Chapter 67

The radio transmission crackled, broken by static. Liam pressed his ear harder against the speaker, straining to hear anything coming from Earth. No, there was nothing—just silence. He had expected it, even welcomed it in some twisted way. The silence didn't hurt as much as the screams had when he first realized what Mars was becoming.

The red planet wasn't just a rock anymore. It was alive.

Liam remembered when the scientists first noticed the oddities. Mars' surface had been trembling like it was shaking off some kind of terrible dream. The surface—sheets of metal, rock, and ash—had cracked open, revealing thick, black veins that spread across its surface like a disease. From a distance, it looked like a vast body, dying, or maybe waking up. It didn't matter. Mars had been growing ever since.

No one thought it was anything more than a series of storms at first. But as the days dragged on, things started to change in the sky. Mars didn't just stay in its place. It moved. Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, but with a terrible, certain pace.

The first time Liam saw it, he was watching from the observation deck. The view from that high up used to calm him. But Mars wasn't like it used to be. It wasn't some silent, distant neighbor anymore. The red planet had begun to stretch—the surface rippling like it had a skin too tight for its bones. It had risen from its orbit, inching closer.

He hadn't told anyone what he'd seen. Who would believe it? But the engineers, the geologists, all of them, had been whispering about it for days now. It wasn't long before the surface trembled again, and the Earth started to feel it.

Mars was walking.

The damn planet was walking.

Liam didn't know how, or why. There was no time to question. Mars was moving closer every hour, bigger, angrier. It was as if it had gained some kind of life force, some kind of hunger. The veins across its surface weren't just cracks—they were mouths. Eyes. Horrible, black holes that seemed to stare back at the humans who had dared to study it.

No one had warned them. No one had seen it coming. The world below—Earth—had begun to panic. Governments crumbled, cities burned. The people, terrified, didn't even know what was coming. It was just there. The slow crawl of a planet bent on destruction.

And then, there were the whispers. That Mars was alive—not in the sense of biology, but something older, more primal. Something angry. Something that could no longer be ignored.

It wasn't long before they had to lock the base down. Martian dust swirled in the atmosphere. The machines sputtered, their hums frantic now. Power was failing everywhere. Earth was no longer safe. And Mars kept moving, tearing through space like a predator that had smelled its prey.

Liam ran. He didn't know where, didn't know why. But he ran anyway, with the others. No one was speaking anymore. No more whispers. No more thoughts. Just panic.

He made it to the shuttle bay. The shuttle was still there, its engines cold, unused.

The doors didn't open. The base was locked tight.

A crackling sound filled the room. The lights flickered. The walls, they were shaking now—trembling with an alien force.

Liam looked out through the windows.

Mars had reached the final stretch. It was no longer a planet—it had grown arms, legs, huge, massive appendages that stretched through the cosmos. The surface was no longer a static, lifeless thing. It was alive—pulsing with energy. The veins were thick now, red, dripping. The planet itself had become a monster.

And it was coming.

Mars was almost close enough to be seen with the naked eye. The horrible noise it made—like the gnashing of teeth or the cracking of bones—vibrated through everything. Every wall, every machine. It was here. The end of everything, crawling through space, unstoppable.

Liam couldn't breathe. His heart thudded, pounding in his chest, and his hands were shaking. His fingers fumbled at the buttons of the console, desperate to get the shuttle working.

He looked again.

Mars was closer. Much closer. It was no longer just a red spot in the sky. It had grown into something far worse. Something that made the planet feel like it was alive with anger, with hatred.

Liam screamed as he ran to the bay doors, pounding his fists against them, but they didn't open.

The sky above rippled. Mars was about to swallow Earth.

Liam fell to the ground, his face pressed against the cold metal floor, knowing that there was nowhere to go. No escape.

Mars was walking, and it was hungry. It was coming for everything.

And then it took him, slowly. Like a mouth opening and closing. Like a stomach digesting.