Theta Mists Part One

 

        On a string of sultry summer nights, with nothing but the hum of a box fan and the glint of distant stars to keep me company, I dove headfirst into the uncharted wilds of my imagination. The result? A science fiction story stitched together from sleepless hours and caffeine-fueled epiphanies. It’s raw, it’s weird, and it’s unapologetically mine. Starting this week, I’ll be serving the novella up in bite-sized pieces—like cosmic breadcrumbs for anyone curious enough to follow. Buckle up; it’s going to get strange.

Part One

 

 

The twin suns of Kepler-442f loomed low on the horizon, their dying embers staining the jagged crags of Theta-13—a moon so desolate it made Mars look like a botanical garden. Aiden Sol—a name chosen by his father to be as much of a beacon as it was a burden—trudged through the neon haze of the mining colony’s thoroughfare. His boots scraped against the ferrocrete surface, each step echoing faintly in the thin, synthetic atmosphere maintained by the dome above. It wasn’t real air, not really. Just another expensive illusion courtesy of the pressure suits and oxygen scrubbers he and the rest of the crew relied on. The moon didn’t care if you breathed or not.

Aiden was a miner—a cog in a sprawling, corporate machine—toiling on the moon for twelve-hour shifts that bled into the next cycle without so much as a nod to circadian rhythm. He extracted decimite, an iridescent mineral that glowed faintly when exposed to UV light and was worth more than gold back on Earth. He’d spent the day descending into the belly of the moon, operating a graviton drill whose dull hum had lodged itself permanently into his skull. The work wasn’t glamorous, but it paid well enough to keep his wife and kid back on Earth comfortable. Only three more months of his contract and he’d be home—a small price for a future that didn’t smell like grease and sweat.

The colony’s living quarters were a labyrinth of corrugated metal and salvaged parts, bolted together in a haphazard sprawl that radiated from the central dome. It had grown like a fungal infection over the years as more miners, engineers, and opportunists arrived. Some sought fortune, others sought escape, and a few sought both. The result was a shantytown in zero-G: black markets thrived in the shadowed corridors, where you could buy anything from a packet of pre-ban tobacco to a memory chip loaded with the latest VR fantasies. The kind of place where every face had a story, most of them better left untold.

Rumors whispered among the crew spoke of alien life—shadowy creatures that roamed the moon’s uncharted surface, seen only by the unlucky or the drunk. Management dismissed the stories as miner talk—the kind of superstitions that bred in isolation and boredom. Aiden had laughed at them once, too, but the longer he stayed, the more he’d catch himself glancing over his shoulder when the dark seemed a little too deep, a little too… aware.

The stench of ozone clung to him as he entered the shared domicile—a tin can of a structure that housed a dozen men packed into bunks stacked three high. The light flickered, casting long shadows across the metal walls. Inside, the air was heavy with the acrid cocktail of sweat, old machinery, and recycled oxygen. It wasn’t home, but it was a place to rest.

Aiden paused in the doorway, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. The room was empty, which struck him as odd. Usually, there were at least a couple of his bunkmates drinking, playing cards, or trying to catch up on sleep before the next shift. He dropped his gear near his bunk and reached for the communal kettle to brew a cup of synth-coffee. That’s when he saw it—a silhouette by the far wall, motionless but unmistakably human-shaped.

“Who’s there?” Aiden’s voice cracked the silence.

The figure didn’t move, but the air seemed to ripple around it, a distortion like heat waves on a summer road. Aiden’s hand instinctively went to his multi-tool, the closest thing to a weapon he had. He took a cautious step forward, heart pounding like a piston. The figure twitched, and Aiden’s grip tightened.

“Hey, this isn’t funny,” he said, his voice firmer now. “Show yourself.”

The shadows seemed to collapse inward, and for a brief moment, the room was plunged into absolute darkness. When the lights flickered back to life, the figure was gone. But the room was no longer empty.

Aiden’s breath caught as he saw the body sprawled across the floor. It was Lewis, the lanky mechanic with a perpetual smirk and a penchant for bad jokes. Except Lewis wasn’t smirking now. His throat had been slit, the wound a jagged gash that leaked crimson onto the floor. His eyes stared blankly at the ceiling, reflecting the flickering light in a way that made Aiden’s stomach churn.

