The First Crime
Rayan's first crime was crying.
His second was being born.
The cry cut through the small room like an alarm.
The woman’s eyes flew open.
“No... no, no, no.”
She pulled the baby tightly against her chest and gently covered his mouth with one hand, while the man beside the door stood perfectly still, listening.
Silence.
Then another cry.
Louder.
“Make him stop.”
“I’m trying.”
“They’ll hear him.”
The room was never supposed to exist.
It was hidden behind an old maintenance panel in Sector 14, deep within the lower levels of Diaspora. Four metal walls, a faulty light, and a few pipes running across the ceiling.
They had lived there for the last three months.
It was there that they had committed their crime.
The woman lowered her gaze.
The baby had stopped crying.
Two tiny eyes stared up at her, knowing nothing about the place where he had just entered the world.
She smiled.
“Rayan.”
The man turned toward her.
“You’ve already decided?”
“That’s his name.”
The man remained silent for a few seconds.
“A name isn’t enough.”
She looked up.
“It is to me.”
He slowly shook his head.
“Not to Diaspora.”
His eyes fell on the child in her arms.
“Without a number, he doesn’t exist here.”
Somewhere beyond the wall, a metallic voice echoed through the corridor.
“Night shift concluded. All Serviles are required to return to their assigned residential units.”
The woman held Rayan even tighter.
The man checked the time.
02:43.
Seventeen minutes until inspection.
“We have to go.”
She looked at him.
“Where?”
He didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to.
There was nowhere inside Diaspora where a child could remain hidden.
Not forever.
The city knew every one of its inhabitants.
Every birth.
Every death.
Every ration consumed.
Every body required for the survival of the species.
Rayan, however, appeared nowhere.
He had no number.
No sector.
No approval from the Selectors.
As far as Diaspora was concerned, that child simply did not exist.
A metallic sound came from the corridor.
Both of them froze.
Footsteps.
One.
Two.
Three.
Then a voice.
“Sector Fourteen inspection.”
The woman went pale.
The man immediately switched off the light.
The room fell into darkness.
Rayan moved his tiny hands against his mother’s chest.
“Please...” she whispered.
The footsteps came closer.
“Please, Rayan.”
The baby inhaled.
For one brief moment, he remained silent.
Then he began to cry.
On the other side of the wall, the footsteps stopped.
—
In 2030, no one thought the world was going to end.
People went to work.
Children went to school.
Planes crossed the sky.
Stock markets opened.
Governments argued.
And for several hours, even after the first images appeared, billions of people continued to believe there had to be an explanation.
There wasn’t.
The first attack lasted less than eleven minutes.
When it ended, an entire city had stopped communicating.
Then a second fell.
A third.
A fourth.
Within less than a week, no one called it an attack anymore.
They called it an invasion.
The armies responded.
Military aircraft filled the skies.
Missiles were launched from land and sea.
Entire divisions were sent against the creatures advancing through the cities.
It wasn’t enough.
Human weapons could kill them.
The problem was hitting them before they hit back.
Defense lines collapsed one after another.
Global communications began to fail.
The great cities became traps.
Millions fled without knowing where to go.
For months, humanity fought a war it had no chance of winning.
Then someone noticed something.
At first, it seemed like nothing more than coincidence.
The incursions decreased in colder regions.
The creatures became slower.
Less aggressive.
Some retreated.
Others died after prolonged exposure to extreme temperatures.
No one knew why.
Perhaps no one truly knew even now.
But humanity didn’t need an explanation.
It needed somewhere to survive.
And so began the greatest migration in human history.
South.
Farther south.
Until the end of the world.
Antarctica.
At first, there were only scientific bases.
Then came the military.
Engineers.
Doctors.
Ships loaded with supplies.
Survivors.
They dug into the ice.
Built beneath the rock.
Connected bases that had once belonged to different nations.
They created tunnels, dormitories, hospitals, power stations, greenhouses, and factories.
And while the rest of the planet sank into silence, something beneath the ice continued to grow.
A city.
They gave it a name.
Diaspora.
At first, it was only meant to be a refuge.
A place to wait.
To reorganize.
To prepare a counteroffensive.
But the years passed.
The world was never reclaimed.
Resources dwindled.
Births became too important to be left to chance.
Every person had to serve a purpose.
Every mouth had to justify what it consumed.
Every new life had to be necessary.
Little by little, what had once been normal became useless.
Then dangerous.
Finally illegal.
Freedom.
Family.
Love.
Diaspora had survived the end of the world.
But to do so, it had been forced to build a new one.
—
THUD.
The metal panel shook.
The woman opened her eyes again.
They were still there.
“Open the door.”
The voice from the corridor left no room for doubt.
The man grabbed the iron pipe.
The woman looked down at Rayan.
And for the first time since his birth, she understood something with absolute certainty.
They would not be able to hide him much longer.
—
The panel shook again.
“Final warning. Open the door.”
The man looked at the woman.
Then at Rayan.
There was no time left.
He crossed to the opposite wall and dropped to his knees beside a ventilation grate almost completely hidden behind several old crates.
“Give him to me.”
The woman tightened her hold on the baby.
“What are you doing?”
“Move.”
He grabbed the grate with both hands and pulled.
Nothing.
Another impact struck behind them.
Harder.
The metal buckled inward.
“Open immediately!”
The man clenched his teeth and pulled again.
