I heard my name before I understood the danger.
"Kael!"
The shout came from far away, stretched thin by distance and panic. For half a second, I didn't move. My hands were buried in a rusted control panel, fingers numb from cold metal, my mind still chasing half-finished calculations that no longer mattered.
Then the second shout came. Louder. Closer.
"Run!"
That word snapped something loose inside me.
I looked up.
The street was empty in the way occupied cities always were. No people. No traffic. No wind strong enough to carry sound. Just that low hum in the air, constant and inescapable, like the world itself was breathing through machines.
I didn't ask what they'd seen. That instinct had died a long time ago.
I tore my hands free and turned.
"Kael, don't think—move!"
Joren's voice. Strained. He never shouted unless there was no other option left.
I ran.
My boots struck broken concrete as I sprinted down the narrow stretch between collapsed buildings. Dust rose around me, sharp in my throat. Behind me, something shifted. Heavy. Measured. Not footsteps. Worse.
I cut left, then right, heart hammering, my bag slamming against my side. Tools rattled inside. Too loud. Everything was always too loud.
A flash of movement caught the edge of my vision. Pale. Tall. Still.
I didn't look back.
"Kael!"
Another voice. Too close now.
I burst through a rusted doorway and threw my weight against it. The metal groaned but held. For a second. I pressed my back to it, breath coming fast, my thoughts racing ahead even while my body lagged behind.
What did I miss?
What did I touch?
The hum outside shifted pitch.
That was when I knew this wasn't just a patrol.
I slid down to the floor and forced my breathing to slow. Panic killed faster than anything they carried. I'd learned that the hard way.
I don't remember exactly when it happened. It was about 3 years or so.
The world hadn't ended with fire or war. It had ended quietly. One moment full of motion, the next emptied of it. People didn't scream. They didn't collapse. They were simply… gone. Entire streets frozen mid-life. Cars stopped with doors open. Rooms left exactly as they were.
No explanation ever came. Governments tried to hold shape, then crumbled. Truth became optional. Survival didn't.
Later, the sky changed.
Lights appeared where stars shouldn't be. Shapes drifted into place without sound or warning. By the time anyone understood what they were, resistance was already meaningless.
They didn't conquer us. They claimed what was left.
The hum outside grew softer, then steadier. Moving. Searching with intent.
I edged toward a crack in the wall and looked out.
They passed through the street as if it belonged to them. Pale figures, tall and unnervingly still, silver hair catching what little light remained. Their faces were calm. Almost human. Almost.
One of them stopped and tilted its head, listening to something I couldn't hear. No raised weapon. No tension. Just evaluation.
I pulled back instinctively.
This was how they ruled. Not through fear alone, but certainty. They didn't chase unless it was efficient. They didn't waste motion. They didn't rush.
A soft click echoed outside. A signal.
The others adjusted instantly and moved on, boots barely touching the ground.
I exhaled slowly, but the relief didn't last.
The hum sharpened.
Something corrected itself.
I moved.
Not running. Not yet. I slipped deeper into the building, stepping only where dust was already disturbed. The Silence had taught us that sound wasn't the enemy. Patterns were.
I reached the stairwell and froze.
Pale light spilled up from below. Clean. Wrong. A shadow crossed it. Tall. Still.
Too close.
I turned and climbed instead. Halfway up, something clicked behind me. Polite. Curious.
I vaulted the railing and hit the floor hard, pain flaring up my side. I bit back the sound and rolled behind a collapsed wall just as the light swept past where I'd been a moment earlier.
It paused.
I could feel it then. The attention. Not anger. Interest.
I reached into my bag with shaking fingers and pulled out a small device. Crude. Untested. I flicked it down the corridor and flattened myself against the ground.
The pulse thudded through the air, just enough to warp the hum. Movement followed. Recalculation.
That was my chance.
I ran.
Through a shattered window, down into an alley filled with ash and stagnant rainwater. I didn't stop until my lungs burned and my legs screamed. When I finally collapsed behind a heap of scrap, I pressed my forehead to my knees and breathed.
Alive. Barely.
I didn't go back to the surface.
No one who wanted to live did.
I followed marks only we knew how to see. Ash smears. Scratches carved unevenly on purpose. Signs that meant nothing to machines.
The access point looked like nothing. A collapsed service tunnel forgotten even before the world broke. I knocked twice, paused, then once more.
A panel slid open.
Hands pulled me inside. The opening vanished.
The air changed immediately. Warmer. Stale. Human.
We lived underground because nothing about us made sense to the system above. Old subway lines and sewage tunnels stitched together into something chaotic and inefficient. No straight paths. No symmetry.
Lights flickered on, dim and angled downward. Faces looked up at me. Tired. Thin. Alive.
This colony was small. A few dozen people. Enough to survive. Not enough to matter.
Someone pressed water into my hands. No questions. Not yet.
We hid heat. Sound. Movement. Cooking happened in short bursts. Power was rationed by minutes, not hours. Children learned early how to stay still and when not to speak.
I slid down against the wall and finally let my hands shake.
