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Chapter One  – A Quiet Dawn

July 22nd 2057 Planet Olympia, Alpha Centauri

 

 

 

 

Dr. Henry Clarke watched the monitors like a priest at an altar. Blue and white waves pulsed across the screens in front of him. Each screen displayed the vitals of his oldest and most revered subject: Daniel Blake, Trial #1.

              Fifty years of forced sleep, fifty years of preparation, and today Clarke would wake him.

              He stood alone in the observation room, hands clasped behind his neck. The hum of machinery filled the cool, sterile room. In a perfectly predictable pattern, everything he preferred humanity to be.

***

Aurora Knight sat quietly by her partner’s bed, waiting for Daniel to emerge from his coma. His chest rose and fell almost in sync with the machine next to him. His dark hair curled exactly the same—untouched by time. When his eyes opened, they would still be the blue she remembered. He kept his left hand open, almost as if he was waiting for hers.

He was alive. But not yet.

Most days, she didn’t speak. Just sat. Walked when she had to. Thought about Earth. Thought about him.

He will wake up. And when he does… maybe it will all go back to normal. She reassured herself.

She hadn’t slept in what felt like days, but time on Olympia didn’t measure itself in days. It was measured in hope.

              She reached for the small frame on the bedside table and smiled. She tapped it, and the photo came to life. What felt like a lifetime ago, the sunlight reflecting in the ring he had just given her. Daniel’s smile, what she would give to see that right now. Her eyes began stinging as she held back tears.

              At the foot of the bed, a nurse approached quietly; Jess.

One of the few hybrids who still knew warmth.

‘He’s stabilising, and when he wakes, you need to be the first thing he recognises.’

Aurora swallowed hard.

‘Small expectations, Jess. It’s been fifty years.’

              Most failed hybrids like Jess had lost their memories or sense of who they were before the trials. But still, she remembered who she used to be.

              She adjusted a dial. The waves on the screen spiked.

‘His mind is dreaming,’ Jess whispered. ‘You should speak to him — give him something to wake up to.’

Aurora nodded and leaned in close. She brushed her fingers against his shoulder and slowly traced his bones all the way to his hand.

Suddenly the world screamed.

She jolted upright in her chair, reliving a memory. She was tumbling. The seat belt snapped. Metal and glass spun around her, every slam against the steering wheel knocking the breath from her chest. The world rolled, flipped, then crushed her back against the seat. The hum of machinery, replaced by the roar of tearing steel. The ring on her finger sparkled once before falling off her finger and into a deep abyss.

She opened her eyes. Her breath was rigid. Her heart pounded. The room returned around her, the bed, the bright lights and the rhythmic sound of machinery.

Jess looked up, startled by the whole event.

‘Aurora?’

‘I’m okay,’ she lied.

It wasn’t a dream. The past was trying to claw its way back.

The pulse on Daniel’s monitor began to climb.

‘Au..rora,’ he said softly.

His body began moving.

‘Aurora, no—please no,’ Daniel screamed, as if he were in pain.

Aurora knew what he was reliving, but she was too afraid to tell Jess.

‘He’s crossing the threshold—quick, Aurora, hold him!’

Aurora grabbed his arm.

‘Daniel, I’m here, it’s me.’

His eyes snapped open, for one perfect second, they remembered her.

‘Hello Daniel. What’s the last thing you remember?’ Daniel’s mind was foggy, but as he concentrated harder, it started coming back to him. He saw an image of a girl, a beach, and when he looked up, he saw a bright object in the sky, heading right towards him.

‘Have you heard of the A.L.I.A project… Horatius Blake?’

The name rang a distant memory in Daniel’s mind, he remembered seeing something about it, but he was confused.

 ‘No, nothing.’

His head began throbbing as if it were trying to find something that wasn’t there.

His uncle stepped beside the bed, put a hand on Aurora’s shoulder, he reassured her Daniel wouldn’t be himself for a few days.