The grate gave way with a sharp crack.
Behind it stretched a narrow, dark duct.
The woman stared at it.
“Where does it lead?”
“The old thermal tunnels.”
“They’ve been sealed for years.”
“Exactly.”
Another impact.
One of the panel hinges snapped.
The man shoved the crates in front of the entrance and turned back to her.
“Go.”
The woman crawled into the duct with Rayan pressed tightly against her chest.
The man followed and pulled the grate back into place just as the panel behind them was smashed open.
White light flooded the room.
“Search everything.”
The voices came muffled through the metal.
“No one registered in this unit.”
“There’s food.”
“And clothes.”
Silence.
Then:
“Someone was living here.”
The woman stopped breathing.
Rayan shifted in her arms.
She slowly stroked his head.
Don’t cry.
Please.
Not now.
On the other side of the grate, something scraped across the floor.
One crate.
Then another.
The man grabbed the woman’s wrist.
“Go.”
She started crawling.
Behind them, a voice shouted:
“Here!”
The grate was ripped away.
“Stop!”
They ran.
Or tried to.
The duct was too low to stand. They moved on their knees and elbows, slamming into frozen pipes and abandoned cables.
Behind them, flashlights were already illuminating the passage.
“Serviles escaping! Sector Fourteen!”
The voice echoed through the tunnels.
A moment later, Diaspora reacted.
The emergency lights turned red.
A siren began to howl through the lower levels.
“Internal violation. All Serviles must immediately return to their assigned units.”
The woman kept moving.
“They’re all looking for us.”
“I know.”
“Where are we going?”
The man didn’t answer.
He turned left.
Then again.
He knew these tunnels.
For years, he had worked maintenance on the thermal systems of the lower levels. Pipes, valves, conduits, forgotten sections that no longer even appeared on the maps available to Serviles.
That was why they had chosen that room.
That was why no one had found them for three months.
Until that night.
A hatch appeared ahead.
The man pushed against it.
It didn’t move.
He tried again.
Nothing.
“It’s stuck.”
The voices behind them were getting closer.
“How much longer?”
“I don’t know.”
“How much longer?!”
The man struck the lock with the pipe.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
The metal gave way.
The hatch opened.
A blast of freezing air hit them.
The woman gasped.
They were not outside yet.
But they had reached levels no Servile had any reason to visit.
The frontier levels.
The man climbed out first.
Before him stretched a vast industrial corridor lined with pipes covered in ice.
The lights were few and far between.
At the far end, beyond several bulkheads, a red sign flashed.
EXTERNAL SECTOR 3.
The woman climbed out of the duct.
The moment she saw the sign, she stopped.
“No.”
The man didn’t look at her.
“Keep moving.”
“No.”
“We have to.”
“You know what’s out there.”
This time, he turned.
“I know what’s behind us.”
The sirens continued to howl.
The woman looked back.
Then down at the baby in her arms.
Rayan was sleeping.
As if none of what was happening had anything to do with him.
“We can surrender.”
The man stared at her.
“You know what they’ll do to him.”
“Maybe—”
“He isn’t in the records.”
She lowered her eyes.
“They could register him.”
“No.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You know it too.”
The silence between them lasted only a few seconds.
In Diaspora, every birth was authorized before conception.
Population numbers.
Genetic compatibility.
Projected consumption.
Mortality.
Sector requirements.
Nothing was left to chance.
Rayan was not an administrative mistake.
He was a life no one had authorized.
The woman closed her eyes.
Then something sounded behind them.
The hatch.
The soldiers.
The man grabbed her hand.
“Go.”
They ran.
They crossed the corridor as the red lights flashed above them.
Past the first bulkhead.
Then a second.
The temperature kept falling.
Signs appeared on the walls that the woman had only ever seen in educational documentaries.
ELITE ACCESS ONLY.
THERMAL EQUIPMENT REQUIRED.
BEYOND THIS POINT, DIASPORA’S PROTECTION IS NOT GUARANTEED.
They reached the final door.
The man stopped.
For the first time since they had started running, he hesitated.
Before them stood a blast door nearly a meter thick.
Above it was a single word.
OUTSIDE.
The woman reached him.
“We can’t.”
He looked at her.
He was afraid.
She finally saw it.
Not fear of the soldiers.
Not fear of the Selectors.
Something much older.
The fear every citizen of Diaspora learned as a child.
The fear of what existed beyond those walls.
Behind them, an order rang out.
“Stop!”
The man entered the emergency code.
Red.
ACCESS DENIED.
He tried again.
“Move!”
Red.
The woman turned.
Shapes appeared at the far end of the corridor.
Soldiers.
“We’re out of time.”
The man struck the control panel.
Then pried it open with the pipe and tore out several wires.
A spark.
An alarm.
EXTERNAL ACCESS COMPROMISED.
The blast door began to open.
Immediately, the wind forced its way into the corridor.
The woman staggered backward.
Snow.
Ice.
Darkness.
For the first time in her life, there was no ceiling above her.
There was the sky.
Endless.
Black.
Terrifying.
The man held out his hand.
“Run.”
She looked back at Diaspora.
Then at Rayan.
And crossed the threshold.
The blast door closed behind them.
For several seconds, there was nothing but the wind.
Then, somewhere far out in the darkness...
something screamed.
Next Episode — Nowhere to Run
