Chapter 1
1
Helena
The building’s elevator had been broken for three weeks.
Again.
Helena made her way down all seven flights of the narrow stairwell, her bag knocking against her hip, her mother’s old brown jacket folded over one arm, stale coffee still bitter in her mouth. The metal handrail was sticky. The light on the fourth floor kept flickering in the same irritating rhythm the building manager had promised to fix last year.
On the second floor, two apartment doors stood open. Two neighbors were talking in voices too low to be casual and too loud not to be overheard.
“I’m telling you, Veksa, he didn’t come back.”
Helena slowed.
“What did the police say?” the other woman asked, exhausted.
“That if he’s only been gone one night, they can’t file anything. That he’s probably with friends and too scared to come home and get yelled at. But he’s only fifteen.”
Helena kept moving, slower now.
“That boy had already been hanging around strange people,” the second woman muttered, trying for judgment and landing on fear. “Teenagers these days...”
“No.” The first voice shook. “He came home missing a tooth last month. I told you. Something’s wrong.”
Helena reached the ground floor before she heard more.
Better that way.
Outside, morning in Nova Terra had already settled into its usual chaos. Suspended buses sliced across magnetic rails. Delivery drones buzzed between buildings too tall to belong to ordinary people. Animated ads swallowed entire facades with perfect smiles and promises of better lives paid in easy installments.
Across the street, a giant screen showed the same woman Helena had been waking up to for months: tall, Aethari, translucent skin, calm predatory beauty.
Breathe. Feel. Align with the eternal flow. Every day, 5:20 a.m.
Jane loved that channel. Helena preferred sleep.
She crossed the street and entered the transit station, her identity chiming from her phone as she passed through. The platform was packed with tired faces, uniforms, urgency, and people already losing the day before it properly began.
The train arrived crammed, as always. Helena shoved her phone into the front pocket of her sweatshirt and slipped into the crush near the doors.
Inside, the carriage screens cycled through ads, market updates, and cheap entertainment before cutting to a live report.
Containment operation in the East Zone: Coalition strengthens presence.
The reporter stood in front of a metallic barrier, hair untouched by the wind, armored vehicles behind her, human soldiers holding the crowd back. Farther behind them, four Vraak-Shissar moved through the street like predators dropped into concrete.
The reporter spoke fast, sharpening fear into content.
“...the Coalition claims this is a preventive action following signs of irregular activity in the region, although residents report the disappearance of at least three young people over the last two weeks...”
A man in an orange work uniform beside Helena let out a bitter breath.
“Preventive. Sure.”
Helena didn’t answer. Onscreen, the reporter hurried after two of the Vraak-Shissar.
“Commander Khesh’Traz! Commander Xar-Khesh’Traz, a word on the operation?”
The first one didn’t even slow down.
He was tall in a way that felt almost offensive, armor built for a body that was unmistakably not human. His helmet retracted with a sharp click, revealing hard, dark features for barely a second before he passed the camera as if it—and the woman holding it—were beneath notice.
The reporter pushed closer. He clicked his tongue, irritated, and kept walking.
The second Vraak-Shissar stopped.
Shorter, but still enormous. Immaculate armor. Poise that bordered on theatrical.
Thros Vak’ren — Vraak-Shissar Tactical Unit
“The Coalition acts whenever civil stability requires it,” he said smoothly. “The population has nothing to fear, so long as it does not interfere.”
“Any information on the missing youths? Is there confirmation of a connection between the disappearances and the operation?”
Thros smiled without warmth.
“There is confirmation that public curiosity remains unproductive.”
The train pulled into a station, and the screen switched to an ad for payroll loans and smiling mixed-species families buying furniture.
Helena looked away.
None of it had anything to do with her. In Nova Terra, someone was always missing, something was always burning, and somebody in uniform was always saying the situation was under control.
Still, her neighbor’s words stayed lodged under her skin.
He didn’t come back.
By the time Helena got off near Miragem, the sun had climbed high enough to turn the dark glass facade into a polished mirror. In daylight, the place looked almost respectable. Quiet. Expensive. Harmless.
She knew better.
She entered through the alley door.
Miragem was still. No music. No drunk customers. No Roberto Belur stalking around like he owned anything except an oversized ego and a handful of underpaid employees.
Just Helena, the smell of cleaning chemicals, polished shelves, and the old television muttering in the back room.