Daniel fell back into unconsciousness, pictures playing in his mind as if he were reliving them. He walked into a large glass building, he was greeted by an AI voice originating from his phone.

‘Welcome to A.L.I.A, what is the purpose of your visit today?’

The building was heavily guarded by the military, he guessed there were some things that his uncle worked on that he could not tell him. He knew his uncle worked with AI, which was a growing technology at the time, but he never knew to what extent.

Daniel started speaking again.

‘I can hear the waves crashing, the sun in the sky. People playing.’

              His voice fading, Aurora leaned in, she could barely make out what he was saying.

‘Aurora Amelia Knight, will you marry me?’

Jess turned to Aurora and said,

‘Recall of events right before the accident will be vivid.’

‘Are you still there, Aurora?’

He reached out for her hand, she grabbed it without even thinking.

‘Is this a dream, where am I?’

‘Not now, my love. Rest, I am here.’

He closed his eyes and returned to a peaceful sleep, his hand gradually losing its grip on Aurora’s before falling back down beside him.

 

• ​

 

Horatius offered one more glance at Aurora and then returned to his office.

He sat down at his desk, his mug still full of coffee. From this morning it had turned frigid, but he drank it anyway. The mug was his only reminder of his wife who was brutally murdered when he was away.

To him it was the only thing left untouched by the violence. Its handle had been cracked and glued back together more times than he could count, yet it endured — across interstellar travel, across the years — when she could not.

That raging fire inside of him pushed him to try different techniques—to experiment more.

 He stared at the newspaper clipping on his desk, a reminder of how far he had come. ‘Cryogenics science whiz, Horatius Blake, preserves first human for five months to correct birth defect’

‘What the hell is happening?’ Clarke demanded.

‘Your subject knows about your plan,’ Horatius replied, ‘I told you this could happen and you didn’t listen.’

‘My plan, since when was destroying Earth only my plan?’ Clarke replied.

 

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Chapter Two – The Price of Unity

July 22nd, 2057 – Global Government Headquarters, Altera- Earth

 

 

 

 

Josephine Lindsay stood alone on the balcony of her presidential office. She watched the daylight drain from the desert as it slowly gave way to the artificial lights of the capital. From her vantage point, two hundred metres above the vast desert plains, she could see that the clans were preparing their harvest. The heavy wind pushed at her coat. The whiskey in her glass barely moved.

Josephine swallowed the rest of her drink, letting the sting claw at her throat. The city shimmered beneath her, steel spires rising from a foundation of ruin that ran to the edge.

To the citizens below, Altera was hope. To Josephine, it was a monument to selective survival.

But it was simply Altera — the home of Earth’s last governing body, a sterile reminder of the endurance of not just the planet but the people too.

Thirteen autonomous states reported to her.

Thirteen functional regions, heavily monitored, rigorously rationed and maintained through the government’s predictive resource allocation model. Below those thirteen, however, were the clans—unofficial and unpredictable. And one of them was here.

A low chime sounded.

‘They’re here,’ her aide confirmed, voice low through the earpiece.

 Josephine turned from the window.

‘Let them in.’

They entered quietly. Eiden Kesari walked first, tall, worn, eyes like polished stone, and behind him, his niece Isha. The girl couldn’t have been more than twenty, but her presence was sharper than most diplomats twice her age. Both wore climate-stitched coats, thick with dust, but not ragged. Practical. Purposeful. They belonged to a people who endured. The doors sealed behind them with a silent hiss.

‘No recording. No notes. This is off protocol,’ Josephine said.

‘Understood,’ Eiden replied. He remained standing, hands at his sides. ‘I requested this meeting six months ago,’ he continued. ‘I was told you were unavailable.’

‘I was evaluating whether this meeting was necessary,’ Josephine said.

‘Necessary?’ Isha demanded, ‘Three failed harvests. One water purification failure. No aid from the South-eastern clan in eighteen months. And no representatives from the Council have stepped foot in our territory since 2042.’

