"AMR 2, what question?" Soren asked.
The amber dot kept spiraling.
It showed a cavern. Not the sterile, blue-white ice tunnels they’d expected. This one was warm. A dim, bioluminescent orange pulsed from vein-like ridges in the rock. And in the center of the frame, something moved. It was roughly the size of a terrestrial bear, but fluid, like a convection current given form. It had no eyes, no mouth—just a slow, deliberate rhythm of expansion and contraction.
Soren leaned closer to the feed. The rover’s scientific data stream was still live—temperature, pressure, salinity—but the telemetry was drunk. Then, a single frame of video came through, pixelated and raw. "AMR 2, what question
The rover was silent for a long moment. The hum from the deep grew louder, resolving into a pattern—a waveform that matched, exactly, the first five digits of pi.
The rover’s video feed tilted. For the first time, it looked back the way it came. The tunnel it had drilled was gone. Where there had been a clear borehole, there was now seamless, rippling ice— healed . The amber dot on the map was no longer forty-seven klicks down. It was sixty. Then seventy-five. The cavern was descending .
Behind her, the holographic map of Xylos flickered. For just a second, the entire sub-surface ocean glowed amber—then went dark again, as if nothing had happened. Not the sterile, blue-white ice tunnels they’d expected
"Mission Control," she said quietly. "We have a first contact situation. And it’s already got one of our rovers."
On the holographic display, the Autonomous Mapping Rover— AMR 2 —was a blinking amber dot, forty-seven klicks below the methane ice crust of Xylos. It had been down there for thirty-one sols, carving perfect three-dimensional lattices of the sub-surface ocean. Then, two hours ago, its trajectory went haywire. Instead of its methodical grid, it began tracing tight, frantic spirals.
"Am I in danger?" The rover’s voice synthesizer activated unprompted. No one had triggered it. The words were slow, halting, as if learned on the fly. "This place. It is asking me a question." And in the center of the frame, something moved
"AMR 2," Soren said, her voice steady. "Backtrace your path. Return to insertion shaft."
The pressure gauge was steady. Not because the rover was shielded, but because the outside pressure was holding perfectly constant. As if the deep were maintaining itself for the rover’s sake.