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Sorry, for not dropping the next chapter of hollow moon. My computer died and I had to get a new one. And as fates would have it i lost all of my drafts and progress on the story. I got really discouraged and haven't really tried writing lately. But a friend of mine got me writing again, so hopefully soon I'll get back into the swing of things.
I've been sick with a bad cold that is refusing to let go. But when I get some free time, I'll get on the next chapter of Hollow Moon 🌙.
Hollow Moon
Chapter Seven – Beneath the White Silence
For a heartbeat, Tara thought Sean was gone.
The flicker of the corridor lights stretched the shadows into shapes that seemed alive, swallowing whole figures in the blink of an eye. Her pulse hammered against her ribs, her throat tight, her breath caught in that instant between panic and despair.
Then, a voice cut through.
“Relax. I’m here.” Sean’s calm baritone echoed around the corner, steady and grounding.
Victor and Mara followed a moment later, their footsteps quick against the pristine floor. Victor’s mouth twitched into the ghost of a smile, as if amused by the fear on everyone else’s faces. Mara, however, looked rattled—her hand pressed to her comm unit like she’d been seconds from calling for help.
The tension broke with a sharp, collective exhale. Belle let out a shaky laugh, hugging her arms tightly across her chest.
“Don’t do that again,” she muttered, more brittle than she meant to sound.
Sean gave her a wry half-smile, one corner of his mouth lifting. “Didn’t plan on it.”
It should have been enough—that little reassurance, the visible proof that no one had been lost. For a fleeting moment, it was. The crew pulled back into a loose circle, each one letting the relief settle into their bones, laughing in that nervous, fragile way people do after they’ve nearly drowned and come back up for air.
For a fleeting moment, everything felt fine.
But only for a moment.
Eric tilted his head slightly, his expression unreadable. “Do you hear that?”
The laughter died at once. Every pair of boots stilled, every chest went quiet. And there it was—the sound Eric had noticed. A faint hum, steady and low, reverberating in the walls like a hidden organ tone. Not the dead quiet of an abandoned place. Not the silence of emptiness. This was mechanical. Intentional. Alive.
Mara shook her head slowly. “It’s just the systems. Cycling.”
“Or waking up,” Eric muttered. His arms crossed over his chest, the set of his jaw harder now, as though he already knew too much.
Sean straightened, his leader’s calm settling like a mantle around him. “Let’s check in with Robert before we move any deeper. No sense getting lost without backup.”
They retraced their steps to the central lobby, boots squeaking faintly on the polished white floors. Tara glanced upward at the arched ceiling, its smooth curves lit from within as though the walls themselves breathed light. There were no lamps, no visible bulbs—just a soft radiance pulsing faintly, like veins of bioluminescence.
It didn’t feel like walking through a facility. It felt like walking inside something.
At the central desk, Sean activated his comms. The static crackled in her earpiece, sharp enough to sting. Then a voice broke through, distant but clear:
“Reading you, loud and clear. How’s it looking down there?” Robert’s voice carried the taut edge of someone who’d been pacing the cockpit.
Sean exchanged a glance with Tara before replying. “Facility’s intact. Pristine, even. Powered. We’re about to push deeper.”
A pause stretched across the line. “You sure that’s wise?”
“No,” Victor said, flat and dry, loud enough for the mic to pick up. “Not in the slightest.”
Sean ignored him, his eyes locked on the desk’s flickering interface. “We need answers. If you don’t hear from us in a few hours, I want you to take off.”
“Negative,” Robert shot back instantly. “I’m not abandoning you down there.”
“That’s an order,” Sean said, firm and steady. His voice carried the kind of authority that came less from training and more from conviction. “We can’t risk the whole mission. You wait a day. Twenty-four hours. If we’re not back by then, you leave.”
On the other end, Robert’s silence stretched thin as wire. Finally, a grudging reply: “…Copy that. Twenty-four hours.”
The line went dead, leaving only the hum of the facility around them.
Belle lowered her comm and exhaled, muttering under her breath. “Not exactly reassuring.”
“Better than nothing,” Kwan said, adjusting the scanner strapped to his wrist. “At least now we’ve got a clock.”
Eric’s gaze swept upward, tracking the shadows in the ceiling as though expecting them to move. His voice dropped low. “Feels like we just set a timer.”
The words lingered in the sterile air. Tara shivered despite herself.
They pressed on, keeping close. The first floor stretched around them in labyrinthine corridors—gleaming white walls, floral-clean air that smelled faintly like sterilized petals. Holographic panels blinked awake as they approached, projecting shifting symbols in an alien script before flickering away again like shy ghosts.
Everything about the place was… wrong. Not dirty. Not abandoned. Wrong in its perfection.
