TRANSMISSION ID: AS-0041N · STATUS: PARTIAL DECODE · COORDINATES WITHHELD

The pulse first appeared eleven nights ago, a slow triple-beat under the static, easy to miss unless you'd already stopped expecting anything on that frequency.

By the third night it had a shape. Not a message — a rhythm. The kind you feel more than hear.

We followed it to a relay that shouldn't have had power.

Nothing inside was broadcasting. The equipment was dead, has been for years by the look of the corrosion. And yet the pulse continued, sourced from somewhere the instruments couldn't locate.

Whatever is out there, it isn't sending. It's receiving. And it has been for longer than any of us have been listening.

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