“Shit,” Aiden whispered, backing away from the corpse. He stumbled into the bunk behind him, knocking over a stack of datapads that clattered noisily to the ground. The sound seemed deafening in the stillness, and Aiden’s mind raced. Who could’ve done this? Why?

He’d heard about fights breaking out between workers—petty squabbles over stolen supplies or lost bets—but nothing like this. Murder was rare on Theta-13. The corporation had cameras everywhere, and punishment was swift and brutal. Yet here was Lewis, dead on the floor, and there was no one else around.

The lights flickered again, and Aiden’s gaze darted to the corner where the silhouette had been. Nothing. Just an empty wall. But the feeling lingered—the sense that something had been watching him, something that was still watching him.

Aiden forced himself to move, stepping around Lewis’s body as he crossed the room to the comm unit. His fingers trembled as he punched in the emergency code, sending a distress signal to security. The unit beeped once, twice, then went silent. Aiden stared at the screen. No response.

“Damn it,” he muttered, slamming his fist against the console. The comms were supposed to be foolproof, but like everything else on this moon, they’d probably been patched together with duct tape and wishful thinking.

The door hissed open behind him, and Aiden spun around, heart leaping into his throat. Two of his bunkmates stepped in, their faces pale as they took in the scene.

“What the hell happened here?” one of them asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

Aiden shook his head. “I don’t know. I just got back and…” He gestured helplessly at Lewis’s body. “This.”

The other man knelt beside Lewis, grimacing as he examined the wound. “Clean cut. Whoever did this knew what they were doing.”

“You see anyone?” the first man asked, looking at Aiden with suspicion.

Aiden hesitated. “There was… something. Someone. I don’t know. It was like a shadow, but it didn’t look… right.”

The two men exchanged a glance, their expressions unreadable. One of them muttered something under his breath, a word Aiden didn’t catch but felt was laced with meaning. Rumors of the creatures. The urban legends.

“We need to call security,” the kneeling man said, standing up. “Even if the comms are down, someone’s gotta be monitoring the system.”

Aiden nodded, but unease gnawed at him. The colony was a powder keg of secrets and grudges, and now, something darker had entered the mix. He glanced once more at the corner of the room, half-expecting to see the silhouette again. But the shadows were still, and the only sound was the faint hum of the life-support systems.

As the men worked to jury-rig a signal to security, Aiden couldn’t shake the feeling that the shadows had been watching him. Not just now, but for a long time. And as he looked at Lewis’s lifeless body, he couldn’t help but wonder if the rumors were more than just miner talk.

 

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The security station was a grim pocket of sterility in an otherwise grimy moon colony. Bright fluorescents buzzed overhead, their light leaching the color out of the walls and making the gray metal furniture seem more oppressive. Aiden sat on a cold, unforgiving bench along the far wall, his nerves unraveling one thought at a time. He’d worked on Theta-13 long enough to know what a summons from security usually meant: trouble. The kind that didn’t go away without a fight—or a bribe.

His foot tapped out a restless rhythm on the floor as his mind cycled through the night’s events. Lewis’s lifeless stare haunted him, the image so sharp in his memory it felt like a scar carved into his mind. Aiden had seen injuries before—miners weren’t strangers to accidents—but Lewis’s wounds weren’t from any drill or malfunctioning equipment. There was intent in those cuts, a deliberate precision that set his teeth on edge.

The door to the interrogation room hissed open, spilling two officers and a forensic tech into the hallway. They spoke in hushed tones, but in the silence of the waiting area, their voices carried. Aiden tilted his head slightly, straining to catch their words without making it obvious he was listening.

“…clean incision, but the edges…” said the forensic tech, a wiry woman with sharp, restless eyes. She held a holo-slate in one hand, the glowing display casting ghostly shadows across her face. “No serration. Too precise for a standard blade. Almost like it burned the flesh as it cut.”

“Burned?” one of the officers repeated, his voice thick with disbelief. “What the hell does that mean? Like a laser cutter?”

The tech shook her head. “No. A laser would leave cauterization, and there’s none here. The tissue… it’s more like it’s been…” She paused, searching for the right word. “Unwoven. Molecular degradation along the wound edges. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Aiden’s stomach tightened. Unwoven? What kind of tool could do that? He’d heard whispers about experimental tech, weapons that corporations and governments kept off the books, but they were the stuff of conspiracy theories, not mining colonies. Yet here it was, real and bloody, and the thought of it made his skin crawl.

