Chapter One: Unqualified for Ascension

  The sky above Neo SeaTac was a living circuit board.

  From street level, the city looked like a vertical ocean of motion and glass. Hovercars whispered past one another in layered lanes, some tethered to magnetic rails, others skipping free along open air corridors. Every surface glowed—softly or sharply, depending on whether it sold information, direction, or distraction. The skyline breathed like a machine exhaling light.

  Ephraim stood behind the thick polyglass of his apartment window, smoking. The end of his cigarette pulsed orange in the reflection. He kept his other hand tucked into the front pocket of his red delivery jacket, the same one he wore for every shift with Light Speed. The sleeves were pushed halfway up his forearms. His hair—long and dark, curled at the back into a half-kept mullet—rested just below the collar.

  He watched as a red flyer, identical to his own work vehicle, zipped past his building on the upper-lane grid. It banked hard, disappearing behind one of the smaller residential spires.

  Below him, the city churned. Skywalkers strode along semi-transparent bridges. Package drones weaved like insects between towers. Near the bay, the old skyline dipped, making way for the massive structure that loomed above the Sound—the Skyport, once the Space Needle, now a floating disk the size of a city block. It hovered on gravitational tethers, humming gently, a monument to Earth’s participation in interplanetary trade.

  He dragged the cigarette and exhaled slowly. The routine felt old and sacred. A ritual before every shift.

  Today, something felt different.

  He didn’t know what.

  The wall display in his apartment was tuned to a newsfeed—mute, of course. He didn’t care what they were arguing about. It was the usual: orbital taxes, AI export limits, a viral clip of some idiot on Europa lighting his suit on fire. The lower-third scrolled headlines in a loop that barely registered.

  Then the entire screen went black.

  So did the lights. The pad on his desk. The apartment’s environmentals. Even the traffic hum outside dropped by half.

  Two seconds of dead silence.

  Then the world came back.

  His wall screen flared to life—not to the newsfeed, but to a drone's aerial footage.

  It was live.

  Geneva was gone.

  Where the United Nations complex once stood, there was now only absence. A vast crater carved into the Earth with unnatural precision—perfectly circular, its center stripped clean of structure or debris. No emergency crews. No responders. Just scorched soil and... shadows.

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  The outlines of people.

  Dark silhouettes on pavement, burned into the edges like ghosts caught mid-motion. Some standing. Some seated. Some holding hands.

  Ephraim didn't realize his cigarette had fallen until the hiss of it hitting the floor snapped him back. He bent down, picked it up. There was still half left.

  And then the air shimmered.

  It began over the Sound.

  A shape emerged above the Skyport, pulsing into view with smooth coherence. Light coalesced into structure—a hologram. Twenty meters tall. Its feet didn’t touch the ground. It radiated no heat. No sound at first. But it was not alone.

  Across the city, more appeared. One above every major structure. From skyscraper domes to low-stack towers, identical figures hung in the air like judgment suspended.

  Every device tuned in—holo-pads, contact lenses, visor HUDs, storefront glass. No region was spared. From the orbital ring to the outer colonies, from the Martian embassies to the drowned coasts of old Florida, every human being with working eyes saw the same thing.

  A figure. Humanoid. But distinctly not human.

  Its skin was a smooth, inorganic grey—like ash sculpted into form. Not textured, not blemished. Its eyes were black and deep, lacking any whites, just glossy and endless. It had a mouth. A narrow, static slit that somehow conveyed more authority closed than most human mouths did open.

  Its eyebrows were stranger still—present only on the outer halves of its brow, leaving a wide, smooth expanse of skin between them. It gave the being a look of detachment. As if whatever facial expression it chose would never fully reach its center.

  It raised its head slightly.

  Then it spoke.

  The voice that emerged was wrong—not loud, not harsh, but alien in its construction. There were too many harmonics. Too much resonance. It sounded like metal sheets vibrating inside a cathedral, like language made out of structure instead of sound.

  Then it began to translate.

  One phrase at a time, the voice rotated through the three most spoken languages on Earth: English. Mandarin. Hindi. Each delivered with flawless clarity, the alien cadence bending itself into perfect pronunciation. The transitions were deliberate. Measured. Like this moment had been rehearsed for centuries.

  > “Humans, as you call yourselves... are, in truth, GEN.V Successors*.”

  > “You were seeded sixty-six million of your years ago.”

  > “The previous inhabitants of this biosphere were removed to make space.”

  > “You are not native. You are not sovereign. You are observed.”

  Behind each language, the original voice continued to drone, constant and layered, like a background hum that never ceased. A reminder of the source.

  Ephraim’s stomach tightened. He felt the pressure of the sound in his teeth.

  The figure shifted its hands behind its back. Its posture was too perfect.

  > “This world was engineered for optimal ecological function.”

  > “You have destabilized it.”

  > “You have failed interspecies compatibility benchmarks.”

  > “Your collective consciousness is incompatible with the path of ascension*.”

  > “You are considered... unqualified.”

  Then it paused.

  A silence stretched just long enough to feel intentional.

  > "The Final Choir* will arrive in three of your lunar cycles.”

  > “Prepare for your cleansing*.”

  The hologram held still for one more moment.

  And vanished.

  No flicker. No fade.

  Gone.

  The city did not resume. Not immediately. For several long seconds, Neo SeaTac held its breath.

  Ephraim stared at the empty sky above the Skyport.

  The air felt heavier than it had a moment ago.

  The lights on his wall display returned to the original broadcast—except the anchorwoman’s mouth was frozen in mid-word. The feed had never resumed. It only looked like it had.

  He reached for his cigarette.

  It had burned itself to ash.

  His shift would start in fifteen minutes.

  But something told him no one would be checking delivery times today.