Photography by Tomas Heligr-Pyke · Bokeh

Ten thousand residents enter an auditorium. One hundred leave their old lives behind.

From the 4671 story library. Read the story below, or explore its original reader and connected world.

Every Year

Every year, the district closes for the lottery.

The trains stop at midnight. Factory shifts end before dawn. Clinic appointments are cancelled. By six in the morning, every registered resident must be inside the auditorium or waiting in one of the fenced queues outside it.

There are ten thousand names on the district register.

There are ten thousand seats.

No one is absent.

Iron Fist officers check us at the doors. They scan our district papers, search our bags and send us towards the numbered aisles. Above the stage hangs a black banner large enough to cover the back wall. A single red fist fills its centre. The cloth moves whenever the ventilation starts, and for a second the fingers seem to close.

The lottery is supposed to be an honour.

That is what the district administrator tells us each year. Selected residents are given the chance to serve where New Atriad needs them most. Training. Relocation. Medical service. Habitat work. Advancement. The words change order, but the list stays the same.

No one we know has ever come back.

The official explanation is simple: allocation is permanent. A person sent to another branch receives new quarters, new duties and a new district record. Contact with the former district is restricted to protect operational security.

It is a good explanation because it cannot be checked.

People say the lottery controls overpopulation. They say the selected are sent to the mines beneath the old branches. They say there are Arks still travelling beyond the Moon and the tickets buy a place aboard. They say the Games need bodies. They say the hospitals need bodies too, but not in the same way.

My family never discussed the rumours at home. Walls in New Atriad carry sound through places you cannot see.

We only said the same thing everyone says on lottery morning.

Not us this year.

The Tickets

Distribution begins after the doors lock.

Officers enter from both sides of the auditorium. They move row by row, placing one ticket into each person’s hand. Every ticket has an individual number, except for the selected hundred. Their tickets all carry the same four digits.

4671.

The number is older than the lottery. I have seen it scratched into an access tunnel where the concrete predates this branch. It appears in old stories, corrupted files and dates that do not make sense. Iron Fist claims the number now. District broadcasts talk about service whenever they show it, but nobody here believes the number belongs to them.

To us, it is simply the ticket.

The first officer reaches my aisle.

Nobody speaks. A child three seats ahead holds out both hands because they are too small to know which one is expected. The officer places the ticket in the child’s right palm and waits while the parent reads it.

Not 4671.

The parent folds over the child and begins to cry anyway.

The officers continue.

They do not exempt children. They do not exempt the old. They do not exempt the guards standing at the walls. Guards receive their tickets before the public distribution begins, watched by other guards.

Last year, one of them drew 4671.

The officer beside him removed his weapon. He climbed the stage with everyone else.

This year, there is a new guard in his place.

The line reaches me.

The officer has a pale scar running from one ear to the corner of the mouth. I remember it because I need something to look at besides the hand holding my ticket. The officer places it against my palm and closes my fingers over it.

Then the line moves on.

I do not look.

Around me, paper or plastic or whatever the tickets are made from makes a soft restless sound as nine thousand people check their numbers. Relief passes through each row in broken breaths. Here and there, someone makes a noise that stops almost as soon as it begins.

My hand is wet.

I tell myself that there are only one hundred repeated numbers in ten thousand tickets. One chance in a hundred. I have survived more lotteries than I can count. I will survive this one.

I open my hand.

4671.

For a moment, the number means nothing. Four shapes. A mistake in printing. A trick of the light.

Then the district disappears around it.

I hear myself say no.

The officer with the scar looks back but does not stop.

Roll Call

Distribution takes three hours.

No one is permitted to leave during that time. The selected sit among everyone else while the officers finish each row. Families whisper. Some make promises about finding the transfer records. Some begin saying goodbye. Others stare at the stage as though refusing to look at the ticket can change what it says.

I count the exits.

Six public doors, all locked. Two service doors beside the stage, both guarded. Ventilation grilles too narrow for a body. Cameras in the ceiling. Armed officers along every aisle.

There is no way out.

At midday, the administrator returns to the lectern.

“Residents holding Ticket 4671 will stand when called. Bring no belongings. Your new allocation will provide what is required.”

The names begin.

A mechanic from the row behind me.

An old woman near the centre aisle.

Two children from different families.

A clinic worker still wearing a night-shift uniform.

One of the guards at the western wall.

When his name is called, the guard does not move. The officer beside him says something too quiet for us to hear. The selected guard slowly removes his sidearm and places it on the floor. He joins the line without looking at the crowd.

No one is free of it.

My name comes sixty-three places into the list.

I stand.

The hundred of us gather at the foot of the stage. The youngest child is carried by a parent who does not have the number. An officer blocks them at the stairs.

“Recipients only.”

“They can’t go alone.”

“Recipients only.”

The parent holds on until two officers pull their arms apart. The child is lifted onto the stage, screaming. Nobody in the audience moves.

We all understand what the rifles are for.

The administrator thanks us for our service.

The door behind the curtain opens.

White light fills the stage.

Behind The Auditorium

The corridor is not part of the auditorium.

The walls change from public stone to sealed metal as soon as the door closes behind us. The floor slopes down. Cameras follow from the ceiling. The applause broadcast still plays through hidden speakers, but it grows quieter with every turn.

The guards escorting us seem nervous.

That surprises me. I thought they would know where the ticket led. Instead, they stop at a security line and surrender us to officers wearing no district markings. The selected guard asks where we are being taken.

The answer is a hand against his chest.

“Your authority ended at the door.”

Our escorts leave.

The corridor divides.

At the first room, we are photographed and stripped of our district papers. An intake clerk enters each number into a terminal, then drops the papers through a slot in the desk. I hear a shredder start below it.

“I was told we’d receive new records,” someone says.

“After allocation,” the clerk replies.

