Landscape

 

The atmosphere on Asterion-9 hovered at seventy-eight percent oxygen balance when Chloe Sorrell began her morning log.

“Cycle forty-two. Wind shear stable. Humidity rising faster than projection. Recommend recalibration of southern regulators.”

Her voice sounded smaller in the dome than she meant it to, as it was swallowed by the steady pulse of machinery. Every sound here had a purpose: air exchangers humming, data screens blinking, the soft rasp of recycled ventilation. It was the sound of order.

Chloe liked order.

Beyond the reinforced glass, the world was still half-born; red plains veined with glowing moss, storm fronts curling like fingerprints. The planet’s weather patterns weren’t supposed to form this quickly, but Chloe trusted systems more than instincts. The simulation models would catch up eventually.

It was a unique opportunity to weave together a planet. Sure, it was based on the designs of a higher authority, but sometimes it felt like something greater than itself.

A hiss from the airlock cut through the quiet. The outer door swung open, and a wave of copper dust swept in before the filters kicked on.

Sky Vale stumbled through, laughing as she stripped off her helmet. Her hair was a tangle of wind and static; her boots left ochre smears on the clean white floor.

“You’re late,” Chloe said, turning sharply from her console.

“Had to take the scenic route,” Sky replied. “The ground’s shifting again.”

“The ground doesn’t shift.”

Sky raised an eyebrow, unbothered. “Tell that to my ankles.” 

She brushed dust from her sleeves, watching Chloe with a small, knowing smile. “You really don’t hear it, do you?”

“Hear what?”

“The hum. The soil breathes after the storms.”

“That’s vibration from the heat exchangers,” Chloe retorted. “It’s normal.”

“Sure.” Sky’s grin widened. “Normal for a living planet, maybe.”

Chloe turned back to her readouts, jaw tight. Sky spoke like poetry, always. Too fluid, too careless. Chloe had spent ten years in training programs where precision meant survival. Sky’s kind of looseness would’ve gotten someone killed.

And yet sometimes, when the power grids idled, Chloe thought she did hear something beneath the noise. A faint, rhythmic sound, deep and steady as a heartbeat.

That night, the dome shuddered.

Chloe was halfway through recalibrating the regulators when the alarms flared. Wind velocity readings spiked off the chart. She sprinted for the control deck, hair loose from its tie.

Sky was already there, lit by the red glow of warning lights. “Regulator Twelve’s offline,” she shouted. “I’m rerouting flow manually!”

“It shouldn’t have failed,” Chloe said, fingers racing across the console. “I checked it myself.”

“Maybe it didn’t fail. Maybe it reacted.”

Chloe froze. Outside, the storm coiled and uncoiled like muscle under skin. The wind readings weren’t random, no, they rose and fell in steady waves.

“That pattern,” she whispered. “It’s...”

Sky looked up at her, eyes bright with something that might’ve been awe. “You see it too.”

The floor lurched. A storage rack broke loose, crashing to the ground. Chloe grabbed Sky’s wrist to steady her, the jolt of contact startlingly human amid the chaos.

And then there was silence. The storm halted, every dust particle suspended as if waiting for their next breath.

Chloe didn’t move. She could feel Sky’s pulse beneath her fingers, wild and alive. Then, slowly, the storm resumed; gentle this time, like an exhale.

Neither of them said a word.

After that, Chloe began to listen.

The hum in the ground. The pulse in the walls. The faint shimmer in the air whenever Sky walked too close.

Sky spent her nights sketching patterns of bioluminescent spores on the observation glass. Chloe told herself she only watched because she needed to ensure protocol was followed.

“Did you know,” Sky said one evening, her voice soft as the moss outside, “the lichen here forms neural clusters? Like a brain, just spread out.”

Chloe didn’t look up from her reports. “A coincidence in growth distribution.”

“Is it?”

When Chloe finally met her gaze, the reflection of the red star burned in Sky’s pupils like a small, deliberate flame. The spore fields beyond the dome flickered in synchrony, their glow pulsing between them like breath.

“Maybe we’re not building a world,” Sky murmured. “Maybe we’re waking one up.”

Chloe’s throat tightened. “I came here to make something beautiful.”

Sky smiled, faintly. “Then don’t destroy what already is.”

For once, Chloe couldn’t think of a counterargument.

Three days before inspection, Chloe found the tampering.

Code fragments buried in the regulator archives, unauthorized commands looping through atmospheric controls. Elegant, deliberate, unmistakable.

Sky.

Chloe confronted her in the greenhouse, where pale vines crawled across nutrient trays. The air smelled faintly sweet, alive in a way the dome never had before.

“You’ve been interfering with the stabilizers.”

Sky didn’t flinch. “Not interfering. Slowing them down.”

Chloe’s voice hardened. “That’s sabotage.”

Sky straightened, dusted her hands on her uniform. “Call it mercy. You’ve seen what this place does when we push too hard. It fights back. It’s alive.”

“You’re jeopardizing the mission.”

“Maybe the mission deserves it.”

Outside, thunder rolled low and deep, like something vast shifting in its sleep.

Chloe’s composure cracked. “Do you think this is some kind of moral theater? That you’re a hero saving the helpless planet from the big bad corporation?”

Sky’s expression softened, infuriatingly gentle. “I think I’m saving you, too.”

The storm outside darkened. Dust hammered against the glass, static crawling along the metal walls. The planet seemed to be echoing their fight; Chloe’s anger, Sky’s conviction, colliding in the air between them.

“Help me shut it down,” Sky said over the roar. “Not for me, for it.”

Chloe’s hands shook as she opened the control panel. Every protocol screamed against it. She thought of the years she’d spent climbing the corporate ladder, the faith she’d placed in equations and clean results.

But she could feel the planet breathing beneath her boots. Hear it in her pulse.

Chloe exhaled.

She entered the override code. One keystroke, and the regulators went dark.

The lights flickered once, then steadied. The air settled into a calm, resonant hum.

Sky exhaled, voice trembling. “You did it.”

Chloe smiled weakly, though it felt like surrender.

They stood shoulder to shoulder before the glass. The storm outside dissolved into pale rain, streaking the soil in shimmering ribbons. The glow of the lichen brightened, spreading across the plain like veins of light.

For the first time, the world looked awake.

When the corporate shuttle arrived, the outpost was empty. The last data log recorded a “catastrophic systems failure.” Headquarters filed it away and moved on. It would be best to sweep the place under the rug.

But Asterion-9 didn’t die.

Weeks later, under the thinned rose-gold sky, Chloe and Sky stood together on a ridge overlooking vast mountains. The air was thin but breathable, warm against their skin. Moss spiraled over the rock, bioluminescent tendrils moving like water.

“You think they’ll come back?” Sky asked, squinting at the horizon.

Chloe adjusted her pack, watching the light ripple beneath their feet. “Let them try. The world will decide who stays.”

Sky smiled, a slow, quiet thing. Her hand brushed Chloe’s, fingertips cold from the wind. Chloe didn’t pull away.

Beneath them, the earth thrummed with a low, steady heartbeat.

Chloe closed her eyes and let it move through her, through the hollow spaces that rules and ambition had carved.

For the first time since leaving Earth, the air she breathed wasn’t sterile.

It was alive. And so was she.

 

Prompt credit to createglue