SAR ASCENDANT / Book 1: Incursion of the INDEN

Part One: Intervention / Chapters 1 to 3

Chapter One

The sky is flash orange. I yank the curtain and squint sleepy-eyed through the harsh light. It's a smear crossing my window, like a PlasTrail. I can tell it's not going to fade.

"SocMed on." I hear my indignation, recognize it as my own brand of word glue.

Twints rise from my comp and swirl in their ghostly ephemeral dance, 2D photonic images touching, separating. I listen to the news espoused by ghosts.

The Orange began at sunrise. The SocMed pundits pretend it's nothing. Not there if you don't believe it. Mass history proves this out, because history repeats on a loop. Get off the wheel, I think. Be like Beethoven. Hear your own music. It's just an event, and we should be used to random disrupters. Yeah.

I summon another Twint. I can do with less opinion, more fact.

SciMed. The light waves have a low frequency. Almost zero. In fact, savvy ones proclaim, eighteen. We should hear them. I open the window. No sound. Just Orange, the swipe beginning to spread across the sky like a spill.

I pull up PoliMed. Might be a mistake, 'cause there's no good news. Another street murder close to home, says the Twint. Not one. One hundred. IT'S THE FREAKING SKY, says another Twint. The Orange – it's making people crazy.

I turn back to the window. The sky's all orange now. Not a bit of blue. If there are clouds, they're orange too. A prankster has taken the sky, turned it icy orange. I feel that ice in my spine, pull open my bedside drawer, reach for a shiny surface. A little sticky with age. A picture, an artefact. Hazel called it a Polaroid. From days turned to dusty corners. My mother, young, indistinct inside a blonde halo, her arm draped around Hazel's waist. They are holding out halves of something called a popsicle. Orange like the sky. My mother's eyes are hazy blue. My eyes. In a couple of years I will be older than she will ever be.

Jax knocks on my bedroom door, pushes it open. Quiet as he is, ever. He pokes at the Twints, watches them separate then coalesce, ducks under and approaches the window, fists knuckled into his cheeks. "What's it mean?" He's only ten, eyes always puffed, brown hair twisting away. Slow, he'd be called. Is he slow, dear? Up yours.

"Dunno."

He looks puzzled, eyebrows low and pinched. Jax shrugs, turns, makes for the door. "Breakfast," he says.

"Be there in a minute."

I call Hazel.

Her voice is stuffed full of sleep. "Sar? Why so early?"

"You slept in. Seen the sky?"

"Sec." Sheet rustle, footsteps, drapery scrape.

Silence, a ticking of annoyance. "Hazel? You there?"

"I'm here. Listen, I'll come over. Something's happening. It's big. You and Jax need to be with me."

"I'm eighteen."

"And you're a self-sufficient and clever young woman, and you've cared for Jax on your own. Yes, I know. I'm still coming over."

Hazel is a boulder rolling downhill. I step aside. "Okay. See you soon."

PsychMed. The measures read Planergy at an all-time low. Even war, famine, the DopeScam, all those crazy SocMed MoneyScrapers can't compete. Swipe to another Twint. More murders, in other cities. It is an epidemic, a viral scourge. Growing by the minute, an unruly lesion.

I hear a sound from below. Breaking glass. Jax. I push through the Twints, run. Slap, slap my feet on the stairs, throat constricting. Jax is sitting on the floor, hands over ears, lemur eyes. Cereal litters the table, the floor. There is glass in the sink. The window's punched through. I look around, breath flutters, primal flush. Jax points, elbow tucked to his chest. There is a brick, up against the cupboard. Wrapped in paper, tied with a string. I crab crawl, one hand out to Jax, fingers raised. Stay there.