First Contact
Copyright© 2026 by Charlie Foxtrot
Chapter 4
The rift breathed.
Eight weeks of reading hadn’t prepared me for the breathing. The accounts I’d found described colors and pressures and currents. Every rift different from the last. None had described breathing.
Pressure pulsed through the air at irregular intervals, hitting my sternum. In the pause between pulses, the turbulence dropped off and movement was possible. During the pulse, the air had weight and my body worked against something that wasn’t quite wind or sound. The intervals fluctuated between sixty-seven and eighty-nine seconds. I counted the beats without thinking.
The ground had a new texture, almost spongy, as if grass were pushing back against my steps. But even that was variable. One step was firm, solid, the next shifting, the third somewhere in between. I was careful as I walked.
The teal and cyan aurora I’d seen from the outside was colored glass looking out at our world from within, a sinuous window showing the mirage of landscape we’d walked through. Nev and Harko were with me, staring at the changed landscape, outlined in a soft wine-hued magenta. The outlines became yellow-tinged as a pulse washed over us.
[Rift harmonics: 0.067 TFU per second.]
That was new.
The first few minutes of moving in the rift were almost easy, once you adjusted to the ever-shifting footing.
I led. Nev was a step behind me. Harko trailing her. The pause-pulse rhythm worked. When the air went quiet, we moved. When it pressed, we held. The breathing of the rift felt as natural as our own.
Nev had stopped walking.
When she spoke, it was quiet. “I didn’t know it would be like this.”
Her eyes moved over me. Then to her own hands when she lifted them. Whatever she was seeing, we were both there.
“I’m glad I came.”
Behind her, Harko had stopped too. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.
We started moving again.
Nev had stopped trying to navigate independently and was following my lead exactly. Everywhere I stepped, the resistance seemed lower for her and Harko. I attributed it to luck. I had a history of lying to myself.
My Flux was high for my age. I knew that. Maybe the rift processed my presence differently because of it. Maybe the system had been waiting to see what would happen if I walked in.
The intervals were getting shorter. Seventy-nine seconds between the last two pulses. Eighty-three before that. I didn’t share the count.
Harko was working harder than I was. His breathing had changed. He was matching my steps when he could, taking longer to recover during the holds. The forces around us had no malice and made no exceptions.
The outlines on us got more aggressive. Magenta sharpened toward red at the edges of each pulse. Yellow during the pressure was harsher than it had been.
I should have been working harder. The rift was making it easier on me, and the easier it got, the less I trusted what was happening. I hadn’t been choosing my steps.
Seventy-three seconds. Then sixty-seven.
We were still moving in the pauses. The pauses were still long enough.
For now.
The turbulence restructured.
Fifty-three seconds since the last pulse. Then the rhythm broke. The pause didn’t come as a drop in pressure like I expected. Instead, it froze, held steady. The sensation of squeezing, testing, almost gripping me.
I responded without thinking. Three steps left, away from the grip to the right. It was an instinctive move, like adjusting to a defender on the soccer field. I hadn’t chosen those steps.
Nev followed immediately. She didn’t so much as sway through the change. Her feet landed exactly in my footsteps. She was braced, tight, aware, beautiful, outlined in sun-warmed magenta, different than before.
[FLUX ANOMALY - ACTIVE] [Classification: Class 4. Escalating.] [Resonance output: 2.8 TFU. Boundary instability: HIGH] [Emergency protocol active. Three personnel in proximity zone.] [Immediate evacuation required.]
The system had moved from advisory to emergency. The first time I’d seen this mode. I read it quick, but paid attention. This wasn’t the time for a mistake.
I looked back. Harko’s outline was more yellow than magenta now. The yellow had been arriving with each pulse, clearing from Nev in the lulls, but Harko was different. His wasn’t clearing. The system was telling me. I hadn’t asked it to. We needed a longer pulse, a rest, for him to recover.
Harko stepped forward, closer, then crumpled. Not dramatically. His legs gave out in slow motion, dropping him to one knee. He caught himself with the butt of his spear and tried to rise. He couldn’t.
His outline was almost entirely yellow.
The flux in the pocket was solidifying around him. The pocket I’d walked through had been gone in three steps. For Harko it was holding, squeezing.
Nev started toward him. I shook my head and she stopped. The next pulse was coming.
Harko closed his eyes. The rapid movement beneath his lids was him reading. Then he opened his eyes and looked at me.
A request to share his overlay appeared in my own. I accepted.
[Frame: Stress threshold exceeded.] [Echo: disrupted.] [Drive: compromised.] [Sustained Flux exposure beyond tolerance. Do not attempt unassisted movement.]
“Told you,” Harko said.
I hadn’t moved.
Nev had. She was at Harko’s side, her magenta-outlined hand on his yellow shoulder. I was rooted in the safe spot my feet had found.
The pulse arrived.
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