Josephine moved to the central table — oval-shaped and long, with only three chairs. She took the centre one. ‘You forfeited representation when your people refused biometric integration. Your zone is classified as high-risk, low-compliance.’

‘Our people refused to be catalogued like livestock,’ Eiden said defiantly. ‘That doesn’t mean we refused unity.’

Josephine offered a tight smile.

‘Semantics are for philosophers.’

He stepped forward. ‘Then let’s speak plainly.’

‘Please. Do,’ Josephine shot back.

‘We’ve lost a third of our population in the last two years,’ Eiden said. ‘Half to disease, the rest to relocation. The clans who left haven’t been heard from since.’ Josephine leaned back slightly.

‘If they were absorbed into recognized states, their data is in the system.’

 That earned a glance.  

‘There’s no record of anything,’ Eiden countered.

He looked up at Josephine and met her eyes.

‘No communications.

No transports logged.

No satellites over our region.’

His voice softened.

‘It’s as if we don’t exist anymore.’

Josephine moved closer.

‘That was a decision you made. That’s not on me.’

Eiden stepped closer, so close to Josephine he could feel her breath on his face.

‘It was a decision we made to survive. You offered assimilation or extinction.’ Josephine took a step back.

‘And yet here you are, still breathing.’

‘Barely.’

Another silence. The weight of it pressed through the temperature-controlled air, heavy despite the sterile setting.

‘We’re asking for minimal aid,’ Eiden said finally. ‘Purification modules. Filtration systems. Seed vault starter kits. Enough medical packs to last through the next cycle. We’ll handle the rest.’

‘You’re asking for thousands of credits in Global Government resources, for a population that doesn’t legally exist,’ Josephine said.

Isha spoke now, her voice low but measured. ‘We’re asking for the chance to make it to next year.’

‘You’re asking for precedent,’ Josephine corrected. ‘You know what happens when the Council hears I’ve given handouts to unregistered clans. The requests never stop. Everyone has a story. Whether I believe it is another matter.’

 ‘We came to you directly to avoid that,’ Eiden said. ‘You’ve centralized power. We centralized hope. This is the only corridor left between them.’

Josephine stood and walked slowly toward the window. She didn’t like admitting when something affected her. But this one did. Not because of pity. Or politics. But because they weren’t wrong.

Her eyes drifted over the horizon. From this spot the Earth looked unbroken. Unified. But she knew the fractures were deep — buried in coded silence, withheld briefings, hushed coups in dust-covered corners of the world. The Global Government was not a government. It was a dam. And there were cracks in it.

‘I understand,’ she said after a long moment. ‘But my answer is still no.’

Eiden didn’t move. Isha leaned forward.

‘Then you’ve chosen silence.’

Josephine turned.

‘No. I’ve chosen consistency.’

Eiden’s face didn’t change. But something behind his eyes shifted — not rage, not fear. Something older. More dangerous. Isha stood slowly.

‘Then let the record show,’ Isha said, ‘that we came without demands. That we came to speak, not to steal. And that when the world below begins to burn, we tried to warn you.’

Josephine remained still.

 ‘There will be no record. This was a sealed meeting.’

‘Everything leaves a trace,’ Isha replied. ‘Even silence.’

Eiden stepped back, nodding once.

‘We’ll return to our people. We’ll tell them you listened. But not that you heard.’ Isha added.

Josephine gave a slight wave to the guards at the door.

‘Escort them to the lower pad. No commentary. No scans.’

As the doors closed behind the clan representatives, she exhaled through her nose slowly, as if purging something just beneath the skin. She remained motionless for several seconds, then turned back to the black-glass terminal at her desk. The surface lit with a soft glow as her palm pressed down.

‘Secure line,’ she said.

A voice replied immediately. ‘Online. Encryption Level Zero-One-One.’

‘Bring up surveillance on Clan Kesari. Last twelve months. I want comm logs, migration paths, and biometric traces from the outer zones.’

