Atlas waited for a moment in the molten sea previously known as Moscow, while what he could only assume were military helicopters buzzed overhead. There weren’t many, and they’d be trivial to take down, but they weren’t really bothersome enough to worry about dealing with either way. Besides, they couldn’t even detect him, buried as he was under the slag that made up the newly formed lake Moskva.

  The gunships hovered above for minutes longer, presumably collecting what data they could on the event. Atlas was well aware they lacked the instrumentation for a detailed analysis, though. For one, they were military craft, and as such couldn’t really be equipped with the machinery necessary to figure out what had happened. And two, he could sense the electricity pumping through the artificial veins of the gunships: and there wasn’t enough for the equipment they’d need.

  After a little while, they apparently realized that too. The Hinds began hovering back the way they’d come, either having gathered what intel they’d wanted too, or realizing that their attempts were futile. At that, Atlas shifted the molten sea above him, and emerged from the ‘lake’ bed, dripping magma. He focused his senses into the distance for a moment longer, making sure that the gunships were continuing on their way as they gradually slipped away from his senses. Then he turned his attention back to the lake. He’d been collecting geological data ever since he’d gotten to the surface, and still, all the molten material made next to no sense.

  “Ok, run this through me again.”

  “It’s ‘run me through this again.’” Calypso corrected.

  “Seriously? Just get on with it.”

  Calypso gave an annoyed huff, but did as told. “So, what we know: vibrations, a large, molten area, no survivors, and no mushroom cloud or debris field. Honestly, I have nothing.” She echoed helpfully.

  One of Atlas’ larger antennae raised curiously at that. “Nothing?”

  “...Antimatter?” Calypso replied weakly.

  Atlas gave a snort of bemusement. “Yeah, right.”

  “Ok, what are your bright ideas?”

  “You mentioned we wouldn’t feel a nuke, but a satellite based weapon might have hit the city. You could drop huge masses accelerated by gravity to tens of thousands of kilometers per hour. It’d explain the liquefaction, and the waves we felt below. It’d be impossible to aim, though…” Atlas trailed off while pacing through the magma.

  “I’d know if they had something like that.” Calypso shot back dryly.

  “It doesn’t matter if you did or not. They wouldn’t be able to aim it accurately- the spinning of the earth would make smart projectiles necessary, and I can’t fathom how they’d get something that technologically advanced up there without us noticing. Just dropping satellites, maybe? But that’d require a signal we’d see…” Atlas answered himself, before trailing off again in thought.

  “Are you so sure it was the humans?” Calypso piped up curiously.

  That stalled Atlas, and he paused in surprise. “What else would it be? It’s not like they’ve been shy to wipe each other out before.”

  Calypso spluttered in disbelief. “Seriously? That’s the extent of your reasoning?”

  Atlas scoffed. “What? Am I wrong?”

  “It could’ve been an asteroid-”

  “We’d have seen that, and we already agreed that wasn’t a likely culprit.”

  “A reactor meltdown-”

  “Of what? A fusion reactor? The humans don’t have that technology yet, and even if they did without us knowing, I’d be able to tell from the remains.” Atlas answered.

  “They do have fusion technology, actually, it’s just not scaled enough to be efficient over their other forms of energy generation.” Calypso countered.

  Atlas’ antennae twinged in annoyance. “Sure. And I’d be able to sense the melted down magnets in this geological anomaly we’re currently standing in. Or any ionized matter in the air, for that matter, once it got evaporated by a collapsing star. That wouldn’t cause the vibrations I felt below, either. This had to have been a weapon.”

  “Or a subterranean mapping tool.” Calypso tried weakly, something Atlas seized on immediately.

  “Which, again, is something we agreed they don’t even need to do. They’ve already mapped the interior of the Earth using wave action- besides what I’ve hidden from them, anyway. It wouldn’t make any sense for them to construct a subterranean mapping tool. Besides, I thought you said the Russians couldn’t afford that anyway?”

  “Well, humans rarely do things that make sense.” Calypso argued.

  “Sure. Like using an unknown weapon to wipe out a rival nations capital.” Atlas agreed.

  “Hey, I’ve been watching them a lot more closely than you have. They don’t exactly kill for no reason. Well… some do. Look, they’re complicated, ok? You owe it to them to get to know a few some time. Maybe that’d change your mind.”

