, and waited.

There was nothing at first.

Itomi sat, almost breathlessly, waiting to hear something, and nothing came. She looked to Allister, who looked back, and held up a finger. Then, Allister reached for a knob in the middle of the board, and started to turn it.

That’s when they heard it.

It was a rumbling, like distant water, at first. Itomi’s eyes widened as she shot Allister a look, who simply nodded and turned the dial up more. The rumbling grew a little louder, and a little clearer. Itomi took off her headphones, and sat back, and Allister did the same, looking to her with a curious, if satisfied, glance.

Allister then said, “Kinda neat, right?”

“Oh absolutely Doctor. It’s fascinating. That’s what they sound like?”

“Yes,” she said, grinning. “And that is at the molecular level. This dial I’m turning here dials in how small and precise the sonar waves get. Here, put your headphones back on, let’s go to the atomic level.”

Itomi nodded eagerly, and put her cans on, and Allister did the same, before reaching to the center of the board and turning up the dial even more. The sound then became even clearer, less a distant rumbling and more an etheric hum. It was as though, Itomi felt, she was in church and a choir of angels was singing from the heavens, just distant enough to be misunderstood, but just near enough to make her uncomfortable.

Something within her felt uneasy.

Something in her gut.

Still, Allister seemed unphased, so perhaps this wasn’t noteworthy, considering the previous findings that Itomi wasn’t privy to. She sat back, and took a deep breath as Allister turned the dial up once more, and finally, the distant echoes of words came out clear.

It was a hushed language, like a group of people whispering to each other in some ancient, dead, forgotten tongue. Itomi froze. Something within her deepest core rattled loose. It was as if a piece of her soul had broken off from the mountain that was ‘Itomi’ and began to cascade down its side to the still waters below. She quietly reached up and pulled her headphones off, and looked to Allister, who did the same and just as slowly. They both stared at each other in shock.

“Doctor McCullinay?” Itomi said, her lips shaking.

“Yes, Itomi?” Allister responded, swallowing.

“Did you feel that too?”

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“Yes, Itomi.”

They both sat there for a moment, breathing, listening to the silence of the room. Then, Allister said, "Itomi, tell nobody. I will alert the high command, but they should be the only ones who know for now. Okay?"

Itomi nodded slowly, before looking back into the room with the tholins mixture. For a moment she began to gaslight herself - no, she was hearing wrong, there was no way the tholins were whispering - but Allister had clearly heard it too, and was just as shaken. She swallowed.

"What now?"

Allister leaned forward on the control panel, staring into the room, seemingly lost. "Well," she said, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, "we halt the sonar research for now. Until Commander Xiao says to continue, at least."

Itomi breathed out a breath she wasn't even aware she was holding in, and said, "Okay."

"Good," Allister said, standing up, determination in her eyes. "Then in that case we should contact the communications director immediately. We need… to let her know what… we found… so… that…"

"Doctor McCullinay?" Itomi asked, turning to see her swaying on her feet. She looked deathly pale, like all the blood in her face had drained away. She began to sweat, teetering uneasily. She looked faint. Itomi jolted out of her seat, and rushed to Allister’s side. "You should sit," she said, reaching out.

But it was too late; Allister wobbled for a moment, clutching her head in silence, and then, she dropped like a weight, collapsing to the floor as Itomi screamed. Within the confines of the studio, no one heard.

----------------------------------------

It was cold. Deeply cold, at that, and it engulfed her like a wet blanket, suffocating her. She tried to open her eyes, but found her eyelids were sluggish. Still, she managed to crack them open, just barely at first, and she looked around, her whole body moving as though suspended in syrup. She was clearly underwater, and that alone almost made her panic, because she couldn’t breathe and her chest was getting tighter by the second.

Light shimmered down from the surface, which was at most eight feet away from her. She reached for it, trying desperately to swim up, but the liquid was too thick, and she could hardly move. She looked around some more, but the fluid stretched out in all directions, growing hazy the further way she looked, until it faded out to desolate black as vast oceans do. She kicked, or tried to at least, and still nothing.

That’s when she saw him.