‘Region marked noncompliant. No biometric anchors available,’ the voice replied.

‘Then check for channel transmissions or any map changes.’

‘Working.’

 Josephine sat. She drummed her fingers once — twice — then stopped.

‘And flag all clans that have submitted direct aid petitions in the last two cycles, I want a cross-reference of high-density territories at risk of alignment fracture,’ she added.

‘Confirmed.’

She leaned back in her chair. The glow from the desk painted a pale halo around her features, casting sharp shadows beneath her eyes.

‘They hadn’t come to ask. They’d come to warn.’

The phone on her desk buzzed again, another call.

Marius Cruz.

She pressed accept.

‘Cruz, if this isn’t good, don’t bother.’

‘In less than 24 hours we may all be dead. Something is incoming from Olympia. A missile. We need to keep this quiet.’

‘No,’ her voice cut like glass. ‘No more secrets, no more cover ups. Not now, not again.’

‘Josephine, just listen to me. What you decide to do in the next hour will determine whether we survive to see a new day. And whatever happens, Project Olympus stays buried. Do you understand?’

Josephine hung up before he finished.

For the first time since taking office, she realised she had become the person she was afraid of.

The executioner.

She turned to her aide

‘Get me a broadcast slot tonight.’

‘A speech?’

‘Yes, I am not going to respect some tech mogul’s wishes.’

 She sat, tempted to type the speech in her computer, she got out her pen and began writing. Her fingers trembling with every word. This is how the end begins.

 

***

 

Josephine had just pulled into her driveway, gathered her belongings, and opened her driver’s side door. A man was standing there with his arms crossed. Josephine expected one of her security, but it was Marius Cruz.

‘Marius, how certain are we that this object is coming for us?’

‘It’s hard to say. It’s travelling so fast that not even some of our advanced systems can track it.’

Josephine pursed her lips together, trying to control her fit of rage.

‘Look at this.’

Marius pulled out his phone, it showed a screen, a model of the Milky Way, up the top in bold capital letters:

PROJECT OLYMPUS

‘They took our defence system and used it to create a weapon.’

‘How is that possible? Aren’t they millions of miles away from us?’

‘It’s impossible to know, but they left the Earth with the technology to build one of these.’

‘Who supplied them?’

Marius looked left as if to defer the blame, but the truth was written all over his face.

‘Cruz International did. That’s why I want to fix this.’

‘Marius, I’ve made up my mind, I am telling my people to work the problem you created. But this is a mess and now I get to choose how to handle it.’

​

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Chapter Three – The Silence

Between Us

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The screen pulsed as Daniel’s heart rate began to rise again. He could see a team of four highly trained tactical security operatives standing beside him, ready to pin him down to the bed to make sure that he wasn’t going to lash out. But Daniel was calm.

He looked around. Rows of beds stretched into a white sterile horizon — silent, glowing softly under flickering lights. Too many.

He searched for anything that could yield a clue as to his whereabouts. His view was obstructed. He clawed at their masks. After a tense struggle, he finally managed to rip one of them free. It was his good friend Charles from Earth.

He looked his friend in the eyes, but it wasn’t Charles staring back at him.

‘Charlie, it’s me. It’s Daniel.’

Charlie looked back, bewildered. Daniel could see a little blue light pulsing beneath his forehead. It was a symbol, one Daniel recognized too well.

Daniel’s mind began playing memories of his life, as if it were a movie. His mind shifted between memories and an image of a girl lying beside him. Her face was too bright to make out. Her blonde hair was glimmering in the sunlight. The girl vanished and Daniel was back on the hospital bed.

Daniel’s eyes didn’t respond. To Charles he looked like he was paralysed with fear. Charles grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him. Once—no response. Daniel’s head rolled loosely against his neck. Charles shook him again. Daniel took his chance.

He drove his fist into Charles’ head. Charles dropped face-down.

