The first child spoke to the wall. Jonah saw it from the watch platform before anyone else noticed. The child stood alone at the outer gate, too small for the rifle slung across her back, her boots caked with red dust. She pressed her palm against the concrete barrier and whispered.The wall answered. Not with sound. With light. Thin red symbols crawled across the surface like veins waking from sleep. “Hold,” Jonah said.The guards froze. Fingers stayed off triggers. The gate machinery stayed silent.More figures emerged from the haze beyond the perimeter. Slowly. Carefully. A line of people stretched back into the dust storm, heads bowed, hands empty or raised. They moved like they expected to be shot at any second.Kevin stood beside Jonah on the platform. He went still when the wall lit up. “They’re carrying pieces,” Kevin said.“Pieces of what?” Jonah asked.Kevin did not answer right away. His eyes tracked the symbols on the wall as they rearranged themselves, simplified, then f

The shovel struck stone and stopped. Jonah leaned into it harder. His boot slid on the loose dirt. He adjusted his stance, pressed down again, and the blade cut through with a dull crack. Soil folded inward. He lifted the shovel and dumped the load to the side. No one spoke.The garden plot lay just outside New Crest’s eastern wall, where the ground had never fully healed. Old scorch marks ran through the dirt in uneven lines. Bits of warped metal still surfaced after heavy rain. This was where Serra fell. Not marked before. Not claimed.Jonah dug again. The wind carried dust across the open land. It hissed against the wall and died. Far off, towers hummed low, steady, controlled.Kevin stood several steps back, holding the sapling’s transport frame. His arms were stiff. His grip never loosened. The sapling stood taller than him, its thin trunk wrapped in stabilizing bands. Leaves shimmered faint gold and blue, shifting color as light moved across them. The roots were sealed in a c

The baby cried once, then stopped. The midwife froze with her hands still wet. The room smelled of antiseptic and iron. The generator hummed low behind the wall. Outside, wind pushed dust against the clinic windows.The infant lay on the table between them. Its skin was warm. That was normal. What was not normal was the light under it.Not bright. Not glowing. A faint spread, like heat under glass. The midwife leaned closer. She did not touch the child again. She lifted her hands slowly and held them still. “Doctor,” she said.The doctor stepped forward and looked. The baby opened its eyes. They shifted from dark to pale amber. Then to soft blue. Then back again.The doctor did not speak. The mother tried to sit up. “Is he breathing?”“Yes,” the midwife said. Her voice stayed flat. “He’s breathing.”The lights in the room dimmed without command. The generator did not change pitch. The control panel stayed idle.The doctor turned his head toward the wall lights, then back to the child

Kevin moved through the underground vaults in near silence. His boots clicked lightly on the metal catwalks, echoing against stone walls lined with steel cases and sealed storage. The air was cool, recycled, and smelled faintly of metal and damp concrete. Dust motes floated in the narrow beams of his headlamp.The sensor clipped to his belt chimed softly. He ignored it, focusing instead on the crates labeled in old handwriting, some pre-war, some hastily marked after. Names of lost outposts, collapsed cities, units long decommissioned. He had cataloged hundreds of these locations before, but something about the vaults beneath New Crest felt different.A sudden spike on his Geiger-like sensor made him pause. The needle jumped, then dropped. Almost nothing. The radiation was faint, almost imperceptible.Kevin crouched beside a sealed stone alcove, brushing the dust off its surface. His gloved hands traced the carvings and scratches etched over time. Something was inside. The readings

The first pulse arrived just before dawn. It hit the outer monitoring station as a clean spike, sharp and narrow. The console lights jumped, then settled. No alarms followed. No automated defenses activated. A technician frowned and leaned closer to the screen. “That’s not weather.”The second technician checked the spectrum. “Not seismic either.”The signal faded as quickly as it came. Twelve seconds. Then nothing. They waited.Outside the station, frost clung to steel pylons. The northern mountains cut a dark line against the lightening sky. Wind scraped ice against rock. The towers along the ridge stayed quiet. Six hours later, the pulse returned. Same length. Same shape. Stronger.The technician tagged it and sent the packet downstream. By midday, New Crest was awake.Jonah stood in the signal room with his hands braced on the table. The room was circular, walls lined with live feeds and spectrum maps. The northern sector glowed faintly on every display. Lisa entered without kn