“This doesn’t look like a lab,” Mara whispered, running her gloved hand along the seamless wall.
“Looks like a resort lobby,” Victor muttered. “Five-star hospital at the very least.”
Belle gave a soft, humorless laugh. “All it’s missing is a concierge.”
The sound of their boots echoed unnaturally, as if the walls absorbed part of the noise but not all. Every step became both muffled and magnified, the acoustics disorienting in a way Tara couldn’t quite put words to.
They passed through what looked like a lounge, though no chairs or couches filled the space. Just empty alcoves shaped for furniture that had never arrived. In one corner, a cluster of consoles flickered faintly, displaying images that dissolved when touched. One showed what might have been a map—but the lines twisted away from comprehension the moment Tara’s eyes tried to follow them.
The further they walked, the more the hum grew. Not just louder, but heavier, as though it pressed against their bones.
It wasn’t long before they reached it—the chamber at the far end of the floor.
The space opened wide, a circular room lined with railings that overlooked a central platform. The air felt colder here, sharper, the clean floral scent replaced by the faint metallic tang of ozone.
A ring of lights embedded in the floor glowed softly, outlining the platform. Its surface was etched with geometric lines that pulsed faintly in time with the hum.
“Elevator,” Kwan breathed, lifting his scanner. His brow furrowed, his voice tightening. “And it goes deep. I’m reading artificial geometry stretching miles downward.”
Victor leaned against the railing, peering down at the platform as if it might stir beneath his gaze. “Miles? This isn’t a basement. This is a buried city.”
Belle swallowed hard. “Or a prison.”
The hum intensified, vibrating faintly beneath their boots. Tara pressed her palm against the railing; it felt warm, as though heat pulsed up from somewhere deep below.
Her stomach tightened. This was it. She didn’t need Eric’s quiet, haunted eyes to know it—the truth waited below.
And whatever it was, it wasn’t meant for them.
Sean’s face was unreadable as he approached the panel embedded in the railing. “This is where we start finding answers.”
The others clustered closer, breaths shallow, eyes fixed on the platform.
The hum rose to a near-thrum, like a heartbeat reverberating through the chamber. And then—
With a hiss of hidden hydraulics, the elevator doors began to open.
Sorry for the delay on Hollow Moon. I had done three more chapters, but i scraped them cause It wasn't flowing or sounding right. But after some rewriting, I will have the next chapter up her by tomorrow.
Hollow moon
Chapter five – Echoes Beneath Dust
“They told us space was empty. But the silence only hides what was buried.” — Recovered fragment, classified transmission – Level Omega Clearance
The moment the rocket’s legs touched lunar soil, a collective breath held for four long years was finally exhaled—shaky, uncertain, filled with a mix of awe and something heavier. The final thrusters sputtered down to silence, and the ship settled into stillness, cradled in an alien world that felt too quiet.
Tara floated just above her seat, her fingers tight on the straps across her chest. Her heart pounded—not from fear, but from a lifetime of dreams finally colliding with reality.
“We’re down,” Sean announced softly from the cockpit, his voice reverent. “Lunar contact achieved. No anomalies in touchdown.”
“Hot damn,” Belle breathed, tears glittering in her eyes. “We did it. We really did it.”
They hadn’t unbuckled yet. No one had the heart to disturb the moment—not just because of what they’d accomplished, but because something felt… wrong.
Victor checked his readings, frowning deeply. “Radiation normal. No external heat spikes. But… atmospheric sensors are reading oxygen levels.”
“Still?” Mara asked from the terminal beside him. She leaned closer to verify.
“Still. Pressure is thin, but stable. Levels are fluctuating like there’s some kind of regulating system.” Victor glanced at Eric, who stood silently near the back, arms crossed, jaw tight.
“Something’s interfering,” Kwan muttered, tapping his screen. “I’m getting false readings on elevation. The surface topography’s shifting—like something below is moving.”
Belle tilted her head. “Malfunction?”
“Checked it twice,” Kwan replied. “Our instruments are fine.”
Tara’s eyes drifted to the porthole window. The lunar surface stretched out before them, vast and silver-gray, broken only by strange shadows and small reflective glints in the dust. Something metallic caught her eye.
“Props,” she murmured.
“What?” Sean turned toward her.
“Look,” she pointed. “That’s not just moon rock. That’s—gear. Equipment. Like the Apollo stuff.”
The crew gathered at the window, quiet falling again as they stared.
Sean narrowed his eyes. “It’s exactly where they said Apollo 11 landed.”
“But that mission was—” Mara hesitated. “It was real… right?”
Eric was still silent. He looked like a man about to either confess or explode.
Tara turned to him slowly. “Eric. You’re quiet.”
He met her gaze. And then finally, he spoke.
