Chapter — 20 The Silent March
The woman stopped looking at the man and stepped off the conference stage.
The man, still bleeding from his nose, sat slumped on the floor. The hall had gone dead quiet — the kind of silence that pressed down on your eardrums until it hurt.
She whispered something to one of the armored soldiers beside her, who nodded sharply. Then, without another word, she left through the side door.
For a moment, no one moved.
Adam exhaled, breaking the stillness. "Just… what the hell was that?"
Chris glanced at him, eyes wide. "She didn't even touch him. He just—" He motioned vaguely toward the floor. "—fell like a puppet with its strings cut."
Adam ran a hand through his hair, still shaken. "That wasn't human. You saw her eyes? She wasn't human."
"She's something, alright," Chris muttered, voice sharp with unease. "And that guy—" he pointed toward the motionless man still breathing heavily on the floor— "He just mouthed off. Didn't even do anything."
Carter hadn't said a word. He just watched the armored soldiers at the door, standing perfectly still. No flinches, no breathing visible under their dark helmets. They looked more like statues than people.
"I think…" Carter finally spoke, his voice low and steady. "…that was a warning."
Neither of the others replied. They didn't need to.
A soldier shouted orders from the stage, voice echoing through the massive hall. "Remain calm. Everyone will be processed. Please wait for further instructions."
That was all.
Then came the waiting.
Hours blurred into one another. The air turned hot, stale, suffocating. Someone's baby wouldn't stop crying. The hum of anxious whispers filled the silence where panic used to be.
Carter had thought that after what the woman did, people would calm down.
He was wrong.
Tension cracked open like a dam.
A middle-aged woman stood up and started yelling, "You can't just keep us here! My husband's out there!"
Another man joined in. "Where's the government? The military? What the hell's going on out there?"
The soldiers didn't respond. They just watched.
And that silence — that cold, trained silence — only made it worse.
Soon the entire hall was in chaos again. People shouted over one another, demanding answers, demanding freedom. Phones flickered uselessly in trembling hands. A few people tried calling loved ones; others just stared blankly at black screens, refreshing, refreshing, refreshing.
Carter, Adam, and Chris stayed near the corner. Emma sat next to Adam, her face pale and distant, muttering prayers under her breath.
More evacuees kept arriving, guided in by soldiers until the hall felt ready to burst. Carter guessed maybe a thousand people now, if not more. A thousand out of a city that once held millions.
He scanned the crowd again. No sign of his parents.
They were probably in another evacuation site.
Or maybe they didn't make it.
But he didn't let that thought linger. He couldn't. Not now. If he did, he knew he'd break apart completely.
He checked his watch.
5 o'clock.
The sun was setting.
Eventually, soldiers began calling out groups. Carter and his friends were herded toward a line of military trucks parked outside.
The trucks were massive, armored, and packed full of civilians. People pressed shoulder to shoulder, faces drawn tight with exhaustion.
"Where are they taking us?" Chris asked as they climbed in.
"Relocation," Adam said, reading the insignia on the soldier's uniform. "Somewhere 'less hit.'"
"Less hit," Chris repeated, bitter. "Yeah. That's comforting."
The doors clamped shut with a metallic clang. Darkness swallowed the inside. The smell of sweat, fear, and diesel filled every breath.
Carter sat wedged between Chris and a woman clutching a child. The child's eyes darted around in panic, searching for something familiar in a world that had none left.
Outside, the city passed in fragments through narrow slits of light.
Shattered streetlights. Burned-out cars. Collapsed buildings.
And everywhere — banners fluttering under the fading light.
Human soldiers stood beside others in medieval armor. Men and women in cloaks and plate, holding weapons that looked stolen from a museum — except they gleamed with energy that wasn't normal.
Magic, maybe.
They patrolled together, side by side — tanks rolling past knights, helicopters flying over riders on horses clad in steel.
Carter's breath caught. He recognized the banner now.
A black sun encircled in gold.
He knew that symbol.
He shouldn't have, but he did.
Valiryea.
The name came unbidden — something remembered, or perhaps inherited.
A whisper from a dream that wasn't entirely his own.
He'd seen it before, in Varka's memories.
So they had come. The Empire of the Sun had set foot on this world.
Carter's hands trembled as the truck jolted over debris. The sound of metal clanging against metal echoed like ghosts in his ears.
