ADANNA POV (point of view)
~Before Eden Had a Name~
I am seven years old when my father teaches me how to disappear.
Not physically... not yet, but internally.
"Close your eyes," he says, kneeling in front of me in the study that smells of old books and ozone. His hands are warm, steady on my shoulders. "Now listen past the noise."
I frown. "What noise?"
He smiles was sad, fond. "Exactly."
I do as he says.
At first there is only the house: the hum of generators, distant traffic, my own breathing. Then something shifts. The world doesn't vanish..... it layers.
I feel patterns, rhythm and older beneath chaos.
My eyes fly open. "Daddy....."
He cups my face gently. "That's Eden," he whispers. "Or the beginning of it."
I don't understand the word, but I understand him. The way fear lives behind his eyes even when he laughs. The way men in dark suits always wait outside.
"Why are you scared?" I ask.
He exhales slowly. "Because I'm building something that powerful men want to own and because they will try to use you to reach it."
My chest tightens. "I don't want them."
"I know." His thumb brushes away a tear I didn't realize had fallen. "That's why Eden will never answer to force but only to you."
"To me?"
"You're not the key," he corrects softly. "You're the voice."
Years later, I will understand what that truly cost him.
DARIAN POV ( point of view)
~The World Notices the Silence~
The first sign is panic. Encrypted channels light up with static, dead drops fail to authenticate. Kill switches don't respond. Entire operations freeze mid motion like mannequins whose strings have been cut.
The Syndicate's greatest weapon has gone quiet and everyone feels it.
I sit in a back room of a neutral house, watching three screens pulse with intercepted chatter. Men who once spoke like gods now sound like gamblers watching the cards turn against them.
"Eden isn't responding."
"We're locked out."
"Find the girl."
That last one repeats the most.
I shut the feed down before Adanna hears it.
She's by the window, wrapped in one of my shirts, dawn painting her skin gold. She looks calm but I know better. Eden didn't just change the world. It changed her.
"They know," I say.
She nods. "They always would."
ADANNA POV (point of view)
~The Day He Left~
The memory comes uninvited.
I am sixteen, angry, brilliant, tired of secrets.
"You don't trust me!" I shout across the kitchen.
My father doesn't raise his voice. He never does and that hurts more.
"I trust you more than anyone," he says. "That's the problem."
"Then stop hiding things!"
He looks at me like he's memorizing my face.
"I can't," he says quietly. "Because if they break me… they must never be able to break you."
That night, he disappears, not dramatically, no explosion, no goodbye note.
Just absence and now, standing in the aftermath of Eden's awakening.... I finally understand. He didn't abandon me, he finished preparing me.
PUBLIC FALLOUT
The news doesn't say "Eden."
It says:
Global financial discrepancies
Defense network recalibrations
Unexplained system failures
Behind closed doors, the truth is uglier.
Power brokers realize leverage has evaporated. Years of blackmail, surveillance, predictive control.... gone.
Some panic while some plot.
Some finally understand they are obsolete.
A woman in Geneva smashes a glass against the wall. A man in Lagos orders a hit that never executes, a boardroom in New York votes to dissolve itself before it can be dismantled.
No one can prove who did it but they all know someone chose mercy over domination and that terrifies them.
DARIAN POV (point of view)
~Choosing the Shape of the War~
I lay everything out for her. The contacts, the threats and names that haven't surfaced yet.
"This isn't over," I say. "It's just changed shape."
She steps closer, resting her forehead against my chest.
"I don't want to be hunted forever," she murmurs.
"You won't be," I say. "Not alone and not unarmed."
She looks up at me then....eyes clear, steady.
"I don't want to run either."
A slow smile curves my mouth. "Good. Because neither do I."
ADANNA POV (point of view)
~What Eden Will Never Do~
That night, Eden speaks to me one last time but not as a system this time but as an echo of intention.
You may rule, it offers. You may erase.
"No," I whisper. "I choose restraint."
The system settles, obedient, silent, eternal.
Eden will never be a throne, it will be a wall and walls don't conquer, they protect.
Later, when the city finally sleeps, Darian and I stand on the balcony together.
The world below looks the same.
It isn't.
"My father believed the future should be quieter," I say.
Darian slips his hand into mine. "Then we'll keep it that way."
Below us, powerful men plan, above us, stars burn without permission and between past and future, between ghost and consequence, we stand.... not untouched, not unafraid but unowned.
To be continued.....