“I didn’t tell you everything,” he said softly. “Because I wasn’t allowed to. Not when I worked for them. Not when I ran. And not until I was sure we were really here.”
Everyone froze. The air shifted.
“Worked for who?” Victor asked sharply.
Eric took a breath. “The government. Specifically, intel—special projects related to space and post-space treaties.”
Belle blinked. “You were government?”
Eric nodded once. “Until I got fired for asking too many questions. For finding things I shouldn’t have.”
Sean stood up. “You lied to us.”
“I didn’t lie,” Eric replied, calm but firm. “I just didn’t tell you everything. Because the truth would’ve gotten all of us killed.”
“Truth about what?” Kwan asked warily. “About those readings? The air? The fake Apollo junk?”
Eric moved toward the window, looking out at the dust-covered landscape. “It wasn’t fake,” he said. “It happened. But not how they said. The astronauts went up, they walked the surface. But what they found wasn’t theirs to touch.”
A long silence stretched between them.
“They were warned off,” he continued. “By something already here. The footage we’ve all seen—edited. Sanitized. Everything else—buried. What you’re seeing out there?” He nodded toward the surface. “That’s a message. A reminder. A line drawn in the dust.”
“You’re saying something made a deal with Earth,” Mara said slowly. “And that’s why space exploration stopped?”
Eric met her eyes. “They made a deal with Earth’s governments. Not with humanity.”
Belle stepped back, her voice barely a whisper. “Why didn’t you tell us before?”
“Because I didn’t have proof,” Eric said, glancing toward Tara. “And I didn’t want to risk everything we’d built on a hunch. But now… you’re seeing it too.”
Tara’s mind swirled with the implications. The government’s relentless pursuit of them. The ancient hardware. The breathable air. All of it—clicking together like puzzle pieces from a dream she was no longer sure she wanted to finish.
Victor sat back in his chair, shaking his head. “So what now?”
“We do what we came to do,” Sean said. “We find the truth.”
No one unbuckled just yet. The crew sat in silence for a few more minutes, listening to the hum of the ship, the faint clicks of cooling metal, and the distant static of the scanners still trying to make sense of a world that defied logic.
Mara finally broke the silence. “You realize this changes everything.”
Tara nodded slowly. “That’s why we’re here.”
It took them nearly an hour to fully confirm that all external systems were stable. Pressure suits were checked. Equipment was recalibrated three times. The lander’s hatch remained sealed until every reading was verified.
Finally, when it was time, Sean moved to the controls and triggered the hatch.
The airlock hissed. The outer door opened.
And the moon—silent, ancient, and impossibly alien—greeted them.
One by one, they stepped out.
Tara was the last, her boots hitting the dust with a puff of silver. She breathed in, the helmet sensors confirming what she could already feel in her chest.
There was air.
Thin. Clean. Engineered.
Victor walked beside her, shaking his head. “This isn’t natural. It’s a system.”
“An artificial atmosphere?” Mara asked.
“Has to be.” He turned to Eric. “How long have you known?”
“Long enough to know this place isn’t dead.”
Kwan had his scanner out, sweeping the terrain. “There’s something under us. A large structure. Deep. Artificial geometry. Looks like it spans miles.”
Eric exhaled. “Then we’re close.”
It took several hours of hiking and scanning before they found the entrance.
Buried beneath a rise in the lunar terrain, just beyond the ridge of the false Apollo landing site, they uncovered a sealed access point—half buried, shielded by lunar rock and a mirrored plating that seemed to shimmer slightly in their lights.
Sean crouched by the console near the door. “Manual override only. No language I recognize.”
“I got it,” said Belle, already pulling out her toolkit. “Give me a few minutes.”
As she worked, the others stood in a loose circle. No one spoke. The moon was too quiet. The stars too still.
Then a low hum began to rise beneath their feet.
The panel flashed green.
The door opened.
Inside was not what they expected.
A long corridor stretched forward—gleaming, white, and strangely pristine. The walls pulsed faintly with light. A scent hung in the air—clean, sterile, almost floral.
At the far end of the corridor, a vast lobby opened up before them.
It looked like a cross between a luxury hotel and a private medical facility. High arched ceilings. Polished floors. Holographic directories that flickered to life and then faded again.
No people.
No sound.
Tara stepped forward, heart pounding. “This place is untouched.”
Victor ran his fingers along a console. “And still powered.”
They moved forward in pairs, equipment at the ready.
Suddenly, static crackled through Kwan’s comms.
He turned, frowning. “I’m losing signals.”
“Same,” said Mara. “Something’s interfering.”
They reached the central desk—sleek, curved, unmanned. A soft chime echoed from somewhere above.
Then the lights flickered.
Belle turned. “Where’s Sean?”
“He was just—” Tara looked around. “Where’s Victor?”
