First suicide attempt. Crewman Idris tried to cycle the forward airlock without a suit. Chen stopped him. Now Idris is sedated in med bay, and we’re all wondering: who’s next?

The shuttle has enough delta-v for one trip. One way. To the dwarf planet. No return.

Not human.

I didn’t sleep. I sat with Idris for three hours, holding his hand. He didn’t wake up. I talked to him anyway. Told him about my dog, back on Mars. About the ocean I saw once on Earth. Small things. Human things.

If you are reading this: help Chen. She’s still on the Elysium. And tell Mira I kept my promise.

It was a door.

I will write that down, too.

— Aris Kaelen, Caretaker of the Fold, Elysium Outpost

A repeating pulse. Low frequency. Artificial.

Then, faint: “Elysium actual. Copy. What is it?” Chen’s voice, barely audible.

Finally: “We’re not dead yet, Kaelen.”

Valdez looked at me. “Kaelen. You’re logging this. What do we call it?”

The dwarf planet is ugly. A frozen marble of nitrogen ice and carbon dust, no atmosphere, no warmth. But the signal is stronger now. Directional. Leading us to a fissure in the surface — a canyon carved by some ancient tectonic shrug.