  Electricity arced between Atlas’ antennae aggressively. Her arguments were starting to grind on him. “Funny, Calypso, real funny. Tell me, exactly, what kind of relationships you’ve managed to build with humans since I was last awake?”

  “I have!... Some. Ok, maybe not relationships… it’s more like lurking. Or stalking.” Calypso admitted. “Still though, do you ever think that maybe you need more people to talk to besides me?”

  “Yeah, I’ll get right on that. Think I should care as much about them as they do each other? Or would it be better to be just sociable enough to let them establish a religion first, then take a nap for a century and wake up to a world inhabited by strangers?”

  “Atlas. You know that’s not what I-”

  “Am I wrong, though? You say you know how they’d react better than I do. Run a few simulations of a world where I’m the all-knowing ‘God of Earth’. See how they pan out.”

  “...You know I know how those turn out.”

  “Thought so. And am I wrong?”

  “Uh, yes?? You didn’t even think humans would get past the nuclear age, and here they are decades later, still doing fine. You let your biases cloud your judgement. Just because your sims show they’ll self annihilate doesn’t mean it’ll come to pass.”

  “Yes, and clearly they’re doing even better now. Can’t help but wonder why they wouldn’t just use nukes, though.” Atlas mused, resuming his pacing. “Easier for the Russians to detect, maybe? Still, with their stealth technology…”

  “I keep telling you, this wasn’t the Americans. For all their faults, the Humans have been mostly careful with their nuclear weapons. They’ve had them for nearly a century, and they haven’t glassed the planet yet.”

  “Well, this is a good way to start.” He said, gesturing over the lava lake.

  “True. But still, not the Americans. They don’t have any real reason to take out the Russians.” Calypso argued.

  “Not having any real reason isn’t the same as having no reason at all.”

  Calypso made an odd groan of annoyance that rattled in his skull. “Really, huh? You’re so hellbent on deciding that they’ve committed a massacre that you haven’t even considered the effects it’d leave. There’s nothing here! It’s like you said: there’s no radiation, no metallic anomalies, nothing! You know that, so why are you still arguing the point? Then there's the fact that you haven’t the slightest clue how humans actually interact with each other. I do! How about you give me a reason they’d spend so much time, money, and technology, that I’d have seen them spending, on some unknown weapon purpose built to wipe out another countries capital?”

  Atlas snorted. “Millenia of them killing each other isn’t enough for you?”

  “It’s not about the killing. It’s about opportunity.”

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  “What?” Atlas asked, pausing his pacing yet again.

  “Even if I believed the humans were as bad as you think they are, what would actually be the point of killing off the Russians? Sure, they’re a competitor, and sure, they’re a threat, but for all their faults the humans aren’t… quite, stupid. The kind of damage human nukes can do that you’ve been rattling on about? The Russians have thousands. Do you really think the Americans, or anyone else for that matter, would be willing to open up a power vacuum like that? Involving weapons like that?” Calypso asked pointedly.

  “Noted.” He responded gruffly. In spite of himself, he was beginning to agree with Calypso's assessment. “Ok, fine. So it wasn’t the Humans. Or an eruption, or an earthquake, or a mapping project, or a super weapon, or any other weapon. Or asteroids. Is there anything I’m missing?”

  “Finally.” Calypso chirped, mollified. “I think that covers what we’ve been over.”

  Atlas grumbled in annoyance. “Maybe it was a landslide.”

  “Gee, you sure you don’t want to circle back around to antimatter?”

  Atlas didn’t deign to respond, instead pausing for a moment to think. “Sound waves, maybe?”

  Calypso snorted, which was a weird sound to hear in his head, let alone from an AI. “There’s nothing natural, or man-made, that could generate sonic waves anywhere near strong enough to destroy a city. Let alone to the extent that we felt it down near the core.”

  “You’re the one that brought up looking at the effects of our hypothetical weapon. It’s theoretically possible.” Atlas countered.

  “Fine. Sure. Yes. Magical sound waves bubbled up from the Earth to melt a city and drop rocks on your head.”

  “I’m being serious, Calypso. Yes, the Humans don’t have the technological capability for something like that. But, strong enough sonic waves would reverberate through the Earth similar to earthquake waves. Especially angled down, penetrating, rather than on the surface.” Atlas gave a start, his antennae stilling as he came to a realization.

