the hub at ninet project/day of assignment

Day of Assignment & The Rescues

The Daily Lives in The World of The Hub

Not every story at the Hub is about grand discoveries or mysterious disappearances. Some are about the people who live in this world of hyper-scarcity and rigid control, trying to survive, to find meaning, to make choices in a society that offers few. These are stories of ordinary individuals navigating extraordinary circumstances, set across different eras of the Commons.

This section collects those stories. For now, there are two, separated by generations but connected by the same harsh reality: life under the Commons is never easy, and the choices people make ripple through time in ways they can't predict.

The Rescues takes place before the Hub was even discovered, in the early days of the Colonies when the divide between the Commons and the Outsiders was still being defined. It's the story of a child taken during a humanitarian mission, and what that rescue really meant.

Day of Assignment happens much later, decades after Granska's investigations, in an era when Freddo himself is an old man. It's about two brothers in everything but blood, an impossible choice during an atmospheric breach, and the price of trying to rewrite fate in a world where every resource, even identity, is controlled and precious.

More stories will be added as they're told. Each explores what it means to live in the shadow of the Hub, in a civilization built on scarcity, structure, and secrets.

Day of Assignment

Rys and Tuan were raised together in the same birth order, as close as brothers in a society where family bonds were structured and controlled by the Commons. Decades had passed since the investigations that shook the Order, since Granska and Freddo uncovered conspiracies at the Hub, since the mysteries of Feren and the Haunted Castle remained unsolved. Freddo himself was an old man now, retired from active duty but still consulted on difficult cases. Yet life in the colonies remained harsh, opportunities scarce, and the strict rules of the Commons unchanged. When Tuan received a placement as a Library novice off-world, they lost contact for years. Rys remained behind, accepting temporary postings and expecting nothing better. On Assignment Day, when Tuan's jumper made an unexpected stop at Rys's station, they had mere hours to reconnect before departure. Then the atmospheric breach hit. Bulkheads sealed. Tuan was trapped on the wrong side, facing certain death. In those final moments, Rys made a choice that would define both their lives: he took Tuan's identity and boarded the Hub jumper in his place. What neither expected was that Tuan would survive, arriving at the Hub months later as a stowaway. With the help of a novice Tuan befriended during the journey, they attempted something forbidden, using a device from the Vault to make both identities real. But in a world of hyper-scarcity and rigid control, nothing comes without a price.

The Rescues

She was a child when the humanitarian mission arrived at Mede. Medical assessment. Food distribution. Artifact recovery. Her family cooperated as always. But that time it was different. They didn't understand what the Library archaeologists really wanted that time. And she did not know that was the last day of her old life.

The monks in their weird vests may think the outsiders are barbarians. May think that when they take the old artifacts that these people protected, that they were rescuing fragments of humanity's past. For them it is not ransacking the weaker. What the monks think, say, and do, however, are different things.

And that time they did not respect anything, not her family relics. The mission was thorough. They took the records. They took the songs of her ancestors from the sanctuary her family had guarded for generations. And when they resisted, they took their air.

Her old life ended. Her old family ended. But she was saved.

A child at risk, a healthy young person.

She received a new name, a constructed identity, and an affiliation to one of the stronger Birth Orders, the Nia. As a rescue she became a gleaming example of the kindness of the Colonies with its less fortunate neighbors.

She was raised in the Commons. Trained by the Library Order. And she learned to play the part. But she would never forget. The raid. Her family's confusion. The face of the officers who led it. And as a promising new librarian, she swore to find each of them