Rain lashed the bubble domes of Last Harbor when Aki Minagawa snuck into the South Dock. She counted her breaths, forced her ragged coat tighter, glanced at her hacked tablet one last time. It was Sunday for everyone, but for Aki it was the start of something too big to name.
Aki was sixteen, a dreamer with a white streak through black hair. That birthmark sliced her eyebrows and always caught curious eyes. Her friends joked she had auroras stored in her veins. She laughed on the outside, but she wasn’t really joking. She knew there was more beyond the smog-screened sky. She hunted for what the moon’s coded radio might tell her.
Did you ever pause at midnight and wonder if signals, not clouds, fill the air? Have you caught yourself hunched under that old dish, straining to hear a voice that shouldn’t exist?
Last week, two lines of transit logs and a looped pulse led her here. Her co-conspirators, Jin (stoic, tech-nerd) and Sanae (good with locks, sharp-eyed, brave under fire), flanked her as they crouched behind crates waiting for Dock 12 to unlock. The drone that stumbled, the empty supplies offloaded, cargo codes pinged up on Aki’s screen: “GATARA FREIHT — EXTRASTRELLAR,” pure typo, instantly suspicious. Was tech failing, or something more uncanny?
A low, humming chord vibrated as South Dock opened. She mouthed, “Now,” Sanae slipped from hiding and kept guard. Jin jammed the access port. A thick mist billowed, curls wrapping around a tall, skinless being with fluid lines, eyes webbed in faint, green light. Outfit? Impossible to tell. The new arrival was taller than most people. Most scary of all, a spiral heard only in tide-song wrapped its words: “Have you heard footsteps on this world before me?”
Time fluttered. Aki’s knees shook as she tried to reply: “Do you know what this place is? Are you lost?” The being lifted an arm with far too many bends.
Sanae hissed, “What’s happening to her face, Ak?” Jin was quiet, hands deep in a quick frequencies scan. Screen spat out an echo pattern: Alien origin suspected; unknown base18 code. Pulse elevated. Was this Artemesian, like old spaceship tales whispered? Or an invader?
The visitor’s shape blurred. Mist tinkled and, between that static, shapes wind-danced, almost familiar, like delicate windchimes not made by hands.
Time didn’t speed; it slowed, thick around them.
Aki whispered, “State your name.”
The stranger pressed two fists together. “Nameless. But hungry for languages.”
She fought the urge to bolt. “Why come here? There are guards everywhere.”
“We crossed the gulf to find a way home.”
Jin typed notes, blinking sweat from vision. “Aki, relay actual interface requests. My scan says no cypher matches, can you use gestures?”
Sanae pressed, “Do you come in peace or —” Paused mid-thought; it seemed too out of place, like asking a stone if it meant harm.
Instead, the visitor flickered and images burned briefly in midair: three worlds—dying, memories shifting as each fell silent, erased—before flashes of these gray domes and, in the center, Aki’s face. Had the thing found them on purpose?
Aki risked touching it, fingertip meeting not skin but lace-fine wires over warm, cloudlike stuff. Whispers rang—bits of word, bright with them: Fields, loss, growth, return. “Did…did you lose your world?”
The answer rode the clouds of meaning: “Yes. Lost. You build domes, too.”
Was their struggle different beyond old stories, memories no one voiced? Do all things seek home, to restore what fades or accept the loss and change?
The team huddled, and Jin grumbled, “We help or warn? It found us, not UNNet, right?”
Aki shuddered. Thought aloud: “If we refuse, it looks for another. Or someone else finds it first.”
Odd break in logic: Sanae joked, “If it can find me in this weather, I vote ally.”
They nodded, then started low, small-syllable speech with the being.
Their questions blurred: Do you eat? How? Where is home? Once shared, truths like old stones.
For now, plea—find aid, learn our ways, warn us if danger comes.
The visitor finger-plucked keys on its endoskeleton, playing clean tunes that sounded clear even above the storm.
They didn’t know if the humans or their visitor really heard—but lines of warm blue traced a circle on the dock barrier. A trading of codes, flickers. Jin stuck in a bundle: start new handshake. AIFT, the last transmitter, filled the dome lighting with error signs, then settled into green.
The being left a glyph stamped inside the dome. It started to walk the rainy back alleys.
The words: “I will share a true sky.” The image: Ships—eels of light—lift out of new-sudden fog.
And then loud alarms. Wailing. Dock 12, enforcers spotted something odd outside, energy signatures peaking. Their tablet static snapped into sharp edges as a battle drone’s lights stabbed through the rain, full charge up.
“Scatter,” Sanae called. Warm blue ring glowed, warm but not free.
Aki stayed to stammer out words, pulse racing. The visitor rested a hand on her brow, “Some friendships come with storms.” A scene of their city caught in alien hue burned into her mind. As the force clattered down plastic stairs, thunder overhead, the fog took the stranger out of sight—but not out of reach. 
The cliffhanger—Sanae surrounded, Jin without backup, the screeching of strange signals not yet named, and Aki locked in a vision: their world splitting, old codes meeting the new.
So, reader, who did you think sent the broken code first?”