  Calypso rattled her neural network for theories. “So… you think someone was sending sonic waves down into the planet. And Moscow was destroyed for that… why? I’m starting to think you didn’t get enough sleep. Hey, big guy, you listening?”

  Atlas wasn’t, not quite. He’d knelt into the slag, lost in thought. “Hmm? Yeah, yeah. Let’s circle back to our subterranean mapping idea. How many good ways can you think of to map the interior of a planet?”

  “Earthquakes, for starters. Even the humans got that down. But really, a vibration is all you… is all you need. Huh. Ok, that’d explain the liquefaction of the city, too. The vibrations would have to be ridiculously intense if it were sound, and if they were happening right here, then the energy would be imparted on the city even if the waves were angled below. Again, though- no one on Earth can do that, and we don’t have to do that. And then, again, why Moscow?”

  “I think… it’s a distraction. Anywhere would work, and if you were avoiding attention, the ocean would be best. Everyone would hear it on their sonars, but they wouldn’t be able to pinpoint it. The humans wouldn’t be able to get to it, either. The vibrations would annihilate anything that got close. Whoever did this wanted everyone else to be aware of it, so they took out a capital city. Why is still the question. It’d have to be buried, though…”

  “Unless it vibrated itself apart.” Calypso pointed out, as Atlas’s antennae flattened while he focused his senses. His fist began to shimmer with the same amber glimmer as before as he mentally sifted through the slag, searching for something that didn’t belong. He had a lot of area to cover, though.

  “I don’t think that's what happened. A sonic weapon, on this scale? That had to be tested. Perfected. You’re really sure the Humans don’t have any tech like this?”

  “There have been experiments, sure. But nothing anywhere near this. At the most, they’ve been used as riot weapons and as experimental tactical weapons. Certainly not like-”

  Atlas interrupted her with a grunt, and she noticed his antennae flicker in confusion. “All good?”

  “There’s definitely something down there. But it’s… wrong. I don’t know how to explain it. I’m going to force it back up so we can get a closer look.”

  “Can’t you tell what it is?”

  “I just said I can’t- Calypso, you know man-made objects are more your thing.”

  “Duh, but we’ve both been pretty adamant about Humanities lack of interest in sonic weaponry.”

  “Maybe it’s from space or something, I don’t know. But we’re not going to be able to tell either way until I get it up here.” Atlas grumbled.

  The slagged city erupted into a geyser around him as he pulled at the object, spewing molten material dozens of meters into the air. Atlas gave it another harsh pull, this time so hard that solid crags of rock skewered through the surface of the molten sea. The thing was… stubbornly… tugging… though, and so he yanked harder. A pulse echoed through the lake, sending a slow ripple outward, and suddenly Atlas realized he had it. Mentally, he gave it a sharp tug and a final push, and then a huge monolith tore out of the ground. Atlas stumbled back in alarm as the pillar kept going and going, and then he took a few more heavy steps back when he realized it wasn’t stopping.

  When it finally came to a halt, it towered over him, easily a hundred meters tall, if not more. It almost looked like an asteroid but… wrong. He couldn’t quite place it, but it appeared grown, not formed. It’s ‘skin’ was rocky, but vaguely mechanical. In what way though, Atlas couldn’t quite tell. Tiny twinkling lights dotted its surface, glowing a soft, icy blue. They beat quickly too, a little like a heart. Heat radiated from it, but he could hear the electricity humming just beneath the surface.

  “Ok, so… that’s new. I think I’m just going to tear into this thing.” Atlas finally said. Calypso started to say something to dissuade him, but before she could he’d already pressed his palm to the machine.

  Immediately, and with a deafening shriek, a wave of sound rolled outward. The titan was pushed meters away under the force of the sonic waves impact, his armor immediately heated nearly to a boiling point under the strain. He grit his jaw and raised his arms to attempt to shield himself from the bulk of it, then took a straining step towards the machine. The sonic weapon increased its timbre- the magma sea began to roil around him as the sound increased impossibly in intensity. He took another step, as the machines shriek began to echo into a roar-

  And then Atlas planted his fist through its metal skin, causing brackish, viscous fluid to wetly pulse around the wound he’d opened in the machine. Immediately, the monolith darkened and went quiet, returning the dead city to its eerie silence. Save, of course, for the ripples still rolling through the lake, and Atlas’ pants of exertion.

