The year was 2125, and Earth belonged to the K’Thari.
It had been a century since they descended from the void, their biomechanical warships blotting out the sky. Their arrival wasn’t one of diplomacy or tentative greetings. The invasion was swift, brutal, and absolute. Cities were reduced to husks, governments crumbled overnight, and human resistance—no matter how fierce—was futile against their superior technology.
Now, a hundred years later, Earth was unrecognizable.
The K’Thari had reshaped the planet in their image. Towering spires of black chitin and pulsating organic matter replaced skyscrapers. Entire forests were converted into sprawling bio-factories that belched strange gases into the atmosphere, altering the air itself. Oceans had turned into strange, iridescent pools where new alien creatures swam, feeding on human memories—harvested and distilled into liquid by K’Thari machines.
But humanity had not been entirely eradicated.
The Remnants
In the shadows of ruined cities, deep underground, or in the husks of once-proud human strongholds, the remnants survived. Scattered tribes of humans—those who had escaped assimilation or extermination—eke out a meager existence, scavenging, hiding, and resisting.
Juno Vega was one of them.
She crouched in the underbrush, scanning the remnants of old Chicago—now designated Sector 47-K by the K’Thari. The skyline was dominated by the towering hive of the Overmind, a colossal structure made of bone and metal, pulsing with eerie blue light. The air hummed with the sound of K’Thari sentinels drifting through the ruined streets, their elongated, insectoid bodies moving with eerie grace.
Juno’s mission was simple: get inside, retrieve the core memory, and get out alive.
The core memory was a piece of stolen alien data, rumored to contain a map of resistance cells across the planet. The K’Thari had harvested millions of human memories, storing them in vast data clusters, but some memories were more valuable than others—secrets of old governments, hidden bunkers, and the last human weapons caches. If the resistance could access them, they might stand a chance.
Juno’s breath was steady as she darted through the wreckage, keeping low. She had spent her entire life fighting the K’Thari. Raised in the underground ruins, she had learned early how to move unseen, how to use salvaged human and alien tech to her advantage.
She reached the entrance to the hive, a jagged opening in the organic wall. Its surface was warm and damp, pulsating as if the entire structure were alive. She placed a gloved hand against it, feeling the faint vibration of K’Thari life inside.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped forward.
The Hive
Inside, the hive was a labyrinth of tunnels, lined with tendrils that oozed bioluminescent fluid. The air was thick with a strange, musky scent. Juno kept her plasma blade close, its blue light flickering faintly as she navigated the twisting corridors.
She passed chambers where human captives were suspended in translucent cocoons, their bodies limp, their minds drained into K’Thari data nodes. Some twitched, lost in their own stolen memories. Juno had seen it before—people reduced to empty husks, their consciousness converted into raw data.
She clenched her jaw and moved on.
Reaching a control chamber, she spotted the core memory—an orb pulsating with an eerie, shifting glow, suspended in a web of alien tendrils. It was housed in a strange, organic console, guarded by a single K’Thari sentinel.
Juno knew she had seconds to act.
She reached into her pack, pulling out a pulse grenade—a human-made device designed to disrupt K’Thari neural links. With a swift motion, she rolled it toward the sentinel. The explosion was silent, a burst of energy that sent shockwaves through the room. The sentinel convulsed, its body shuddering before collapsing in a heap.
Wasting no time, Juno moved to the console. She pulled a data spike from her belt and plunged it into the core memory. The device hummed, translating the alien code into something readable. A holographic display flickered to life, revealing maps, coordinates, and something unexpected—
A signal.
The Last Human City
Juno’s heart pounded as she scanned the data. There was a transmission—a beacon originating from a place she had thought was long lost.
The Last City.
The beacon’s signal was weak, but it was unmistakably human. A surviving enclave of people, hidden in the wastelands of Antarctica, broadcasting a call for aid.
It changed everything.
For years, the resistance had believed that the Last City had been destroyed in the early days of the invasion. If it still stood, if it still had resources, weapons, or even a working spaceport… humanity had hope.
Juno yanked the data spike from the console just as an alarm blared through the hive. The K’Thari were aware of her presence.
She bolted.
Escape and the Future
The corridors pulsed red as drones flooded the hive, chittering in their alien tongue. Juno sprinted through the tunnels, plasma blade in one hand, data spike clutched in the other.
She burst out of the hive’s entrance just as a K’Thari patrol spotted her. They shrieked in pursuit, their elongated limbs moving unnaturally fast. Juno didn’t slow.
Her escape route was pre-planned—a ruined subway tunnel that led back to the resistance hideout. She dove into the tunnel just as plasma bolts scorched the ground behind her.
Panting, she pressed a hand to her earpiece.
“Command, this is Vega,” she said between breaths. “I have the data. And I found something big.”
A pause. Then a voice crackled through.
“Report, Vega.”
She took a deep breath, steadying herself.
“The Last City is still out there.”
Silence. Then, “Are you certain?”
“I have the coordinates. They’re broadcasting a distress call. If they survived this long, they might have something—resources, weapons, maybe even ships.”
Another pause. Then, a quiet, determined voice:
“Get back here. We’re going to need everyone on this.”
Juno looked up at the ruined skyline, the hive glowing ominously in the distance. A century of occupation, of despair, of loss. But now, for the first time in her life, she felt something new.
Hope.
With a determined nod, she turned and disappeared into the shadows.