At the second room, medical staff take blood, inspect teeth and joints, test eyesight and ask about pregnancies, surgeries, medication and family illness. The questions move too quickly for answers to matter. Each person receives a mark on the intake sheet.

At the third room, the line begins to break apart.

A heavy door opens at the left wall. Six adults in work uniforms are taken through it. I glimpse a freight platform descending towards the mining levels.

Another door opens on the right. Three children and a clinic worker are led into a white medical passage. One child asks when their parents will arrive. No one answers.

Farther ahead, a group of younger adults is ordered to run between floor markers while cameras track their movement. An officer checks their reflexes, balance and aggression. Behind the assessment room is a corridor lined with equipment cases and black observation glass.

I have seen that corridor before.

Not with my own eyes.

In a forbidden maintenance record copied through the branch network, there was a diagram of the old service spine beneath this district. The writer claimed it connected civic auditoriums to freight lifts, sealed clinics, transfer platforms and an intake route used by the Games. The report vanished two days after it appeared. The person who posted it received Ticket 4671 at the next lottery.

I thought the diagram was a lie.

Now I recognise the angle of the corridor and the arrangement of the doors.

“No,” I say.

An officer turns towards me.

The line moves again.

There is one more route in the diagram. It ends beneath the reclamation decks. No dormitory. No transfer platform. No return passage. Just a wide service chamber connected to the district furnaces.

I look at the people still beside me and understand why no one comes home.

Some of the selected may be alive. They may work in another branch, travel on a ship, enter a clinic or survive the Games. It makes no difference to the district. Their records are destroyed before anyone decides where they go.

Ticket 4671 is not the destination.

It is permission.

The state can make one hundred people disappear, then decide what each body is worth.

An intake officer takes my sheet.

The officer reads the mark beside my name, looks towards the doors and covers the page with one hand before I can see it.

“Next,” the officer says.

Someone grips my arm.

A door opens.

Photography by Tomas Heligr-Pyke · Bokeh

A desperate man from Wet Eighteen joins a Habidash crew for Mara, Eli and June and is trapped by a killing used to test his loyalty.

From the 4671 story library. Read the story below, or explore its original reader and connected world.

Howard and the Habidash

At thirty-five, Howard joined the Habidash because Mara, their child Eli and his mother June depended on money his irregular waste-pump repair shifts could no longer provide.

They lived in Habitation Tier 18, called Wet Eighteen by the people who had to live there. Condensation and water-reclamation pipes leaked through ceilings and service walls faster than the maintenance crews could patch them. Mara, thirty-three, tested reclaimed water under a low-status laboratory classification. Eli was eight. June was sixty-one and had spent most of her working life inspecting and patching condensation lines. When reduced shift eligibility cut June’s income, the household leaned harder on Howard. No illness had done this to them. New Atriad’s classifications had simply decided how much work each of them was still allowed.

Their two-room unit was cramped but cared for. It sat against a service wall with access panels that never fitted properly, catch basins beneath the worst leaks and fold-down beds that returned a little floor space each morning. Their work clothes dried beside the warmest pipe because it was the only reliable heat in the room.

Housing and work classifications passed from one generation to the next, binding families to water processing, pipe repair, waste systems and other low-status work across the neighbouring tiers. Severe poverty remained part of ordinary life despite the wealth and power of the lunar capital.

Howard had watched every honest option narrow until rumours of the pirates began to sound less like warnings and more like work. Habidash crews crossed the Sol system taking cargo, ships and lives. They were dangerous, but danger appeared negotiable when hunger was not.

He told himself he would endure them for his family.

That lie carried him aboard.

At first, Howard tried to look only at the part that concerned him. A task was given. He completed it. A superior spoke. He obeyed. The ship moved through the dark between settlements, and Howard counted the distance as though it separated him from responsibility.

It did not.

The Habidash did not simply steal what they needed. They took what they wanted because no one nearby could stop them. Cargo crews were threatened after surrendering. Settlements were damaged after payment had already been made. Violence continued long after it had served any practical purpose.

Howard saw enough to understand that cruelty was not a failure of discipline. It was part of how the pirates kept discipline.

By then, leaving was no longer a decision he could make alone. He knew their faces, their habits and the routes they used. They knew where he had come from and why he needed them. Every day aboard made him more useful to the Habidash and less able to return to the person his family believed him to be.

Then they captured the cargo pilot.

The pilot was innocent. Howard knew that before anyone ordered him forward. There had been no battle worth avenging and no hidden threat to uncover. The prisoner was simply available, and the Habidash had decided Howard needed to be blooded. The killing would test his obedience and make his guilt useful to them.

He was made to take part in killing the pilot while the crew watched.

Howard would remember the pilot afterward in fragments. He would remember the enclosed air, the people watching and the certainty that refusing would not save the prisoner. He would remember that he obeyed.

Whatever the Habidash called the act, it left Howard unable to pretend he was merely working among violent people. Their crime now included him.

He carried it through every passage of the ship. He tried to imagine telling his family and could never reach the end of the confession. He could not explain that he had joined for them without making them part of his excuse. He could not ask for forgiveness while the pilot remained dead. He could not return home and place what he had become at their door.

The pirates had trapped him more completely than any locked compartment could have done. Even escape would not restore the life he had entered with.

Howard began watching his superior.

The plan that formed was not complicated. There was no route out of the Habidash that he could see, so he chose the person directly above him and decided to kill them. Perhaps it was revenge. Perhaps it was punishment. Perhaps Howard needed one final act that belonged to him rather than to the people who had blooded him.

He knew it would not undo the cargo pilot’s death. He did not believe it would make him innocent. It was only the last direction left that did not feel like obedience.

When Howard acted, the clean moment he had imagined disappeared at once.

Gunfire filled the ship. The narrow space gave every shot a hard mechanical violence. Howard fired, moved and lost track of who had seen him first. The Habidash answered from more than one direction. His attempt became noise, impact and the sudden knowledge that he had never controlled what would happen next.

