Two weeks after the sky burned, the world still smelled of smoke.
The once-glimmering skyline of New Avon was a graveyard of steel and light, half-sunken in the canals that now glowed with chemical flame. The air shimmered with dust, ash, and silence. Ships no longer crossed the sky. No laughter echoed through the towers. Only the whisper of wind through broken glass reminded survivors that the world was still turning.
Briar woke to that sound every morning. He and Lyra had found shelter in the hollow of a derelict transport tunnel, where a few dozen survivors had gathered—soldiers, engineers, orphans. They lived beneath dim emergency lamps powered by scavenged cells, surrounded by the hum of dying machines.
Lyra sat across from him, her arm wrapped in a bandage that glowed faintly where energy had once flared. Her eyes were sunken but alert. She hadn't spoken much since the crash.
"Dreams again?" she asked quietly.
Briar rubbed his face. "Same one. The sky breaking apart. The light swallowing everything."
"Except you."
He didn't answer.
Every night, he saw flashes—violet lightning, shadows of ion soldiers, and that last moment before he'd jumped from the shuttle. Sometimes he thought he still felt the water closing over him. Sometimes he thought he could still hear the screaming.
A sound broke through the tunnel's quiet—boots. Someone was approaching from the main passage. The survivors tensed automatically.
A figure appeared in the glow of a flickering light. A man, limping, his coat tattered and half burnt, but unmistakable.
Dr. Keiran Solis.
Briar stood instantly. "You're alive."
"Barely." Solis's voice was hoarse. He carried a small case under one arm, its surface marked with the emblem of the United Earth Directorate. "I've been searching for survivors. The city's gone. Half the planet's gone." He looked at them both. "But we still have work to do."
Lyra rose. "You saw the ships. How can we fight that?"
Solis's eyes glinted behind cracked lenses. "Not with ships. With people." He opened the case. Inside were vials of shimmering liquid, glowing faintly blue—like bottled lightning. "The next evolution of the Genesis drug. The one I told you about. It bonds only to the young, but this version stabilizes the energy. If we can adapt it, humanity has a future."
"You mean more experiments," Briar said bitterly.
"I mean survival," Solis replied. "The ions aren't here to conquer. They're cleansing the planet. And they'll be back to finish it."
A murmur ran through the survivors. Some stepped forward, drawn to the faint, hypnotic glow of the vials.
Briar shook his head. "You want to turn kids into weapons again. That's what killed my father."
Solis's gaze hardened. "And what saved your world—for a time. The only reason you and I are breathing is because men like your father took the drug."
The tunnel lights flickered again, and for a moment the doctor's face looked older, hollowed by guilt. "This version is different. It was designed for your generation. You, Briar. You're what it was meant for."
Briar froze. "I don't even have powers."
"Not yet." Solis set the case down. "Exposure to ion energy during the fall could have changed you. The readings I took from your Pulse—your cells are reacting differently."
Lyra frowned. "He nearly died. How is that a sign?"
"Because he didn't," Solis said softly. "Anyone else exposed to that much raw energy would've been vaporized."
The survivors exchanged uneasy glances. Outside, a low rumble rolled through the ruins—the sound of distant thunder, though no storms had formed since the invasion.
Solis closed the case. "There's a new base forming beyond the old defense perimeter, near the Arctic sectors. The Directorate remnants call it Haven-9. They're rebuilding a command there and recruiting every surviving adolescent for something called the Second Genesis Program."
Briar's voice was quiet. "Conscripting us."
"Preparing you," Solis corrected. "It's the only way we stand a chance."
Lyra crossed her arms. "And what happens if the drug kills us again?"
Solis met her gaze. "Then humanity dies with you. But if it works…" He looked at Briar. "It could mean the rebirth of our species."
For a moment, no one spoke. The faint hum of the lights filled the silence, blending with the distant, low growl of collapsing structures.
Finally, Briar said, "If this is what's left of humanity, then we're already dying."
Solis's eyes softened. "Then live long enough to change that."
The journey north took six days.
Briar and Lyra joined a convoy of battered transports winding through what remained of the continent. The once-lush forests were gray wastelands now, the ground scarred by orbital bombardments. Burned cities passed in silence, monuments reduced to glass.
Along the roads, they saw what the ions had left behind—carved craters glowing faintly with purple residue, machines melted into the earth, and bodies that dissolved to dust when touched.
Each night, when they camped beneath broken stars, Briar stared at the faint glow in his wrist display. The Pulse had begun to flicker—weak, but alive. It wasn't supposed to.
He said nothing to Solis, but he could feel it: a hum beneath his skin, like static waiting to spark.
Lyra noticed the change before he did. "Your Pulse," she whispered one night as the wind howled across the ruins. "It's… moving."
He looked down. The darkness under his skin pulsed faintly blue.
"Probably a glitch."
"Or it's starting," she said quietly.
He didn't know which frightened him more.
Haven-9 rose from the snow like a wound in the ice—an unfinished fortress of metal and light domes, surrounded by walls of scrap and salvaged plating. Hundreds of refugees moved through the camp under drone watch, most of them children or teens wearing Directorate insignia that no longer meant much.
At the entrance, soldiers scanned every newcomer. Solis handed over his credentials, muttering something to the officer in charge. The man nodded grimly. "Medical sector C," he said. "You're just in time. Trials begin at sunrise."
Briar's chest tightened. "Trials?"
Lyra looked equally uneasy.
Inside, the camp buzzed with weary purpose—engineers repairing broken exo-suits, medics tending to rows of pale faces, scientists whispering over data screens. It felt less like a base and more like a final gamble.
Solis led them into a lab lined with sealed pods, each filled with a faint blue mist. "This is where it happens," he said. "Where Genesis begins again."
A woman in a white coat approached, her expression detached. "Subjects are being selected based on genetic compatibility. Only those under eighteen qualify."
Lyra frowned. "Selected? What if someone says no?"
"They don't," Solis said quietly.
Briar stared at the rows of pods. He thought of his father, of the hollow look in the soldier's hologram back in the Academy. He thought of the ion soldier calling him weak. He thought of the sky burning.
"What if it kills us?" he asked.
Solis looked him dead in the eye. "Then you die with meaning."
That night, Briar couldn't sleep. The snow outside glowed under artificial lights. He sat by the narrow window, watching the cold world shift beneath the auroras.
Lyra joined him silently. "Do you believe him?"
"I don't know," he said. "I don't think I have a choice."
They sat together for a long time. The camp was quiet except for the wind.
In the distance, a single flare rose into the sky—a signal from one of the patrols. Seconds later, alarms began to wail.
Lyra stood. "What is it now?"
Briar looked out across the white expanse. Far beyond the perimeter, faint lights shimmered against the horizon—violet, not blue.
He felt it before he saw it. The hum under his skin grew stronger, burning like fire in his veins. The Pulse on his wrist flared to life, glowing bright for the first time.
Lyra's eyes widened. "Briar…"
Outside, the snow exploded upward as something massive descended from the clouds.
The ions had found them again.