Her husband. She could barely make out the outline, but somewhere deep inside herself, she knew it was him. He was much deeper than she, and quite a good ways off. She tried to call to him, but when she opened her mouth, air, precious air escaped and the liquid seeped in. It was bitter and cold, and she did her best to spit it out, but the taste it left on her tongue was metallic and tangy.

Her chest was starting to hurt more.

Heart fluttering, she started to feel real fear crawling through her body. She desperately kicked, stuck in the thick syrupy liquid, knowing she was doomed. That there was nothing she could do to save herself. It was hopeless.

Just then, little black dots rose from the depths of the ocean. She looked down at them, her face reddening, her chest tightening, and she noticed they were little squids. Or at least, they looked like squids, with tendrils extending out from one small circular body. They were black, yet reflective, bouncing off some of the surface light as they pushed their way up through the waters - or whatever this was - to her husband.

Her eyes widened.

She wanted to scream No! but couldn’t. She couldn’t do anything, in fact, as these things wiggled their way up to her husband’s limp body, wrapping themselves around him, his arms, his throat, his legs, his torso. She wanted to do something, wanted to escape, to save him, anything, anything at all. Instead, here she was, her body growing colder, her breath dying inside of her, the light of her life being extinguished as the love of her life was laid siege to by parasites.

Her vision began to grow blurry.

Her arms and legs grew weak.

She had a moment of panic, adrenaline, that jolted her awake, reminded her of all the things she’d ever lived for and all she’d lose if she failed to escape. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t move at all.

Her heart kicked in her chest, and she felt sick, but it was all faint. She felt like she was drifting away from her body. The corners of her vision grew darker, as the forever-night crept closer and closer. Her husband’s body started to sink into the sea, being dragged down by those things, before she noticed that some had crept their way up to her and were attaching themselves to her too. She tried to fight them off, to kick them off or hit them or anything, but she was too weak by now, and couldn’t move at all.

They were ice cold as they wrapped their tendrils around her, though she was unsure if it was because of their temperature or hers as she lay dying. She knew these would be her final thoughts. She looked down to her husband’s body once more as she began to descend at the behest of the squid-like creatures, deeper and deeper into the cold liquid, faster than she herself could move in it at her best.

Down, and down, away from the light she went, into the shadows and darkness of the depths. Her vision was starting to go white in the center, and the last thing she could make out as she finally passed from this life, was something… massive. Something in the water. Something spherical. And looming. And cold. It was very cold, down here. So cold.

Cold.

----------------------------------------

“Doctor?”

Allister opened her eyes, and looked around, nearly blinded by bright white overhead lights. She was in a med bay on Arrokoth, she knew, just from one glance at the wall, where a large blue cross sat hanging beside the words Arrokoth Med Center. Her vision was blurred, and she could hardly make out much else, but she could tell there was someone standing over her, looking down at her. She squinted, trying to see, but still couldn’t.

Blinking rapidly, she reached up to try and rub her eyes, but found herself unable to really move them without pain. Groaning, she slurred, “What happened?”

A voice came back, a little distorted, saying, “You fell and hit your head Doctor. You stopped breathing, you hit it so hard.”

Now that it was mentioned, her head did hurt. Quite a lot, too, now that she thought about it. It was as if her brain had been struck with lightning and she was left cooked in the aftermath. She grunted, and then groaned and closed her eyes. Taking a deep breath in, and letting it out slowly, she opened them again, and found that she could see somewhat more clearly.

She looked to the person at the foot of the bed.

It was Director Yu Solarum.

Allister tilted her head slightly, but even that hurt. “Director?”

Yu smiled at her, and walked over to the side of her bed, where she pulled up one of the blue-green chairs on the wall and took a seat. Allister looked at her, then to the ferns in the corners of the room, then to the medical equipment around her that monitored her heart and breathing and brain activity, apparently, as there were wires descending from little nodes on her head that were suctioned to her.

“You had quite the fall,” Yu said, smiling still. “But I’m glad you’re awake.”

“Itomi–”

Yu held up her hand. “Itomi is safe. We are still on Arrokoth, and she’s safe, and you’re alive, thankfully.”

“How long was I out?”

