All This Effort To Make It Look Effortless

It was the third time that week, unusual by the standards of the Station. Pulling a pillow over her face, Elain tried to slip back into the dream she’d been having, but the noise was only muffled.

Wah. Wah. Wah. Wah.

Rhythmic and unyielding, a warning to remain in her cabin for the time being. Elain sighed, tossing the pillow to the cold, metal floor. She blinked against the offensive red lighting up the otherwise peaceful dark of her space until she didn’t have to blink against the light. What was going on?

It was tempting to ask her sister Feyre, who seemed to know all the gossip albeit unwillingly. Feyre lurked in the maintenance halls, hiding from her responsibilities and so she could focus on the one thing that gave her real purpose and joy—art.

There was no room for art on The Station. 

Elain sat up, legs dangling off the raised platform her bed rested on. Reaching toward the metal plated wall, she pressed a button to lift the shade from the porthole just above her window. It was the only one she had, a view into the vastness of space. Below, Elain could see the ruined husk of the planet Earth, abandoned centuries earlier for space travel—at least at first.

No one knew if it was space travel or simple biological evolution that brought about the beginning of the end for humanity. Had someone contracted a disease on some far-flung planet? Or had a planet, filled to the bursting with a population that seemed like it couldn’t die, finally brought about its own destruction? Everyone seemed to agree it was technology taken too far, but the disease had spread too quickly and had killed so effectively that by the time anyone realized they had a full-blown pandemic on their hands, all that was truly left was evacuation. 

Elain peered closer against the tempered glass. To her, Earth was something mythological. A pristine blue and green sphere, the mother of her species—home. As a girl, she and her sisters had run about The Station pretending they were living in those lush jungles and swimming in the salted oceans they so often read about. 

Humans weren’t meant to live in space, of that she was certain. Some had certainly adapted. Nesta, for example, seemed to have been built for the cold, dark expanse of space. Most people agreed. Nesta was powerful, overseeing secretive missions deep into space as humanity pushed ever forward, looking for another planet they could call home. They were, after all, the only species in the known universe that did not have a planet to call their own.

Humans were everywhere, living in the most populous cities and the most remote outposts. It was said humans could adapt to anything, often with a sneer of disgust. The other races loathes humanity for the way they’d kicked open the galactic door at gun point, demanding equal trade access, the right to settle colonies and worlds, and the right to defend themselves with force. It took other races centuries to accomplish what humanity managed in fifty years.

The galaxy was afraid of humanity. That’s what Nesta said, anyway. Better to let them be, Nesta would add, brow arched and arms crossed, as she reflected on their status in the universe. Nesta was so close to a council position—the first ever for humanity—though Elain secretly hoped she didn’t get it.

That was more selfish than anything. Nesta wielding one of the most powerful position in the galaxy was a major coup, and it would mean she and Elain would never have another meaningful conversation again. Nesta didn’t know how to switch between gears—she was either Nesta, the woman only Elain truly knew, or she was Ambassador Nesta, a woman even the most feared races in the galaxy didn’t dare cross. While other ambassadors were often lambasted on the net, everyone tiptoed around their critiques of Nesta.

She was ruthless, and her hands were stained with blood. Everyone knew it. 

Elain turned from her window and her musings as the blaring ceased and darkness flooded through the room again. Her ears rang with the echoing wah’s even when she closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep. The clock on the nearby stand read four twenty two am—local donjon time. The whole galaxy was centralized around the founding galactic civilization and their stronghold—donjon. Their language was the standard, common language, their year was the standard year, their time the standard time. 

Humanity called their city The Donjon based on its appearance—it seemed to look like the protective keep of a medieval fortress, nevermind that it sounded nearly identical when spoken in their native tongue. The name had stuck over the years since, and now most colloquially referred to the city as Donjon, much to the irritation of the people living there previously. Humanity is so disrespectful! Net pundits would scream, eyes purpling around the sockets. But all these centuries later, the name was still around and so was humanity.

Deciding it was better to just start her day early, Elain let her bare feet  the cold metal sheeting of the floor. Having been cleaned the day before, she could see her distorted reflection peering back up her, just as she could everywhere else she went. There was no privacy aboard The Station—not even from herself. 

