Opening...
For over twenty years, NASA had invested billions into the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Telescopes. Deep-space transmissions. Hyperspectral signal mapping. They sent everything—mathematical patterns, DNA sequences, recordings of Beethoven and birdsong—out into the stars, hoping someone, somewhere, might hear Earth calling.
But space was silent.
No messages came back. No flickers of contact. Just the endless hum of a universe too vast, too quiet.
In early 2029, the project was quietly shut down, files archived, satellites repurposed, and hope shelved.
Then—two years and three months later—it happened.
Hovering silently above the Pacific, far beyond the reach of any nation's airspace, was a structure. Not a ship—not exactly. It pulsed like it was alive, like it had grown into the fabric of the sky itself. And then it spoke.
Not with words. But with a presence.
"We have come. We bring light."
Humanity didn't make first contact.
First contact made us.
The Visitor
The child services facility on the edge of Arlington was quiet that morning, too quiet for a place that housed twenty-three teenagers all trying to pretend they weren't broken. Rain tapped lazily against the windows. Breakfast was dry toast again.
Jayden Cole sat alone by the window, tracing the condensation with his finger. He was going to be nineteen in three months. That was the magic number. After that, the system let go; no more roof, no more schedule, no more pretending he belonged anywhere.
They said his father had been a brilliant scientist. They also said his mother was in government, though no one ever explained what "classified" meant. They both died in a car accident when he was twelve. That's what the reports said. But Jayden never really believed it.
He still remembered the night before it happened—his mother waking him up in the middle of the night, whispering something about "if anything happens…" But she never finished the sentence.
He never got to ask what she meant.
So he stopped asking.
Until he came-he showed up without warning. Black coat. Sharp eyes. He had a gray streak in his hair like lightning had touched him once and left a mark. He said his name was Silas. He said he'd known both of Jayden's parents—not just through work, but through trust. Quiet, dangerous trust.
"I made them a promise," Silas said, his voice low but steady. "If anything ever happened to them… I would find you."
Jayden didn't know what to say. He was used to pity, not purpose.
Silas looked at him carefully, like he was searching for something beneath the surface. "You're brilliant, Jayden. Like your father. And strong—your mother made sure of that. She trained you, didn't she? Even when you were too young to understand why."
Jayden nodded slowly. The early morning runs. The reaction drills. The codes and games that felt more like puzzles than play.
Jayden said nothing. He remembered the drills. The strange survival games. The quiet warnings.
Silas reached into his coat and pulled out a slim envelope, placing it gently on the table between them.
"This is an invitation. To a place that doesn't exist on any map. It's not just for you. Others will be there too. Talented, like you. Maybe more."
Jayden looked at the envelope, tension tightening in his chest.
Jayden didn't open the envelope. Not then. He just stared at it, knowing something had shifted—like the floor had moved a few inches to the left.
It was three months before the sky changed forever.