The volcanic stone was colder underfoot than it looked. The wanderer had expected warmth from something born of fire, but the rock held the mountain's chill in its pores, radiating up through thin boots with each step.

Embedded lighting ran along the corridor walls in pale veins, bright enough to navigate but not to read by. The glass wall on the left dropped away to nothing — a viewing panel that went floor to ceiling, offering the rift below in its blue-green quiet. Dawn hadn't reached this side of the mountain yet. The light from the depths pulsed slowly, as if something very large and very patient was breathing down there.

The wanderer stopped to look. The pulse wasn't regular. Faster, then slower, then a long pause. They counted the intervals without meaning to. Old habit. The pattern didn't repeat.

"Dr. Vance?"

The voice came from behind — quick footsteps approaching. The wanderer turned.

The man was younger than his gray-threaded beard suggested, tablet pressed against his chest, stylus tucked behind his ear. His coat hung open over a worn sweater, pockets bulging with something angular. His eyes found the wanderer's face, then the viewing panel, then back.

"You're here for the specimen briefing. Good, good — I was worried when you weren't in the dining hall. Dr. Okonkwo's already in the lower labs, she doesn't wait, never waits, so we should—" He stopped. His head tilted. "You are Dr. Vance?"

The silence stretched.

The wanderer didn't correct him.

"I've just arrived," they said.

"Arrived? But the shuttle landing was yesterday. The manifest said—" He pulled his stylus from behind his ear and began scrolling on his tablet, one-handed, frowning. "Vance, Vance... xenolinguistics, expected on the... ah." His scrolling slowed. "Dr. Vance isn't arriving until next week."

He looked up. His face shifted through several expressions — embarrassment, curiosity. His eyes narrowed slightly.

"You're not Dr. Vance."

"No."

The scholar's stylus hovered over his tablet. He didn't put it away. "Then who—" He caught himself, shook his head. "Sorry, sorry. That's not — I should be asking if you're settling in, if the room's adequate, not demanding papers." He tucked the stylus back behind his ear. "Kade. Kade Merrow. Xenobiology, though it's really taxonomy, which is really just arguing with Dr. Okonkwo about what things should be called."

He gestured with the tablet toward the rift below.

"Have you seen the charts yet? The depth surveys? No, of course not, you've just arrived." His free hand moved through the air, pointing at something invisible. "Three kilometers down — that's where the sensors lose coherence. Not because they fail. The rift just doesn't... stay still. The topography shifts. We map it on Tuesday, and by Thursday the map's wrong. Not a little wrong. Completely wrong. Passages that were there are gone. New ones appear." He turned back to the wanderer. "That's what I study. The things that surface from depths we can't measure twice."

The blue-green light pulsed behind him. The wanderer watched it shift.

"Something surfaced," they said.

Kade's expression changed. His mouth opened, closed. He looked back at the viewing panel as if confirming the rift was still there.

"Last night. Yes." He lowered his voice, though the corridor was empty. "We haven't announced it yet. How did you—"

"The observatory is humming."

Kade blinked. "What?"

"The building. There's a frequency. Low. Everyone's moving faster than they need to."

The scholar stared. His stylus came out from behind his ear again, twisting between his fingers.

"That's..." He trailed off. "You noticed that."

"Is it unusual? The surfacing."

"Everything that surfaces from the rift is unusual." Kade's voice found its footing again, his hands gesturing. "But this one — it doesn't fit any category we have. Not even the wrong categories. Usually when something's new, you can at least say what it's not. This one, we can't even do that. Dr. Okonkwo's been in the lab since midnight trying to—"

He stopped. His eyes moved to the wanderer's hands — the way they rested at their sides, neither open nor closed.

"Why am I telling you this?"

The wanderer waited.

"You're not Dr. Vance. You're not staff. I don't even know your name, and I'm here describing unclassified specimens in the corridor." He ran a hand through his beard. "This isn't — I don't usually do this."

"You're excited," the wanderer said. "About what surfaced."

"Terrified," Kade corrected. Then he smiled — sudden, teeth showing. "Same thing, really. Around here."

The lighting pulsed faintly in its embedded veins. The rift answered with its own rhythm, off-tempo, unhurried.

"You wanted to share it with someone," the wanderer said.

Kade looked at them for a long moment. The stylus stopped twisting.

"Dr. Vance is a linguist. That's why she's coming — because the specimen has structures that might be language. Might be. Dr. Okonkwo thinks it's just patterning, like crystal formation, but I've studied formations for six years and this is..." He shook his head. "This is different."

He glanced back at his tablet, then at the corridor ahead.

"The briefing's in an hour. The lower labs." He hesitated. "I could add a guest to the observer list. If you wanted to see it."

The wanderer's hands stayed at their sides.

"What does the specimen look like?"

Kade's hands started moving again.

"Like nothing. That's what's wrong. The xenoscientists say it looks like everything at once — features that shouldn't coexist. Eyes that aren't eyes. Limbs that don't articulate. And the patterns on its surface..." He leaned in slightly. "They change when you look away."

The wanderer looked back at the viewing panel. The rift pulsed. Slower now. Almost still.

"I'll come," they said.

Kade exhaled.

"Good. Good." He was already turning, already moving down the corridor, his tablet tucked under his arm. "The lift is at the end of the eastern wing. I'll meet you there in forty-five minutes — I have to get Dr. Okonkwo's authorization for the guest list, which means I have to find her first, and she's never where the schedule says she is..."

His voice faded as he walked. The corridor swallowed his footsteps. The wanderer stood at the viewing panel, alone with the rift's blue-green light.

The patterns pulsed. The intervals shifted.

The wanderer counted them anyway.