“And the… residue?” the other officer asked, his voice low, as though afraid to give life to the question.

The tech nodded, pulling up another display on her holo-slate. Aiden couldn’t see the image, but he imagined it was Lewis’s body, splayed out on some cold metal slab, dissected by the unforgiving light of forensic lamps.

“Traces of an unknown substance,” she said. “Organic, but not human. It’s… reactive. Fluoresces under UV. Whatever it is, it was on the weapon and transferred to the wound site. Could be contamination from the mining equipment, but I’ve run comparisons against known compounds on Theta-13, and nothing matches.”

The first officer let out a low whistle. “So what? You’re saying… alien?”

The word hung in the air like a foul odor. Alien. It was the kind of thing miners joked about over drinks, the punchline to half-baked stories told to scare rookies. But now, hearing it spoken in earnest, Aiden felt a cold sweat break out across his back.

The tech frowned, her lips thinning into a line. “I’m saying it’s unidentified. Don’t read into it until we have more data.”

“Data or no data, we’ve got a dead man on our hands and a bunk full of witnesses who didn’t see shit,” the second officer grumbled. “The suits aren’t gonna like this.”

Aiden’s ears burned. Witnesses who didn’t see shit. That meant him, didn’t it? He’d told them about the shadowy figure, the impossible distortion that had lingered just long enough to haunt him. But he hadn’t seen anyone. Not really. And now, with this talk of molecular degradation and alien residues, his account sounded even more absurd.

The door hissed open again, and a third officer stepped into the hallway. He was a slab of a man, all sharp angles and bristling authority, his uniform tailored to perfection. His eyes locked onto Aiden, and a faint smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“Sol,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “You’re up.”

Aiden swallowed hard, his throat dry as sandpaper. He rose from the bench, his legs stiff and uncooperative. As he stepped toward the door, the officer’s gaze didn’t waver, a predator’s focus on prey. Aiden felt the weight of it pressing down on him, as if the man’s eyes could peel back his skin and read his thoughts.

The interrogation room was just as sterile as the waiting area, but smaller, more claustrophobic. A single table sat in the center, bolted to the floor, with two chairs on either side. The walls were bare, save for a single camera mounted in the corner, its lens glinting like a watchful eye. The air was colder here, sharp and clinical, and it carried the faint scent of disinfectant.

“Have a seat,” the officer said, gesturing to the chair opposite him. Aiden obeyed, sinking into the hard metal seat as the man settled in across from him. The door hissed shut, sealing them in.

“You’ve had a hell of a night, haven’t you?” the officer said, leaning forward with a practiced air of camaraderie that felt about as genuine as synth-meat.

Aiden didn’t answer immediately. His mind was still replaying the words he’d overheard, the strange, inexplicable details of Lewis’s death. He felt the officer’s gaze boring into him, dissecting his silence like a scalpel.

“Let’s start with the basics,” the officer continued, his tone hardening. “Tell me what you saw.”

Aiden licked his lips, his mouth as dry as Theta-13’s surface. “I saw…” He hesitated, the memory of the shadowy silhouette creeping into his mind like a dark tide. “I saw something. Someone. I… I don’t know what it was.”

The officer’s eyes narrowed. “Be specific, Sol. Every detail matters.”

Aiden’s pulse quickened, his thoughts a jumbled mess of fear and confusion. He tried to find the words, to piece together the fragments of what he’d experienced. But as he opened his mouth to speak, a chilling realization gripped him:

Whatever he said, it wouldn’t matter. He was already under the spotlight, and the shadows around him were only growing darker.

 

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            The room felt smaller now, the walls pressing inward, their blank surfaces mocking Aiden with their sterile indifference. Across from him, the officer—a man who’d introduced himself as Lieutenant Graves—leaned forward, elbows resting on the table, his fingers steepled. His sharp gray eyes pinned Aiden like an insect on a board.

“You’re not making this easy, Sol,” Graves said, his voice low and cutting. “We have a dead man with wounds no one can explain, a pile of unanswered questions, and you—the last person to see him alive.”

Aiden sat rigid in his chair, his palms slick against the cool metal of the table. “I told you everything I know,” he said, his voice faltering. “I don’t know who did it. I didn’t even see…”

“Save it,” Graves interrupted, slapping a hand on the table. The sharp crack echoed through the room, making Aiden flinch. “‘I didn’t see,’ ‘I don’t know.’ That’s not going to cut it, Sol. Not with what we found.”