It felt too familiar — like the slave carriages from those dreams.
Faces filled with the same emptiness. The same hollow resignation.
"You okay?" Chris asked softly.
"I'll be fine," Carter said, though his voice cracked a little.
Across from him, Emma was crying quietly, face buried in Adam's shoulder.
"Nice to have a girlfriend in a situation like this, huh," Chris muttered, trying to sound casual.
Carter wanted to smile, maybe even chuckle. But the expression never made it past his lips.
Outside, night crept in fully.
The city lights — or what was left of them — shimmered faintly under the haze. Searchlights cut through smoke. The occasional gunshot echoed in the distance, followed by silence.
By the time the trucks stopped, it was almost six.
They had arrived at the airport — or what used to be one.
Now, it was a fortress. Barbed wire lined the fences, barricades stacked with sandbags. Floodlights illuminated soldiers on patrol, both human and not.
Hundreds, maybe thousands more civilians were here. The air buzzed with the hum of generators and murmured prayers.
Carter jumped off the truck, boots crunching against gravel.
Around him, people were whispering — some crying, others clutching their phones or holding onto strangers for comfort.
There was hope there, fragile and desperate.
Maybe they thought their families were here. Maybe they thought things would finally make sense.
But before anyone could enter, soldiers raised their rifles.
"Everyone will undergo a screening," one of them shouted. "Line up and wait your turn."
A collective groan rippled through the crowd. People began to protest.
Chris turned to Carter. "What the hell are they screening for?"
Carter's face went pale. He didn't look at Chris when he answered.
"They did that to me too," he said quietly.
Chris frowned. "What do you mean they did that to you too?"
But Carter didn't answer.
Because deep down, he already knew this wasn't just an evacuation.
It was something else entirely.
---
Another hour crawled by.
They stood in line — the entire school gathered together — waiting to be screened.
Carter had expected noise, panic, maybe someone trying to break through the barricades. A few had tried, early on. The soldiers dragged them back without a word.
Now, silence. Heavy, suffocating silence.
Faces were blank, grim, hollowed out. More than half the students were crying quietly, mostly the younger ones. The teachers hovered near them, pale and wordless. Carter had thought they'd say something — some speech about staying strong, or hope, or whatever teachers usually said during drills — but they just stared ahead. Maybe they knew that no words would make any difference.
The soldiers spoke in low voices, some of them maybe on purpose loud enough for the students to hear.
Words floated through the air like fragments of another language.
Truce. Alliance. Joint operations. Monsters. Aliens.
Carter tried not to listen, but he couldn't help it. Each phrase felt like a nail tapping against his skull.
Chris muttered beside him, "This all still feels like a bad dream. None of this makes sense."
Adam gave a hollow laugh. "Yeah, well, if it's a dream, I'd like to wake up now."
Emma didn't join in. Her eyes kept darting across the line, scanning faces. Searching.
Carter followed her gaze, but there was nothing left to find.
Then Carter heard a sound — a voice, close by.
Familiar.
A woman's voice.
The same one who'd checked him before he'd entered the school.
"Hey, you."
She was pointing at him through the crowd. "Weren't you at that place a while ago?"
Adam leaned toward him. "Is— is she talking to you?"
Carter nodded slowly. "Yeah. I was screened before I got in. That's her."
"Screened? How?" Chris asked, frowning.
"I don't know," Carter muttered. "She just… stared at me for a few seconds. Like she was looking through me."
Before Chris could ask more, the woman stepped closer. Her movements were smooth, deliberate — too calm for the chaos around them.
"Hello?" she said. "You ignoring me?"
Carter froze. He'd never spoken to one of them before. Everyone nearby turned to look.
Whispers spread through the line.
"Wait— how the hell is she speaking English?" someone murmured.
"Do they even know our language?" another whispered.
Chris muttered under his breath, "That's freaky as hell…"
The soldiers reacted instantly — hands tightening around their rifles.
The woman glanced at them, unbothered. "I already screened this one," she said evenly. "He's clean."
One of the soldiers gave a slow, curt nod. "He can go."
Before Carter could react, she reached out and took his hand — cold, firm — and pulled him out of the line.
Voices rose behind him, students shouting, "Why does he get to skip?"
But their words blurred into noise as the woman led him away.