Crossover Chronicles
Chapter 1: The Team-Up
The world in 2042 was quieter on the surface than it had been in decades. Wars had faded into cold truces, technology had smoothed the chaos of everyday life, and the great powers of Earth had finally turned their eyes toward the stars.
But peace has a way of hiding fractures. And when a signal — rhythmic, alien, unrelenting — pulsed from beneath the Antarctic ice, governments panicked. They needed specialists, outsiders, people who could survive the unknown.
They needed a team.
The Arrival
At a remote airbase carved into the ice, Commander Marcus Hayes (Richard T. Jones) scanned the blizzard horizon. Hayes wasn’t a man who believed in fate, but he’d led enough missions to know that sometimes the right people came together by necessity, not choice.
The first to arrive was Nathan Dillon. Clean-cut, sharp-eyed, dressed not in military fatigues but in a tailored coat that somehow looked warmer than any gear Hayes had seen. Dillon didn’t salute. He didn’t need to.
“You’re the one in charge,” Dillon said with a grin, as though it were a casual introduction at a cocktail party, not the edge of the world. “I’m here to make sure we all play nice. Or at least survive long enough to argue about it.”
Hayes frowned. He already knew Dillon’s type: diplomatic, smooth-talking, the kind of man who could convince a snake to buy shoes. But there was steel under that charm — something that told him Dillon was more than a mouthpiece.
The next arrival shattered the quiet with a burst of propellers. A battered chopper dropped Nathan Phillips onto the landing strip. He hopped out with a grin, scarf half-frozen, eyes sparkling like he’d just won a bet with Death itself.
“Bloody hell, it’s colder than a tax collector’s heart,” Phillips muttered, hauling a crate of improvised tools off the helicopter. “But you won’t find a station I can’t break into, fix, or blow sky-high. Sometimes all three.”
Hayes groaned inwardly. A wild card. Just what he needed.
And then she arrived. Quiet. Almost unnoticed. A slim figure stepping from the shadows of the hangar, her movements precise, almost too graceful for the icy winds around her. Summer Glau didn’t speak at first. She simply looked at the three men, her gaze distant but piercing, as though she were listening to a song only she could hear.
Finally, she spoke. “The signal isn’t just sound. It’s… emotion. Someone, or something, is calling. And they’re scared.”
Silence blanketed the landing strip. Even Phillips stopped cracking jokes. Hayes narrowed his eyes — this was what the classified files hinted at: Glau’s unique ability to feel patterns in ways no machine could.
Four strangers. Four entirely different skill sets. But fate — or something deeper — had thrown them together.
The Briefing
Inside the steel bunker, a holographic map of Antarctica glowed blue across the room. The signal pulsed, a slow heartbeat, from deep beneath the Ross Ice Shelf.
“This isn’t a rescue,” Hayes explained, his voice heavy with command. “This is containment. We go in, identify the source, and shut it down before it destabilizes the grid. Every second that thing pulses, satellites glitch, comms fail, and the world teeters.”
“Containment?” Dillon asked, his tone sharp. “Or cover-up?”
Hayes didn’t answer.
Phillips leaned back in his chair, boots on the table. “Don’t matter to me, mate. Signal, station, cover-up — as long as I get paid and don’t freeze to death.”
Glau’s voice cut through softly, almost too quiet. “You don’t understand. This isn’t just interference. It’s a doorway. And it’s opening.”
The room went still.
For the first time since arriving, Dillon’s smile faded. He met Glau’s gaze, and in that instant, he knew the mission wasn’t just about shutting down a machine. It was about confronting something humanity wasn’t ready for.
Something that had chosen them.
The Pact
Hayes laid his hands on the table. “We’re in this together, whether we like it or not. No backup. No rescue teams. Just us. You don’t follow orders, you don’t come home. Clear?”
Dillon leaned forward, eyes narrowing. “Fine. But understand this — I’m not here to follow orders. I’m here to make sure we survive. If that means bending your precious rulebook, then so be it.”
Phillips chuckled. “Finally, someone speaking my language.”
Glau only whispered: “The ice is already listening.”
The four exchanged glances. Uneasy allies, bound by something larger than themselves. Outside, the Antarctic storm howled, but inside, a strange energy crackled. The team was formed.
And as the first tremor shook the base — faint but undeniable — they realized the signal wasn’t waiting for them to arrive.
It was coming closer.
Comments
Post a Comment