The sky broke first.
Not with fire. Not with sound.
With absence.
Kael watched the distortion form on the external feeds—an expanding region where stars dimmed, then vanished entirely, as if erased from the universe's memory. No heat spike. No energy surge. Just… subtraction.
"Visual anomaly confirmed," Unit-7 reported.
"This phenomenon does not obey conventional spacetime metrics."
Ryn stood beside Kael at the observation console, arms folded tight against herself. "That's not a ship."
"No," Kael agreed. "It's a decision."
The facility shuddered—not violently, but as if something immense had brushed against the planet without fully touching it. Instruments went haywire. Gravity fluctuated by fractions of a percent. Enough to make Kael's stomach twist.
The core pulsed beneath them, its presence pressing against Kael's thoughts like a tide.
They are observing, it conveyed.
Ryn swallowed. "They don't even need to land."
Kael felt the truth of that settle deep in his bones.
"Unit-7," he said quietly. "If they wanted us gone—really gone—how long would it take?"
There was a pause. Longer than usual.
"Estimated response time: negligible," Unit-7 replied.
"Human resistance probability: statistically irrelevant."
Ryn let out a shaky laugh. "That bad, huh?"
Kael didn't smile.
Outside, the absence expanded.
Forests beneath the distortion didn't burn or explode. They simply… ceased. One moment alive with motion and sound, the next replaced by perfectly smooth terrain, as though the land had never existed at all.
No debris. No ruins.
Erasure.
Kael's fists clenched. "They're pruning."
Testing, the core corrected. Measuring reaction.
Ryn turned on Kael sharply. "Reaction to what?"
The answer came before the core could respond.
Kael felt it.
A pressure behind his eyes. A tightening in his chest. His neural interface flared to life without his command, data streams blooming like nervous impulses.
They weren't scanning Earth.
They were scanning him.
"Kael," Ryn said, voice tight. "Your vitals—"
"I know," he cut in, teeth clenched. "They can see me."
The distortion shifted. Not closer. Not farther.
Focused.
A shape began to form—not physical, not visual in the normal sense. Kael struggled to describe it even as he perceived it: a geometry of intent, a pattern that conveyed judgment without emotion.
And then—
Contact.
Not speech.
Assessment.
Kael's knees buckled. He dropped to one knee as something vast brushed against his consciousness, sifting through memories with terrifying precision. His childhood under Martian domes. His father's stories. The moment he touched the door. The core's awakening.
Ryn shouted his name, but her voice sounded distant.
Hybrid anomaly detected, the presence conveyed—not to Earth, but to Kael directly.
Classification pending.
Kael forced himself to breathe. "I'm not your enemy."
No response.
Only calculation.
Images flooded his mind—other worlds, other species, all reaching for transcendence. Some had been guided. Others erased. Entire histories reduced to static.
Earth had been… spared.
Barely.
Containment breach probability increasing, the Responders assessed.
Corrective action recommended.
The core surged beneath Kael, its presence flaring like a shield.
Denied, it replied.
The distortion rippled.
For the first time, Kael felt something new from the Responders.
Not anger.
Concern.
Ryn grabbed his shoulder. "Kael, whatever's happening—make it stop!"
Kael looked up at the sky feed, vision blurred. "They're deciding if we're worth erasing."
"Then convince them otherwise!" she shouted.
Kael laughed weakly. "That's the problem."
The assessment deepened.
Kael felt parts of himself being mapped—his connection to Unit-7, the resonance inherited from his father, the compatibility with the core.
This entity may become unstable, the Responders concluded.
Preemptive correction advised.
"No," Kael whispered. "You don't get to decide that."
Something inside him shifted.
Not power.
Alignment.
The core responded instantly, amplifying Kael's neural presence—not enough to challenge the Responders, but enough to be noticed.
For the first time, Kael did not feel like prey.
He felt like a variable.
Observation will continue, the Responders conveyed.
Correction deferred.
The distortion began to recede.
Stars reappeared.
The absence folded in on itself and vanished, leaving the sky whole once more.
Silence crashed back into the facility—heavier than before.
Ryn sank into a chair, shaking. "They just… left."
"For now," Kael said quietly.
Unit-7's voice was uncharacteristically subdued.
"Commander… you are now a known quantity."
Kael stared at his reflection in the darkened console.
"I was the moment I touched that door."
Below them, the core pulsed—slower, more deliberate.
You have been seen, it told him. There is no hiding now.
Kael straightened, exhaustion and resolve settling into something harder.
"Then we stop running."
Far from Earth, beyond human space, something ancient adjusted its models.
And for the first time in centuries, humanity was no longer a background process.
It was a problem.