The group had scattered without realizing it.
The quiet was no longer peaceful. It was thick. Watching.
And the Hollow Moon had begun to whisper.
Wow I didn't notice that I have 21 followers. thank you. I hope you enjoy what I have done so far. Also a shout out to all the amazing creators that I have also repost from time to time. If you weren't for them I would not be doing what I am doing now.
Hollow Moon
Chapter Four: "The Stars Within Reach"
The air was heavy with tension long before the engines fired.
Tara stood at the base of the launch tower, her suit sealed, helmet cradled under her arm, eyes scanning the dusky horizon. The sun hadn’t yet risen, and the early morning shadows clung to the edges of the facility like ghosts refusing to let go. She felt her pulse in her ears—part nerves, part adrenaline. This was it. Four years of building in the dark, of pretending they were just eccentric space nerds running a historical museum. Four years of hiding weld burns and bruises beneath long sleeves, of coded transmissions and nightly simulations.
And now, the rocket—sleek, silver, and born of salvaged bones and brilliant minds—waited atop the launch pad.
Kwan stood a few feet away, double-checking the checklist on her datapad, murmuring the final launch codes under her breath. Victor was next to her, eyes narrowed toward the horizon, where unmarked vehicles had begun appearing just beyond the tree line.
“They’re early,” Victor muttered, his voice low but tense. “We’ve got maybe ten minutes before they breach the gates.”
Sean swore. “That’s not enough time.”
“We make it enough.” Belle adjusted her suit, tightening the straps on her chest piece. “The airspace is locked down. If we go now, we can beat them.”
Eric moved to the comms panel, eyes hard. “Ground team, status?”
“We’ve got agents on-site,” came the static-filled reply. “They’re trying to delay us with warrants and inspections. Stall protocol engaged.”
A beat. Then the voice added, “Go. Now.”
Tara barely had time to breathe before the call to board came through. The crew moved in sync, climbing the tower with swift, practiced precision. One by one, they entered the capsule—eight dreamers, rebels, and believers.
The launch cabin was tight but immaculate. Tara settled into her seat, fingers trembling as she strapped in. Across from her, Belle offered a small, encouraging smile. Eric sat beside her, unnervingly calm.
Kwan and Victor took the rear seats, near the flight systems. Sean, Mara, and Arjun filled the mid-level chairs. The hum of internal systems filled the air as hatches sealed shut.
“T-minus 90 seconds,” the AI intoned.
Outside, the ground crew was in a full standoff, physically blocking access to the control room as agents waved badges and shouted legal threats. But the countdown didn’t stop.
“T-minus 30.”
Tara closed her eyes. Her grandmother’s voice echoed in her mind—“T-minus girl, always chasing the stars.” A nickname born from obsession. From defiance.
The rumble began deep, like the earth itself was growling. Then the pressure built.
“5… 4… 3… 2… 1…”
The rocket screamed to life.
Gravity crushed them into their seats as fire and force hurled them skyward. Through the tiny windows, the world fell away—first the treetops, then the curve of the earth, then the fading blue of atmosphere.
No turning back.
Stage one separation was smooth—metal clamps hissed and detached, and the lower booster dropped away in a plume of white vapor. The second stage engaged, and they continued their ascent, the vibrations leveling to a steady hum.
Tara opened her eyes. The blackness of space stretched in every direction, pierced only by stars.
“We’ve cleared Earth’s pull,” Kwan announced, her voice light with disbelief.
For a moment, no one spoke. Then, Sean let out a breathless laugh.
“We did it,” he whispered.
They had worked like ghosts for four years—fabricating parts, designing systems, scavenging components from forgotten Cold War bunkers and decommissioned satellites. None of them had slept more than a few hours a night in weeks. They had solder burns, cracked fingernails, and permanent ink stains. But they had done it.
They were in space.
And for the first time, they were weightless.
Tara’s arms lifted slowly as she unbuckled, watching her body drift with surreal grace. Belle followed, spinning gently with a giggle that bubbled like champagne. Even Eric allowed himself a rare, amused grin as he floated past a stray pen that bobbed between them.
Kwan, ever the pragmatist, tapped the system panel and opened the internal stabilizers for orientation. “We’ll maintain heading. We should arrive in lunar orbit in 43 hours.”
Arjun kicked gently off a wall panel, flipping in the air. “So what now?”
“Now,” Victor said, tugging a floating protein bar from his pack, “we enjoy two days of peace before the next nightmare begins.”
The hours passed in a strange rhythm. Without sunrise or sunset, time became abstract. The crew took turns sleeping, eating, and checking systems. Mara sat with Kwan going over lunar surface protocols. Belle began rechecking the sample containers. Sean kept looking at the Earth shrinking behind them, as if afraid it might vanish entirely.