Two more operatives rushed in through the doorway. They were speaking into their radios, calling for assistance. Daniel pushed himself up. He struck one operative in the chest, then again in the forearm. The man staggered back.

Daniel was free.

He sprinted. Anyone who tried to stop him went down. As he passed each hospital bed, he glanced quickly, hoping to recognise someone.

He recognised the name of only one.

A.L.I.A

Test Subject 34

Name: A.A Knight

He stood there for a brief moment. As he turned to look back, someone tapped his shoulder. He turned. First he didn’t recognise the flowing blonde hair.

It was Aurora.

He stared for a second. A tear welled in his eye. He saw the ring on her hand. A smile crept across his face.

‘Don’t just stand there. We need to go.’

Aurora grabbed his hand and started running, they could see a team of operatives in pursuit and hot on their tail. Daniel looked both ways for an exit, he found a staircase on the left and ran towards it. As he ran he looked at Aurora, there was a blue light pulsing from her forehead.

‘Aurora, what’s—’

Aurora paused mid-step.

‘Daniel, not now. We have to get you somewhere safe.’

They quickly rushed down the stairs, opened the door and found themselves in a metropolis unlike anything Daniel had seen before. It wasn’t the familiar city that Daniel had grown up in, it looked like something out of science fiction.

‘Welcome to Olympia,’ Aurora said and she smiled back at Daniel.

The blue light now pulsing more frequently.

Daniel pointed at it, she pushed his finger down.

‘There will be time, trust me.’

A light hovered up in the distance, it was probably a search party for his escape. It was a type of transport he’d only seen in fiction.

He looked back at Aurora and smiled. The words just tumbled out of his mouth with no thought as to the consequence of them.

‘I love you, Aurora.’

The girl seemed perplexed by what she was hearing, the puzzling look on her face not helping Daniel’s mindset any further. After a few longing seconds she finally spoke.

‘Not now, my love,’ she pushed her finger to his lips. ‘First, we get out of here and then I’ll explain.’

So, they took off together, at what was a light jog to begin with but as they saw their faces illuminating TV screens on the side of the buildings, they quickened the pace.

‘It’s just around this corner.’

They ran another fifty metres or so. They turned right into a dimly lit alleyway.

Daniel noticed the street name on the side of the building, it read: Aphrodite Avenue

They came to a small wooden door a couple of buildings from the corner, a symbol on the door that was familiar in Daniel’s mind. He stepped into the light, illuminating the abyss in front of him,  A.L.I.A insignia lit up on the door. For the first time in fifty years he was completely awake.

• ​

Josephine had returned to her office, her trip home was meant to refresh her. However the confrontation with Cruz had unsettled her.

As she sat in her chair, she could hear her heartbeat. She took one deep breath in and nodded towards the cameraman.

‘Ladies and gentlemen of Altera,

we are the remnants of the human race on Earth. We have endured years of hell, and as your president, I am here to guide you through this dark time.’

She paused, then looked directly into the camera.

‘There is a missile travelling at immense speed that will reach Earth in less than twenty-four hours.

Hold your loved ones close.

Panic is not the answer. If these are our final hours, I ask you to be there for one another. Reach out to your neighbours. Show them kindness. Show them love.

We have endured before. We endured when our planet was brought to the brink. And we will endure again.

The crisis of today will be the story of tomorrow. We will find a way. Tomorrow will come.

And we will not rest until we prevail.’ 

The few in attendance whispered to each other, but after that her office filled with an eerie silence. Every person resumed their normal activities, the shock of her announcement just hung in the air.

Josephine closed her laptop, grabbed her bag and paused to look back at her desk, ‘You’re tomorrow’s problem,’ she muttered. ‘Play your little game, Marius, but when tomorrow comes… your time is up.’

She stepped out into the cold night air,

From the outside, the Capital building had already dimmed for nightfall. The towers shivered in cold light, casting long shadows onto the landscape below.

The world had begun to fracture beneath her fingertips.

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© Jordan Anderson 2026