Chapter 2: Touchdown
755 Words
### Chapter 2: Touchdown
Mars – Sol 1 (First Day on Surface)
The descent was brutal.
Eva gripped the harness as the Ares-7 lander plummeted through the thin Martian atmosphere, retro-thrusters roaring like angry gods. Plasma flared orange across the viewport. G-forces slammed her into the seat.
Across from her, Jax sat calm as stone, gray eyes locked forward, jaw tight. His hand rested on the armrest—close enough that she could reach out and touch him if she wanted.
She didn’t. Not with the rest of the crew strapped in around them.
The lander shuddered. Alarms chirped. Then—solid ground.
A hard jolt. Dust plumed outside the windows. Silence.
“We are down,” Jax announced over comms, voice steady. “Welcome to Mars, team.”
Cheers erupted—short, professional, but real. Six months of transit, and they’d made it.
Eva unbuckled, legs shaky from the landing burn. Jax was already up, helping the others with post-landing checks. He caught her eye for a split second. Heat flashed between them, quick and hidden.
No one noticed. Or if they did, they were too focused on the red world waiting outside.
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Four hours later, the habitat was pressurized, suits checked, and the first EVA team prepped.
Eva stood in the airlock with Jax and Dr. Lena Park, the geologist. The outer door cycled open.
Red dust. Endless red dust. The crater floor stretched out under a butterscotch sky, Phobos a tiny streak overhead.
Eva stepped down the ladder last, boots crunching into regolith for the first time.
“Magnificent,” Lena whispered.
Jax scanned the horizon, rifle slung but ready—standard protocol for unknown terrain.
“Stay tight,” he ordered. “First objective: Site 14. The deep drill core from the orbital survey.”
They moved out on the rover, a sleek six-wheeler kicking up plumes behind them.
Site 14 was two kilometers west—an ancient lava tube collapse with exposed layering. Orbital radar had flagged anomalous readings there. Organic signatures. Weak, but undeniable.
Eva’s heart raced. This was why she was here.
They reached the site. The tube mouth gaped like a wound in the landscape, shadowed and deep.
Jax parked the rover. “Park and I take perimeter. Reyes, you’re on samples.”
Eva nodded, grabbing the core drill and collection kit. She approached the exposed wall—layered sediment, iron oxide staining everything blood-red.
She set the drill. It whined into the rock, pulling out a perfect cylinder.
That’s when she saw it.
A thin, dark seam in the core. Not rock. Something… preserved.
“Guys,” she called over comms. “I’ve got something.”
Jax was at her side in seconds, Lena right behind.
Eva carefully extracted the segment. Inside the clear sample tube: a frozen matrix. And embedded in it—fragments. Organic. Structured.
“Jesus,” Lena breathed. “That’s… tissue?”
Eva zoomed her suit cam. The fragments were fibrous, almost crystalline. And at the center—a small, intact vial-sized pod, sealed in ice older than Earth’s oceans.
Alien.
No question.
“We need to bag this and get it to the lab module,” Eva said, voice steady despite the adrenaline.
Jax’s hand brushed her arm—protective, grounding. “Copy that. But carefully. We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
They sealed the sample in a bio-containment case.
That’s when it happened.
A static pop in Eva’s suit seal. A tiny breach—micro-meteor puncture from the dust kicked up during drilling. Undetected until the case brushed against it.
Air hissed. Minuscule. But enough.
The pod cracked.
Just a hairline fracture.
A faint mist—barely visible—escaped into her suit recirculator.
Eva froze. “Houston… possible containment issue.”
Jax’s head snapped toward her. “What kind?”
“Sample pod compromised. Possible exposure.”
His eyes darkened. “Get back to the rover. Now.”
They moved fast. Decon protocol in the habitat airlock. Suits off. Scans.
Nothing showed on initial bio-readings.
But that night, as the crew celebrated first sol with rehydrated meals and Earth music, Eva felt it.
A warmth. Deep in her core.
Not fever. Not illness.
Something… alive.
And across the hab table, Jax watched her.
His pupils were wider than they should be under the LED lights.
His knuckles white around his cup.
He felt it too.
Whatever they’d brought back from the red dust wasn’t staying buried.
It was waking up.
Inside them.
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(To be continued…)
- Writer
