Unauthorised Departure, Service Hatch K-2

This log should not exist.

The hatch register lists no opening. The shift roster lists no external crew. Yet a damaged relay held a forty-three-second transmission stamped from beyond the outer shell.

The speaker identifies the group only as the people who found the old road. They describe exposed ground beyond the Vault through dead machinery and black rain. They say they found a sign in an unreadable language, then heard a second signal answering from somewhere past the ridge.

The transmission ends with a request for the hatch to remain unlocked.

It did not remain unlocked.

Two days later, an interior maintenance camera shows five wet footprints approaching the sealed hatch from inside the rubble field. The recording skips twelve minutes before the door is visible again. No footprints remain.