† SINISTER PUBLICATIONS†

You are thirteen years old.

By then, science has already exhausted its miracles. Faster engines, cleaner bombs, quieter machines. The magazines say there’s nothing left to discover—only refine. Interspatial travel is next. Everyone agrees. They talk about it the way they talk about highways: inevitable, useful, dull.

Your life is good.

Your parents love you. They give you everything you need. Lunches wrapped neatly in wax paper, reminders to look both ways before crossing the street, goodnight kisses before the light goes out. At school, people know you. You aren’t special. You aren’t invisible. You fit perfectly in the middle, where futures are supposed to be safe.

Math class smells like chalk and floor cleaner.

The emergency siren goes off halfway through a problem you don’t understand anyway.

At first, no one moves.

The teacher tells everyone not to panic, says it’s probably another drill. You’ve done these before. Tornadoes. Fires. Civil defense exercises that always end with everyone going back inside and laughing about it later. You stand when you’re told, push your chair in, line up like you’ve been trained.

Then you hear the sound.

This siren is different. Louder. Sharper. One long tone followed by short bursts, arranged in a way that feels intentional, like the system is trying to say something without words. You feel it vibrate in your chest.

You walk outside in a single‑file line.

The sky is red.

Not sunset red. Not fire red. Thick and wrong, like diluted blood smeared across the clouds. The light makes familiar faces look unfamiliar. You hear jets screaming overhead—too many, too low—and distant explosions follow, deep enough that you feel them before you hear them. Somewhere far away, the ground is breaking apart.

There’s another sound layered beneath it all, chaotic and overlapping, like dogs fighting somewhere you can’t see.

No one tells you where to go.

You realize, with sudden clarity, that this isn’t rehearsed.

Your mind refuses to process it. The noise, the sky, the weight pressing into your chest—it doesn’t fit into anything you know. Your thoughts scatter, grasping for something familiar.

Am I dreaming? you ask yourself.

You close your eyes.

Then you wake up.

Your sheets are soaked with sweat. Your heart hammers against your ribs. The room is dark and quiet, exactly as it should be. No sirens. No red sky. Just the house settling around you, the ordinary sounds of night. You touch your forehead. You’re hot. Feverish, maybe.

A bad dream.

You lie there, staring at the ceiling, replaying details you shouldn’t be able to remember so clearly. The sound of the siren. The color of the sky. The sense that whatever was happening didn’t care that you were a child.

What did it mean? you ask yourself.

The question loops, over and over, until your thoughts blur and slow. Eventually, your mind gives in.

You fall back asleep.

Somewhere—far beyond your awareness—the sirens continue.