The United Nations building in what was once New York stood like a scarred relic of the old world—its dome cracked, patched with salvaged polyglass, yet defiant. Inside, the grand assembly hall pulsed with a tension so thick it was almost audible. Delegates—what remained of them—filled the seats in ragged uniforms, patched suits, and grim stares. They had come from every surviving zone, a fractured mosaic of human resilience. Fear and grief haunted their eyes, but something else sparked underneath: the brittle glow of hope.Above them, salvaged media drones hovered like ghosts of the past, their cameras blinking with silent urgency. This wasn’t just another summit. It was humanity’s first breath after flatlining.We walked in, strangers among the architects of the old world. Our tattered combat gear replaced with plain black clothing, the blood scrubbed from our hands but not from our memories. Nancy walked beside me, her posture poised but her eyes carrying the haunted weight of Gaia'

The hum of the control room’s machinery provided a steady background thrum, a low and familiar comfort in the vastness of space. Five years. Five years since the Covenant had been forged, since Ka!ri left for Mars, since we pulled humanity back from the brink. Five years since I last stood on scorched Earth, looking up at a red star and made the hardest choice of my life.Now I was orbiting the planet I chose to stay and rebuild, a General still wearing the skin of a soldier, stationed aboard Horizon’s Edge, humanity’s first orbital surveillance hub. Earth below was no longer dying. Oceans pulsed blue again. Forests regrew like stubborn ideas. Africa—our continent—had become the beating heart of reconstruction, not because it was spared, but because it had learned how to rise.I leaned back in my chair, scanning rows of data crawling across my screens—defense diagnostics, environmental vitals, deep space monitoring. Routine. The quiet kind of duty. But some days, I still felt the tug.

The R49 highway stretched before them, a ribbon of cracked tar under the bruised twilight sky. Crossing it felt like stepping through a membrane—leaving behind the familiar wreckage of suburban Mahikeng and entering the untamed world of Aslaagte, where civilization frayed into the wild."Keep your eyes peeled," Mr. Nkosi murmured, his pistol raised. "This used to be quiet, but being near the reserve always meant spillover."They moved in silence, boots crunching softly on gravel. At first, the changes were subtle. A flicker in a shattered shop window revealed a mutated ground squirrel—its eyes glowed like dying embers, its movements twitchy, wrong. It vanished into the shadows before they could get a better look. Further ahead, a mongoose with matted fur and an elongated snout slithered out from under a dead smart car. It sniffed the air with an intensity that prickled Nancy's skin, then disappeared into the garden hedges.“They’re everywhere,” the burnt man whispered, clutching his ri

The first sensation was cold. It seeped into my bones from the graphene bench beneath me, a stark and sterile chill that was the opposite of death. I swept my body for wounds, surprised to find only the phantom aches of a brutal impact. I was alive. I was lying in a transparent cell, a fiberglass cubicle framed by thin carbon tubes. My mind, still swimming in a fog of ozone and desperation, slowly began to piece together my surroundings.My gaze drifted to the necklace around my neck, a small pendant made from a fragment of the Red Rock. I wrapped my fingers around it, the familiar weight a tangible anchor to a life I'd left behind. A memory, sharp and vivid, cut through the haze. Jarek’s smile, his infectious enthusiasm for the Martian landscape, our shared sense of wonder at the Rock’s unique properties. The bittersweet reminder of what I'd lost hit me with a physical pang. I held the pendant for a moment longer, a symbol of my past, a tangible connection to the Martian world, a sile

The explosion still echoed in my mind, a thunderous crack that had shattered more than just concrete and steel. A high-pitched, insistent whine rang in my ears—a sharp, piercing note that drowned out everything else. My vision blurred at the edges. The world around me was a smeared canvas of gray ash, firelight, and shifting shadows. I stumbled forward. My legs moved on autopilot. My body wasn't mine.My mind had become a broken circuit, firing phantom signals. The familiar overlays of mission logs and vitals—always there in my HUD—were gone. My thoughts were like strangers, whispering through static.Rachel’s voice buzzed faintly through the haze. Her lips moved. She clutched my arms, trying to anchor me—but I couldn’t hear her. Not properly. Her voice was distant, underwater. !Guruseb’s face entered my field of view, his expression carved in worry. He spoke, too—but it was muffled, like sound behind glass.I couldn’t answer. My thoughts were drowning in fog. The high, chitinous shrie