She dropped her bag under the counter, tied her brown hair into a ponytail, and started prepping for the evening shift. Bottles lined up. Glasses checked. Counter wiped. Stock counted.
The kind of work that kept your hands busy and your mind wide open.
The television droned on about rising property values in the lunar colonies until a familiar report flickered back onscreen. Grainy footage. Restricted area. Barrier tape.
Helena glanced over without meaning to.
“...unconfirmed sources mention discreet transfers of biomedical materials and increased security around private facilities over the last forty-eight hours...”
That made her pause.
Another shaky shot. Military movement. A Vraak-Shissar crossing the background, too broad to fit in frame.
The same one from the station.
Xar-Khesh’Traz. Or something close to that.
“God, this network is trash,” Helena muttered.
But she didn’t change the channel.
The reporter tried to keep up with him. He didn’t even turn.
Something about that cold indifference caught her attention a second longer than it should have.
Then someone pounded hard on the side door.
Helena jerked so hard her hand flew to her chest.
“Shit.”
She strode over and called through the door, “Who is it?”
“Marko.”
Of course.
When she opened it, the delivery guy handed her a clipboard.
“You look worse than usual.”
“Thank you so much, Marko,” Helena said dryly, signing. “You’re always a delight.”
He ignored that and jumped down from the truck.
“You ordered a lot.”
“We’ve got a reservation tonight,” she said. “Twenty-first birthday.”
He made a sympathetic noise.
“My condolences.”
“I hate twenty-first birthdays.”
They always ended with her breaking up fights, cleaning puke out of bathrooms, or both.
Marko smirked as he hauled out the first box. “Not in the mood to deal with freshly minted adults making a mess?”
“It was only fun when I was the freshly minted adult making the mess.”
That got a real smile out of him.
After two years at Miragem, carrying boxes of alcohol wasn’t hard. Helena hauled the first one inside, then the second, while Marko did exactly the minimum required by his job and not one movement more.
Honestly, she preferred that.
At least he didn’t mistake friendliness for entitlement.
“Gotta keep Beto’s pockets full, right?” he said, bringing in another box.
Helena shut her eyes for a second. “Don’t even start.”
“You’re taking way too little joy in supporting local predatory capitalism.”
A laugh escaped her before she could stop it.
“Help me, asshole.”
“Not paid for that, princess.”
She threw a dirty bar towel at him. He caught it one-handed.
“Not paid for that, my ass.”
But there was no real heat in it.
Compared to most people, Marko was almost refreshing. He didn’t pester. Didn’t posture. And when things got bad, he helped without making a production of it.
“I’ll come by later,” he called on his way out. “Maybe I can save your night.”
Helena grunted and crouched to pull bottles from the open box behind the counter.
When the door shut, the silence settled back in.
Working for Roberto wasn’t easy. The man had a talent for making exploitation sound like opportunity. Helena always worked more, and it was never enough. And if she complained, he always found a way to remind her how hard it was for someone with her record to get a job anywhere “respectable.”
Her phone buzzed on the shelf beneath the counter.
Her heart kicked before reason could catch up.
She snatched it up too quickly—and felt stupid the second she looked.
Not Sara.
Just some useless social media notification.
Helena opened the chat anyway. More than ten messages. Missed calls. All from her. No answer from Sara.
She stared at the screen longer than she wanted to.
Sara had another life now. Another job. Better circles. Better hours. Ever since she’d been promoted into the Nova Estrela project, the two of them barely managed to speak properly.
That was adulthood, wasn’t it? Exhaustion. Schedules. Distance disguised as inevitability.
Knowing that didn’t make it hurt less.
Didn’t stop Helena from missing her.
Didn’t stop the quiet, bitter feeling that maybe Sara had climbed out and decided not to look back.
She locked the phone and set it down harder than necessary.
On the television, another commentator was smiling through a segment about public trust in containment forces while a ticker along the bottom displayed security numbers and restored order across the city.
Helena reached for another bottle.
She wanted to finish. Go home. Sleep for an hour before coming back for the night shift.
It was going to be a long day.
And for some reason, she still couldn’t stop seeing two things:
the Vraak-Shissar commander walking past the camera like the entire world bored him—
and her neighbor’s trembling voice in the hallway.
He didn’t come back.
