I--- Antonov An 990 -

The sensors went white. The 990 did not crash. It did not explode. According to the telemetry, the aircraft simply ceased to be in the air. One moment it was a sixty-ton mountain of Duralumin and titanium. The next, it was a perfect, three-dimensional shadow of itself, painted onto the clouds below.

It sounds like an engine, idling.

The mission was simple: fly to the edge of the stratosphere, open the ventral shutters, and hum. i--- Antonov An 990

It sounds like a heartbeat.

The I-Carrier

On that night, the I--- Antonov An-990 rose from a hidden airstrip near the Aral Sea. It reached operational altitude at 02:00 local time. The ground crew, wearing double-layered ear defenders, watched the altimeter tick past 15,000 meters. The order came over the scrambled channel: “Carrier, this is Hearth. Execute Lullaby.” The sensors went white

When search teams reached the coordinates two hours later, they found no wreckage. But they found the ground. For a radius of four kilometers, the Siberian permafrost had been compressed into a crystalline lattice. And embedded in that lattice, at perfect mathematical intervals, were the frozen, peaceful faces of the ground crew, smiling as if listening to a favorite song. According to the telemetry, the aircraft simply ceased