10.16. 100. 244 |work| Instant

"100," she whispered. "244."

Dr. Mira Vasquez had seen plenty of strange data in her fifteen years at the Array—a sprawling deep-space listening post buried in the Atacama Desert. But this was different. The numbers weren't random noise. They were precise. Encoded. 10.16. 100. 244

She opened a starchart. 100 hours of arc. 244 degrees. A line of sight pointing not outward, but back toward Earth. Toward the buried salt flat beneath them. Toward something that had been asleep for millennia—until 10:16 PM. "100," she whispered