A round struck him in the head.

His body fell before his thoughts did.

In the last moments available to him, Howard did not think about the pirate he had tried to kill. He thought about Mara, Eli and June in Wet Eighteen and everything he had failed to tell them. He imagined the Habidash reaching them. He imagined slavery, exploitation and the worst markets hidden across the system. Fear turned every possibility into certainty, and he died believing that his attempt to provide for them might instead have exposed them to ruin.

He never learned whether that fear was true.

He never returned to confess what he had done, and he never found a way to repair it. The last thing the Habidash took from Howard was the chance to know what became of the people for whom he had joined them.

Photography by Tomas Heligr-Pyke · Bokeh

Two private diaries follow the same long-distance relationship from the person being recruited and the Follower guiding him.

From the 4671 story library. Read the story below, or explore its original reader and connected world.

Evan’s Diary

First Entry

I have a girlfriend.

That still looks impossible when I write it down, but it is true. Her name is Sophia. She lives in New Hope City and I live in Nybell, so for now we are voices, messages and faces behind glass. I thought the distance would make it feel less real. It does not.

We have made a plan. In three years, we will finally be together.

Three years sounds enormous when I say it aloud. Sophia says it is nothing compared with forever.

I believe her.

The Distance

We are alike in ways I have never been alike with anyone.

Sophia knows what I mean before I finish saying it. When I cannot sleep, she is awake. When I feel stupid, she makes the feeling sound temporary. Sometimes we sit without speaking and listen to each other breathe through the call. I used to think silence meant there was nothing left to say. With her, silence feels like proof that neither of us has gone.

I love her. There is no cleverer way to write it.

I want to live with her. I want to wake beside her and know there is no screen between us. She wants that too.

She keeps saying forever.

I have started saying it back.

What She Believes

Sophia told me about her beliefs tonight.

She would not give me a name for them. She said names are what outsiders use when they want to put a wall around something. Her people believe there is more beyond us: something greater than one life, one body or one world.

At first it sounded like every religion I had ever heard of. I told her that. She laughed, but she did not get angry.

She said ordinary religions ask people to believe without showing them anything. Her people have proof.

I asked what the proof was.

She said I was not ready.

I thought that would annoy me. Instead, I wanted to be ready.

The Blackout

I could not reach Sophia.

The calls failed first. Then the lights went out, followed by every screen in the building. No one could agree how far the blackout reached. Each station that returned named somewhere different.

When the news feeds came back, they showed a city hanging above another country.

Some reports said Nussia. Others said Uchen or Atriad. The footage never looked the same twice. Towers stood upside down against the clouds. Roads ended in open sky. For a few seconds, the shape above them moved like a reflection after the thing being reflected had gone.

People online called it a hoax. Officials called it an atmospheric fault. Sophia called me when the network returned and asked what I thought I had seen.

I told her I did not know.

“Proof,” she said.

She would not explain further.

Purpose

Sophia has been teaching me slowly.

I understand why now. If she had told me everything at once, I would have heard the words without understanding them. A body believes it belongs to itself. A mind believes it is alone. Work, money, hunger, sleep: all of it keeps a person staring down at the floor when there is something above them, around them and waiting beyond them.

I used to wake, work and come home so tired that I could barely speak to the one person I loved. I called that a life because everyone else did.

I have found my purpose.

A life without purpose is not a life.

I do not need to go to work anymore. The Great One will provide what matters.

Sophia says I am close.

Offerings

I made my first offerings.

The animals were small. I bought them from people who asked no questions. Their lives would have ended eventually. Everything made of flesh ends. The only choice is whether the ending means something.

I thought I would feel shame. I felt fear, then stillness.

Sophia stayed with me through the call. She told me not to look away. She said an offering made in shame is an offering refused.

When it was done, she told me she was proud of me.

No one has said that in a long time.

The Followers help us see what the rest of the world refuses to see. Flesh is not sacred because it lasts. Flesh is sacred because it can be given.

The Cube will guide us to sanctuary.

One

We are all one.

And one is all.

Our lives are joined.

Our stories are shared.

What we surrender will remain.

What remains will change what follows.

We will worship.

We will follow.

The Great Ones are beyond us.

The Artefact is before us.

The Cube will open the way.

Last Entry

Sophia is here.

I collected her from the airport this morning. For one terrible second I thought we would not recognise each other without a screen between us. Then she smiled, and there was no distance left.

We came back to my apartment and prepared the room. The table stands in the centre. The chairs face away from it. We pressed our fingers until blood rose, then drew the Cube together across the tabletop. Her lines met mine at every corner.

Soon, each of us will open the other. Flesh and blood will join what distance kept apart. There will be pain, but pain is only the body begging to remain separate.

Sophia says we will be together forever.

I believed her when forever meant three years.

I believe her now.

This is the last thing I will write before we begin.

Sophia’s Diary

First Entry

I have a boyfriend.

His name is Evan. He lives in Nybell, far enough away that we cannot meet yet. That helps. The cause cannot be hurried. If I tell him what waits for us before he understands me, fear will answer before love can.

He is not a believer.

That will change.

When the time comes, we can complete the cause together. Neither of us will have to cross alone.

Patience

We have agreed to wait three years before we live together.

Evan thinks the wait is practical. He talks about money, work and all the ordinary arrangements people make when they believe a future is something they own.

I let him talk.

I listen to everything. That is how I learn which parts of him are empty and which words will fit inside them.

The emotional connection between us is real. I can feel the urge to love him.

He is amazing.

The Teaching

It is time to begin converting Evan.

I started with the idea of something higher. Nothing about the Followers. Nothing about the blood. Nothing about what a body must become before it can be left behind.

He called it religion. I laughed because he expected me to. Then I told him we have proof.

That was enough.

Curiosity opens more gently than fear. Once opened, it is difficult to close.

I teach him slowly. I do not want to lose my one and only other half.

First, I teach him that the body is temporary.

Then, that temporary things can still be used.

Then, that sacrifice is not destruction when something greater receives it.

Soon I will tell him about the Cube.

The Failed Opening

Another cell tried to force an artefact awake.

They believed they could feed it enough power to open a passage. Instead, the grid failed and two places occupied the same sky. The news called the other place a floating city because ordinary language has no words for one world showing through another.

The reports cannot agree whether it appeared over Nussia, Uchen or Atriad. Perhaps the overlap was larger than anyone understood. Perhaps frightened people gave the same impossible sight three different names.

The cell has not spoken since.

Evan saw enough to become curious. I told him it was proof and let the silence do the rest.

Failure can still open someone.

Conversion

He has stopped going to work.

He says the Great One will provide. He says it with the certainty of someone repeating his own thought, not mine. That is how I know the teaching has settled inside him.

He made his first offerings. I watched. He did not turn away.

Evan is now one of us.

I thought triumph would feel louder.

Instead, I listened to him breathing after the call and wished I could touch his face.

One

We are all one.

And one is all.

Our lives are joined.

Our stories are shared.

What we surrender will remain.

What remains will change what follows.

We will worship.

We will follow.

The Great Ones are beyond us.

The Artefact is before us.

The Cube will open the way.

Last Entry

Evan met me at the airport.

He looked exactly like himself and nothing like the person on the screen. When he held me, I felt the distance collapse all at once.

The room is ready. He remembered the table and the chairs. I did not have to correct him. We marked the tabletop together, his blood joining mine until the Cube was whole.

Soon we will open each other. Our flesh will end. What is joined beneath it will continue.

Evan believes we are doing this because we love each other.

I chose him for the cause before I knew him.

Now, when I try to separate what I feel from what we are about to do, I cannot find the line.

There is no distance left.

Photography by Tomas Heligr-Pyke · Bokeh

An unnamed detective follows an anonymous file into the cover-up surrounding Annabelle Klanders’s death.

From the 4671 story library. Read the story below, or explore its original reader and connected world.

The Room

I woke with my wrists chained to a chair.

The room was too dark to measure. A line of light beneath the door gave me the floor, my shoes and the first few links hanging from each arm. Everything beyond that line might as well have been open space.

I pulled once. The chair moved less than an inch.

Two days earlier, I had been in my office wondering how long I could keep pretending it was a business. Then an unfamiliar file appeared on my desk.

That was all it took.

One file. One dead student. One question I should have left unanswered.

Two Days Earlier

The folder had no return address, invoice or client name. Inside was a short note.

Annabelle Klanders died one week ago. They called it suicide. Something is wrong with the body.

The rest was copied from official records.

Annabelle was a young university student. Her computer had been wiped, and the storage inside it had been physically destroyed. She had been found at home with wounds across her wrists and a bloodied razor left beside her.

The authorities had accepted the scene.

Someone else had placed the file on my desk.

I should have taken it to the police. I should have thrown it away. Instead, I looked at the unpaid work stacked beside it and decided that an anonymous client could still become a paying one.

I began with the people who knew her.

They disagreed about almost everything except the conclusion.

Annabelle had been kind. Annabelle had been difficult. Annabelle kept to herself. Annabelle spoke to everyone. She was serious about her studies. She had been distracted. She seemed happy. She did not seem happy.

But no one expected her to die.

Clive was the last interview.

He sat opposite me with his hands locked together and stared at the space over my shoulder.

“She was my friend,” he said. “We were messaging on the day it happened.”

“About what?”

“People she wanted to meet.”

“What people?”

His hands tightened.

“Some call them rebels. The ones with the cuts.”

“Cuts where?”

“Their hands. Their fingernails. I do not know.”

“Was Annabelle joining them?”

Clive looked at me then. Whatever answer had been ready disappeared before he spoke.

“I do not know. She stopped replying.”

“You were talking to her on the day she died. What did she say before she stopped?”

He stood.

“That is all I know.”

It was not all he knew. I could hear that much. I let him leave anyway.

The Followers

The description led me away from political groups and into old rumours: private rites, artefacts, scars hidden beneath ordinary clothes, deep arrow-shaped cuts carved into fingernails.

The Followers.

Most references contradicted one another. Some called them a church. Others called them a criminal network, an invented enemy or an excuse for unexplained bodies. The only useful name I found was Zander.

I sent a request through a contact channel and promised anonymity. His reply named a park and a time.

He was already on the bench when I arrived.

“Sit,” he said. “Look ahead. Do not look at me.”

I sat at the other end of the bench. The path in front of us was empty.

“You know why I am here?” I asked.

“Annabelle Klanders.”

“Clive said she was trying to meet rebels.”

“They are not rebels.”

“Then what are they?”

“Followers. They do not care who governs your city. They care about things older than it.”

“Was Annabelle one of them?”

“She was trying to reach them. That is not the same thing.”

“Why?”

“You are asking the question that got her killed.”

I turned toward him without thinking.

“Look forward,” he said.

I faced the path again.

“Clive left something out,” Zander continued. “Annabelle had been asking questions about Iron Fist. Not stories. Names, decisions, things that were not meant to remain written down. Enough of what she found was true.”

“What does that have to do with the Followers?”

“Maybe she thought they had evidence. Maybe she wanted protection. Maybe she wanted to become one of them. It no longer matters. Iron Fist knew she was looking.”

“You are saying they killed her.”

“They followed her home. They destroyed what was on her computer and made the room tell a simpler story.”

The wounds. The razor. The clean official conclusion.

“Can you prove that?”

“No. Neither can you.”

“Then why tell me?”

“So you understand what happens next.”

Zander stood.

“Close the file. Forget Annabelle. Forget my name.”

“You said the Followers did not kill her.”

“I said Iron Fist did. I did not say the Followers were safe.”

He started down the path.

“Is that all?” I called.

He did not turn.

“It was already too late for Annabelle. Decide whether it is too late for you.”

The Car

I walked in the opposite direction and told myself the case was finished.

There was no evidence I could use. No client to report to. No witness willing to sign a statement. I had a destroyed computer, a frightened friend and the word of a man who would not let me look at him.

I reached the end of the park.

A car door opened behind me.

Someone caught my arms. Another hand covered my mouth. The pavement vanished beneath my feet, and the inside of the car swallowed me before I managed to shout.

Then came the room, the chair and the chains.

The Offer

The door opened.

Light crossed the floor and climbed the legs of my chair. A man entered, shut the door behind him and stopped where I could not see his face.

“You spoke to a Follower,” he said.

“I spoke to a source. I am a detective.”

“You spoke to a Follower about Annabelle Klanders.”

“I was hired to investigate her death.”

“By whom?”

“I do not know. The file was anonymous.”

He stepped closer. A blade touched the skin beneath my jaw.

“That answer makes you useless or dishonest. Neither keeps you alive.”

“I am telling you the truth.”

“Are you one of them?”

“No.”

“Did Zander give you names?”

“No.”

The blade pressed harder.

“What did he tell you about us?”

I thought of Annabelle’s destroyed computer. The wounds placed where people expected to find them. The razor completing the picture.

“Nothing I could prove,” I said.

For the first time, the man laughed.

“That is the correct answer.”

He lowered the knife but did not move away.

“You cannot return to your office knowing what you know. We can leave you here, or you can make yourself useful.”

“You want me to join Iron Fist.”

“I do not care what you believe. You will investigate when instructed. You will report what you find. You will speak to no one about this room, Zander or Annabelle Klanders. The details come after you leave.”

It was not an offer. It was a method of deciding whether I died in the chair or somewhere later.

“And if I refuse?”

The knife returned to my throat.

I closed my eyes.

“I accept.”

The blade lifted.

I had not joined them. I had chosen the only answer that kept me breathing.

Whether there was still a difference, I would learn when they gave me the next file.

Photography by Tomas Heligr-Pyke · Bokeh

A camera fixed in the back seat records Jain and Alex’s attempt to leave an Iron Fist puppet state before curfew.

From the 4671 story library. Read the story below, or explore its original reader and connected world.

Screen Rule

The camera never leaves the back seat of the car.

It may see through the windows, between the front seats, or into the mirrors, but it never follows anyone outside. The audience learns what happens beyond the doors through partial movement, reflected light, sound, and what does not return.

Border

BLACK.

Rain taps against metal.

A car unlocks. The interior light comes on, revealing an empty back seat and two vacant places in front. The passenger door opens first. JAIN gets in and immediately turns towards the driver’s side.

ALEX enters carrying a document wallet under his coat. He closes the door carefully instead of slamming it.

For several seconds, neither of them starts the car.

JAIN: You have everything?

Alex opens the wallet. Two passports. Two travel permits. A folded vehicle authorisation.

ALEX: Everything he sold me.

JAIN: That is not what I asked.

ALEX: It is everything they ask for at the border.

Jain looks through the windscreen. Rainwater bends the streetlights into long white streaks.

JAIN: And if they ask for something else?

ALEX: Then I give them something else.

JAIN: Alex.

He stops arranging the papers.

ALEX: We are leaving tonight. We cross before curfew. By morning we are outside their records.

JAIN: Their records go everywhere.

ALEX: Not everywhere.

JAIN: That is what people say before Iron Fist arrives.

Alex reaches across the console and takes her hand. Jain guides it down to her stomach.

ALEX: I will keep you both safe.

JAIN: Do not promise what you cannot control.

ALEX: I promise I will not stop trying.

Jain nods. It is not agreement, but it is enough for him to start the engine.

The interior light fades.

They drive.

For a while there is only rain, the wipers, and the wet road passing beneath the headlights.

JAIN: Where do we go after the crossing?

ALEX: Inland first. Then south, if the road is open.

JAIN: You have never been there.

ALEX: Neither have the people who told us it was safe.

JAIN: That does not help.

ALEX: I know.

He squeezes her hand once and lets go to change gear.

ALEX: We need fuel. Food too. The first town across the line might not take our money.

JAIN: The first town across the line might send us back.

ALEX: Then we keep driving.

He turns on the radio.

A calm official voice fills the car.

RADIO ANNOUNCER: Border restrictions remain in force. Travel after twenty-three hundred hours requires valid identity documents, movement permits, and registered destination authority.

Jain looks at the dashboard clock.

RADIO ANNOUNCER: Citizens who have knowingly communicated with a Follower, assisted a Follower, or withheld information concerning Follower activity are ordered to report to the nearest community centre for dismissal.

Alex turns the volume down but does not turn it off.

ALEX: They put Jimmy on the list.

JAIN: They accused Jimmy. That is not the same thing.

ALEX: It is to them.

RADIO ANNOUNCER: Curfew begins at twenty-three hundred hours. Violators will be detained. Protect your home. Protect your nation. Obedience preserves peace.

Alex switches the radio off.

ALEX: If they took him, they will read every name attached to his.

JAIN: We were already leaving.

ALEX: I should have gone to him.

JAIN: And then there would be three names on the list.

ALEX: There may already be.

Jain watches him. He keeps his eyes on the road.

JAIN: What matters now is getting through.

Alex nods, but his jaw remains tight.

The car turns beneath the bright canopy of a roadside fuel station. Only one other vehicle is present, parked without lights near the building.

Alex takes the keys.

ALEX: Lock the doors while I am inside.

JAIN: You said you would not leave me.

ALEX: Thirty seconds.

JAIN: You do not know how long thirty seconds is tonight.

He leans over and kisses her.

ALEX: Then count. I will be back before you finish.

Alex gets out. Jain locks the doors.

She watches him cross in front of the car and disappear into the station.

One second.

Two.

Three.

She stops counting at twelve when someone knocks on the passenger window.

A STRANGER stands outside in the rain. Their face is distorted by water on the glass.

Jain lowers the window by a few centimetres.

JAIN: What do you want?

STRANGER: Curfew is close.

JAIN: We know.

STRANGER: Then go home.

JAIN: We are going home.

The stranger looks at the document wallet on the driver’s seat. Jain covers it with her hand.

STRANGER: Not by the western road, you are not.

Jain says nothing.

STRANGER: They changed the checkpoint shift this afternoon. New officers. They are checking the paper against the register now.

JAIN: Why are you telling me?

STRANGER: Because somebody once told me.

Alex returns carrying a small paper bag and two bottles of water. He stops when he sees the stranger.

ALEX: Is there a problem?

STRANGER: There will be if you keep driving.

The stranger walks away. They do not enter the waiting vehicle. They disappear past the edge of the rear window.

Alex gets in and locks the door.

JAIN: He knows.

ALEX: He guessed.

JAIN: He said they are checking the register.

ALEX: The papers are registered.

JAIN: To people who are not us.

Alex puts the food on the back seat beside the camera. Water, cereal, sealed packets, whatever could be eaten without stopping.

ALEX: We cannot go back.

JAIN: I know.

ALEX: We can wait until tomorrow.

JAIN: Curfew officers will check the car before morning.

ALEX: I know.

Neither of them says what remains.

Alex starts the car.

The station lights fall behind them.

JAIN: Alex.

ALEX: I am here.

JAIN: Whatever happens, do not make me face it alone.

ALEX: I am here.

This time he does not promise anything else.

The road narrows. Wire fencing appears beyond the passenger window. Floodlights grow brighter ahead.

Traffic has been divided into empty lanes by concrete barriers. A black banner hangs from the checkpoint building, wet cloth pulling around one plain red fist.

Alex slows beside a booth.

A gloved hand knocks twice on his window.

He lowers it.

BORDER GUARD: Papers.

Alex gives over the document wallet.

The guard turns away. Through the rain-streaked rear window, a second officer walks behind the car and examines the plate.

Jain’s hand finds Alex’s beneath the level of the window.

Five seconds.

Ten.

The guard returns without the wallet.

BORDER GUARD: Engine off. Driver, step out.

ALEX: Is something wrong with the permits?

BORDER GUARD: Step out.

Alex looks at Jain.

ALEX: Stay in the car.

He opens the door.

Hands seize his coat before he can stand. The driver’s door is pulled wide, filling the back-seat view with rain and white checkpoint light.

Alex disappears beyond its frame.

ALEX: Wait. She is pregnant. Please, just let her go back.

A strike lands outside.

Jain reaches across the console, but the empty driver’s seat blocks most of the view.

Another strike.

Alex falls low enough for one hand to appear on the wet road beneath the open door.

BORDER GUARD: False identity. False movement permit. Association flag.

ALEX: We have done nothing.

BORDER GUARD: You tried to leave.

A flash turns every window white.

The gunshot reaches the back seat an instant later.

Alex’s hand stops moving.

Jain screams his name and claws at her door lock. It opens from outside before she can reach it.

The passenger door swings wide.

JAIN: Why did you do that? He was not fighting you. Why did you do that?

A guard’s arm reaches into the car. Jain grips the seat belt with both hands.

JAIN: Please. I am pregnant. Please.

The belt releases.

Jain is dragged from the passenger seat. Her fingers hold the door frame for a moment, then slip away.

The camera sees only the open door, hard rain, and the lower half of the checkpoint barrier.

JAIN: Alex?

A second flash.

A second gunshot.

Silence, except for the rain and the idling engine.

An officer leans into the car, turns the ignition off, and removes the false documents from the console. Their face never enters the frame.

The doors are left open.

Rain begins to darken both empty front seats.

CUT TO BLACK.

Photography by Tomas Heligr-Pyke · Bokeh

An unnamed survivor finds passage off a dying Earth, but the Ark carries a crime that New Atriad will turn into history.

From the 4671 story library. Read the story below, or explore its original reader and connected world.

The Third Day

I used to think being the last person alive would feel like silence.

It did not.

It sounded like alarms with nobody left to answer them. It sounded like water running in apartments above empty shops. It sounded like a dog barking behind a locked door until one morning it stopped. At night, when the power failed district by district, the city settled with long cracks and groans, as though the buildings were trying to speak to each other after we had gone.

The panic began before the disease had a name.

People crowded the stations. They emptied pharmacies and fought over bottled water. The government told us to stay indoors, then told us to move toward the shelters, then denied it had ever ordered an evacuation. Iron Fist broadcasts replaced every channel. A calm voice promised that the situation was contained while armed vehicles sealed the roads out of the city.

Then the bombs fell beyond the river.

I spent the first night on the floor of a stranger’s laundry with six other people. We listened to impacts roll through the ground and watched dust jump from the ceiling. One man prayed. Another kept checking a dead phone. Near dawn, someone began coughing in the hall.

By morning, the laundry was empty except for me.

I never learned whether the others fled or were taken. There was blood on the tiles and a trail of it through the rear door, but no bodies. That became ordinary. I opened houses and found meals left on tables, taps running, beds stripped apart. I found blood in handprints and long smears where people had been dragged. I found no one who could tell me what had happened.

On the third day, I saw the Arks.

They rose from the launch fields north of the city, one after another, slow at first and then impossibly fast. Their engines turned the clouds orange. Even from kilometres away I could see the black Iron Fist banners hanging from the towers, each marked with a single red fist. The cloth snapped in the pressure waves while the ships climbed above us.

They had room to leave.

They left us anyway.

I stood in the street and watched until the last engine became a white point. That was when people began running from the bomb district.

I called them mutations then. Everyone did. We believed the craters had changed them. We believed one touch meant death. Fear gave us rules because rules made the end of the world easier to understand.

What came down the street was worse than anything fear had prepared me for.

They were people. That was the part none of us wanted to see.

Some had gone grey around the mouth and eyes, their skin stretched tight over swollen veins. Others were already coming apart. A woman’s cheek had split from the corner of her mouth to her ear, exposing teeth lacquered dark with blood, yet her eyes moved from doorway to doorway with terrified attention. A man ran on a broken ankle. The joint rolled sideways each time his foot struck the road, bone pressing white against skin that refused to tear. He screamed with every step and kept running.

Their wounds did not behave like wounds. Skin loosened in wet sheets. Fingers wore down to shining knuckles where they had clawed at concrete. Jaws worked after lips had split. They snapped at each other, at doors, at their own arms. Between those fits they cried, begged, called names, or stared as if they were trapped behind their own faces.

One of them saw me.

For a moment she stopped.

“Please,” she said.

Then her body folded forward and charged.

I hid in a storage cupboard inside the nearest building. She struck the door until the frame shook. Others joined her. I could hear nails scraping down the metal, then the soft knock of bare finger bones. I held a shelf against the handle and waited for them to find another sound.

Hours later, they moved on.

The next morning I left the city.

The Long Walk

I went where there were fewer people.

Forests first, then farms, then the dry country beyond them. I avoided highways and slept in culverts, sheds and houses set far back from the road. I drank from tanks when the water did not smell wrong. I learned which tins could swell without leaking and which roots would make my tongue numb. When I found batteries, I saved them for the radio. The radio gave me static, old evacuation orders and Iron Fist voices telling survivors to report to collection points that had already burned.

I met people sometimes.

Once, I travelled for four days with a mother and her adult son. The son had a cut under his sleeve that he would not show us. On the fifth morning he woke shaking so hard his teeth broke against each other. His mother held him while blood ran from his nose and ears. He kept saying he was still himself.

He was.

That did not stop his hands from closing around her throat.

I ran before I saw how it ended.

After that, I kept my distance from everyone.

The months became weather. Rain inside my boots. Heat shimmering above empty roads. Cold that made abandoned houses sound occupied as timber contracted in the walls. I stopped counting days when I lost my pack crossing a flooded creek. I know at least a year passed because I saw the same kind of flowers bloom twice.

Loneliness changed the shape of things.

In a department store, I sat six mannequins around a table and gave them names. In another town, I found a body seated behind the counter of a service station and told him where I had been. He listened for three nights before the smell forced me to leave. I apologised when I went.

I spoke aloud because silence made every thought sound final.

Then I found the settlement.

It stood inside an old Iron Fist service field, hidden behind collapsed hangars and concrete walls stained black by engine exhaust. Smoke rose from cook fires. Washing hung between antenna masts. There were guards on the gate and children chalking pictures on the tarmac.

Living children.

One of them stared at me through the bars. I reached between them before the guard could stop me and touched the child’s face.

Warm skin. A pulse under the jaw. Breath.

I began crying so hard I could not tell them my name.

They let me in after three days of isolation.

There were more than a hundred people inside the walls. Farmers, labourers, nurses, teachers, mechanics and families who had followed fragments of an evacuation signal. At the centre of the field lay an Ark on its side supports, too large to understand as a vehicle. Dust buried its lower hull. Scaffolds climbed its flanks. A black panel near the bow still carried the red fist.

Iron Fist had shut the vessel down before the last launch wave. Some said the assigned crew had been recalled to a better ship. Others said they had died in quarantine. Nobody knew. The settlement had found the Ark empty, damaged and still registered in the evacuation network.

They were repairing it.

For the first time since the city, I believed I might live.

The Ark

Everyone worked.

We stripped wire from buried offices and hauled fuel cells from a military depot. We cleaned water tanks, packed seed stores and sealed the habitation pods stacked beneath the Ark’s belly. I crawled through service ducts because I was thin and no longer afraid of dark spaces. I knew how to ration food, find leaks, sleep through alarms and keep moving when something smelled dead. Those were useful skills now.

The people who directed the repairs had been engineers, medical officers, administrators and licensed Ark contractors before the collapse. They kept the only working terminal in a locked room. They wore old credentials on cords around their necks even though there was no government office left to inspect them.

They said the credentials would get us through the orbital grid.

Their leader had an Ark Key.

I never saw it clearly. I saw only a dark object placed against the command console and the Iron Fist system waking around it. Lights passed across the bridge. A recorded voice welcomed an authorised crew. The room cheered.

After that, we called the Moon our destination.

Some people called it a new world. Others called it a utopia. I had watched Iron Fist ships abandon a city, so I did not believe in either word. I believed in sealed air and distance from the infection. That was enough.

The work took months.

As launch approached, the technical group began weighing everything. Water. Seed. Tools. Fuel. Oxygen. People.

The leader stopped saying everyone would fit.

He spoke instead about survival margins. He divided us into crews and dependants. He asked what each person could contribute once we reached the Moon. The lists changed every night.

No one wanted to ask what happened to a name when it disappeared.

On the final evening, we ate together beneath the Ark. Someone opened the last bottles from a ruined hotel. Children ran between the tables while adults argued about what they would build first. A woman beside me said she wanted a room with a window facing Earth.

I told her I never wanted to see Earth again.

She laughed because she thought I was joking.

We slept in the old barracks, ready to board before dawn.

I woke to a muffled shot.

Then another.

For several seconds nobody in my room moved. A man in the bunk above me whispered that it might be infected outside the wall. The door opened before he finished speaking.

Two members of the technical crew entered wearing dark maintenance coveralls. One carried a pistol. The other held a list.

The first shot took the man above me through the chest. He fell halfway from the bunk and hung there, one arm striking the frame. My roommate sat up. The second shot threw her against the wall.

I rolled beneath the lowest bed and pressed myself into the dust.

Boots crossed the floor.

The person with the list read names. The gun answered each one. Some people never woke. Some woke enough to plead. A child began screaming in the next room, one thin sound cut short by a shot and then another.

Blood crept under the bed toward my face.

I held my breath as it touched my sleeve.

The boots stopped beside me.

For one second I was certain they could hear my heart striking the floor.

Then someone called from the corridor. The boots moved away. The door closed.

I stayed beneath the bed until the shooting spread to the far barracks.

Then I ran.

The Hatch

The launch field had become a place of shadows and muzzle flashes.

People stumbled between the buildings in night clothes. Some tried to reach the Ark. Others ran for the walls. The technical crew controlled the boarding ramp and shot anyone whose name was not on their list.

I climbed through a maintenance opening beneath the aft hull. I had sealed it myself two days earlier and knew the bolts were only hand-tight. Inside, I crawled past fuel lines and dropped into the cargo hold between containers of dry food.

The inner hatch locked behind me.

The engines began their start cycle.

Outside, the surviving settlers realised what was happening. They rushed the main hatch. I heard fists and tools striking the outer door, a frantic metal thunder that travelled through the hull.

“Open it!”

“My daughter is inside!”

“Please!”

The loudspeaker ordered them to clear the launch area.

They kept pounding.

Beyond them came another sound: many feet moving across the tarmac.

The engine tests and gunfire had drawn the infected from the surrounding towns. They poured through a breach in the perimeter wall, dozens at first and then hundreds, bodies colliding and climbing over one another. In the red launch lights I saw faces stripped to tendon, arms hanging from opened shoulders, torsos wrapped in old bandages turned black and rigid. Some ran with the desperate speed of the newly infected. Older ones dragged ruined legs or crawled with fingers worn down to bone.

They were moaning, but words moved through it.

Hungry.

Help me.

Run.

The people at the hatch looked back. Some pressed themselves against the Ark. Others tried to fight through the horde. A man lifted a little boy above his head as if someone inside might reach down and take him.

I was inside.

I could have opened the service release from the cargo hold.

I knew where it was.

I did nothing.

The Ark launched while they were still striking the hull.

Acceleration crushed me between the containers. The hammering disappeared beneath the engines. Through a narrow inspection port, I watched the field fall away: the fires, the breached walls, the living and infected becoming one moving stain around the empty launch cradle.

Then cloud covered everything.

New Atriad

I hid for nearly two days.

There was enough food in the cargo hold to feed a city branch, and I still rationed every mouthful. Habit had become stronger than hunger. I slept between containers and woke whenever the ship changed course.

On the second night, armed crew found me.

They dragged me to the bridge and forced me onto my knees. The leader stood above me with his old credential still hanging from his neck. On the forward display, the Moon filled half the sky.

He asked how I had boarded.

I told him.

He asked what I had seen in the barracks.

I said I had seen nothing.

He knew I was lying. I knew he knew.

“What can you do?” he asked.

I told him about the service ducts, the water systems, the wilderness, the months alone. I told him I could live on almost nothing and keep machinery working with less.

He looked at me for a long time.

“Then you survived,” he said.

It was not mercy. It was employment.

Before we reached the lunar perimeter, he made me repeat the account he had prepared. Infection entered the settlement. Panic followed. The outer camp was lost in a riot. The authorised crew recovered the vessel and launched with every viable survivor.

I repeated it until I could say it without pausing.

Iron Fist defence platforms found us before we saw New Atriad. Targeting warnings filled the bridge. The crew transmitted the Ark’s identity and the stolen Key’s authorisation. For several minutes, nobody breathed.

Then the weapons released their lock.

Escort craft took position around us.

Iron Fist did not welcome us as founders. It processed us.

Officers separated us by credential, health, occupation and usefulness. They detained me because my name was not on the manifest. The leader gave them the story about infection and riot. I confirmed it. The officers looked at the intact Ark, the packed equipment and the technical crew who could make it work. No one asked a second question.

The habitat pods were lowered into a branch zone beneath New Atriad. Iron Fist already owned the ground, the air, the power and the locks. The technical crew received quarters and administrative work. I received a temporary number and a place in maintenance.

The city grew around us.

We sealed tunnels, opened mines and built chambers for water and crops. New families filled the pods. Artificial gravity pulled at our bones. Children who had never stood beneath an open sky learned that Earth was a bright object behind reinforced glass.

Years later, a plaque appeared in the transit hall. It said our Ark had completed an emergency rescue after its launch site was overrun. It praised the authorised crew for saving essential personnel and equipment.

People stopped to read it.

The leader attended the unveiling.

I repaired an air recycler in the wall behind them.

The Door

New Atriad calls us survivors.

It is a useful word. It tells what happened to us without asking what we did.

I survived the city. I survived the wilderness. I survived the barracks because I hid beneath a bed while other people were killed. I survived the launch because I stayed inside while families struck the hatch. I survived the Moon because I repeated a murderer’s lie.

The woman who wanted a window facing Earth did not survive.

The father holding up his son did not survive.

The people whose blood ran beneath my bed did not survive.

I did.

For years I told myself that surviving meant I could repay them. I kept air moving through the branch. I repaired pumps before crops died. I taught apprentices how to hear a failing seal. People live because of work I have done.

It has never silenced the hatch.

I still hear the pounding when the ventilation changes speed. I hear voices in the pipes. Sometimes I wake certain that there are people outside my door, asking me to open it before the infected reach them.

There is a plaque in the transit hall now. There are school lessons about the rescue. The leader’s lie has become history, and my silence is built into it.

I cannot pull the Ark back to Earth.

I cannot open that hatch.

There is only one door left for me.

The inner lock closes behind me. Through the small window, New Atriad stretches across the dark: lamps, towers and pressurised tunnels made from everything we carried away. Earth hangs above it, blue enough to look untouched.

The outer seal begins to turn.

This time, I am the one outside.