Chapter Three: Before the Sky Fell

  They said the invasion would begin at dawn.

  Instead, the storm came first, howling winds that thrashed against rooftops and slammed shutters like warning knocks from something older than fear. It churned through the district with a fury that made it hard to tell where the weather ended and where fate began.

  Rizer stood at the edge of the garage, staring at the modified escape pod one last time. The pod had been built for two, a tight shell of metal and hope, but their grandfather had rigged it with reinforced alloy struts and recalibrated the internal pressure regulators. It could take three, he insisted. Barely.

  Kiera leaned against the wall, arms crossed, rain streaking the grease on her sleeves. “Still think it’s gonna work?”

  Rizer hesitated. “It has to.”

  Elias was inside, cuddled in a blanket on the garage floor, humming to himself. His latest drawing sat beside him: a childlike sketch of three figures in a pod beneath a sky that exploded into branching smoke trails. The words scribbled underneath said, we fly like roots.

  Upstairs, their grandmother moved through the kitchen with quiet urgency, packing ration bars, water pouches, and keepsakes into a military-issued satchel. Everything had to be underweight. Every ounce mattered. The government had been clear about that.

  On the table sat the meal she insisted on making, eggs, toast, and lukewarm coffee. No one touched it.

  “They’re issuing last instructions in thirty minutes,” she said. “After that, it’s only chaos.”

  Kiera grabbed her rain-soaked jacket and started checking the seals on the pod hatch. She moved like she was already saying goodbye.

  “We’ll take the back route through the alley,” Rizer said. “Less chance of being flagged. Your tracker’s still cloaked?”

  She nodded. “Was never activated. I’m not even a blip to them.”

  Grandad's voice echoed in Rizer’s head: Just get to the launch point. The pod will do the rest.

  The streets were beginning to fill now, not with people, but with shadows of what they’d once been. Families in torn coats, children clutching ID bands, shoulders stiff with the weight of not knowing who would be left behind.

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  They passed a crying boy being held back by a trembling mother, begging to take his sister’s place. They passed an official screaming into a commlink, his voice drowned by the wind.

  And then, they reached the launch fields.

  Hundreds of pods dotted the clearing, each one a gleaming vessel of desperation. Military drones zipped overhead, scanning faces, verifying trackers. Loudspeakers crackled with static and commands:

  "—Proceed to platform 12 if you’ve been cleared—"

  "—Do not attempt unauthorized boarding—"

  "—Weight overage will result in pod denial—"

  Suddenly, the clouds cracked open with a sound like the Earth splitting.

  A screech, unlike anything human, pierced the sky as the first Odryix pod slammed into a distant city district, sending out a shockwave that flattened buildings like cardboard. Another tore across the skyline in flames. Fire bled from the heavens, and panic erupted like a match to dry grass.

  Rizer was already clinging to Elias as they stumbled through the courtyard toward the launch site. Around them, families shrieked. People shoved, clawed, fought. Not for dignity. For survival.

  A man tackled another over a pod key. Children screamed for parents they’d already lost in the crush. One woman was trampled, her body flattened by desperate boots. Another man tried to rip a tracker from a child’s wrist just to take his place.

  "Don't look!" Rizer shouted, shielding Elias’ head with one arm and dragging him with the other. Blood splattered his sleeve from someone else's wound. The sky thundered again, red now, with streaks of fire like veins through a dying heart.

  He reached their pod. It was shaking from the seismic booms, its ladder slick with soot and something darker.

  “Climb, Elias!” Rizer yelled, pushing his brother toward the metal rungs.

  Elias climbed fast but slipped halfway, scraping his elbow. Rizer caught him before he fell, shoving him inside the cramped chamber. “Go, go!”

  The boy curled into the side seat, trembling. Rizer turned to look, but..

  No Kiera.

  She wasn’t there.

  His gut dropped like a broken elevator. The crowd thinned just enough for him to spot her, darting through the open square with wild urgency, dodging rubble and bodies.

  “KIERA!”

  She was almost there.

  A blur passed overhead. The screech again. And then..

  Kiera was lifted clean off the ground, suspended midair by a grotesque spike impaling her abdomen, emerging from the hooked, armored tail of an Odryix scout. Her body jerked, spasmed. Blood soaked her shirt.

  She didn’t cry out.

  She didn’t flinch.

  Her eyes locked with Rizer’s. Steady. Knowing.

  The alien's tail pulsed with a sickening glow as it siphoned her energy. Her skin paled. Her lips trembled.

  She opened her mouth.

  "Survive," she whispered, her voice like rusted wind, guttural and wet.

  Blood splattered.

  The pod slammed shut with a hiss.

  Rizer stared in frozen horror as her image blinked out behind the reinforced window. Elias grabbed him, sobbing, curling into his side as the ignition sequence began.

  Flames roared beneath them.

  The chaos outside vanished.

  Silence.

  Just the thrum of engines and the screaming quiet of loss.

  The pod streaked upward with hundreds of others, smoke trails branching like roots in reverse. Like veins. Like hope trying not to die.

  On Rizer’s wrist, the bracelet Kiera made flickered faintly.

  Gone, but never gone.