Chapter 1
Year 2248.
In the early morning, as winter was finally beginning to loosen its grip, the sun spread a blazing wash of crimson and gold across the horizon. That light mingled with the artificial illumination inside Lucien Flynn’s private tower in North Dome City, casting an uncanny glow.
It was a spectral light, hinting at the wild, unknown world beyond the dome—a world they had only been taught to fear.
The great half-dome rising above them sheltered its people like a mother protecting the child within her womb. Unlike that child, however, they would never be born from it, nor did they wish to be. Yet on this morning, there was something they all awaited.
In a chamber at the summit of the tower, guarded day and night, Flynn’s young wife was performing an ancient act that, ironically, stood in direct contradiction to the very purpose of the dome.
Terry Zeller had served in the Gray Army for two years. Recently promoted to Lucien Flynn’s personal guard, he had begun to regret saving the officer whose gratitude had indirectly earned him the position. His only real question was whether he regretted saving the fool more than he wished he’d simply let the man fall.
He suppressed a sigh.
Well, there was nothing to be done about it now.
Here he stood—hungry, exhausted, and thirsty. His stiff gray military uniform chafed unbearably in the sweltering corridor where he stood watch. Complaining openly would accomplish nothing. More likely, he’d be punished simply for speaking his mind aloud.
Had the officer not taken his own life a week after Terry saved him, Terry suspected he might have been tempted to help him along. He discreetly scratched at his neck.
Damn collar...
His post was almost entirely ceremonial. No one in their right mind would ever attempt to force their way into the Tower. But tradition was tradition, no matter how the world changed around it until customs became relics of another age. Then again, perhaps that was precisely why traditions endured. People found comfort in things that had always been.
A faint cry from behind the doors drew his thoughts to the birth of their future lord.
Beyond the towering white doors, reinforced with enough iron rivets to stop a siege, the young woman struggled. Fourteen hours. Terry glanced at the chrono on the wall. At least there would be no surprise about the infant’s sex; the Guarantors’ tech had settled that months ago. All that was left was the screaming.
The expectant father paced outside with barely concealed impatience.
A stray beam of sunlight danced across Lucien Flynn’s dark hair before illuminating his stern face and keen silver-gray eyes. They betrayed irritation at how long the labor was taking rather than concern for his wife.
Terry found that mildly surprising. He shifted his weight as the Leader strode past once more and caught an unreadable sideways glance from the other guard standing beside him.
Flynn strode past the guards again, his jaw set. Terry could only guess at the man’s thoughts, but the tension in his shoulders spoke of more than an overdue heir.
Indeed, Flynn’s mind was miles away. Maintaining order was a constant battle, and the damned rebels had struck another food convoy. The real problem, the one that gnawed at him, was how they had obtained the route.
Maintaining order throughout the nation demanded every waking hour, and now the damned rebels had struck another food convoy. Food was the city’s greatest vulnerability, and they knew it.
Every attack fueled his fury, a promise of the retribution he would one day deliver. He would crush Harley Luna’s movement so completely it would become a ghost story. The problem haunted his waking hours and his dreams: how had they gotten the route?
Children of the Broken Seal!
He snorted to himself.
What a ridiculous name—
The thought was cut short by a piercing, vigorous cry that echoed through the corridor, bringing Lucien Flynn’s long wait to an end.
A few days later, from his tower, Lucien Flynn watched the Guarantor vessel land. It settled on its platform just outside the city, its obsidian form unfolding like a black, geometric flower.
Four of them emerged, gliding toward the decontamination chamber.
He hated this ritual.
He hated the reminder that his power existed inside a cage they had built after the Catastrophe. They had given humanity shelter and, in doing so, had fostered a deep-seated terror of the outside—a fear he now wielded like a weapon.
Exile was a death sentence, and everyone knew it. Not even he would dare step beyond the border. This reliance galled him. North Dome was the pinnacle of their work, but it was still just a gilded prison.
The decontamination chamber was a tubular airlock, completely sealed from the outside world.
The four visitors waited silently before it until unseen eyes confirmed their identities. Simultaneously, they inserted their right hands into a narrow opening in the wall. With a slow mechanical groan, the lock disengaged. Coolant hissed into the heated air, evaporating almost instantly.
The heavy door clanged shut behind them, a sound that reminded anyone prone to claustrophobia just how isolated and confined this city truly was.
A fine disinfectant mist sprayed from hidden nozzles in the walls, eliminating any foreign microorganisms. Three minutes later, an androgynous metallic voice declared them sterile, and the matching doors on the opposite side slid open.
Outside, a spindle-shaped transport vehicle awaited them.