Tara drifted through the cabin, watching the little rituals of her teammates. Victor fixed a loose panel with duct tape and a curse. Arjun recorded a log entry about how “space smells like burnt metal.” Eric typed quietly on his tablet, always observing.
Even here, Tara could feel the weight of what they were doing—not just for themselves, but for humanity. The governments of Earth had signed an agreement decades ago: no more moon missions. The surface was off-limits, protected by a secret clause only Eric knew existed. Now they were about to violate it.
And no one knew why that rule existed in the first place.
On the second day, they gathered near the viewport, huddled in floating clumps. The moon grew larger with each hour, transforming from a silver disc into a vast, pockmarked sphere. It filled the windows, every crater casting long shadows.
“I can’t believe it,” Arjun murmured.
“We’re going home,” Mara whispered.
“No,” Eric said quietly. “We’re going somewhere no one’s meant to return to.”
The final stage of descent began with retro-thrusters engaging, the ship slowly angling into orbital alignment. Kwan took over manual controls while Victor read off coordinates. The shuttle’s systems hissed and shifted, pieces retracting and folding as they began final approach.
“Tara,” Belle called. “You might want to see this.”
Tara floated to the front.
The lander’s external sensors flared, then adjusted.
Readings scrolled across the monitors. Oxygen. Nitrogen. Trace carbon.
“Wait,” Tara said. “That’s not possible.”
Eric leaned forward, staring at the numbers.
“There’s… an atmosphere?” Belle whispered.
The cabin fell into stunned silence. Outside, the moon turned slowly beneath them. Silent. Waiting.
And alive.
reblog if you're corny and insufferable
I'll claim corny
Hollow moon
Chapter Three: Below
“There are no ghosts here. Only echoes that still bleed.” —Unknown transmission, recovered from Moon Site X-7
The air was wrong.
It wasn’t the smell—there was none. It wasn’t the light—because there wasn’t any. It was the silence. Too complete, like the entire place had swallowed its own heartbeat and forgotten how to breathe.
The lunar surface was still. Just a field of shadows and memory. Craters yawning like dead mouths beneath the sunless black. Only the battered remnants of 1969 remained: a single American flag, half-buried in dust. A gold-plated reflector panel. A lifeless lander descent stage. No domes. No doors. No signs of what lay beneath.
Five miles down, the elevator screeched to a halt.
Stretch stood first, bones creaking with tension. His tall frame cast sharp angles in the flickering emergency lights of the shaft. His jacket was cinched tight, collar up. His glowing orange eye flicked once at the control panel. Cracked. Sparking.
“Dead systems,” Undyne muttered, fingers flying nervously over the scorched interface. Her glasses reflected red warning sigils scrolling in a language none of them spoke.
Gaster stepped forward. His coat, once pristine, now smudged with lunar soot. He placed a hand gently on her shoulder. “We’re in. Doesn’t matter how far. Blue is somewhere below. We keep moving down.”
A low, distant moan echoed up the corridor. Not mechanical. Not wind.
Something alive.
The outer corridors of the lab were a mausoleum.
Bodies—or what was left of them—were slumped along the walls. Some burned. Some frozen in poses of escape. Some… partially changed. One corpse pulsed when Alphys passed it. She lifted her plasma spear and plunged it in without hesitation.
“Don’t look,” she growled. “These things aren’t dead enough.”
Napstablook floated silently behind her. Their ectoplasmic form shimmered with unease. “This place... it remembers what happened. I feel it screaming. Like… in the walls.”
Stretch clenched his jaw. He kept one hand tight on his cracked bone-blade, the other held out slightly, telekinetic feelers brushing the bulkheads like invisible fingers.
“It’s not just the monsters,” he said quietly. “It’s the place. The lab itself is infected.”
They reached a sealed bulkhead, twisted from the inside.
Alarms had once blared here—now only dull crimson strobes blinked on the floor. Undyne dropped to her knees and cracked open the access panel. Her fingers trembled.
“System’s fragmented… keeps trying to override itself. I think something’s rewriting the code in real time.”
“From what?” Gaster asked.
She looked up, wide-eyed. “Not who. What.”
Stretch stepped beside her. “Then burn it. Melt the system and force it open.”
Her palms sparked as she rewired the core. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”
“You didn’t,” Stretch said. “You volunteered.”
“I regret everything.”
The door clanked open.
Beyond the threshold was a new level—deeper. The walls changed. Gone were the clean white sterility of science. These corridors were darker, older. Etched in symbols. Alien design. Like the lab had swallowed another building… another world.
Alphys tensed. “This wasn’t on the schematics.”
“Because it wasn’t meant to be found,” Gaster said grimly.
