Over the sprawling daylight skyline of PAX City, something moved through the clouds. At first, it was dismissed as a meteor—then a drone—then some classified military aircraft no one was cleared to acknowledge. But meteors didn’t stop in midair. And aircraft didn’t make the sky go silent. Under the hard white glare of noon, witnesses watched the object emerge above the towers: vast, black, and impossibly still. Its shape seemed to shift whenever cameras tried to focus on it. Sunlight bent around its edges, turning the surrounding clouds into a bruised halo. Streetlights flickered despite the day. Radios filled with a low, broken whisper. Then every aircraft within two hundred miles vanished from civilian tracking screens. The official statement came twelve minutes later: > **UNIDENTIFIED AERIAL ANOMALY DETECTED. REMAIN INDOORS. AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.** Behind sealed blast doors far beneath the city, a far more alarming order was issued. Three classified PAX anti-air batteries—weapons whose existence had never been publicly confirmed—were activated and moved toward designated firing positions. Their target was not a hostile nation. Not a terrorist weapon. Not anything human. As the batteries rolled through streets that had gone abruptly, unnaturally quiet, their encrypted tactical network came alive. > **BATTERY ONE, call sign LANCER:** “Lancer is in transit. Visual contact intermittent. Target altitude twelve thousand and dropping.” > > **BATTERY TWO, call sign HARBOR:** “Harbor confirms. Civilian channels are compromised—something is riding the frequencies.” > > **BATTERY THREE, call sign VIGIL:** “Then keep this net locked down. Frequency-hop every four seconds. No open-band transmissions. Keep our comms secure.” > > **LANCER:** “Copy. Secure comms only.” The convoy passed abandoned cars and office towers full of people pressed against glass, staring upward. Above them, the object descended without sound. A targeting officer in Lancer’s command vehicle leaned closer to his scope. The display struggled to draw a stable outline around the thing—each frame gave it a different shape. Wings. Limbs. A ring of machinery. Nothing at all. > **LANCER:** “Command, confirm dimensions. My system is reading six hundred meters across.” > > **HARBOR:** “Negative. Mine says eight hundred.” > > **VIGIL:** “Neither of you are right. I’ve got one-point-three kilometers.” For several seconds, only encrypted static answered. Then Lancer’s commander spoke, his voice lower now. > **LANCER:** “I don’t remember it being that big from the briefing.” No one replied. Because the briefing image had shown a dark object no larger than a transport plane. And the thing above PAX City was still getting bigger. > **VIGIL:** “All batteries, weapons free on command. Do not fire independently.” > > **HARBOR:** “What exactly are we waiting for?” > > **VIGIL:** “For it to prove it sees us.” The black mass stopped descending. For one impossible moment, it hung over the sunlit city like an eclipse that had forgotten the sun. Then every screen in all three battery vehicles flickered at once. A message appeared—not in any known language, not exactly—but every soldier understood it anyway. **I REMEMBER YOU.** Which battery fires first: **Lancer, Harbor, or Vigil**? I’ll use that choice to determine whose crew carries the next scene.
Reposted updated
