The storm above the highway did not move naturally.

The clouds twisted in enormous spirals across the night sky while distant lightning flashed silently inside them, illuminating shapes far too large to comprehend.

Maya stood frozen beside the truck.

Watching.

Waiting for the thing above the clouds to appear again.

The infected kneeling across the highway continued whispering together in perfect synchronization.

"It comes from the stars…"

"It comes from the stars…"

Their silver eyes glowed brighter with every pulse of thunder overhead.

Ethan remained on the ground trembling violently. Blood ran from his nose and ears while black veins beneath his skin pulsed faintly silver now instead of black.

Selena knelt beside him.

"What's happening to you?"

Ethan barely managed to answer.

"It's searching."

Another distant call rolled across the sky.

The sound vibrated inside Maya's chest.

Not heard.

Felt.

Every infected person on the road suddenly lifted one shaking hand upward toward the storm like worshippers greeting a god. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

Then all of them spoke together.

"Gateway opening."

Maya's stomach tightened.

Selena grabbed her arm.

"We need to leave now."

But Maya couldn't stop staring upward.

Because part of her recognized the signal.

Not from memory.

From blood.

The same connection BLACKTHORN had engineered inside her before birth was reacting again.

Only this signal felt vastly older than the Deep Signal beneath the silos.

Colder.

Hungrier.

The truck radio suddenly burst alive with overlapping emergency broadcasts.

"—multiple impact events confirmed—"

"—do not approach infected rainfall zones—"

"—military quarantine has failed in—"

Static drowned the voices.

Then came something worse.

A recording.

A child's voice whispering softly through the speakers.

"They're singing under the ground."

Ethan suddenly screamed.

His body arched violently backward as silver veins spread across his throat like cracks in glass. Maya rushed toward him instinctively.

His white eyes locked onto hers.

"It knows your name."

The storm answered immediately.

Lightning exploded across the clouds overhead.

For one horrifying second the massive shape appeared again.

Closer this time.

Maya finally saw enough of it to understand why the infected knelt.

It was not a creature moving through the storm.

The storm itself was alive.

A colossal organic mass drifted above the clouds like a living continent covered in pulsing silver light. Tendrils larger than skyscrapers moved slowly beneath the cloud layer before vanishing again into darkness.

Selena backed away in horror.

"That's impossible…"

The infected on the highway began smiling.

Their mouths opened too wide.

Silver light spilled from their throats.

Then one of them stood.

A little girl no older than eight.

Rain poured down her pale face as she looked directly at Maya.

"It remembers you," she whispered.

The voice was not hers.

Dozens of layered voices spoke beneath it.

"The First Daughter survived."

Maya raised her revolver shakily.

"Stay back."

The little girl tilted her head unnaturally.

"The Deep Signal was only the seed." Her silver eyes widened further. "Now the Harvester comes."

Thunder shook the earth.

Far above the clouds, enormous shapes began descending slowly through the storm.

Pods.

Black organic structures falling from the sky like meteors.

One struck somewhere beyond the distant hills with a deafening impact.

Then another.

And another.

The invasion had begun.

Selena grabbed Maya violently.

"We have to get to Site Zero before those things spread."

Maya looked toward the burning horizon where new impacts lit the darkness one after another.

Humanity had thought the nightmare beneath BLACKTHORN was the infection.

But Earth had never been the source.

Only the first world marked for harvest.

And somewhere high above the dying planet—

Something ancient was finally coming home.