There was also very little water. Water had to be imported, and not every world needed water or relied on it the same way humanity did. Often, a world would have drinkable water for them, but absolutely polluted to humans. In the early days, Elain knew it had been a major source for concern—how did you establish colonies both on planets and in space without access to a constant source of water?

The answer had been synthetic, like so many other things. H2More, they called it. It was like water. Good enough to satisfy the human body, and easy to replicate in factories to be bottled and sold all over the galaxy at reasonable costs. People who’d tasted real water reported H2More tasted wrong, though they could never quite articulate how. No one could even describe the taste of water to begin with, so how could something reportedly made of the same compounds—along with several extras to compensate for living in space—taste wrong?

Elain had never had actual water, so she couldn’t say one way or the other. Most of her life had been spent on The Station—known as Tuscon, the former city on Earth—or on Donjon on occasion. Elain didn’t care for space travel, which often left her feeling sick to her stomach due to the high rate of speed they had to move to get from one planet to the next. 

It was good enough to brush her teeth and wash her hair with, and she didn’t have to ration it like she’d heard they’d done back in those yearly years, and that was good enough for her. Life was small on The Station, but it was simple and navigable. The larger galaxy was chaotic, loud, and confusing, which worked for someone who could establish order, like Nesta. But for Elain, her little life felt like enough.

She parted her hair into two waist length plaits, slid a little chapstick over her lips to help with how dry the air was, and slid into the white belted jumpsuit everyone wore on The Station. Her name was embroidered just above her heart: Elain Archeron, Astrobotanist, and she wore it with pride. Her vegetables, fruits, and herbs might be grown with synthetic sunlight and synthetic water, but what came through was real. 

It was more science than anything. Elain wasn’t expected to feed The Station, which imported the majority of its goods from other worlds, but to find the right conditions in which once extinct produce could return to the wider galaxy. She’d been working on bananas for the better part of a year. No one in living memory had eaten a real banana, though every human had tasted banana flavoring.

Whether that was the truth of a banana or merely someone's memory, no one truly knew. Elain wanted to be the first to find out, though growing bananas in a lab in space was proving to be quite more difficult than she’d first imagined when she’d applied for the research grant. She’d had good luck growing tropic fruits—she’d managed little mangoes, one teeny papaya, and one half-sized pineapple that had been so acidic, the fruit had ripped apart Elain’s mouth as she’d eaten it.

Though, that hardly stopped her. Elain would have eaten it even if it made her mouth bleed. Nothing had ever tasted so sweet, so…so…alive. She could recreate the humid conditions, the heat, the volume of light, and yet…her trees resisted. It was as if they knew she was attempting to trick them into giving up something they otherwise wouldn’t.

As if this continued pursuit to see what she could grow regardless of if she should, was offensive to the plants themselves. Bananas, a fruit so ubiquitous on earth that they were mentioned in passing in so many written documents, almost as an afterthought, seemed determined to thwart her.

Not for you, stargirl.

How did Elain explain that she had roots in her fingers tethering her to the planet below her? That if there were a chance to return, Elain would have taken it without a backward glance at the stars above? She wanted to feel the sun warming her skin the way humans were meant to—her sun, on her soil, on her planet. No red suns, twin suns, blue suns, or any other type of suns that existed and provided light and warmth to other species. Her sun. 

Shaking her head, Elain laced up her boots, grabbed her keycard so she could access the other parts of the ship, and left her gun behind. Technically, all personnel aboard the ship were required to carry a standard issue firearm everywhere they went but Elain rarely did. Soldiers patrolled the corridors and that was enough for her. 

She wasn’t the only one up. A light murmuring down the bright, sanitized halls betrayed the cafeteria, which was busier than usual despite the early hour. There weren’t lines yet which was lucky, but if she’d waited Elain knew they’d have cleared out all the tofubacon before she got a chance to get any. Elain added toast with a packet of jam, a scoop of eggs, some sour ro fruit along with a packet of salt to cut through the tartness, and a little carbonated water. She scanned the crowd, found a familiar head of golden blonde hair, and plunked her tray at the same rounded table.

