EZREN’S POV “Ezren.” My name lands in the air like a thrown stone. Not a machine’s pitch, not some synthetic trick, but a cadence my bones recognize before my head can catch up. Half affection, half exasperation. Like always. My brother. Not my brother. A projection, a recording, a memory wearing his skin. But it sounds so much like him, my chest splits open anyway. “I know you’re scared,” the voice says. It’s soft, patient. The tone he used when we were kids and I’d stumble out of nightmares, shaking. “I know this is hard to understand. But I’m okay. I’m at peace here.” My throat cinches until every breath feels like glass. I want to speak, to argue, to throw a thousand questions at him like stones, but all that crawls out is a sound that might be his name. “You always worried too much,” he goes on, warmth threaded through the humor. “Even when we were kids, you’d lie awake imagining every way the world could collapse. Remember the summer I taught you to swim? You were convinc

SORA’S POVThe island looks like something out of a travel brochure. Too perfect. The kind of perfect that feels paid for.White sand unfurls in long ribbons, soft as sifted flour. The ocean burns blue… so blue it hurts to look at for long. Palm trees lean into the wind, shaking their leaves like they know they’re being watched.And maybe they are.Flags from a dozen nations flap along the boardwalk, a chorus of bright colors that say unity and progress. The Choice Station pilot, humanity’s grand moral experiment, supposedly built to let people decide their future freely.It looks like hope carved into paradise.That’s exactly what makes my stomach turn.Officially, I’m here as a field medic. Unofficially, I’m here to see if any of this is real… or just another performance with better lighting. Because nothing this flawless exists without a few bodies buried under the sand.The station buildings are elegant in the same sterile way hospitals try to look “friendly.” White structures wit

ZARA’S POVThe transit lounge reeks of metal and fatigue. Stale coffee. Recycled air. A crowd half-asleep on plastic seats, hunched over phones as if the screens might tell them when the world will start making sense again. Suitcases piled like sandbags against an invisible storm. Voices low, in a dozen languages, all whispering the same confession: I don’t know when I’ll be home.Six hours I’ve been here… nursing burnt espresso, combing through the wreckage of data like a scavenger at a crash site. Seized contractor notes. Diplomatic cables. Snippets of political chatter are too careful to name what they mean. I keep chasing a thread through it all. Something that hums under the noise.And then it appears.A name. Or maybe a myth.The Shepherd.At first, it’s not a person… just a function buried in encrypted memos, fragments scattered like breadcrumbs only a paranoid bastard would piece together.The Shepherd will coordinate messaging.Check with the Shepherd before release.The Shep

EZREN’S POVThe rain doesn’t fall… it attacks.Each drop slams the chapel windows hard enough to make the glass tremble, as if the whole sky’s trying to break through and drown what’s left of us. I came here for silence, or something close to it. But even in this place built for stillness, the noise follows me. The team’s bickering. The contractor’s silver-tongued logic. The architect’s patient, suffocating judgment. All of it echoes in my head until I can’t tell where their voices end and mine begin.The chapel is old. Stone ribs arch into a ceiling darkened by decades of weather. Interfaith, the plaque says outside… a shared sanctuary for anyone who needs to face something bigger than themselves. Now it’s just me, the rain, and the ghosts of too many voices.My brother’s voice… recorded, preserved, saying my name like it still means something.The caretaker’s calm reasoning about mercy and continuation.Devon’s anger at seeing infrastructure twisted into weapons.Sora’s cold disgus

EZREN’S POVThe hill crouches above the city like an old scar… raised, aching, and never quite healed. From up here, the skyline looks soft. Lanterns flicker behind windows like scattered stars, each one sheltering someone trying to live, or forget, or decide. I come here when it gets too heavy… when the machinery of what we’re building threatens to crush the people inside it.Today, the first humane sanctuary opened.Not another Choice Station dressed up as mercy. Not a contractor hub whispering quick salvation to desperate ears. This one’s different… quiet, slow, stubbornly human—a place where people can sit with their terror and confusion without someone rushing them toward a terminal.The building was formerly a community center. Old bricks, uneven floors, a mural half-scrubbed off one wall. We took money from donors we don’t fully trust… the kind who smile with too many teeth… but for once, the cost felt worth paying. Inside, there’s nothing sleek or glowing. No pods humming in n