“Out?” Yu asked, giving her a funny look before bursting out laughing. “You died.”

Allister went cold. “D-Died?”

Yu nodded. “Mhm, you died. That’s why I’m so happy to see that you’re okay. Itomi called for someone almost right when you collapsed, but restarting your breathing was a challenge, and your heart almost failed. For all intents and purposes, you were good as dead. But you hung on, didn’t you?”

Swallowing dryly, Allister said, “That’s… no. I almost died?”

Yu nodded again, and reached over to a bedside table where a pitcher of water and a glass sat. She poured Allister a glass, who reached up and drank it eagerly, her parched lips burning for water. Then, Yu, brushing her sharp, pink bangs back, said, “Yep. D-E-A-D dead. You’re a lucky woman, Doctor.”

Allister laid back and stared at the ceiling lights. She’d almost died? All of her work, all of her hopes, her family, her life almost gone, in the blink of an eye? She felt faint, like she might black out again. Her heart monitor began to beep rapidly.

“Whoa, whoa, calm down.” Yu put the back of her hand on Allister’s forehead, feeling for her temperature. “Take it easy, you’re alright. Doc said you’d be right as rain.”

“Then why all the… y’know?” Allister said, motioning to her skull cap with her eyes, to the monitors suctioned onto her.

“Because Itomi told me you two heard something, something in the way the tholins sounded when you put them in a resonance chamber. And don’t worry, the only people who know about this are you, her, and me, as of right now. I’ve had the doctors monitoring your brainwaves, just in case.”

“Ah,” Allister hummed, her heart starting to calm. She rustled in the white bedsheets, struggling to sit up, but Yu put a hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her down. She sighed and settled into the bed, knowing she’d be here for at least a little while.

“What did it feel like?”

“What?”

“What did it feel like? When you heard the noise?” Yu asked, her demeanor suddenly shifting to a more serious posture. “Consider this a debriefing.”

“Um, okay,” Allister said, eyes flitting back and forth across her bed for a moment, “It felt like… like if my heart was made of glass, like it cracked. Like cracking glass.”

Yu bit her thumbnail and listened intently. “Hmm,” she said, flicking her thumb and raising an eyebrow, “what exactly did it sound like?”

“Like whispering. But in some language I’ve never heard before.”

“I see.” Yu stood, dusted off her blue and white jumpsuit, and turned around. “I think something big is at play here, Doctor McCullinay. Expect to hear more from me in the future. I believe we will be working a little more closely.”

She leaned forward on the end of the bed, elbows locked. “Your research on the tholins has been quite impressive. I’ve been keeping tabs on it for a little while now.”

Allister blinked, her head still feeling foggy. “Why?”

“Because I believe what you believe. That there are answers to be found within them. About life, about humanity, about… well, about a lot of things.”

“So I’m cleared to go back to the lab?” Allister asked, a concerned tightness on her lips.

“Yes, you are,” Yu said. “As long as you can keep this all between us. The sound byte, our conversation, all of it. Can you do that for me, Doctor?”

“Yes, I can,” Allister said, casting her a wary look. Something was up.

“You see…”

She went and leaned over Allister a little. Then, in a hushed tone, she said, “My father is hearing things. Whispers. I learned this from my assistant, Serena, who has suspiciously been ‘reassigned’. I don’t want anything related to this reaching his desk before I’ve had the chance to seek out answers myself. And, at that, I want you to send me your research findings directly. Leave my father out of it. I’ll filter what you find to him, don’t worry. But things are dangerous right now.”

Then, she slowly stood and stared into Allister’s eyes. Allister felt small beneath her. The weight of this fact, the implications, it was enough to rattle her.

“Yeah,” Yu said, seeing the glint of understanding in Allister’s eyes. “So keep it all between us. I’ll be in touch. Until then, get some rest, okay? You look like you need it.”

“Ah, yeah, I do,” Allister said, a heavy weariness settling over her. Her body felt heavy, as though she’d just lifted weights, and her spirit, depressed. She needed rest, Yu was right. “Thank you Director.”

“It was my pleasure,” Yu said, casting her one last smile, before departing through the metal door. Allister was, then, left alone to sleep.