The aliens ruled the surface. They harvested. They counted.
And down here, in the dark, we learned how to exist without being worth noticing.
I stared at the ceiling and listened to the distant hum seep through layers of concrete and earth.
This was survival now.
Not hope. Not rebellion.
Just staying invisible long enough to matter someday.
Footsteps approached. Slow. Deliberate.
I didn't look up at first. I didn't need to. I knew who it was by the way the room seemed to tighten around him.
"Did you find it?"
The voice was calm, but not gentle. The colony leader never wasted words. He stood in front of me long enough that I finally lifted my head.
Rafe.
His face was lined deeper than it had any right to be. Not age. Responsibility did that. His eyes dropped to my bag before returning to my face.
"The blue core," he said. "The mechanical unit."
I swallowed and shifted my weight. My side protested. I ignored it.
"I found it," I said. "Or what's left of it."
A murmur rippled through the room. Quiet. Controlled. Hope, carefully restrained.
Rafe crouched in front of me, lowering his voice. "And?"
"And it was still active," I continued. "Barely. Integrated into an old surface relay. Alien retrofit layered on top of human tech."
That got his attention.
I reached into my bag and hesitated for just a second. Long enough to feel every pair of eyes on me. Then I pulled it out.
The room changed.
The device sat in my palm, no bigger than a clenched fist. Its surface was smooth, unfamiliar, segmented in ways that didn't follow human design logic. A soft blue light pulsed from its core, steady and alive, like a slow heartbeat.
Even shielded, it hummed faintly.
Someone sucked in a breath.
Rafe didn't touch it. He never rushed things like this. He studied it the way you looked at a weapon before deciding whether to use it.
"You're sure it wasn't tracked?" he asked.
"I scrambled its signal before I moved it," I said. "Twice. But I won't lie. They noticed something. I barely made it back."
His jaw tightened. Not anger. Calculation.
"This is what you need," he said. Not a question.
I nodded. "If it works. And that's a big if."
The blue core wasn't a weapon. Not yet. It was a power regulator. A piece of alien tech adapted to stabilize systems that shouldn't still function. With enough time, enough testing, it could give us something we didn't have anymore.
Consistency.
Lights that didn't flicker. Sensors that lied to the surface scans. Maybe even a way to mask an entire sector for longer than a few minutes.
Or it could fail.
Spectacularly.
Rafe finally stood. "You took a serious risk for this."
"I know."
His eyes met mine. "And if they followed you?"
"They didn't," I said. Then, after a beat, "Not all the way."
That silence was heavier than shouting.
Rafe straightened. "Get some rest. We'll decide what to do with it after you've stabilized."
I closed my fingers around the device, feeling its steady pulse against my skin.
Rest sounded like a lie.
Because if this worked, we'd stop hiding for just a little while.
And if it didn't—
I tucked the blue light back into my bag and pushed myself to my feet.
Whatever I'd brought back with me, one thing was certain.
The surface wasn't going to ignore it for long.
The shout cut through the room like a blade.
"Movement on the outer grid!"
Every conversation died instantly.
I turned just as the monitoring station lit up brighter, static trembling across the screens. The operator leaned forward, fingers flying, voice tight.
"They're close. Really close."
Rafe was already moving. "How close?"
The operator swallowed. "Two patrol units. Slow sweep pattern. They haven't locked onto anything, but they're inside the red zone."
That sent a cold wave through my chest.
The red zone wasn't supposed to be touched. Ever. It was the buffer. The thin, fragile lie we told ourselves that kept this colony alive.
"They didn't see the entrance," the operator added quickly. "No scans. No descent. Just… hovering."
That was worse.
Aliens didn't hover without reason.
The low hum of their craft bled through the rock, not loud enough to hear with ears, but enough to feel in your bones. A pressure. Like the air itself was being pressed flat.
People started moving without being told. Lights dimmed. Systems powered down. Conversations vanished into silence.
Rafe looked at me.
Not accusing. Not panicked. Just sharp.
"This is because of the surface run," he said.
"I masked everything," I replied immediately. "Signals, heat, motion. If they're here, it's not a direct trace."
"Indirect is enough," he said.
The monitors flickered again. Blue-white shapes drifted across the display, elegant and slow, like predators that knew nothing here could outrun them.
One of the operators whispered, "Why aren't they scanning?"
No one answered.
I felt it then. That familiar, sickening realization settling in my gut.
"They're listening," I said quietly.
Rafe's eyes narrowed. "Explain."
"They don't always look first," I continued. "Sometimes they wait. For patterns. For reactions. For fear."
As if to prove the point, one of the patrol units adjusted its position. Not toward us. Around us. Like it was circling something it couldn't see yet.
The colony held its breath.
If they found the entrance, it wouldn't be a fight.
It would be an ending.
I tightened my grip on my bag without thinking, feeling the faint pulse of blue inside it. The device was silent now. Too silent.
And for the first time since I'd dragged myself back from the surface, a thought hit me harder than exhaustion.
What if they weren't here because of what I took—
—but because of what I woke up?