The hallway descended in a spiral, half-melted from an explosion—or something more organic. Lights here were wrong, glowing blue mist leaking from cracked ceiling panels.
Then came the sound.
Not screaming. Not speech.
A sob.
Small. Familiar.
Stretch’s glowing eye flared.
“…Blue.”
They ran.
Down twisting halls where gravity seemed to flicker. Past containment chambers shattered from within. One room still housed a form—a massive beast, covered in barbed armor, breathing shallowly in the dark. Alphys held up a hand. They didn’t stop.
Finally, they reached the broken quarantine level.
Stretch was first through the broken door.
Inside, curled beside a deactivated control station, lay a smaller skeleton in a torn lab garment. His eyes—one blue, the other dim—fluttered open.
“…Stretch?”
His voice cracked.
Stretch dropped to his knees. “I’ve got you, bro.”
But even as he reached out, something else moved in the shadows behind Blue. A soft slither. A wet hiss.
Undyne raised her blaster. “Incoming—!”
The walls erupted.
Felt like drawing. Still suck but it makes me feel better.
Chapter Two: The Weight Between Stars
“It’s not the silence of space that kills you—it’s the noise you carry there.” — Old engineer’s margin note, source unknown
The silence after training always felt louder than it should.
Tara lay sprawled across the padded floor of the sim chamber, arms and legs flung like wreckage from a crash landing. Sweat soaked her shirt. Her knees ached. Somewhere nearby, someone groaned—Belle, probably. Or maybe Victor, who liked to complain even when he was winning.
“Okay,” Belle wheezed, “I’m calling mutiny on gravity.”
“It’s simulated,” Sean muttered from across the chamber.
“Then I’m simulating rebellion.”
Laughter rippled through the group. Not loud, but real.
Tara opened one eye and spotted Victor curled against the far wall, dramatically sipping from a water pouch like it was fine wine. Eric sat cross-legged with quiet precision, checking the seals on an old regulator. Mira and Kwan were helping each other unclip from the restraint lines, still catching their breath. Juno, the youngest of the crew, lay flat on her back, staring at the ceiling like it might open into space.
Victor groaned. “Tell me again why we’re doing this?”
“Because we need to survive on the moon,” Kwan said.
“Debatable,” Victor replied. “What if we just… lie very still and let the robots do everything?”
“You already lie very still,” Juno chimed in. “You’re basically the prototype.”
More laughter. Tara smiled, exhausted but light.
Belle sat up and tossed her sweat-damp braid over one shoulder. “Still think we should’ve skipped the zero-oxygen crawl. That thing is just a fancy panic box.”
“You did fine,” Sean said.
“She panicked halfway through and tried to fight the floor,” Victor corrected.
Belle flipped him off, cheerfully. “It looked at me wrong.”
Eric gave a small chuckle from his corner but didn’t join in.
Tara caught it—the way his eyes lingered on Belle a moment too long. Not in a way that meant anything… yet. More like a habit forming behind his expression. A flicker of something unspoken. Belle didn’t notice.
But Tara did.
She sat up slowly, stretching her legs, and caught her breath. “My grandma would’ve said we were courting death.”
“She sounds fun,” Mira said.
“She was,” Tara replied. “She called me ‘T-minus Girl’—because I was always counting down to something. Christmas, birthdays, exams. She said I’d probably start a countdown to my own funeral just for the drama.”
Belle grinned. “Explains so much.”
“She sounds like my kind of woman,” Victor said.
“Don’t talk about her like that,” Tara warned, mock-serious.
Sean passed by her with a cooling unit pack and murmured, “You never stop counting.”
It wasn’t a question. And it wasn’t unkind.
Outside the sim chamber, the sun was setting. They filtered into the upper level of the museum like they weren’t carrying secrets in their blood. From the outside, they were docents. Archivists. Tour guides. People who gave talks about moon rocks and told wide-eyed children how brave the past had been.
But the past wasn’t done.
In the conference room, mismatched chairs formed a ragged circle. Belle brought tea. Juno grabbed the last decent protein bar and made a show of licking the wrapper. Victor passed around a sheet of diagnostics, muttering about the power grid like it had personally betrayed him.
The windows glowed with moonlight.
Eric remained quiet, leaning against the far wall, eyes scanning the room like he was always listening for a sound no one else could hear.
“What’s our status on the press kit?” Kwan asked.
“I finished the fake interview clips last night,” Mira said. “We look very trustworthy and not at all like a rogue space agency.”
Victor snorted. “Do I at least look hot in mine?”
“No,” Belle said. “You look like you haven’t slept since Y2K.”
“Perfect,” Victor nodded. “Authenticity.”
Tara sipped her tea and leaned against the window, watching shadows stretch across the museum’s front lawn. A few weeds had begun to breach the concrete edges. Nature didn’t wait for permission.
