Chapter 1 — Wake Up!

  (Year 26,387)

  Darkness. Silence.

  Light fades in like sunrise on an alien world. Sound comes back wrong—muffled, distant—then snaps into focus.

  The Void breathes. White static walls bend in and out like a lung collapsing and reforming. Water ripples faintly, a thin skin across the floor. Different—yet the same.

  Metal clatters.

  Arthur is on his knees.

  “What is this?” he whispers.

  Chains drag him down—wrists bound, iron biting deep. Every shift screams metal against metal.

  A tired groan answers beside him. Another heavy clank of chain.

  Sarah.

  A collar clamps her throat. Shackles chew her ankles raw. Her chest rises too fast, breath sharp and uneven in the quiet.

  Arthur tilts his head—just enough for their eyes to meet.

  They say nothing.

  Her gaze says everything: confusion, terror, and a question she can’t form.

  The Void hums louder. Pressure thickens. The room feels like it’s closing.

  Arthur tenses—feels it before it happens. His ears ring.

  Sarah’s voice barely survives her fear. “What is this… a new mind game?”

  Static bends.

  Footsteps echo—impossibly distant, yet somehow right behind them.

  A man steps into view.

  Unchained. Immaculate. Tailored suit, perfect hair, perfect posture. His presence warps the place—space itself leaning toward him, like the Void recognizes an owner.

  He stops with his hands folded behind his back, smiling like a man returning home.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” He spreads his arms, admiring the water, the shelves, the air. Silence blooms around him. “Your sanctuary of memory… and love.” His smile flickers. “And now—mine.”

  He circles them slowly. Each step sends ripples through the water.

  Sarah lifts her head. Exhaustion burns into defiance. “Why are you here?”

  He kneels, face level with hers.

  “You don’t belong here,” she says, trying to understand the cruelty wearing a man’s face.

  He sighs—intimate, almost tender. “I’ve belonged here since the moment you signed the hospital forms.” A small smile. “I created the drive.”

  His hand snaps out—grabbing her face, squeezing her jaw.

  “I created you.” His eyes harden. “Twenty-four thousand years is a long time.”

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  Too long.

  Venom threads his voice. “You’re here because I made it so. Don’t interrupt me.”

  His hand flashes.

  The slap detonates like thunder.

  Arthur surges—chains snap him back, iron shrieking. “Leave her alone! Hit me!”

  The man rises leisurely, brushing imaginary dust from his sleeve. He strolls between them, savoring the silence.

  “I created you too, Arthur.” He stops. “What—did you think God made you immortal?” He leans in, smiling near Arthur’s ear. “Maybe I am God.”

  Arthur’s breathing turns ragged.

  The man chuckles, soft as a confession. “I needed a guinea pig. And there you were—getting brain scans.” His smile widens. “Crying. Sad.”

  He laughs.

  Black metal spikes erupt from the floor—slamming through Arthur’s chest and arms.

  Arthur convulses. A roar shreds into breath.

  The man bends close, pleased. “My name is Richard Daevos.”

  “Daevos Industries?” Arthur rasps, choking on pain.

  “The Daevos Alliance now.” He straightens. Calm again. “You interrupt too much.”

  He tilts his head, almost curious. “I warned her about interrupting me. Did you think it didn’t apply to you?”

  He circles, watching for the flinch. “Pain.” A smile. “You’ve never felt it. Not here. Not in your safe place.”

  Arthur shakes against the spears, teeth bared.

  Daevos kicks him deeper into the metal.

  “Now let me finish before I get upset.”

  He claps as he walks, amused. “Perhaps a change of view.”

  The Void warps—memory bleeding in.

  A lab flickers like damaged film. Cold fluorescence. Chrome. Instruments arranged like bones.

  Sarah—on a table.

  Wires at her temples.

  Her lips move.

  No sound.

  The image stutters. Loops. Tears return. Loops again.

  Sarah turns away, swallowing something that won’t go down.

  The spikes retract with a wet scrape. Arthur drags in air, coughing. “Stop. Please—stop. She’s suffered enough.”

  A baseball bat forms in Daevos’s hands.

  “I decide when she’s had enough.”

  The bat cracks across Arthur’s skull.

  Blood sprays.

  Arthur collapses, stunned—then the bat disappears as if Daevos is already bored with it.

  The lab dissolves.

  An old farmhouse replaces it—Sarah’s childhood home.

  Their home.

  Warm sun. Too warm. Unreal, like the memory is trying to comfort them while it dies.

  Anna sits nearby with a book, pages lifting in the breeze. The porch swing creaks, steady as a heartbeat.

