They Burned The Sky

I should have gotten on the ship. That was the plan. Wait, board, survive. I kept my head down, the boarding pass damp in my hand, standing under the broken flight board that still flickered like it meant something.

ODYSSEY – FINAL BOARDING CALL.

The air inside the terminal stank of burnt plastic and old fear. People pressed against the walls, clutching bags, whispering prayers no one answered. The guards stood in heavy armor, rifles slung like leashed wolves. Their helmets hid their faces. Maybe that was better.

No one was allowed to cry. No one was allowed to run. You boarded, or you disappeared.

My seat—17A. I almost laughed. As if seat numbers still mattered.

The line inched forward. I could see the ship from here: a silver spear aimed at the orange sky. Engines rumbled low, like some giant animal waking in its cage. One last chance to leave Earth before the corporate grave keepers shut the doors for good.

I tightened my grip on the boarding pass. My fingers trembled—not from fear, but from knowing I was doing the right thing and still wanting to turn back.

Someone bumped into me—hard. A figure in a battered maintenance coat, hood pulled low. I caught a glimpse: scarred hands, worn boots, a limp like a bad memory.

“Sorry,” the figure muttered, and in a flash disappeared into the sea of chaos.

I barely had time to register the weight in my coat pocket—small, solid—before the alarms started.

BWEET. BWEET. BWEET.

The guards snapped to attention. The line froze. My face flashed on the cracked screen above the gate, all grainy static and betrayal.

WANTED FOR DETAINMENT.

The pass dropped from my hand like a dying bird.

Instinct took over. I ran—past hollow-eyed evacuees, past stunned soldiers, diving into the maze of maintenance corridors my father once showed me: fast, low, unseen.

The station’s belly stank of oil and mold, something deeper and rotten. Metal stairs moaned under my weight. Somewhere far above, the Odyssey’s engines groaned.

I pressed myself against a crumbling wall, heart pounding. The thing—whatever it was—still weighed heavy in my pocket.

What had that man—ghost—given me?

I didn’t know. Only one thing was clear: I wasn’t getting on the ship anymore. And somehow, through the sweat and fear and blood in my ears, a thought bloomed like a slow, terrible sunrise.

Maybe I wasn’t supposed to.

I moved until my lungs burned and the alarms were swallowed by silence. I found a shadowed alcove beneath a broken ladder and crumpled down, pressing against the cold wall.

No footsteps. No chatter. Just the low hum of a station waiting to die.

I pulled the object from my coat. Small, black as dried blood. No markings. One worn button. What if it was a tracker? A bomb? A trap? But I already knew better. I pressed the button.

A soft whirr. A projection blinked into the air—a grainy blue image. A hooded man, features blurred.

“Don’t get on the Odyssey,” he said. “They aren’t saving you. They’re taking you.”

Static chewed the rest. But the fear—the truth—was clear. I swallowed hard, fingers tight around the device.

Don’t get on the ship.

I thought of the evacuees, eyes glazed, hope clinging to them. The Odyssey rising like a god’s spear. My father’s warnings. For the first time in years, I wondered if he’d been right.

The floor trembled—but not from engines. Bootsteps. Close.

I killed the projection and slipped the device back into my coat, standing quickly.

A flashlight cut through the gloom. Voices followed—clipped orders. A sweep team.

I backed deeper into shadow. If they found me…

A shape moved. Not a soldier. Someone rough, hunched in a grimy suit, welding mask pushed back. His eyes met mine—quick, calculating.

He raised a hand. Come with me.

I didn’t know him. Didn’t trust him. But I trusted the soldiers less. I followed. He led me through a side hatch, sealed it behind us with a hiss. Silence fell.

“You’re lucky,” he said, low. “They would’ve torn you apart.”

I didn’t answer.

“Name’s Cal. You want to live, come with me.”

I stared. No better options. I nodded. He didn’t look back. And like a fool—or maybe the last soul still willing to hope—I followed him into the dark.

We descended into rust and shadow, down tunnels twisted like the arteries of something already dead. The air reeked of oil and cold metal, a hint of rot clinging to my throat. Water dripped from overhead pipes in a nervous rhythm.

Cal moved with the confidence of someone who knew every inch. He didn’t talk or check if I was behind him. I followed anyway, my hand never leaving the device in my pocket.

“Where are we going?” I finally asked.

“Safe enough. Off-grid. Out of the sweep range.” His voice was rough, but not unkind—like he didn’t speak unless it mattered.

He stopped at a sealed checkpoint door, half-buried in debris. A faded light blinked red. He jammed in a manual override. The lock released with a hiss.

The room beyond had once been a breakroom. Now, mildew crawled the walls. A crooked table stood in cracked tiles. Water dripped into a rusted bucket from a leaking pipe.

Cal approached a dusty terminal and tapped commands. The console sputtered to life.