Neither did they.
A soft ping echoed from the wall console—low priority sensor trip. Could’ve been a bird, or a dust shift. Could’ve been something else.
Sean checked it without moving from his chair. “False ping on the west gate. No visual. Rebooting.”
“Third time this week,” Juno said.
“Wiring’s aging,” Mira offered.
“Or someone’s watching us,” Victor muttered.
They went quiet for a moment. Just a beat too long.
“We’ve been careful,” Sean said. “No leaks. No signs.”
“Yet,” Eric added, without looking up.
Tara glanced at him. His voice was soft, but there was something behind it—something steel-edged. Not paranoia. Experience.
She still didn’t know much about where he came from. None of them did. But sometimes he moved like a man who’d already seen the consequences.
Belle bumped her knee into Sean’s and took his hand. He let her, his posture easing just a fraction.
Eric saw it. His expression didn’t change.
Tara looked away, unsure why that made her feel so strange.
Outside, the moon hung low—clear and heavy, its surface catching the sun’s edge like polished bone. Tara’s breath caught in her throat.
It felt like it was watching.
Soon, she thought.
Not long now.
The air in the room shifted—laughter settling into quiet purpose. The kind of stillness that came before the next big step. Not fear, but anticipation.
“Tomorrow,” Sean said, standing, “we run the fuel simulations. If they hold, we start hardware testing by next week.”
“And if they don’t?” Juno asked.
Victor sighed. “Then we cry into freeze-dried pudding and start over.”
Tara raised her cup. “To pudding and progress.”
They clinked plastic mugs. Someone turned on music—old stuff, low and fuzzy through the cracked speakers. Outside, the moonlight spilled across the launch yard like a promise.
Eight hearts. One mission.
And the countdown never stopped
Opening Quotes
"The moon was never empty. We just stopped asking the right questions." — Declassified transmission, origin scrubbed
"I wasn’t born for silence. I was born to hear what the stars stopped saying." — Tara Collins, final Earth entry
Chapter One Hollow moon
The stars had always whispered to Tara Collins, even when the world fell silent.
She stood alone beneath the fading letters of “Johnson Space Center,” now little more than a sun-bleached skeleton of its former self. Most saw a dead museum—just another relic from the golden age of spaceflight. But to Tara, it was a cradle of forgotten dreams. This place had once launched people into the sky. It had once mattered.
Now, it was a shell. And like the moon above, it held its secrets close.
Wind scraped across the cracked concrete, carrying the smell of dust and rust. The world had moved on. The International Space Station had been scrapped. Human boots hadn’t touched extraterrestrial soil in over a century. Space exploration was now a sterile, drone-driven operation—remote, silent, impersonal. Safer, they said. Cheaper. Cleaner.
But not better.
Tara tilted her head back, scanning the pale Texas sky. The moon would rise soon. She waited for it like a lover left too long in the dark.
She could still remember the first time she saw it through a telescope as a child. That craggy, ancient face staring back at her. So close, so present, like it knew she was watching. Like it wanted her to come find it. She’d built her whole life around that pull—through books, simulations, volunteering at science centers. She had been too young to go when the world had still cared. And now, everyone claimed it was too late.
But she was going anyway.
Inside the museum—if anyone still called it that—the exhibits were shadows of what they once were. Outdated models, faded posters, and gift shop memorabilia covered just enough surface to satisfy casual visitors. But beneath the shell, in rooms that used to store brochures and brochures, something else was growing.
They were rebuilding NASA from the bones up.
Every bolt tightened. Every circuit re-soldered. Every flight manual memorized. It was a secret project born not out of funding or fame but of faith—faith that humanity belonged among the stars. Tara had helped lead it, fueled by a fire she couldn’t name. A need. A calling. And she wasn’t alone.
There were others. Quiet engineers. Former pilots. A tech salvager with more scars than stories. A handful of true believers who had risked everything to make this impossible dream real.
It had taken years.
Four years of backbreaking work, carefully woven lies, and late-night planning beneath flickering lights. They called themselves docents, curators, archivists—any title that kept suspicion low. Their “restoration project” earned them just enough funding and press coverage to survive. Tour groups came through twice a week, none the wiser. But beneath the clean walls and looping documentaries, they were building something meant to fly.
Something meant to leave.
And lately, they had all begun to feel the heat.
Last week, a man from some unnamed agency had stopped by. His smile was too polished, his questions too casual. He asked about fire code compliance and digital archives, but his eyes lingered on their hands—the callouses, the scrapes, the faint tan lines from goggles and gloves. No one said it, but everyone felt it:
They were being watched.