“Alarms got you up, too?” Arina grumbled, pushing the same neon yellow eggs around her tray without enthusiasm.

Arina Novak, Archivist. 

“I was dreaming about forests again,” Elain admitted, resting her elbows on the metal surface as she ripped apart her bacon absently. 

Arina ran both hands over her bare face. Like Elain, she’d pulled her hair back, though she used a series of small ponytails to create two large bubble braids that hung down either side of her back. It was a popular style on the net, and it looked rather pretty on Arina. Arina, in Elain’s opinion, reminded her of the sun, or what the sun ought to be. Maybe that had been why Elain had been so drawn to her as a little girl.

It wasn’t just her gold hair that caught even under the harshest, most artificial light. It was her grassy green eyes and her brown skin, the same as the soft soil Elain often sifted through her fingertips. Arina seemed the living embodiment of a planet Elain was homesick from, as though she’d been crafted from the missing parts.

Though, Elain looked for Earth in everyone she met. The iron blue of Nesta’s eyes were a stormy sea, the freckles that dotted Feyre’s nose little pebbles for skipping across a lake. Earth was everywhere as a reminder, and never so clearly than it was in the beautiful Arina. 

Arina, who spent her days preserving what she could of humanity. The work of her colleagues was to digitize what they could, while others preserved what existed in the here and now. But Arina took the oldest records and carefully preserved them, either by copying them exactly onto new paper, or restoring the documents so they could live on. The majority of these artifacts, once restored, sat in museums on planets that did not belong to humanity and could only be seen if a person had the resources to travel to wherever they were.

Where else would they be housed? Humanity had no home, which meant no place to keep their cultural heritage. Arina often complained about this to Elain, who privately wondered what the benefit was, overall. Did it make other cultures appreciate them more? Make their case for a new planet to colonize greater? Elain could have asked Nesta these questions if she’d wanted to, but never did.

“I wish I was dreaming about forests,” Arina grumbled, finally forking some food into her mouth. “Everytime I close my eyes, I see fire.”

Elain sighed, chewing thoughtfully. “Afraid of losing your work?”

Arina didn’t answer. “What if we got out of here for a while? Took a break, saw a…I don’t know, a beach? Someplace new? What if we spent six months in Noctus Prime—”

“Why?” Elain interrupted, brow wrinkling. “You want to leave?” Arina turned toward the large, open windows at the far end of the cafeteria. All Elain saw was the emptiness of dark space, peppered with the occasional star here and there. 

“We’re rotting out here, Elain,” Arina said with an urgency she hadn’t heard from her friend in the two decades they’d been friends. “Nothing changes on this station and nothing ever will. Don’t you want more than all this?”

Elain looked down at her half-eaten tray. Not really. Once, maybe, she’d dreamed of seeing more of the universe back when she’d been a little girl, but now…

“Doesn’t it suck seeing Gray every day?”

Elain recoiled as though Arina had struck her.

“Why would you say that?” Elain asked, willing her bottom lip not to tremble. “I barely see him at all.”

That was true enough. After Graysen had ended their engagement, he spent more time off The Station than on, traveling between worlds as a diplomat, same as his father. That had been eight months ago, and Elain was doing better. She didn’t cry herself to sleep at night, though if she were honest, she did spend a lot of time trying to keep herself busy so she wouldn’t obsess over the what-might-have-been. 

“You used to want more than banana’s, Elain,” Arina tried, her tone just a little too sharp. Elain scowled, eyes narrowing.

“If you want to travel off world, you don’t need me for that,” she snapped, petulantly.

Arina’s hand shot across the table, fingers encircling her wrists. “I want you to come with me. There’s whole worlds out there to grow bananas on. Worlds that Gray wouldn’t dare step foot on.”

That was, partly, what Elain was afraid of. Neither of them needed to vocalize that outloud, given they were both well aware of Elain’s unspoken fears. Even if Gray came back crawling, could she ever trust him again? It had been nothing personal, he’d said, as if their engagement was merely a business transaction that had run its course. He simply needed to put his career first. Maybe someday, blah blah blah, Elain had stopped listening by that point. Empty platitudes meant to make him feel like he wasn’t the bad guy for letting things get this far.