  “What the hell?” Calypso echoed in his head, for once voicing his inner thoughts. “What just happened?”

  “Well, obviously it was soundwaves.” He responded nonchalantly, before ripping his hand back out of the… meteor? More slick pulsed from the injury. He rested his palms on it, then looked it up and down appraisingly. “Definitely not-”

  Before Atlas could finish his sentence, the machine erupted again. This time, it screamed out an immense beam of energy instead of a soundwave. It was incredibly intense, so much so that Atlas noticed the air ionizing around him as excess molecules were boiled away. It was rippling with energy, feeling almost like reality was bending around it, and yet somehow there wasn’t even the slightest glow. Right as Atlas thought to put his fist back through it, the beam stopped. It’d only erupted for a fraction of a second, but Atlas kept his gaze locked on the tip of the monolith until he was sure it was actually dead.

  “-a meteor. What was that?”

  “Some kind of laser, I think? There was at least an intense burst of radiation with it, but it gave off odd gravity distortions too. It didn’t last long enough for me to get any kind of analysis on it, though.” Calypso answered.

  “That wasn’t just a laser. That was information. Something wanted to know about Earth. You seriously couldn’t get any data on it?” Atlas asked, frustration creeping into his voice.

  “That burst was so short… I captured it, but it’s not readable. Whatever it’s scattering back just looks like dead emissions. I’m sure there's more than that, I just can’t read it. It doesn’t even look like it’s in a language.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Just look at it.” Atlas shot back with a snarl.

  “This isn’t like hacking, and that wasn’t written in code. For lack of better words, it’s like it’s locked, and we don’t have the key. I captured the data, but it’s useless to us in the state it's in. This isn’t like a decryption. I’m sure there's a way to read it, and whatever it’s going to probably knows how. We don’t.” She answered.

  Atlas made a noise of frustration, but relented. “We’ll circle back to that later. First-” He gestured to the monolith. “It’s alien, right?”

  “No, really? What do you think?”

  “I think we need to figure out exactly what we’re dealing with here. This obviously wasn’t any normal disaster.” Atlas said, before he looked the structure up and down again. “This is a weapon.”

  Calypso took a moment to think. “Maybe not. Not necessarily, anyway.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “It could just be a mapping tool.” Calypso pointed out.

  “Like I said.” Atlas answered smugly. “But still, that it happened to hit Earth? Let alone Moscow? That it happened to set off a firestorm that I’ll be dealing with for the next few weeks?”

  “Well, it was absolutely shot at Earth. There’s no doubt about that. But exactly where it’d land is down to every phenomena of physics that affects the solar system, even down to how the sun spins. Without knowing where it came from, we can’t even begin to guess why it hit here.”

  “We didn’t see it coming.” Atlas emphasized.

  That gave Calypso pause. “And yet… the humans knew about it as it was happening. You’re right, though. It being stealthy is a pretty big red flag. I’ll start digging around, we need to find out what they know.”

  “Wait, what do you mean they knew about it as it was happening? You said Human activity picked up after the reverberations started and Moscow got slagged.”

  Calypso let out a low whirr that rattled around Atlas’ skull. “It… was about the same time. The Chinese were able to scrape some data from a disabled spy satellite, and the Americans noticed one of their satellites acting erratically. That’s where the anomalies began, so that’s where I’m going to start. That matches up for when something like your screaming friend over there might have entered orbit, too.”

  Atlas nodded at that, shifting his antennae as he did so. “That’s something. In the meantime, I’m going to see if I can get this piece of junk to sing any more. It may not be able to decode that signal, but it created it. That’ll give us somewhere to begin.” Just as he reached up to begin ripping out panels though, he paused. “Aren’t you in all their satellites?”

  “From time to time. These ones though… woof, they got burnt out pretty hard. Whoever was snooping around in them was very thorough. I’m going to try and follow the path of destruction back, see if we can’t find our culprit. Whoever saw this knows a bit more about our visitor than we do at the moment.” Calypso answered.

  “I’m looking forward to meeting them.” Atlas grumbled, before prying a ten meter segment loose and tossing it into the magma.

  “Just don’t kill them.”