Chapter 48 - The Anomaly

"The world is not in your books and maps, it’s out there."

— J.R.R. Tolkien, spoken by Gandalf in The Hobbit

The dinette table was crowded, elbows bumping as the crew huddled around mugs of what Luca privately dubbed liquid disappointment, otherwise known as Ryan's god-awful coffee. The bastard had beaten him to the pot this morning and ignored the measurement guide again. The coffee was strong enough to dissolve paint; Luca was pretty sure his tongue was still numb from the first sip. He cradled the mug anyway. Caffeine was caffeine, and he needed to wake up.

Ryan had bags under his eyes and was eating like someone had insulted his cereal. Danny looked half asleep. Zoe, somehow, looked perfectly fine, which was annoying.

“Alright,” Luca said, clearing his throat and setting his mug down. “Once we finish breakfast, let’s get the camp cleaned up and prep to move out. We’ve got more ground to cover.”

Ryan stretched in his chair, the smug look on his face almost as irritating as his coffee. “Finally. I’m starting to feel like we’ve been camped here for weeks,” he said.

“Yeah, we’ve been here three days,” Luca muttered, but Ryan ignored him.

Zoe nudged her half-eaten ration pack aside, leaning forward on the table like she was ready to bolt. “Agreed. We’re not going to learn anything new staring at the same trees. Let’s see what else this planet has to offer,” she said, her eyes flicking between Danny and Ryan, looking restless.

Joey cleared his throat, setting down his tablet with a triumphant air. “Speaking of learning new things,” he said, looking around the table like he was about to drop a bombshell. “I’ve got some preliminary results on the fruit samples.”

The chatter died down instantly. Even Ryan put his spoon down, leaning forward with interest. “And?” Luca asked, trying to sound casual but failing. Was it actually safe to eat, or were they going to find out it was laced with some alien neurotoxin?

Joey grinned, clearly enjoying the attention. “Well, the good news is, it’s safe. No toxins, no weird proteins. Nothing that would cause an immediate reaction.”

“And the bad news?” Zoe asked, raising an eyebrow, already suspicious.

“No bad news,” Joey said, holding up his hands. “But there is… a catch. The fruit contains an alkaloid compound similar to ones we’ve seen on Earth. An aphrodisiac.”

Ryan snorted, nearly choking on his coffee. “An aphrodisiac? Seriously? What kind of planet did we land on?”

“You mean I landed us on?" Luca asked, grinning.

“Relax,” Joey said, rolling his eyes. “It’s mild. Barely noticeable in low doses. You’d have to eat a bunch of them for it to have any real effect, or you know, ferment them into a drink or something.”

Emily leaned back, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “So, it’s perfectly safe unless someone decides to gorge themselves.” She shot Luca a knowing look.

Joey’s smile faltered as he kept reading. “Actually… there’s something else. High doses could cause side effects like heightened aggression and impaired judgment. In extreme cases, violent behavior. It could push someone into fight-or-flight mode.”

That got everyone’s attention.

“So, wait,” Luca said, leaning forward. “You’re telling me if someone eats too much of this, they don’t just get happy, they might lose their shit and start a brawl?”

Joey nodded. “Potentially. It depends on the person. Some might just get a little more… uninhibited. Others? Could go full berserker mode.”

Ryan let out a low whistle. “Great. So it’s not just space Viagra, it’s space PCP.”

Emily shot a glance at Zoe, then at Luca. “Remind me to keep this stuff away from you two.”

“Oh, ha ha,” Luca muttered, shaking his head. “Joey, are we logging this as edible or not?”

“Edible,” Joey confirmed, his grin widening. “But maybe not something you want to bring to a first date.”

The table erupted into laughter, the tension breaking as everyone relaxed. Luca leaned back, sipping the terrible coffee and watching the crew banter.

[SURVEY PROGRESS UPDATED]
[Objective: Water Source Survey] (12/40)
[Objective: Collect Core Samples] (12/12) - COMPLETE
[Objective: Alien Biosignature Detection] (15/40)
[Objective: Flora Sample Collection] (80/150)
[Objective: Fauna Sample Collection] (24/75)

---

As they continued eating, their mostly-silent-and-therefore-useless ship AI, broke the quiet hum of their conversation.

Alert: Anomaly detected. Significant energy patterns located 53.1 kilometers northeast of your current location. Analysis suggests presence of an active portal.

Everyone froze, forks and mugs suspended mid-air. The usual light-hearted banter stopped cold. Luca set his mug down, and for a second nobody in the cabin seemed to remember how to move. “A portal?” he asked. A fucking portal, here, now, and only thirty-odd miles out.

Ryan, who’d dropped his mug and had run to the computer, replied. “That's right! The energy signature matches! A little stronger than what we’ve seen in Sol.”

Luca leaned back, arms folded around the fact that a portal had just dropped into their laps after weeks of nothing, zilch, and no reason to think this planet was going to cooperate. Where the hell had it been hiding? “Well, that changes things,” he muttered.

They couldn’t ignore this. The whole reason for the trip, the years of savings and a mission charter, all the survey work, had always been about the chance to break the level cap.

“We can’t ignore this,” Luca said, keeping his voice steady. "If the System’s active here, we need to know why it’s been so quiet until now. A portal changes everything, about this mission, about this planet.”

Zoe smirked, her dreadlocks catching the firelight as she shifted. “You know what this means, right? I was starting to think this planet was too good to be true.”

Danny hesitated, his brow furrowing. “Or the System took its time to wake up. What if it’s not the same as back home? New place, new rules... and we have no idea what’s on the other side of that thing.” He had a point, and Luca’s pulse kicked up anyway because this was the first thing on this planet that felt remotely real.

