Swipe Right
Copyright© 2026 by Sci-FiTy1972
Chapter 26: Rocket Man
They saw the rocket three days before it arrived.
It rose from Earth on a trajectory that was never subtle—old metal, brute thrust, legacy guidance systems layered with modern corrections. It burned hard and loud, as if daring someone to stop it.
No one did.
On ARK-1, the object was tracked, modeled, simulated, and quietly allowed.
Darius watched its progress from the operations deck, hands clasped behind his back. The path was wrong for accident. Too clean for desperation. It was aimed, measured, and intentionally barely within acceptable tolerance.
A probe.
“They want to see what we do,” Renee said.
“They want to see if we panic,” Amina replied.
Darius nodded. “Or if we swat flies with hammers.”
The rocket crossed the lunar boundary without interference. Shroud layers parted just enough to let it pass—not as permission, but as demonstration. ARK-1 did not hide. It observed.
Inside the capsule were three people.
Two women. One man.
The man was the most dangerous of the three, though he did not look it.
He sat rigid in his restraint harness, eyes fixed forward, breathing shallow but controlled. His hands trembled—not with fear of spaceflight, but with the weight of equations he could not solve.
He was a physicist by training. A problem-solver by instinct.
And he knew exactly why he had been sent.
The capsule docked hard.
Not violently—just imprecisely enough to cause alarm. Guidance thrusters flared late. One docking collar scraped before locking.
ARK-1 absorbed the impact and compensated.
Inside the station, a sector dimmed. Then another. A medical wing lost power for fourteen seconds—long enough to matter, not long enough to kill anyone.
Fourteen seconds was still havoc.
Containment doors slid shut automatically. Pressure equalized. Systems rerouted.
The man felt it through the hull.
He closed his eyes.
This is it, he thought. This is where they make an example.
They did not.
Security teams arrived with practiced calm—no raised voices, no weapons drawn. The three astronauts were escorted from the capsule separately.
The Chinese woman walked upright, jaw set, eyes wide with something close to awe. She was taking everything in—angles, materials, the way light bent subtly wrong near certain corridors.
Curiosity burned brighter than fear.
The Russian woman moved like she belonged there already—muscle memory precise, posture relaxed, eyes never still. She cataloged exits, personnel, response times.
She smiled when spoken to. She listened carefully.
The man did neither.
He stared at the floor until he was alone.
Interrogation was not dramatic.
It was quiet. Methodical. Patient.
Darius sat across from him, hands folded, posture unthreatening.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
The man hesitated.
Darius waited.
“Kim Jun-ho,” the man said finally.
“What do you do, Kim Jun-ho?”
“I ... solve problems,” he replied. “When I am allowed to.”
Darius nodded. “Why are you here?”
Silence stretched.
Kim’s hands clenched in his lap.
“My family,” he said at last. “They are ... guests.”
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