“You can access feeds here,” he said. “Until they reroute.”

I hesitated, then pulled out the device and sat on the table’s edge. Smooth. Black. Featureless. One worn button.

He hadn’t given it to me. He’d slipped it into my coat. That stuck. I pressed the button.

Dozens of feeds blinked into the air. Some grayscale. Some pulsing color. At first, all I saw was ruin.

Then one sharpened: a forest, vibrant and green. Birds in the trees. A river winding through. I held my breath as more feeds lit up. Rooftop gardens. Solar fields. People tending crops between buildings labeled long abandoned.

These weren’t archives. Timestamps ticked. Coordinates updated.

“They said it was gone,” I whispered. “They said Earth was dying.”

Cal didn’t answer.

One feed zoomed in on a dome marked contaminated. Inside: glowing greenhouses, children running between fruit trees. No masks. No suits.

“They lied,” I said. “God, they lied.”

Cal watched me.

“How long have you known?”

“A while,” he said. “They’ve been clearing us out for years. Not saving us. Just making room.”

I thought of the Odyssey. Of sedated children. Of the price people paid for a spot. I thought of my father’s words: They’ll say it’s mercy. But it’s theft. I shut off the projection. Time to think. But we didn’t have it.

“My father tried to warn people,” I said. “He was killed for it.”

Cal’s face flickered—recognition, maybe regret.

“Maybe not,” he said quietly.

I stared. “What did you say?”

“We need to move. This place won’t stay quiet long.”

But that flicker hadn’t been nothing.

We moved again, deeper into the forgotten veins of the station. The silence between us turned brittle. He didn’t look at me—hadn’t since the breakroom. Like he wanted to pretend nothing had changed.

I wasn’t going to forget.

A heavy door slammed somewhere above. Boots hammered steel. The sweep teams were closing in. Cal held up a fist. I froze. He peeked around a corner and whispered, “Two guards. Heavies.”

“What does that mean?”

“Means they shoot first.”

He tapped the pipe above, thinking. His face was sharp in the dim light. Something in the way he moved tugged at something old in me.

“Stay close,” he said. “Don’t get smart.”

He led us into a shaft barely wide enough to squeeze through. Dust clogged my throat. My shoulder scraped the wall. I kept a hand on the device, the other near the gun I hadn’t used in months.

We crouched behind rusted pipes, close enough to hear the guards.

“…said sweep the lower decks. No way anyone’s still hiding.”

“Orders are orders.”

Their boots scraped past. I held my breath. Cal didn’t move. He became part of the wall. I mirrored him, heart hammering.

At last, the steps faded. Cal exhaled and waved me on. We wound through a maze of rust and decay, the station groaning around us like something collapsing inward.

Finally, Cal stopped outside a sealed bulkhead. He keyed it open and slipped inside. Just another empty bay. Stripped clean but hidden. He slammed the door behind us and locked it.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“Dead zone. No sensors. No comms. We can think here.”

His face was a map of scars. His eyes stayed on the door. Like someone who’d been waiting to be found for years.

“You said something earlier,” I said. “About my father.”

His shoulders tensed.

“If you know something, tell me.”

He didn’t speak for a moment. Then, quietly, “There are things you don’t understand, Little Bird.”

I froze.

No one had called me that in years.

The nickname hit like a sudden drop, like the floor vanishing beneath me. I hadn’t heard it since before the riots—before the day they told us he was dead. Before the silence settled in my chest like ash.

I stared at him, the pieces refusing to fit. The voice was close but buried, older, rougher. The way he moved, the way he held tension in his shoulders—it felt familiar, but impossible. My mind scrambled to make sense of it, even as my gut already knew.

“Callum?” I whispered, barely breathing.

He closed his eyes for a long second. When he opened them, there was no more hiding.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s me.”

I staggered back, breath caught. My brother stood in front of me—alive.

“You died,” I said. “During the riots.”

“You saw what they wanted you to see. They didn’t kill me. They took me.”

I remembered the coffin. The silence. Our mother folding his clothes.

“They broke me,” he said, touching a scar at his neck. “Rewired me. Turned me into one of theirs.”

His voice—it was still his.

“You were going to hand me over,” I said.

“That was the order. You and the drive.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No. When I saw you… something broke loose.”

“I didn’t get the drive from you.”

“No. That wasn’t me.”

“Then who?”

“I don’t know. But whoever it was—they were careful. Precise. They knew what they were doing.”

I thought of the figure in the terminal, the one who’d bumped into me like it was nothing. I hadn’t looked. I should have. That moment was sharper now, more deliberate. Not an accident. A handoff.

I pulled the device from my coat again, turning it in my fingers. We’d already seen what was on it—live feeds, green zones, children breathing unfiltered air. Proof. But it still felt like more than that.

“Why give it to me?” I said, mostly to myself.

