The sky above Zone 60 was a soft, artificial blue—programmed to match Earth's original daylight hue. Birds no longer flew overhead, only the occasional glider drone or hover-commute shuttle slicing quietly through the air.
Below, the city hummed—not with chaos, but with rhythm. Pedestrians moved along hoverwalks. Machines swept the walkways. Towering data screens lined the skyline with silent updates, tracking energy flow, population cycles, and Council bulletins. The world was quiet now. Controlled. Predictable.
And in the heart of this balance, Auron Riven walked alone to school.
He wore a simple gray-and-blue jacket, sleeves a little too long, and a satchel slung over one shoulder. His dark, slightly messy hair swayed with each step, and his steel-gray eyes, quiet and thoughtful, scanned the world like it might change when he wasn't looking.
Auron wasn't loud. He wasn't brilliant. But he noticed everything.
He noticed the repair drone that hesitated at crosswalks, even when no one was near. He noticed the girl on the corner whose chip flickered red—too many denied transactions. He noticed how people had stopped looking up entirely.
And more than anything, he noticed when his friends weren't by his side.
"You're early," said Zeke Talin, dropping down from a maintenance pipe above the alley with a grin.
"You're late," Auron replied without a smile, but his voice was warm.
Zeke was the kind of friend who could vanish for hours and come back with pocketed food chips and five new conspiracy theories. Today, he wore a patched-up flight jacket, goggles around his neck, and his usual chaotic charm.
"Had to loop past Sector 17. Someone tagged the council wall with the words 'Magnus Lives.' Totally wiped it clean before I got close."
He nudged Auron. "You ever wonder who that guy was?"
Auron shrugged, even though he did wonder. He just didn't say it out loud.
At school, things were like always.
Metallic floors, clean and humming with energy. Holo-desks projected interfaces into the air. Each student was logged into the zone network via their neck chip—access to lessons, social rankings, and biometric readouts all in one blink.
Auron slid into his seat in the middle of the room, nodding politely at a few classmates. He wasn't the most popular—he didn't crave attention—but no one disliked him. His kindness was subtle, like a thread that wove people together without them noticing.
When a student dropped her pen-tab, he bent and picked it up.
When another whispered that his chip wasn't syncing properly, Auron quietly offered to help during break.
And when Zeke got a warning ping for his "frequent misbehavior," Auron didn't laugh—he frowned, concerned.
"You need to stop pushing things," Auron whispered.
"And you need to start," Zeke whispered back. "You're smart enough to blow this system apart, but you keep pretending you're average."
"Because I don't want to lose people," Auron said softly. "Not again."
Zeke didn't reply to that. He knew better.
Their first class was History of Fusion, taught by a drone instructor that flickered every time someone sneezed. It projected slides and spoke in a flat tone:
"In 2765 AD, humanity cracked the fusion equation, eliminating all fossil fuels and leading to the formation of the Unified Earth Government…"
But Auron wasn't listening. Not really.
His chip—just like everyone else's—was receiving the lecture directly into his neural pathways. But his mind was elsewhere.
On the dream he had last night.
A dark room. A man's voice.
"If you find them, protect them. If you activate it… never let it fall into the wrong hands."
He didn't recognize the voice. But it felt familiar.
At break, Auron sat under the rust-orange tree in the courtyard—genetically designed to look like Earth's ancient oaks. Zeke and a few other kids threw digital discs across the grass, laughing, arguing, fighting over scores.
Auron watched them with a gentle smile.
He wasn't the strongest. He wasn't the leader. But he would do anything for them. He remembered how hard it had been when his father died. He remembered how Zeke stayed by him. How Lyra gave up a scholarship to stay near home. How his mother carried everything without breaking once.
Auron would never let anyone fall away from him again. Not if he could help it.
That was just who he was.
And in the distance, beyond the school towers, deep within the grid…
A signal pulsed.
Soft. Subtle. Ancient.
And it was calling to him.
TO THE READERS
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT