Chapter 2: Arkfall

Elys Cain stared out through the thick glass of the observation deck, eyes locked on the blue-green planet below. Earth. His fingers idly traced a path across the chilled surface of the window, but his thoughts were elsewhere—drifting through the quiet corridors of the Ark, through the years of experiments and confinement, all the way back to the beginning.

"Hey, Earthborn, what are you daydreaming about?"

Elys blinked and glanced sideways at the speaker. A broad-shouldered young man with dark brown skin and cropped hair stood beside him, dressed in the standard-issue gray uniform of the Ark's Exile Unit. His sharp features and wary eyes marked him as someone who'd been born into this world of constraints and regulations. This was Avery Torres, one of the Exile —a fighter, and a constant thorn in Elys's side.

"I was just imagining what Earth might smell like," Elys said with a smirk, his voice light and teasing. "Bet it's better than the recycled air we've been choking on our whole lives. Maybe they have flowers that don't smell like ammonia?"

Avery snorted. "Keep dreaming. We get to breathe that 'fresh' air, and you'll probably wish we were back up here."

Elys just shrugged, his dark hair falling across his forehead as he turned back to the window. He had a lean, wiry build, standing just shy of six feet with a frame more suited for quick reflexes than brute strength. He was an anomaly—the anomaly. Dark hair, bright emerald-green eyes, and a knack for slipping through the cracks that had kept him out of trouble longer than most Exiles could claim. But it wasn't his appearance that set him apart.

He was the first—the first child in nearly 140 years born naturally. The first to breathe without a lab, to live without the surgical alterations that made the others stronger, faster, and more space-resilient. He was a mistake. An impossible birth in a society where the Prime Minister and the Council controlled every heartbeat and every cry that echoed through the metal bowels of the Ark.

"You're awfully quiet today, Cain," Avery murmured, his gaze softening just a fraction. "You nervous about tomorrow?"

Elys tilted his head, eyes still fixed on the distant planet. "Nervous?" He laughed, a quick, bright sound that lit up his face. "Nah, just… curious. I mean, how many people get to say they've been to Earth?"

Avery shook his head but didn't push. Maybe it was the lingering uncertainty about what Elys represented. Even now, after eighteen years, there was something different about him—a freedom in his manner, a looseness in his stride. Where the rest of them walked as if weighted by the collective expectations of a society always watching, Elys moved as though the Ark were his playground.

And in some ways, it was.

The Ark was more than just a refuge. It was a city among the stars—a patchwork of ships and modules, welded together over generations to form a sprawling, self-sustaining habitat for the last of humanity. Inside its interconnected rings and towering spires, twelve distinct Tribes lived and worked, each governed by a tightly controlled hierarchy of privilege and power.

At the very top of this fragile ecosystem was the Prime Minister, the absolute ruler and the voice of the Council—a diverse group of representatives who had final say over the life and death of every soul aboard. The Ark's leader was a figure of cold authority, chosen not by birth or succession but by a ruthless selection process that weeded out the weak and the unworthy. For the past twenty years, that position had been held by Prime Minister Lenox Ravelle, a man of stern demeanor and unyielding will.

Prime Minister Ravelle was a commanding presence. Tall and slender, his hair, though graying, still held hints of the dark brown of his youth. His piercing blue eyes seemed to see through layers of lies and deceptions, and his very posture exuded an air of supremacy. There was no warmth to be found in his gaze—only the keen, analytical intelligence of someone who saw people as resources to be managed.

And below him, the Council—the real architects of this engineered society. Scientists, politicians, engineers: each representing one of the Ark's Tribes. From the brilliant but cynical Dr. Elara Kim, head of the Life Sciences Division with her jet-black hair pulled into a severe knot, to Councilor Amadi Nyong, whose ebony skin and calm demeanor belied the fierce ambition that had propelled him to power. Each councilor was a reflection of their Tribe's strengths and weaknesses, and all shared a single, overriding goal: to preserve what remained of humanity, at any cost.

On the Ark, every resource was measured, every life meticulously planned. To have a child was not a matter of love or choice—it was a privilege, a decision weighed by the Council and granted only to those who could prove their genetic worth. Applicants were tested, their genes analyzed and matched with cold precision. Only the strongest, the most adaptable, were allowed to reproduce. When a union was approved, the embryo was manipulated in vitro, its genes altered to produce children who were perfectly suited for the harsh realities of space.

But Elys was different.

He hadn't been created in a lab. He hadn't been chosen, engineered, or improved. He had simply been born, an anomaly that should have been impossible. The Prime Birth, they called it. A deviation so rare that it was studied, probed, and tested for years. For a long time, Elys had been more specimen than child, his existence a problem that the scientists struggled to quantify.

But as he grew, there was one thing that separated him from the carefully engineered children of the Ark.

His blood.

Radiation levels that would have killed a normal person in days barely registered on his system. His cells seemed to adapt, to shift and harden in the presence of danger. His only downside was his physical abilities. He was too average in that way. The Council's theories ran wild: Was it a throwback to some long-lost genetic quirk? A mutation? Or something more?

In the end, they had no answers. All they had was a boy who defied everything they knew—and the knowledge that Earth, with all its dangers and mutations, might be the only place that could reveal what he truly was.

But now, with Elys and the rest of the Exiled 300 bound for the planet's surface, the stakes were higher than ever. The Council watched from above, eyes fixed on the green-blue world spinning slowly beneath them, and in the silence of their sealed chambers, they wondered:

Would They survive ?