Chapter 1:
The Sky Bleeds
The sky was bleeding, and no one else seemed to care.
I stood frozen outside HelixMed's research wing, the paper cup in my hand long gone cold, my fingers numb where they'd burned minutes before. The coffee tasted like acid now, but I couldn't bring myself to throw it away. Not when my other hand was pressed against the glass door, my palm leaving a faint, sweating imprint as I stared upward.
It wasn't right. None of this was right.
The red streaked across the morning sky like claw marks deep, visceral gashes that pulsed faintly, as if the atmosphere itself was hemorrhaging. It wasn't the warm glow of sunrise or the harmless shimmer of light pollution. This was something alive. Something wrong. The longer I stared, the more the color seemed to seep into my vision, staining the edges of everything with that same sickening hue.
"Cat?"
I jumped at the voice, sloshing cold coffee over my wrist. The liquid traced a sticky path down to my elbow before I even registered the spill.
Rina stood in the doorway, her usually bright eyes shadowed. She'd tied her locs back too tightly today. I could see the tension in her scalp where the hair pulled. Her brown skin had taken on an ashen undertone that made my stomach clench.
"You've been out here forever," she said, but her voice lacked its usual teasing lilt. "They're calling it an atmospheric anomaly. Dr. Veyra says—"
"Dr. Veyra would call the apocalypse a 'minor atmospheric disturbance' if it meant keeping grant money flowing," I muttered, finally dumping the ruined coffee in a nearby bin. My fingers trembled as I wiped them on my lab coat, leaving faint brown streaks across the white fabric.
Rina didn't laugh like she normally would have. Instead, she wrapped her arms around herself, fingers digging into the sleeves of her coat hard enough to whiten her knuckles.
"It's not just here," she said quietly. "My cousin in Breaker's Point just texted me. Their sky looks the same."
A cold finger traced down my spine. I turned back to the sky, but now the red seemed darker and thicker. Like coagulating blood.
The lab behind us hummed with the usual activity, but all wrong. The rhythms were off. People typed too quickly, laughed too loudly, avoided looking at the windows with a determination that bordered on manic. The air smelled sharper than usual, the sterile tang of disinfectant undercut with something else. Sweat, maybe. Fear.
I reached for Rina's hand without thinking. Her skin burned against mine.
"You're feverish," I said, turning her palm upward.
She yanked back with surprising strength.
"I'm fine. Just... didn't sleep well."
But her breath hitched on the last word, and when she turned away, I saw the sheen of sweat at her temples.
The coffee churned in my stomach as we walked back inside. My workstation sat untouched where I'd left it. The culture samples I'd been analyzing before my coffee break still waiting under their glass covers. Someone had turned off my microscope. Probably Dr. Veyra. She hated it when equipment was left running.
I was about to sit when Rina coughed.
Not the polite clearing of a throat. Not the dry hack of allergies. This was a wet, tearing sound that seemed to come from deep in her chest. The kind of cough that hurts just to hear.
"Rina?"
She waved me off, but when she pulled her hand away from her mouth, her fingertips glistened red.
The blood hit the tile with a sound like raindrops. Bright. Arterial. Wrong.
For one frozen second, the entire lab held its breath. Then chaos erupted.
Rina's knees gave out just as I lunged forward. I caught her, but her dead weight nearly took us both to the ground. Her skin burned through both our lab coats, feverish and dry. When I tilted her face toward me, her pupils had swallowed nearly all the brown of her irises, leaving only thin rings of color around black voids.
"Medic!" I shouted, but my voice sounded distant, muffled by the sudden roar of blood in my ears. "Someone call—"
The security doors burst open before I could finish.
They moved like they'd been waiting just outside. Four figures in black tactical gear, visors obscuring their faces. No medics. No crash cart. Just those blank, reflective masks and gloved hands reaching for Rina.
One of them wrenched her from my arms with terrifying efficiency. Rina's head lolled, a thin line of blood tracing from her nose to her chin.
"What the hell are you doing?" I grabbed for her again, but a second guard stepped between us, his bulk blocking my path. "She needs a hospital!"
"Containment protocol," he said, voice flat through the mask's modulator.
The words made no sense. There was no containment protocol for sick employees. There were medics. Sick days. Not... this.
I tried to push past him. "Rina! Rina, look at me!"
Her eyelids fluttered, but she didn't. She couldn't respond. The guards were already moving, carrying her toward the secure elevators with a speed that spoke of practice.
Dr. Veyra's hand closed around my upper arm like a vise. "Enough, Lin."
I whirled on her. "They can't just—"
"They can." Her grip tightened painfully. "And you will return to your workstation. Now."
When I looked back, the elevator doors were closing, Rina's limp form the last thing visible between the black uniforms. Then she was gone.
The lab had gone eerily quiet. No one met my eyes. Keyboards clicked. Equipment hummed. As if nothing had happened. As if one of our own hadn't just been dragged away bleeding.
I turned toward Rina's workstation. Her terminal still glowed, research files open. If I could just see what she'd been working on—
The screen went black before I took two steps. Then, line by line, her files disappeared as if they'd never existed. User profile. Access logs. Everything.
"Catara."
Dr. Veyra stood too close, her perfume with something expensive and floral is cloying in my nose.
"Go home," she said softly. "Consider yourself on leave until further notice."
The threat hung unspoken between us. I'd seen too much. Asked too many questions.
I grabbed my bag with numb fingers. The walk to the elevators felt endless, every eye in the lab burning into my back. The last thing I saw before the doors closed was Dr. Veyra tapping something into her phone, her mouth set in a hard line.
The lobby was nearly empty. Through the glass front doors, I could see people clustered on the sidewalks, all staring upward. No one spoke. No one screamed. The silence was worse than panic would have been.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
An emergency alert.
BOBCAT CITY EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT:
Atmospheric disturbance detected. Remain indoors when possible. Avoid prolonged exposure. Updates to follow.
The words blurred as I stepped outside. The air smelled wrong. Metallic and thick, like ozone after a storm but sharper. More pungent. My skin prickled beneath my clothes.
Halfway to the subway, I realized what else was wrong.
The birds were gone.
No gulls crying over the bay. No sparrows fighting for crumbs outside the food carts. Just silence, broken only by the occasional gasp or whisper from the people huddled under awnings, all staring at that impossible red sky.
I pulled out my phone and dialed Rina.
One ring. Then a flat, automated voice:
"The number you have dialed is no longer in service."
The phone nearly slipped from my sweating hands. I called again. Same message.
A search for HelixMed's main line went straight to a recording. Her employee profile on the company portal returned a 404 error. It was like she'd never existed.
The train ride home passed in a blur. Every face I saw looked haunted and drawn. People clutched their phones like lifelines, but the screens showed only the same canned emergency message repeated ad infinitum.
My apartment door locked behind me with a sound like a gunshot. I checked the windows. Dragged the blinds shut. Paced the length of my tiny living room until my legs ached.
Finally, I opened my laptop.
Red sky phenomenon brought up news articles. Dry and clinical explanations about atmospheric refraction, algae blooms, and light pollution. All dated today. All suspiciously similar in wording.
It was the third page of results that made my breath catch.
A forum thread, already flagged for moderation, with just three replies:
"Saw it in Breaker's Point first. Now here. They're calling it Zera."
"My sister works at St. Luke's. They've got entire wards quarantined."
"Don't trust the alerts. Don't trust the news. They're lying."
The page refreshed before I could screenshot it.
404
Page Not Found
I sat back, my hands shaking. Outside, through the thin gap in my blinds, the red glow pulsed faintly against the gathering dusk.
This wasn't an anomaly.
This wasn't an accident.
And as I sat there, listening to the unnatural silence of a city holding its breath, I realized with cold certainty:
Whatever was coming had already arrived.
And Rina had been the first warning.