The Last Transmission

Not everything that returns from space comes back human.

The sole survivor of the Mars Enyo Expedition has returned to Earth—but something about Commander Jason MacLeod isn't right.

In the sterile confines of a top-secret NASA quarantine facility, psychologist Dr. Vanya Guthrie faces the most challenging case of her career. Commander MacLeod's debriefing reveals disturbing inconsistencies: perfect recall of technical details but a complete lack of emotion when describing his colleagues' deaths. His posture too rigid. His eyes reflecting light... differently.

As Guthrie delves deeper, MacLeod reveals the expedition's dark secret: an ancient signal buried beneath the Martian surface, broadcasting for 2.3 million years. A discovery that preceded the tragic deaths of his entire crew.

But when MacLeod's medical scans trigger violent, unexplainable reactions and security systems begin to fail throughout the facility, Dr. Guthrie must confront an impossible truth about what returned from Mars. With time running out and an unknown threat growing, she must rely on her understanding of human psychology to face something that may be anything but human.

From the sterile hallways of a classified government facility to the desolate caves of Mars, The Last Transmission explores the terrifying possibility that first contact was never meant to happen on another world, but in a debriefing room where the line between human and alien begins to blur.

For fans of cosmic horror in the tradition of John Carpenter's The Thing and Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation, this haunting short story asks: What makes us fundamentally human, and how would we recognize when something isn't?