  Sarah stares at the life she lost—so close she could touch it. Her lips tremble.

  Daevos steps onto the porch as if he has always belonged there. He lays a hand on the swing’s chain.

  The world falters. Slows. Dims.

  He turns a page in Anna’s book.

  The words crumble into gray static.

  Sarah breaks. “No—don’t. Don’t take this one.”

  Arthur strains against his bonds. “Not here! Not her!”

  Daevos crouches, smiling softly at Anna.

  With that same smile, the light leaves her forever.

  “That was fun,” he says, standing. “Want to do another?”

  The farmhouse collapses back into the White Void.

  Arthur and Sarah remain—shackled, shaking.

  Daevos stands over them, calm and absolute.

  “You are not free,” he says. “Not your body. Not your love. Not even your grief.”

  He kneels again, voice tight as wire. “You belong to me. Both of you.”

  The chains cinch.

  Skin splits.

  Water blooms pink.

  Arthur screams—raw, human.

  Sarah swallows hers, defiant in silence.

  “Where is Valuun?” she mutters through her teeth.

  Daevos chuckles. “Valuun? Long dead.” He smiles like he’s enjoying the confusion. “It’s been a thousand years since you lay on that slab.”

  Arthur blinks. The number hits like a blow.

  “So it failed?”

  “No.” A scoff. “You lived another forty years.”

  He kicks Sarah hard in the ribs.

  She cries out.

  “Babies. Peace. Sunlight. Music.” His tone turns mockingly fond. “I’m sure it was wonderful.”

  Arthur flinches. “Then why are we here?”

  Daevos shrugs—boredom made flesh.

  “Because I got bored.”

  —

  Reality slams back.

  Arthur jerks awake in the real: a steel chair bolted to ribbed flooring. Chains hold his wrists and ankles. Cold air burns his lungs.

  Daevos stands immaculate—an absence of empathy in a tailored suit.

  “I don’t like being interrupted here either,” he says. “So I’ll be brief.”

  Tools clatter on a desk.

  “You’re a clone, Arthur. DNA on file at Linthera.”

  A bone saw glints in his hand.

  “Sarah’s new coin drive?” He smiles. “Downloaded with her last scan.”

  Arthur’s throat tightens. His mind scrambles for an angle, a weakness, a way out.

  Daevos sets the saw down, considering him like a toy.

  “I’m going to dump you on the nearest planet.”

  Silence stretches.

  “Why?” Arthur croaks. “Why all this?”

  Daevos leans close, delighted.

  “Because torturing you might relieve my boredom.” He tilts his head. “I’ll always know where you are.”

  “And Sarah…” His smile thins. “I’ll enjoy having her in my head again.”

  Arthur’s vision tunnels.

  He dives inward—

  —

  The White Void returns, changed.

  The walls have darkened to storm gray. Bookshelves crowd in. Ladders vanish into shadow. The air feels heavier, like the place is afraid to breathe.

  Sarah sits at the center, chained, turned away.

  Arthur stumbles toward her, shaking. “He’s not a man,” he whispers. “He’s a hole where a man was.”

  “Sarah.”

  No answer.

  He circles to her front—

  Bruises. Cuts.

  And her right hand—

  Gone.

  Arthur breaks.

  He falls to her, pulling her into him like he can stitch her back together with arms alone.

  She sobs—violent, shattered.

  “How do we get away?” she gasps. “We have to leave—he—”

  Arthur holds her until her shaking slows, then pulls back, hands raised as if to promise her something he hasn’t earned yet.

  —

  Arthur snaps back to the real.

  Fury blazes through him. “I will kill you.”

  Daevos beams. “What? The violin hand?”

  Arthur goes still.

  Daevos shrugs, almost playful. “That had to go. Two minutes straight.” He smirks. “I don’t know how you tolerated it.”

  His smile twists.

  “This is going to be fun.”

  He spins once, giddy. “Maybe I’ll clone you again. Break you. Rebuild you.” His voice softens, thrilled. “Until pain feels ordinary.”

  The ship shudders.

  “We’re here,” someone says—systems locking with a heavy thunk.

  Landing gear bites cracked salt. Heat ripples to the horizon.

  The hatch opens.

  “One hundred miles to the city,” Daevos says. “Enjoy the walk. Those new legs could use the exercise.”

  Arthur hits the ground barefoot. Shirtless. Blinding heat. He stumbles, falls, rolls—sand cutting like glass.

  The hatch seals.

  The ship lifts.

  Its shadow passes once—

  then vanishes.

  Arthur lies in the heat, staring at the horizon.

  Then inward—

  to the faint reflection of Sarah, trapped behind his eyes..

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