First Contact - Part 4

First Contact

by Charlie Forêt

A short story set in the Integration era.

©2026, by Charlie Forêt, all rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Cover Photo: ©2026, by Charlie Forêt

Ebook ISBN: 979-8-9985516-9-7

Part Four

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.

I felt the pressure through my sternum, familiar now. My feet shifted, riding the wave of pressure and the shifting surface beneath me, balanced against the rift. Nev braced over Harko, her body between him and the pressure front, her feet wide and stable. Harko's eyes were closed, his mouth opened, his breathing labored.

When the pulse passed, Nev's outline returned to magenta. Harko's yellow silhouette was overbright.

Forty-seven seconds since the prior pulse.

I expanded my overlay.

The familiar elements remained, but there were new details as well. The Class 4 banner held, pulsing in the same magenta outlining Nev.

[Resonance output: 2.9 TFU. Boundary instability: HIGH][Rift harmonics: 0.127 TFU per second.]

The next pulse would come sooner than that last. The power was increasing as well. Nev leaned in closer to Harko, talking to him. I couldn't hear what she said, but he nodded, barely.

[Field coherence: 0.41. Declining.]

It was superimposed next to the yellow nimbus surrounding Harko.

That can't be anything good.

Nev looked up at me. The same look from the cafeteria. The look she used when she was waiting for me to catch up with her.

She looked down to Harko.

Whatever she was waiting for, I didn't have.

The next pulse hit. I'd just counted forty-one. It was stronger, as I'd expected.

[Resonance output: 3.1 TFU. Boundary instability: CRITICAL][Rift harmonics: 0.149 TFU per second.]

Harko's outline was brighter yet.

[Field coherence: 0.31. Declining.]

Nev's magenta now carried a tinge of yellow that was fading slowly. Whatever was happening, it was getting worse.

It was the kick careening toward the goal.

[Field coherence: 0.29. Declining.]

I read it and realized it meant nothing I could use. The reading stopped.

In the visual silence of the overlay I looked at the teal and cyan fields swirling around us. The quiet pattern was sweeping over ground I knew wasn't real, forming a pocket of stability at my feet. I still felt the pressure, but the equilibrium point at my feet was tangible. Recognizing that revealed something. The point I stood in was a bubble, a macroscopic pocket. There were more now that I knew what to look for. The bubbles were moved by the pulses, but had their own motion as well. They were escaping somewhere.

I saw it then. The surface of the rift with our reality escaping like exhaled breaths rising from the deep. It was a path to follow.

I turned to Nev. "I know which way."

She didn't ask how. She knelt lower, getting Harko's arm across her shoulders. His weight came onto her. She took it as she stood.

The bubble we were in was already drifting. I could feel it. Slow, steady, toward the surface of the rift. Toward our escape. I went with it. Nev came with me, carrying Harko with his feet barely touching the still shifting ground.

The pulse came. The bubble held. Pressure built around us, but inside it was tolerable. Harko squeezed his eyes shut, panting as the wave passed. Nev looked at me, waiting for the next step. The bubble drifted in the field, carrying us without effort.

The next bubble was three meters away, drifting in a slightly different direction. I felt the moment, gauged the timing. We'd have a second, maybe two.

"Now," I said and stepped.

Nev moved with me. Three steps, crossing the gap, feeling the pressure change. Harko's legs touched down inside the new sphere of stability just as the pulse arrived. The new bubble held the same way as the first.

I watched the flowing field of energy, looking for our next steps. The number of bubbles was clearer to me now, a veritable froth surging through the rift. Three would pass close enough to step into, but only one was going the direction I sensed was right. The other two were floating to foreign surfaces, places I instinctively knew we should avoid, places I didn't want to think about.

I had been close to stepping into one of those wrong bubbles. The overlay didn't warn me, my own intuition did. I stopped. It was moving slower than the others. Slower meant longer to reach an exit. Slower might be stable, but time was what we needed.

I shifted my stance, eyeing a different path. The bubble we needed was to the right, not our left.

"This way," I said as I stepped in front of Nev. She pivoted and followed.

The crossing wasn't easier, but it was as I expected. My feet moved confidently without guidance, feeling the shifts, anticipating the force challenging us. We arrived and settled before the pulse hit. Each bubble was a point of stability in the storm. Each bubble would take us where it was going. We still needed to find the path home.

The fourth bubble was easier. I handled the shifting drift, the variable pressure. I gauged which flow this bubble was on and sensed it was the path we needed. When the pulse came, it was different. The hum I'd been ignoring was muted, the pressure less intense. Our footing felt stable for the first time since entering the rift. This bubble sheltered us somehow. It felt bigger, more real.

Harko's eyes opened briefly, then closed again. Nev's aura cycled from yellow-tinted back to solid magenta. The teal field around us was softer, with more blue than green. The waves were almost still from within our protective sphere.

[Field coherence: 0.31. Stable.]

Stable. Good.

Nev looked at me. I nodded. She set Harko down, carefully, his weight transferring to the not-real ground in stages. He folded down against her, breathing slowly.

[Flux: 13 → 14. Active engagement confirmed.][First recorded instance of intentional affinity deployment. Significant.]

Significant.

Nothing in my overlay changed what we still had to do. I dismissed it.

We weren't out yet.