The last page of the story is Croft staring at his own reflection, noticing for the first time that he cannot remember making a single major life decision—not joining the DIA, not taking the case, not even falling in love—without a faint, inexplicable sense of permission from somewhere just outside his own thoughts.
In 2029, the Blue Planet Project —a 1,247-page document supposedly compiled by a clandestine UN working group in 1979—surfaces on the dark web. It claims to detail 73 confirmed extraterrestrial species, their biological signatures, psychological profiles, and, most controversially, their legal status under a forgotten treaty signed in Antarctica in 1954.
Croft turns to Appendix J. It’s been removed. Every copy, across every known leak, has that section missing.