Pretty lies to obscure the fact he’d broken her heart. 

“What about a weekend on Noctus Prime? On the Gold Coast?” Arina cajoled, betraying her hand. Elain’s eyes narrowed again.

“You’ve already purchased a flight, haven’t you?”

“Two days from now,” Arina admitted without an ounce of shame. “We can extend it, if we want, but come for a couple days and relax. Get away.”

“Fine,” Elain conceded, ignoring the soft fissure of pleasure she felt at Arina’s obvious joy. It was nice to have a friend who loved her like Arina did. 

Arina beamed and Elain basked in the warmth, a moth drawn to the soft glow of her smile. 

They parted ways not long after, shifting topics to The Station and all the gossip Arina had. Unlike Feyre, who happened to know things because she was often in the room where things happened, Arina had a trustworthy face. People just told her things because they trusted her, and Arina often immediately told those things to Elain, knowing Elain would never betray her secrets.

The lights in the halls began to warm, mimicking a sunrise on a faraway planet. As Elain walked down the halls, boots smacking softly against metal, she wondered what time it was on Earth. Was the sun rising somewhere below, too? 

It was a question she wondered every morning as she walked the halls to her own station—a massive space divided into multiple smaller rooms that were supposed to mimic the biome they wanted to grow in. Elain took one last breath of dry, filtered air, before scanning her key and stepping into her own little lab. 

The warmth was a kick to the stomach, the humidity physically weighing on her as though it were its own form of gravity. Elain would never be used to it, though some part of her relished it. This was what the world might have felt like, at least somewhere. 

She spent the morning doing her checks, working from a tablet to input data like she did each day. The amount of water needed to be measured, along with soil density, depth, and acidity. Each day Elain measured the length and width of her trees and each banana leaf coming from each branch. She charted the different colors as she observed them, any little spots, any trimming she did, and everything in between.

It took her all morning to complete. Elain wanted to be through so her research could be replicated someday, once she succeeded. The whole galaxy could eat bananas for all Elain cared—that would make them easier to obtain. 

She was about to start mixing her feed for the soil to encourage a little more growth when the station seemed to shudder. Elain paused, looking toward the door, but nothing happened. No sirens began wailing, no lights flickered. It was as if something merely knocked into The Station and kept going. 

Elain shrugged and continued about her lab, supposing it was likely a piece of floating rock, or junk, merely bonking into them as it continued onward in its neverending journey through space. Elain barely looked up when the station rocked again, though the lurch caused her to dump some of her fertilizer onto her shoes. 

“What is going on—”

Another crash, this time violent enough to send Elain careening against the far wall as though she’d been thrown by an invisible hand. Groaning, Elain attempted to rise to her feet, but another lurch kept her pinned to the floor. 

The lights overhead shut off with a loud, whining click. A moment later, the sirens began blaring. Wah. Wah. Wah. Wah—

Louder than they’d been that morning, a full-blown warning that something was wrong. Outside the lab, Elain could hear loud voices. Someone was shouting as Elain made her way to the door of her lab.

Someone was firing plasma shots, too, she realized. “What’s happening?” she demanded, as if someone was going to materialize and tell her. 

“Get back inside!” A soldier from the hall barked, hitting the red button on the wall to manually shut the doors to the lab from the inside. Elain didn’t move from the little window, feet rooted in place. It seemed unreal. Smoke curled down the hall, obscuring her view. The soldiers in the hall were pushed back as bright red bolts of molten plasma screamed toward them. Some fell, and Elain watched that, too. 

This wasn’t a meteor or debris. This was an invasion.

Why? 

Who?

The second part of that question was answered almost immediately. Emerging from the fog was a sight Elain had only ever seen on the net—a male Teryx, tall and imposing, his brown skin glistening even in the otherwise dark and adorned with blue, whorling inked tattoos over his shoulders and biceps. They were said to be marks of conquest, given their race was prized warriors above all else. 

He paused in the middle of the hall, rolling his shoulders to reveal two massive, leathery wings on either side of his body. Elain ducked, but not quick enough—those vivid yellow green eyes saw her.

