The first sign was not an explosion.
It was a message.
It appeared on public screens, on home monitors, on street kiosks, and along the glowing edges of government buildings. The same typography. The same tone. The same soft music they always used to say things they didn't want to sound serious.
NATIONAL STABILITY COMMUNIQUÉ
Preventive operation in progress.
There is no cause for alarm.
Remain in your assigned zone.
Cooperate.
In Heart of the Dawn, the capital remained lit as if nothing were happening. Too clean, too still, too perfect. Drones patrolled as usual, lights continued to mark schedules, and people walked without running, as if running meant admitting the country was changing.
And yet… everything was changing.
⸻
1 — The Single Voice
In Communicaré, there was no chaos. There was coordination.
Social networks filled simultaneously with the same phrase, repeated with minimal variations to make it seem human. On-screen anchors smiled with that professional exhaustion learned after reading too many scripts they no longer believed.
"This is not an emergency," said a woman with a soothing voice. "It is a preventive measure to ensure public order."
The word preventive was the only thing that sounded honest.
Independent broadcasts disappeared one by one. Not through visible censorship, but through "technical" failures. One channel showed static. Another looped endlessly. Another simply never came back.
Information did not scream that it had died.
It simply stopped breathing.
⸻
2 — The Movement
In Trasporium, trains kept arriving… just not where they used to.
At the central station of Grey City, a group of people waited for a monorail heading east. A different train arrived instead. Longer. With darkened windows. No destination announcements.
A loudspeaker announced, in the same soft voice as always:
"Temporary route due to security adjustments. Please board in an orderly manner."
"Where does it go?" asked a man with an old suitcase.
No one answered.
Because the system had already answered for everyone: you don't need to know.
At dimensional teleportation points, things were worse. Not because of violence, but because of silence. Portals activated only for "authorized personnel." Civilians were left behind with their belongings on the ground, staring at a light that once meant escape and now meant wall.
That same morning, Dinaria issued the economic communiqué:
TEMPORARY FINANCIAL SECURITY ADJUSTMENT
Transfers suspended.
Accounts under review.
External trade paused.
People didn't understand the details.
They only understood the result: they couldn't move… and they couldn't buy a way out either.
⸻
3 — The Selection
In Laboris, it all began the way the worst things do: with lists.
Not lists posted on walls. Not lists shouted aloud. Lists inside systems that no longer accepted questions.
A supervisor received a notification titled:
PERSONNEL REORGANIZATION — PHASE 1
He opened the file. He saw names. He saw canceled shifts. He saw "temporary" reassignments with no return date.
Some names had a mark beside them: a small symbol, almost elegant, as if it weren't a sentence.
When a worker asked what it meant, the supervisor only said:
"I don't know."
It was a lie and the truth at the same time.
Meanwhile, in Cintekis, servers worked without rest. Not out of scientific curiosity, but structural obedience. Algorithms crossed biometric data with work histories. Age. Health. Productivity. Behavior.
They didn't decide who was good.
They decided who was useful.
A young engineer stared at a screen and felt nauseous. Not from blood, but from coldness. The classification didn't say people.
It said loads.
She closed the window.
She reported nothing.
She had learned to survive like everyone else: by pretending not to see.
⸻
4 — Controlled Hunger
In Agrobia, inspectors arrived.
Not as soldiers. As technicians.
They stepped out of clean vehicles, wearing gloves and holding tablets. They checked granaries, counted sacks, measured humidity, took soil samples as if the land itself had committed a crime.
Mariel watched one of them write something down and then gesture to the others.
"Preventive confiscation," he said.
"Preventive of what?" her father asked, fists clenched.
The technician didn't raise his voice.
"Instability."
They took part of the harvest "for redistribution." They left a digital receipt no one could dispute.
That same afternoon, in Carnaria, rations changed.
Processed packages arrived with new labels:
OPTIMIZED FORMULATION
Regulated consumption for national stability.
They tasted the same as always: like nothing.
But now there was less.
It wasn't hunger yet.
It was the notice that hunger could be programmed.
⸻
5 — The Presence
In Fortis, soldiers were already in the streets before people fully woke up.
There were no shots. No open raids. Just presence: still bodies at key points, unmarked helmets, weapons visible, eyes that didn't look away.
The message was simple, without words:
Do what you're told. Don't test your luck.
In Mediavare, the machinery of death moved with the same calm used to organize logistics.
Crematoriums were activated "for sanitary testing." Quarantine protocols were reactivated "as a precaution." Special routes were assigned for transporting "biological material."
They didn't say bodies.
They said material.
That was the new thing: language no longer felt shame.
⸻
6 — What Isn't Explained
In the dimensional zones — Infernara and Umbrallya — access points were sealed without announcement.
Transit gates turned red. Panels displayed a single status:
RESTRICTED FOR SECURITY
In Cintekis, someone tried to access the energy records associated with those seals.
They couldn't.
In Fortis, an officer asked why.
They told him:
"It's above your clearance."
That phrase, repeated across the country, became an invisible wall no one could break.
⸻
7 — Grey City, the Thermometer
Grey City wasn't special.
That's why it mattered.
If the country could bend Grey City without noise, it could bend anyone.
That night, a family waited at the station with two bags and a child who couldn't stop staring at the screens.
"Are we going on a trip?" the child asked.
The mother adjusted his jacket collar, smiling too much.
"Yes, sweetheart. It's… an adjustment."
The father didn't smile. He watched the soldiers, the destinationless train, the loudspeaker repeating "in order."
"What if we don't want to?" the child asked innocently.
The mother froze for a second.
The father crouched to the child's height and spoke the way you speak to someone who still believes the world is fair.
"There are things you don't ask out loud," he said.
The child frowned.
"Why?"
The father swallowed.
Because he didn't want to say: because I don't want them to erase you.
So he only repeated:
"Because no."
The train arrived.
The door opened.
The family boarded.
The station lights stayed on.
The Republic still stood.
But it was no longer a place.
It was a route.
⸻
In Heart of the Dawn, before dawn, palace screens showed nothing.
No speech.
No president.
No smile.
Only a system status, visible for a second on an internal monitor no one outside the Council was meant to see:
EXECUTION: IN PROGRESS — PHASE 1
EVALUATION: SUCCESSFUL
And then, like an old mockery slipping into the exact right moment, an old melody surfaced through the static of a forgotten radio in Grey City.
Not loud. Not clear.
But there.
Run, rabbit… run, rabbit…
The child lifted his head, confused.
"What's that song?"
His father didn't answer.
Because he didn't know what such a melody meant.
They were warnings — or so it was believed