The sun rose like liquid gold spilling across glass and steel. From orbit, Earth shimmered—veined with flight lanes, ringed by satellites that pulsed like heartbeat monitors. Humanity had never looked so serene. After centuries of fracture, the world had finally agreed to stop killing itself.
New Avon was its crown jewel, a city that climbed rather than sprawled. Miles of mirrored towers floated on antigrav anchors, each tethered to the bedrock by silver beams of light. Streets curled through the air like ribbons of mercury, and cars—sleek wings of alloy—glided silently between the towers. Pedestrians drifted along lev-paths under soft gravity fields. Above it all, the Spire of Concord thrust toward the stratosphere, its apex blinking with the emblem of the United Earth Directorate: a circle of white stars surrounding a single ember-blue planet. To every child born under its glow, peace felt eternal.
Briar Lox sat on the edge of a floating walkway, legs dangling hundreds of meters above the cloud-sea. His reflection trembled in the mirrored glass below—grey eyes, unruly dark hair, the pale trace of a scar along his jaw. Seventeen and still no spark. Every citizen carried the Pulse, a wrist-embedded biosphere that displayed vitals, metrics, and Aether output—the measurable energy of human potential. Most teens his age already shimmered faintly beneath their skin, proof of an active gene resonance. Briar's stayed dark. He tapped it once. Nothing.
"Still broken, or just mocking me?" he muttered.
A laugh came from behind. "Maybe both," said Kael Thorn, tall and broad-shouldered, his smirk capable of starting riots. A flicker of red energy coiled around his knuckles before fading. "Don't worry, Lox. Some of us are born ordinary. Keeps the world balanced."
"Appreciate the pep talk," Briar said dryly.
Kael stepped onto his grav-board. "Try not to fall. The safety field's been glitching since last night's storm." With a rush of red light he shot off into the haze.
The storm had been strange—violet lightning arcing from clear skies, magnetic surges strong enough to blackout half the city grid. Engineers blamed solar interference. Others whispered of something older, a word spoken only in history lessons: ION echoes.
In the Defense Academy's amphitheater, holographic screens curved overhead, projecting scenes from the Great ION War a generation ago. Briar took his seat beside Lyra Kade, her golden eyes reflecting the flicker of plasma bombardments above them. On the screen, crimson skies split as alien vessels pierced the clouds. Human soldiers—enhanced by the first Genesis trials—fought beneath banners of smoke.
Professor Ardan's voice carried over the noise of battle. "Ten years of fire, compressed by textbooks into a paragraph. The IONS came from a world called Sitar, twelve light-years away, bearing technology centuries beyond ours. They sought resources, but more—dominion." The projection zoomed in on one of the invaders: tall, purple-hued, armor fused to flesh, silver eyes devoid of mercy. "They believed weakness was a disease. Humanity was to be purged."
The class shifted uneasily. Lyra's fingers tightened on her tablet.
"The Genesis Protocol changed everything," Ardan continued. "A fusion of Aetheric energy and human DNA. It granted us strength to fight back, but it demanded a price. Every adult who received it perished within a year. Only the young, pre-pubescent subjects survived. The peace you live in was built on their sacrifice."
Briar's gaze fixed on a hologram of a soldier kneeling amid ruin, the name LOX—GENESIS UNIT 12 etched on the armor. His father.
Ardan's tone softened. "You are their legacy—the second generation. The ones who must ensure Earth is never taken by surprise again."
After class, Lyra caught up with him on the lev-bridge that linked the towers. "You okay?" she asked quietly.
"Yeah."
"You know the Pulse readings don't define you."
"Easy for you to say," he said. "You lit up the scanners last month. Light spectrum control, right?"
Lyra smiled faintly and raised her palm. A sphere of radiant color bloomed there, warm as sunrise. It painted her face in soft gold before fading. "Still learning," she said. "But it feels alive—like the universe breathing through me."
Briar looked away. "Guess the universe is holding its breath with me."
"Maybe it's waiting for the right moment."
A chime interrupted them. All along the lev-paths, holo-panels unfolded mid-air, projecting the Directorate emblem.
"Attention citizens of New Avon," announced the cool voice of Central AI Solara. "Unexpected gravitational anomaly detected in upper atmosphere. All flight channels to Tier-Four altitude suspended. Please remain indoors until clearance."
Lyra looked toward the sky. The blue had darkened to bruised violet; static prickled against their skin.
"Another storm?" she asked.
"Maybe just weather," Briar answered, though the knot in his stomach said otherwise.
That night he stood alone on the dormitory roof, the city glittering beneath him like circuitry. The storm gathered above—clouds swirling around a silent core. A filament of lightning spidered across the sky, but instead of vanishing it hung there, twisting, forming a spiral. Within the spiral, faint shapes moved—angular, metallic, impossibly large. He blinked hard. They remained. A low vibration rolled through the air, too deep to hear, felt only in bone.
The access door hissed open behind him. Dr. Keiran Solis, head of the Academy's research division, stepped into the wind. "Couldn't sleep either?" he asked.
Briar shook his head. "You see that?"
Solis followed his gaze. "It can't be… The readings were supposed to be background radiation."
"What readings?"
"Residual Aether signatures. We thought they were echoes from orbital debris. But this pattern—" He pulled a handheld scanner; its display flared crimson. "—this isn't debris. It's organized."
A pulse of violet light rippled through the clouds, and for a heartbeat Briar saw it clearly: a vast silhouette breaking through the upper atmosphere, sleek and predatory.
"Dr. Solis…" His voice was barely sound. "That's a ship."
The scientist's face drained of color. "Not human design."
The hum rose into a roar. Across New Avon, gravity fields flickered; aircars wobbled and collided in showers of sparks. Defense drones erupted from tower ports, forming a lattice of light around the city dome. Solis grabbed Briar's arm. "Inside, now!"
Briar hesitated, staring upward. "I thought they were gone."
"So did we," Solis said grimly. "So did we."
The spiral widened, swallowing the sun. The last thing Briar saw before the emergency shutters sealed the rooftop was a vast obsidian hull streaked with violet energy—the mark of the IONS. Then darkness fell, and the sky screamed.