The locked door crunched beneath the male's power, his long, strong fingers prying the two sides open with ease. Elain remained where she was, taking note that he seemed almost human with that shock of dark hair, his square jaw and strong, curving nose. The Teryx came from somewhere within The Cosmic Web, their homeworld unknown and uncharted. How they managed space travel was its own mystery, theorized endlessly by pundits on the net. 

The Teryx didn’t join politics, they had no interest in being part of any Galactic Alliance, and if they were concerned about their image, they never attempted to correct it. It had been a good century since anyone had seen one of them in the wider space, though on occasion someone might find a Teryx male in some far-flung outpost, taking work as a bounty hunter or otherwise doing something that concerned only them.

Elain had never seen a Teryx female, though she knew the rumors—that the males kept them enslaved in caves, forced them to breed, and cut the wings of every young girl so she couldn’t escape. Though, until that moment, she’d never seen a Teryx male either.

He was terrifying. Pointing his weapon directly at her—a strange mixture of a gun and a knife—he said, “Out. Now.”

Elain shook her head back and forth. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” she whispered.

The male’s eyes narrowed, lips pressed in a firm line. He held the gun a little firmer in his hand. “Now,” he said again, his soft voice a lethal threat. 

Elain had a split second to make a decision. Who knew what would happen if she went with him. There was a booming black market trade for slaves in which humans were valued rather highly—nevermind females. For all she knew, he intended to round them all up and sell them for as much as he could manage.

And that was the kindest future she could imagine. Every other alternative was far, far worse. There was a stack of ceramic pots on the table just behind her. With speed Elain didn’t know she possessed, she reached for one and smashed it against the male's face before darting around him.

The roar of anger he emitted scared Elain to the bone, urging her legs on faster. Delving into the smoke and chaos, Elain relied on her emergency training.

Everyone living on The Station went through it four times a standard year. Given how long she’d been there, Elain had gone through it a bazillion times—enough to know the path blindfolded in the dark. That was lucky, given the lack of light, save for the flashing red overhead, was the only illumination in the smoky dark. The floors lit up the path to the shuttles was all but useless given Elain couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.

She choked, coughing against the smoke, as she made her way through the twisting turns. The closer she got, the louder the screaming, the shouting, and the sounds of gunfire. Were they firing bullets or plasma rounds, she wondered? And would they strike her? 

As it turned out, no. Soldiers wearing masks yanked her through a chokepoint, not bothering to see where she fell as she came through. It didn’t matter—Elain could hear Nesta’s voice cutting through the hysteria.

“Elain? Where is Elain?”

Elain scrambled to her feet and flung herself at Nesta, colliding into her chest with relief. “We need to get out of here—”

“We need to take them out while they’re distracted,” Nesta interrupted, eyes steely. 

“Nes—”

“One of them has Feyre,” Nesta said again, teeth clenched. “They took Feyre, and we have to get her back.”

Elain looked over her shoulder, catching sight of vivid gold in a sea of gray. She reached out for Arina, yanking her hard to keep them together. 

“You’re sure?” Elain asked as Arina gasped for air, hands braced on her knees. They were lined up for evacuation but it was going slowly. People were panicked, screaming for children, for lovers, for friends and the orderliness had broken down. If they didn’t hurry, not everyone would make it out before they were breached and more prisoners taken. 

“There were two Teryx,” Nesta said, pulling Elain deeper into the hall and further from where the evacuation ships were. “They were…are…huge. One of them lunged for me and she appeared out of nowhere with a knife. Stabbed the bigger one right in the stomach, which should have sent them running.”

“What happened?” Elain whispered, so easily able to imagine what had happened.

“The other one,” Nesta’s eyes clouded over with burning hatred, “he laughed. Said, ‘There you are, darling. I’ve been looking for you,’ like it was a joke, and then…”

Nesta shook her head, the crown of braids atop coming slightly loose. “He swallowed her up in a cloud of smoke. Like magic.”

Elain’s steps stuttered for a minute. “Magic?”

“Some kind of tech, probably,” Arina interjected, having finally caught her breath. “There’s no such thing as magic. And if you blow up their ship, you’re going to blow your sister up, too.”

