Director Silas Vane stood on the stage of the Great Hall like a priest of a dying religion, his white suit the only bright thing in the room. The hall was a staggering expanse of tiered balconies and reinforced carbon-fiber pillars, designed to hold the entire population of the Upper Rings in a display of unified strength. But today, the strength was an illusion. Thousands of citizens watched from the heights, their faces gaunt and sallow under the harsh, flickering LED arrays. Their breathing, a collective, ragged wheeze, was synchronized with the labored hum of the failing life-support system. A rhythmic, mechanical gasp that seemed to vibrate on the floorboards.
The air in the Hall was thick with the smell of unwashed bodies and the ozone of overtaxed electronics. It was the scent of a civilization at the end of its tether. Vane, however, looked untouched by the decay. He stood behind a lectern of polished obsidian, his posture perfect, his gaze sweeping over the masses with the predatory calm of a man who had already decided their fates.
"The stars have been our sanctuary," Vane's voice boomed, channeled through a thousand hidden speakers until it felt like the very walls were speaking. It was a smooth, hypnotic baritone that had the power to soothe a riot or condemn a soul. "For generations, we have looked down upon the cradle of our birth and seen only the fire and the rot. We chose the cold purity of the vacuum over the chaotic filth of the soil. We built a world of glass to escape the world of ash."
He paused, letting the silence hang heavy in the air. A child coughed in the third balcony. A dry, hacking sound that echoed painfully.
"But the sanctuary has become a cage," Vane continued, his tone shifting to one of mournful necessity. "Our blood is thinning. Our spirits are weary. The very technology that sustained us is now gasping for its final breath. We cannot wait for the machines to save us. We must reclaim the vitality we left behind. Today, we begin the Eradication Initiative; not as an act of war, but as a harvest for our future. We go back to the Earth not as refugees, but as conquerors of our own destiny."
A ripple of uneasy murmurs moved through the crowd. They had been told for a decade that the surface was a graveyard. Now, Vane was rebranding the graveyard as a garden, provided they had the "tools" to prune the weeds.
"Every great endeavor requires a pioneer," Vane said, his voice dropping to a more intimate register. "A mind capable of navigating the bridge between our technological purity and the wild, biological chaos of the Ash. We need someone who understands the enemy's flesh as well as our own survival."
He paused again, his eyes scanning the crowd with terrifying precision until they locked onto Evelyn, who stood in the designated section for the Medical Corps. The intensity of his gaze felt like a physical weight, a cold needle pressing against her skin.
"Step forward, Doctor Evelyn Harper."
The crowd parted like a silent, retreating sea. Every eye in the Hall turned toward her. Some with envy, some with pity, but most with a desperate, hollow hope. Evelyn felt the eyes of five thousand people on her back, but they were nothing compared to the sensation blooming in her chest.
As she began the long walk toward the stage, her boots echoing against the carbon-fiber floor with the finality of a drumbeat, she felt the "Tether" spike. It wasn't a glitch this time; it was a physical invasion. Her vision flickered, the sterile grey walls of the Hall momentarily replaced by the jagged silhouette of a mountain range at dusk. She could feel a phantom wind, cold and smelling of rain, whipping through hair that was currently pinned in a tight, clinical knot. The contrast to the stagnant, overheated air of the Hall was so sharp it made her stumble.
Ren was restless. He was pacing somewhere deep in her mind, his anger a hot, copper taste in her mouth. He knew. Somehow, across the miles of vacuum and cloud, the Alpha felt the noose tightening.
Evelyn ascended the stairs of the dais, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm that matched the silver pulse in her shoulder. She stopped before Vane, her face a mask of Academy-trained stoicism, though her hands were hidden in the folds of her tunic to hide their shaking.
Vane reached out, his fingers cool and dry as he took her hand. It was a gesture meant for the cameras; the benevolent leader presenting the savior to the masses. He raised her hand high, and the crowd erupted. It wasn't a cheer of joy; it was a desperate, frantic roar, the sound of a drowning people seeing a life raft.
Under the cover of the thunderous applause, Vane leaned in. The smell of his expensive, synthetic cologne; scented like a forest that didn't exist, cloyed at her. His lips brushed the shell of her ear, his breath warm and smelling of mint.
"You were born for this, Doctor," he whispered, his voice a cold blade hidden in a velvet sheath. "I've watched you for a long time. I know the 'ghosts' are screaming in your head right now. I know you feel the pull of the dirt. Don't let it slow your hand when the time comes to make the cut. You are a Harper, and your loyalty is to the hand that feeds you."
Evelyn tried to pull away, but his grip on her hand tightened, his rings biting into her skin.
"Remember the stakes, Evelyn," he continued, his whisper dropping even lower, vibrating with a lethal promise. "If you fail to find the Alpha; if you let your misplaced empathy cloud your diagnostic clarity, your father's respirator will be the first one we decommission to save power for the labs. I will watch him gasp for the air you failed to provide."
He pulled back, a perfect, fatherly smile on his face, radiating pride for the cameras. He squeezed her hand one last time before releasing it, turning back to the crowd to bask in their adoration.
Evelyn stood frozen on the stage, the silver light of the hall's projectors blinding her. She looked out at the desperate faces of her people, the starving, the sick, and the dying, all of them looking at her as if she were a god. Then she looked back at Vane's elegant, white-clad back.
She realized then that the Director didn't just want the werewolves for their blood. He didn't just want the genetic templates to fix the Bottleneck. He wanted to see if he could break the Luna before she ever realized who she was. He wanted to turn her into a monster before she could become a queen.
The "Tether" thrummed in her skull, a low, constant growl that matched the roar of the crowd. Ren's rage was now her own. As she stood on that stage, a prisoner of the stars, she made a silent vow. She would go to the Ash. She would find the Alpha. But when she returned, she wouldn't be bringing a harvest. She would be bringing the end of Silas Vane.
The Selection was over. The hunt had begun.