“Exactly,” Joey cut in, his voice measured. “It could be an opportunity. Resources, data, hell, even treasure if it’s like what we’ve seen before. But we need to approach this carefully. No charging in the dark.”

Luca held up a hand. “Hold on. We don’t rush in.” He turned to Ryan. “Energy status.”

Ryan pulled up another screen, his expression shifting. “Not great. Two more cells failed their diagnostic this morning. They won't hold a charge. We’re down to sixteen.”

Sixteen cells sat wrong in Luca's head the second Ryan said it. He did the math quickly. They needed at least twenty-three cells just to power everyone's essential gear. His own loadout alone required four cells between the energy tomahawk, sniper rifle, blaster, and scout suit. Ryan needed even more with all his engineer equipment, his scattergun, blaster, armor, stasis trap, turret, and God knew what else.

"Shit," Luca muttered. Seven cells short of minimum operational capacity. If they ran into trouble, half the crew would be fighting with dead weapons or compromised armor.

But loot, XP, and levels kept flashing through his head with ugly, hungry clarity. A portal meant the System was active here in the one way that mattered. Live, not dormant, not theoretical.

“All the more reason to investigate,” Emily argued, stepping forward. “Portals in Sol drop loot. Energy cells, gear, components. If this one is the same, it’s a lifeline. We need what’s on the other side of that thing, Luca.”

She was right, and every instinct Luca had was already screaming it at him. Breaking the level cap had stopped mattering. This was basic survival. Ryan looked half feral with excitement, and Zoe had gone razor-focused. Even Danny's nerves had burnished into something harder. They looked like raiders who had just heard the loot room door unlock.

Ryan nodded, his eyes moving between Danny and Joey. “If we can get close enough to analyze it, that might give us answers. Hell, it might tell us why it didn’t show up until now.”

Luca watched them talk, running through every possibility he didn’t like. A portal that hadn’t been there seven days ago. No energy signatures on their initial scans. Nothing until this morning. So either the planet had been hiding it, or something had just turned it on.

Portals didn’t play fair, and Luca wasn’t going to pretend they did.

“We’re not rushing into anything,” Luca said, cutting through the chatter. “We’ll finish packing up, then head out and take a closer look. We’re done with this site anyway. If the portal is stable, we’ll set up the Peregrine nearby and analyze it from there. No one goes in until we’re sure it’s safe.”

Emily's posture eased slightly, though her expression remained wary. “I can get behind that plan. But if anything looks off, we pull back. No heroics.”

“Agreed,” Luca said. “I’m not looking to get anyone killed over curiosity. But we need more information about this place. That’s why we’re here.” They had a job to do, after all. Even if part of him wanted to stay here, in this weird, peaceful place, and forget about portals and monsters and the rest of it.

The forest had been too quiet, honestly. Quiet enough to make a person forget what they came here to do.

Chris, who had been quiet, spoke up. “And if it is a portal, we’re prepared. We’ve got the gear, and we’ve got each other. That’s all we need.” He said it so calmly, like he was talking about a walk in the park.

Everyone got up from the table and started pulling the camp apart like they'd been waiting for permission. Hope was back, meaner than before.

Luca took a last sip of his now-cold coffee and scanned the horizon. New Dawn’s red sun threw long shadows across the rocks, painting everything in shades of rust and amber. It was a pretty planet, which somehow only made it worse. Seven days on the surface, and he still wasn’t used to air that didn’t sting his lungs, or a sky with no portal glow bleeding through it. Seven days without a real encounter felt wrong, like the planet had been holding its breath and was finally about to exhale something ugly.

If this were anywhere in Sol, they’d already be dodging attacks, their supplies half gone by now. Nowhere was safe there, not unless you shelled out for a Territory Control Tower to set up a safe zone. And even those weren't foolproof.

---

“Everything’s packed and ready,” Ryan called out, hoisting a crate onto the back of the Peregrine. Luca could see the restlessness in Ryan's movements despite his casual tone. Four years of grinding portals, and now they were level-capped, stuck at level sixty with nothing to show for it but gear they barely needed.

Luca understood; they’d all been craving something new, a challenge, and New Dawn was supposed to be it. A fresh start, a chance to explore without always watching their backs. But now the whole trip had narrowed down to this portal.

Emily approached, wiping her hands on her suit, a streak of dirt smudging her cheek. She looked cute, all smudged and determined. “We’re good to go,” she said, smiling, though her eyes kept drifting to the treeline. “Ready to head out?”

“Yeah,” Luca replied, though he hesitated, looking over the treeline. It wasn’t quite paranoia, but he had learned not to trust the quiet. “Let’s get the latest data to the Triumph before we head out. Better safe.”

Emily gave Luca a quick peck on the cheek, then jogged back to help Ryan, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

Seven weeks to get here, years of planning, and now they were ticking off items on a list. For the first time since Alpha Centauri had failed to crack the cap, looking ahead didn’t feel like waiting for the next disappointment. It felt like standing at the edge of the real thing.

He was halfway to the Peregrine’s ramp when the AI spoke again.

Update: energy signature has increased by 340% since initial detection. Pattern is consistent with portal activation sequence. Estimated time to full deployment: fourteen hours."

Luca stopped walking.

Three hundred and forty percent. In the time it had taken them to eat breakfast and argue about it, the portal had more than tripled in strength.

And fourteen hours from now, it would be fully open.

"Luca?" Emily called from the ramp.

He didn’t answer right away. He was still staring northeast, at a treeline he couldn’t see past, toward something that had been invisible twelve hours ago and was now growing fast enough to have a countdown.

Portals in Sol didn’t do that. They were there, or they weren’t, and none of them ever built themselves up like this.

Whatever this was, it wasn’t waiting for them. It was getting ready for them in a way portals in Sol never had.

"Yeah," he said. "We need to move. Now."