In the year 2001, Dr. Aris Thorne stood before the Monolith.
And somewhere, in a crater on the moon, the Monolith waited. Patient as stone. Older than gods. Listening for the next question.
When she opened her eyes, she was weeping. Chen was frozen, jaw slack.
It had been three days since the excavation team on the moon—funded by a silent coalition of space agencies—unearthed the impossible object from a crater floor. The Tycho Monolith, they called it. Blacker than any black, smooth as a frozen lake, and precisely four meters tall, two wide, one deep. Its edges were sharper than a scalpel's blade. It had been buried for four million years.