Nesta didn’t seem to be listening, two pistols in either hand as she made her way toward a fleet of fighters. Most were gone, encircling the terrifying, onyx ship in the distance. Had a bevy of lasers not been firing from its canons, the ship might have looked like a dark void. It seemed to absorb all the light around it like some kind of terribly devourer from legend. 

“Are you listening?” Arina pressed, her own gun strapped to her thigh. “If you blow them up–”

“I just need to board,” Nesta interrupted, turning to face Arina down. Elain didn’t know how Arina withstood that look, and after a moment it seemed Arina couldn’t either. She backed down, palms held upward in surrender. 

Another body boarded the small fighter. She was a familiar figure to Elain and Arina, though for different reasons. Another archivist, and Nesta’s only friend Gwyn stepped aboard, pushing a gun into Elain’s chest without a word.

“You pilot,” Gwyn said, plopping into the co-pilot’s seat. “You two—buckle in.”

Arina moaned softly, eyes closed as she took a jump seat across from Elain. The two snapped in the harnesses as Nesta jerked away from The Station. She shouldn’t have watched—Nesta took off like a bat out of hell, yanking Elain forward by her navel before pressing her back against her seat.

“I’m going to be sick,” Elain whispered.

“There!” Nesta shouted, tilting the aircraft sickeningly on its side. The cannons from Gwyn’s guns recoiled, causing their own little fighter to lurch from the energy. Not that it stopped Nesta, laser focused on her prey. They whipped around enemy fighters flying ships that melded with the space around them, appearing just in time to send another fighter ship crashing into the void.

That was going to be them if Nesta wasn’t careful.

Elain wondered who’d taught Nesta to fly like she did. She was a natural, maneuvering through the sky and debris like she had some sixth sense—like she’d been born for it. Nesta had always been good at everything she tried, and even better when she put effort behind it. 

And that wasn’t enough to stop what was coming for them, all the same. The dark ship at the center of the invasion seemed to have its own wings, unfurling like a terrible dragon. Nesta attempted to move further afield, but gravity was dragging them toward that gaping maw.

Alarms inside the fighter began to ring.

“What now?!” Elain demanded as Nesta and Gwyn flipped switches and pushed flashing buttons to no avail.

“I’m not letting them take Feyre!” Nesta swore. “We’ll never see her again.”

“This is a suicide mission!” Arina argued, unstrapping herself as they yanked forward. “We need to bail—now.”

Gwyn looked at Nesta. “You’re right,” she said before Nesta could argue. “Nes, it’s over. C’mon.”

Nesta only had seconds to decide. Looking up at Gwyn, she finally nodded. “To the pods. Now.”

There were two pods, big enough to sustain life for seventy hours for two individuals. Arina went in first, Elain second. As Elain sat, knee to knee with her friend, Nesta looked into the pod.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Nes—” Elain scrambled, but Nesta slammed the hissing door shut and began the countdown launch for the pod.

“Sit down, Elain!” Arina tried, but Elain was banging on the small window. 

“Nesta!” She screamed, palm aching from the force. “Nesta, they’ll kill you! Nes—”

The pod launched into space and once again, Elain was slammed against a hard, unyielding surface. Arina groaned, too, having taken an elbow, or perhaps a knee, to the gut. 

“Elain, you—”

Something smashed into the side of the pod, sending it careening wildly out of control. Elain smacked her head against the unyielding metal wall once, twice.

And then one final time before the stars all winked out. 

–

“Another day in paradise,” Jurian commented as Lucien rolled his eyes. That’s not what he would call their current circumstances. He’d come to the resistance a good five years earlier with a friend, and while many others had abandoned the cause, Lucien had remained. 

Even in the sticky, muggy weather in the ruined suburbs of Chicago. He supposed he ought to be grateful the ground wasn’t radioactive like so many other cities that had once existed. It had merely been torn apart and left to rot until nature took it over.

And now he lived there, even in the dead of summer, the middle of winter. The weather was decent for about four months out of the year, and he lived for those times. Looking upward at the towering oak trees swaying beneath the moonlight, he wondered what life might be like among the heavens. It was the dream of little boys, not men. There was nothing in their universe besides Earth—how long had they searched, only to find nothing? There were rumors, of course, of aliens appearing in this place or that. Someone claimed a whole group had crashed in Ft. Lauterdale. What a horrible place to be introduced to humanity. 