Graves gestured to a datapad resting on the table between them. Its screen displayed a rotating 3D model of something that looked like a jagged wound carved into human flesh. Aiden swallowed hard, his stomach twisting.

“The forensics team found traces of an unknown organic compound in the wounds,” Graves said, his tone clipped. “Something that doesn’t match anything native to Theta-13. Care to explain that?”

“How could I?” Aiden shot back, the words slipping out before he could stop them. “I’m a miner, not a scientist! I work a drill, for Christ’s sake. I don’t even know how this happened.”

Graves leaned back, his expression unreadable. He tapped a finger against his chin, a slow, deliberate motion that made Aiden’s nerves fray. “Funny you should say that,” Graves mused. “Because the way I see it, you’re exactly the kind of person who’d snap after months out here. Maybe it’s the isolation, the pressure. Or maybe it’s the Theta Mists getting to you.”

The mention of the mists made Aiden’s blood run cold. Every miner on Theta-13 knew about them. Every day, as the moon rotated into the shadow of the gas giant it orbited, the mists rolled in. Heavy, silver-gray tendrils of vapor that crept through every crevice, seeping into the colony like a living thing. The scientists claimed the mists were a byproduct of the moon’s unique atmospheric composition, the result of extreme temperature fluctuations causing rapid condensation. But for the miners, the mists were more than a scientific curiosity. They were an unshakable presence, a shroud that cloaked the world in eerie silence and played tricks on the mind.

“You think I…” Aiden started, but Graves cut him off.

“People lose it out here,” the lieutenant said, his voice colder now. “They see things in the mists. Hear things. Start believing the stories. And when that happens, people get hurt. Sometimes they get killed.” He leaned forward again, his eyes narrowing. “So I’ll ask you one more time, Sol. What happened to Lewis?”

Aiden’s hands curled into fists on the table. “I told you,” he said, his voice trembling. “I don’t know. There was a shadow… something I can’t explain. And then Lewis was just… there, like that.” He gestured helplessly toward the datapad.

Graves stared at him for a long moment, the silence in the room stretching taut. Then he let out a derisive snort and pushed back his chair, rising to his feet.

“You’re not exactly selling your innocence here, Sol,” he said. “But we’re not done yet.” He turned toward the door. “Wait here.”

As the door hissed shut behind him, Aiden sagged in his chair, his body taut with exhaustion. The air in the room felt thicker now, the weight of Graves’ accusations pressing down on him. He rubbed his temples, trying to block out the image of Lewis’s body, the strange, unearthly wounds that no one could explain.

Minutes ticked by, each one dragging like an eternity. Aiden’s thoughts swirled in a chaotic spiral, a tempest of fear, confusion, and anger. He barely noticed when the door opened again, and Graves stepped back inside, flanked by two guards.

“Here’s the deal, Sol,” Graves said, his tone curt. “We don’t have enough to hold you. Yet. But that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook.”

One of the guards stepped forward, holding a small device that looked like a metallic cuff. Aiden’s heart sank.

“Ankle monitor,” Graves said, almost conversationally. “Standard procedure for suspects under investigation. You’re confined to your quarters until further notice. Step outside, and we’ll know.”

The guard knelt and clamped the device around Aiden’s ankle. It clicked into place with a finality that sent a shiver down his spine.

“Consider this your warning,” Graves said, his eyes boring into Aiden’s. “Don’t do anything stupid. We’ll be watching you.”

With that, the guards escorted him out of the room and down the sterile corridors of the security station. Each step felt heavier than the last, the ankle monitor a constant, oppressive presence. When they finally reached the exit, the guards stopped and watched him go, their gazes like twin daggers in his back.

The mists were already rolling in as Aiden made his way back to his quarters, their ghostly tendrils curling around his boots. The air was thick with moisture, carrying the faint tang of ozone. He kept his head down, his thoughts racing. The shadows seemed darker now, the silence more oppressive, and the sensation of being watched wrapped around him like a suffocating shroud.

By the time he reached his quarters, his nerves were frayed to the breaking point. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him, leaning against it for support. The room was empty, the bunks eerily silent. He sank onto his cot, his mind churning with unanswered questions and the growing fear that he was caught in something far bigger than himself.