Home to five million inhabitants, Dome City possessed an efficient web-like transportation network extending both above and below ground. The oval hovercraft lived up to their name, floating effortlessly on compressed air through transparent twin-lane transit tubes that stretched across the entire city.
A middle-aged couple passed nearby, giving the visitors a wide berth while carefully avoiding staring at them.
Although the Guarantors had visited Earth for nearly one hundred and eighty years, their appearance still unsettled people.
As they moved, one’s eye would struggle to find individuality. Their genders were indiscernible, their lean bodies nearly identical. But the unsettling details stood out: the reddish cast of their skin, the flat bridge of a nose, the inverted V-shaped mark at the back of a neck.
It was the combination of narrow eyes in a triangular skull, the lack of ears, and the receding chin that gave them their unnerving, serpentine look.
They could not fully perceive human speech, but they were extraordinarily sensitive to vibrations. Though never officially confirmed, many believed they possessed telepathic abilities.
Their voices sounded hollow and muffled as they painstakingly imitated English words, their anatomy lacking the vocal organs necessary to reproduce human speech naturally.
It was one of the principal reasons they seldom appeared among humans. The constant vibrations of human civilization caused them genuine discomfort.
The hovercraft carried them swiftly through the city. Guided by the three-dimensional map projected onto the dashboard, they soon arrived at the Tower.
Having already passed identification in the decontamination chamber, their arrival was expected. The guards respectfully stepped aside as the quartet approached.
The staircases wound upward in tight helixes, each step edged with a strip of cold blue light.
On the fifth of fourteen floors, the Guarantors stopped.
The one leading the delegation—Z’Yosh, whose sensitivity to atmospheric vibrations far exceeded that of the others—tilted his head slightly. Human ears could never have detected the faint sounds concealed behind the thick walls and the particular door that had captured his attention.
Without touching it, the doors slid silently open.
Z’Yosh, commander of the diplomatic corps, raised his four-fingered hand in the universal greeting.
“Welcome,” Lucien replied, folding his thumb into his palm as he imitated the gesture.
“Our Leader sends his greetings,” Z’Yosh answered in his hollow voice.
With a graceful sweep of his hand before Flynn’s face, the Guarantor produced a shimmering image.
Flynn had never understood how they conjured such hypnotic visions with a gesture so effortless, almost careless.
Floating before him appeared a wavering figure, glistening like rippling water in hues of blue, green, and gold.
It was an elderly Guarantor.
He offered Flynn the traditional sign of peace.
The vision lasted only a heartbeat, yet long enough to reveal that age had done nothing to diminish the old leader’s authority or power.
It was an unmistakable demonstration.
Without the Guarantors—and without their technology—humanity would have perished long ago.
Lucien Flynn’s expression hardened.
He could not deny the truth of it, though he despised having to humble himself before these aliens to maintain the illusion of a compliant ruler of Earth.
He had long known that the Guarantors possessed technologies far beyond anything they had shared.
Whenever he asked why humanity was denied access to them, their answer was always the same.
“You are not ready.”
Ready for what?
The question never failed to irritate him.
Still, his carefully cultivated diplomacy had paid dividends. Between himself and the aliens existed a fragile trust.
Yet the one thing he desired above all else remained forever just beyond his reach.
That fact drove him nearly mad.
Right there, just out of reach...
Now he watched as the four slender diplomats gathered around his infant son.
Z’Yosh’s smooth crimson face was solemn and unreadable as he looked upon the child.
Then, with what humans could only describe as incomprehensible magic, the Guarantor marked the baby’s upper arm.
The symbol was no larger than a thumbnail and shaped like an egg.
It was the Guarantors’ seal, confirming the newborn heir and acknowledging his future inheritance.
Flynn studied the alien diplomat with growing unease.
Had he imagined it...
...or had the faintest smile touched Z’Yosh’s lips?
And were his eyes not gleaming with something speculative...
...perhaps even triumphant?
A chill settled deep inside Lucien Flynn.
An unspoken warning seemed to linger in that expression.
Unaware of how tightly he was clenching his jaw, he watched the visitors depart after the ceremony. Soon afterward, a blinding headache seized him, sharp and insistent as his wife’s latest excuse.
That night he slept fitfully, plagued by confused dreams that left him, by morning, with nothing but a vague unease he couldn’t account for.
Yet the feeling remained.
From time to time it returned, like an infected wound buried deep within his soul.
Neither Harley Luna, nor his ragtag rebels, nor even the lethal wasteland beyond the Dome inspired such dread.
Never before had Flynn seen anything that resembled emotion on a Guarantor’s face. He couldn’t be sure he’d seen it even now.
But it was the possibility in that look—and what it might mean—that haunted him.