No, this was all their was. Lucien sighed, thinking of his father, the governor of the entire territory. It was a huge swath of land that had once been different states within a United States—a place Lucien only read about in textbooks. Now it was simply The Middle, and had become the most prosperous region in the massive empire that now was The Imperium of the Americas. 

Lucien sighed, pulling his shirt from his sticky skin and tossing it over his shoulder. Beron might have declared the resistance dead, but it seemed lively enough to Lucien. People were working, as they always did, in the camp Jurian had taken over from a previous group. It wouldn’t be hard to find them, even as they dug far below the ground to create shelters that could protect them from radiation, and the vast array of new weaponry that seemed to come from the stars every other month. 

He glanced upward again just in time to see a shooting star streak across the sky. He wasn’t the only one watching. Everyone, it seemed, had craned their neck to take a look. He heard a child announce they ought to make a wish, and for some reason, Lucien decided to do it.

Send us something that can help, he breathed, eyes fluttering shut for a moment. Anything. Anyone.

“Lucien,” Jurian’s voice interrupted. “That’s metal.”

The star should have arced along the curve of the planet, not…continued plummeting. “Meteor?” Lucien heard himself say, ignoring everything Jurian had just told him. 

Jurian shook his head no. “Could be junk.” They’d found a lot of debris that had fallen from their gravitational orbit, leftovers of a space age that was long gone. Unfunded by a government more concerned with immediate profit and stripping the remaining minerals from the planet than they did about learning anything new. Lucien often wondered what would happen once there was nothing left to take. When the earth had given up all her secret spoils and humanity was left wretched and abandoned. 

Why?

“Could be good for salvage,” Lucien offered, well aware he wouldn’t be getting sleep that night.

“We need to move fast,” Jurian replied, wiping sweat from beneath a mop of brown curls. 

“Let’s go now.”

–

Eris was interrupted by his father.

“The Tuscon was attacked.”

“The research station?” Eris questioned, setting his tablet down on the side table. “For what purpose?”

“It’s unclear. They had a lot of projects, and the station is rubble.”

“Who?”

“Teryx,” Beron replied. “Debris is raining down just outside the city. Go out there, clean it up, and ensure no one else finds anything.”

Of course Beron had come to deliver instructions. Beron cared as little for space as Eris did. Their home was on Earth and had been since the dawn of time. Eris had little interest in traveling off world like his father so often did. He’d heard there were grand civilizations out there and he simply did not think anything could be better than what humanity had already constructed.

Even if humanity was a fractured species at the moment. What did the aliens make of that, he wondered? 

Eris nodded his head curtly. It was a direct order, and Eris always obeyed. He’d cleaned debris up before. No one was to know the full scope of what was happening in the galaxy, mostly to keep the interests of the wealthy, well…wealthy. Humanity still needed food, still needed weapons, and those things were best found on Earth.

Beron turned and left Eris’ townhouse, leaving Eris to send a flurry of messages as quickly as his fingers could type. This was a problem for the morning. Eris was tracking his youngest brother, who was back somewhere nearby, living like a filthy caveman if he knew Lucien. And he did. Lucien would be scrounging, and Eris didn’t want to have to drag him back home.

Again.

It had simply become an embarrassment for them all. Lucien, brother by his mothers blood only, had always been difficult and unafraid of Beron. He’d left for the resistance as a teenager and only returned when Eris found him, often knocking him unconscious and dragging him home.

Only for Lucien to vanish just as soon as someone took their eyes off him. 

Eris sighed, crossing his legs. A ruined space station, the Teryx coming out of deep space, and now debris was raining from the heavens.

Eris had warned his father this secret wouldn’t last, and when the populace on Earth realized they’d been lied to and essentially enslaved, there would be no need for Lucien’s rebellion. The people would revolt all on their own.

He doubted they’d care much about Eris’ own forced participation when they were lining him up for the guillotine. It was simply too much work to try and control everyone’s perception. Beron still cared.