The silence in the Joint Deep-Space Tracking center was absolute for exactly three seconds. Then, every console lit up with a single, cascading priority override.

‘Oumuamua—the first visitor, the one that started it all—had just violated the fundamental laws of celestial mechanics. Its trajectory, a perfect hyperbola carved into the void for years, snapped. On the main plot, the line representing its path didn’t curve. It kinked. A 180-degree reversal, executed with the sterile precision of a guided missile. No solar sail could do that. No outgᴀssing jet could do that. It was a controlled, powered maneuver.

But the true terror was in the second plot, blooming beside the first. From a point of absolute emptiness, just behind ‘Oumuamua’s long axis, a new signature appeared. Not a debris field, not a cloud. A second object. Designated Omega-One. It fell into formation with its progenitor, a perfect, fixed two-kilometer separation, moving as one unit.

They were no longer fleeing. They were no longer drifting. They were returning. On a direct, recomputed vector that intersected not with empty space, but with the orbital lane of Jupiter. And the live spectral feed showed Omega-One’s surface wasn’t pitted rock. It was etched with the same damnable, geometric glyphs we’d just seen on 3I/ATLAS.

A cold realization electrocuted the room. ‘Oumuamua was never the anomaly. It was the anchor. The tow cable. It had been waiting, dormant, holding a position in the dark. And now, something had called it home, and it was reeling itself—and its newly unveiled companion—back in. The first contact protocol was obsolete. This wasn’t a hello.

It was a recall. And we were now inside the retrieval zone.