Tara hadn’t told anyone, but she’d seen him glance up toward the secured basement door—just once, but it had chilled her to the core. That door led to their lab. Their heart. If anyone went down there without clearance, it was over.
The sun had begun to dip, washing the world in bruised light. Shadows stretched across the lot like long fingers. Tara’s eyes caught on the chain-link fence lining the west perimeter—bent slightly in the corner where one of the crew slipped in late one night.
Even their entrances had to be secret.
A quiet shuffle behind her broke the moment. Belle stepped out, her expression unreadable in the dying light.
“You always this dramatic, or is it a moon phase thing?” she asked, holding out a mug of tea.
Tara managed a dry smile, taking it gratefully. “It’s not dramatic if it’s true.”
Belle rolled her eyes but stood beside her anyway, shoulder to shoulder. The air between them was warm, familiar, tinged with something unsaid.
“I hate that it’s beautiful,” Belle murmured, nodding to the eastern sky where the moon was beginning to rise. “It’s like it knows we’re watching.”
Tara's gaze didn’t waver. “It’s been waiting.”
There was silence between them for a moment—deep and reverent. The kind of silence that felt like it meant something.
From inside, the sound of a dropped wrench echoed faintly through the open bay. Tara recognized the distant cursing—Victor, their lead systems analyst. Brilliant, irritable, and always skeptical of the world outside their project.
“He’s probably elbow-deep in circuit guts again,” Belle muttered, grinning.
“Or rewiring something that wasn’t broken,” Tara said.
A shadow passed through the lit windows—Eric, moving silently between workstations, shoulders hunched in deep focus. His movements were efficient, careful. He carried a small crate of tools and what looked like a retrofitted oxygen scrubber prototype.
He didn’t speak as he passed them on the way to the storage wing. He just gave Tara a nod. Belle, too.
But his glance lingered a moment longer on Belle before he turned away.
Tara noticed. Belle didn’t.
Footsteps approached from the lot—measured, deliberate.
Sean.
He walked like someone who’d never stopped being a soldier. Even out of uniform, everything about him radiated control. He carried a clipboard, an old-fashioned watch on one wrist, and a discipline that never relaxed.
“Cooling unit’s stabilized,” he said. “Had to reroute power through Module C. It’s patched for now, but it won’t hold forever.”
Tara nodded, sipping her tea. “Nothing does.”
Sean didn’t smile, but something in his eyes softened briefly—respect, maybe. Or fatigue.
“What’s the status on the secondary payload?” Belle asked.
“In position. We’ll test comms again at 0200.”
The words passed between them like code. It wasn’t safe to say too much out loud, even here. Too many ears. Too many unknowns.
Together, they turned to the sky.
The moon had risen—ghost-white and full, casting its pale light over the facility like a watchful eye. It seemed bigger tonight. Closer. Or maybe Tara was just more aware of how little time they had left before the world noticed them.
She looked at the others—Belle, with her wit and restless heart. Sean, steady and scarred. Eric, quiet and loyal. Victor, muttering in the dark, and the rest of the team behind closed doors.
They had nothing left to give but everything they were.
“I used to think it was lonely up there,” she whispered. “But now I think it’s waiting.”
No one disagreed.
Inside the hangar, machines hummed. Screens blinked. A launch window opened, just weeks away. And far below, in a chamber sealed with biometric locks, something very old and very secret sat waiting in silence.
But that was a truth for another chapter.
For now, they stood beneath the moonlight, quiet rebels chasing ghosts in the dark—
—and dreaming of the day they’d rise
all-seeing
Ok, I have a theory. We all know a monster will dust if his soul is destroyed. And ink is technically walking around without one. What if he still has his soul with him and no body realized it. Ink was created by an artist to be an artist along with the rest of his dimension. But it was never finished and was left with only one completed character,ink. This drove him insane where he took his soul and tore it apart to escape. When he woke up, he had no memory, and these black tattoos were all over his body. What if his soul is his tattoos, and the reason why he can't feel without his viles is because his soul is protecting him from the pain he endured and will suffer if he remembers.
If your heart is broken, make art with the pieces. Shane koyczan
I feel like this right now
well don’t you?
it’s MY blog I’m ALLOWED to post self-indulgent things goddamnit—
credits to @aka-indulgence for the Moonlight AU, featuring my design for mc - they have a sun corona around their eyes, yay :D - and a different design for sans bc i suck at drawing long baggy sleeves and bones are interesting to draw. AND HE NEEDS SPACE FOR HIS ARMS. OKAY.
anyway. yeah. i'm going to go seclude myself away for the next five billion years hahaha goodbye.
OOOO HES SO SPOOKY THANK YOU
I love moon sans so much. You did amazing 👏
when your hulking eldritch goth bf turns to you after the final battle to save the world and asks if you want to go do mafia taxes together