Cal didn’t answer right away.

“Maybe because you’d know what to do with it,” he said. “Or maybe because you were the only one who still might care.”

Proof. Not just that Earth isn’t dying—proof they planned it.”

“They didn’t want anyone to stop it.”

“They almost succeeded.”

“You have to run, Little Bird.”

It crushed me. No one had called me that since before the fire. Before Callum, my only brother died.

“You’ll come with me.”

“They’re tracking me. If I’m with you, you won’t make it. But I can buy you time.”

An alarm blared. Red lights strobed.

“They found us.”

The bulkhead exploded inward. Smoke. Sparks. Armored guards.

“Go now!” Callum shoved me. “Northeast shaft. Maintenance shuttle. It’ll run dark.”

“What about you?”

He didn’t answer. He was already moving.

“Callum!”

He looked back once. “Finish what Dad started.” “GO! NOW!!”

Then he turned and opened fire as I dove into the tunnel. I didn’t look back. The hatch slammed shut behind me, sealing him in with the soldiers.

I wanted to scream. To go back. But I kept moving. He’d made his choice—and given me mine.

The station groaned like a dying animal. Steel cracked. Pipes hissed. The Odyssey’s engines screamed far above.

I ran. Not because I had a plan—because I had no other choice. My legs carried me through ruptured corridors and buckled steel, breath ragged, lungs raw. Alarms howled behind me, but I didn’t look back.

I found the supply hatch behind a corroded panel and shoved it open. The northeast bay was colder than I expected—silent, still, long forgotten. Dust floated in the dim light like fallout. And then I saw it.

The shuttle wasn’t sleek or graceful. Just a weather-beaten escape pod with a cracked exterior and a hull scarred by years of wear. But it was here. Functional. Waiting.

I climbed inside. The hatch sealed behind me with a hydraulic groan. For the first time since the terminal, the noise stopped—no boots, no engines, no shouting. Just me and the stale air.

The cockpit came alive as I dropped into the pilot’s seat. One chair. A battered console. Systems powered up with a low mechanical hum, like they were waking from a long sleep. I pulled the device from my coat and slid it into the nav port. It locked in with a soft click. The lights dimmed, then warmed.

A projection unfolded in front of me—crisp and unmistakable. My father’s face appeared.

Older. Harder. Eyes shadowed by years of hiding. But it was him.

“If you’re seeing this, Tessa,” he said, “then I couldn’t stay. But I found you.”

I didn’t breathe. Couldn’t.

“You weren’t meant to run. You were meant to lead. The coordinates are set—off-world. A resistance cell. Survivors who still believe in something more than survival. When you reach them, tell them the truth. Show them what they’ve tried to bury. Show them you.”

His voice didn’t shake, but it carried the strain of someone who had risked everything to record this message and send it into the dark.

“Earth isn’t dead. It never was. They cleared us out to take it back for themselves. But they didn’t count on you.”

My chest tightened. A slow heat rose behind my ribs—grief, anger, something stronger.

“I did what I could,” he continued. “Maybe it wasn’t enough. But if you’ve made it this far, it means you’re still standing. And that’s more than they ever expected.”

The image began to degrade, the edges softening as if time itself was trying to pull him away. But his last words cut through clearly.

“We’ll be ready. We’ll be waiting. When you return, the fight begins. You are my daughter. You are Earth’s daughter. Never forget that.”

The projection faded. The console beeped once and locked. The ship lurched gently as the docking clamps disengaged. There were no decisions left to make. Only direction.

The shuttle slipped free of the station, and the stars opened above me. The sky turned black. The last edge of the station shrank behind me like a closing wound. I turned in my seat and looked down.

Earth lay below—scarred, yes, but not dead. Smoke veiled much of the surface, but through it I could see signs of life. Veins of green laced through the gray. Light pooled in unexpected places. Rivers still glinted. Clouds still moved. They had told us it was lost.

Uninhabitable. Dying.

They lied.

They erased our future to build their empire on the silence they created. They took my brother. My father. My home. And still—somehow—we were here.

For a long moment, I just sat there, staring through the viewport as the blue curve of the planet slipped beneath the dark. My hands rested on the controls, steady now. Callum had bought me time. My father had given me the truth.

They had both risked everything for this. For me. And for whatever came next.

The nav console blinked. The ship was locked on course—coordinates set for a resistance cell I’d never met, people I didn’t yet know. But they were out there, still fighting, still holding a thread of the truth.

I wasn’t just carrying proof. I was carrying a promise.

I looked down at Earth one last time, the green veins pushing through the ash, the hidden lights in the dark, the signs of life they’d tried to bury.

“You were wrong,” I whispered to no one. “We’re not done.”

I adjusted the seat. Set my hands on the controls. The stars stretched out in front of me, endless and waiting.

It wasn’t an escape.

It was the beginning.