Prologue

*copyrighted material*

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    The day-star had come and gone for days in the isolation of that unsettling bedroom space, little Tobey Luna's nursery room. His old man sat on the carpet, nostrils stained with blood and caked in dirt, smelling like fresh grass. Last night had been a jarring one, he'd slipped on the sloppy garden a few times while it rained trying to protect their home. Barefoot, back and head to the wall, fast asleep next to the baby boy's crib but with a tight grip on his rifle. A rough hand with sausage fingers clawing the thing, while he covered his tired, ticking eyes with the other arm. The open window was proof that time was still here and kept its course without a care in the universe, even when most of us were already gone, those that ended their lives in desperation to escape the confinements of their minds or those that died due to the constant seizures and fatal nosebleeds.

    The three-year-old woke every morning at 6:05 A.M. hungry and locked his eyes at the window. He'd stare at the sunlight strips on the fluffy carpet of his room, particles soaring beneath the light like Peter Pan's fairy dust, he'd say. He'd laugh at the hot colors and cool shades. Tobey would then grab his squishy baseball toy and throw it at his big brother Stevee between the bars. Stevee slept on a mattress in front of the toddler, a white duvet for the cold of nights and a handful of queen pillows spilled over, rarely any beneath his head after a good night's sleep. Stevee was an inhibited seventeen-year-old with down syndrome, he had his mother's beautiful butternut eyes and full lips. 

    Elias, their father, remembered as much about her, Florence Montecinos, a big city girl, santiaguina born and raised. He remembered her as a hopeless freshman that took her guitar everywhere, bumping into every soul she didn't acknowledge right away but to say sorry.

 Who was he to judge her, but a boring foreign student from Buenos Aires that wasn't actually into Latin American alternative music like everybody else. Yet she'd come by and hang out with him and his roommates 

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while they smoked weed and solved Rubik's cubes, then go upstairs and fuck. After they both graduated with an Electrical Engineer bachelor's degree, and a BA in Music Production respectively, they left Santiago, Chile, and back to his dear city of Buenos Aires, where they got married. However, they would move out again shortly as his new wife wanted to experience the American dream in hopes of advancing her career, Elias had never had the heart to use the word 'no' against her. They landed in Los Angeles with a loan and two college debts, and after a hard year in the city of actors and pop stars, they moved to Las Vegas. Florence never overcame her disappointment when he got a job that would keep them afloat as a power engineer at a solar company called Ophiuchus Corp.

    Every morning he'd drive her to her workplace before his own, a mini-mart downtown. It wasn't so that Florence couldn't get a better job, it was the job she found complacent that would let her work on her music in her free time, as impractical as it was to let Elias pay most of the bills. Her mother was very vocal about it every time they talked on the phone, which always ended in a tremendous fight. He packed their lunches and two coffee flasks with a smile in the morning to make her happy, but sometimes the company called at witching hours and he needed to leave while she slept. This usually caused trouble to them both, as his wife sometimes decided to skip work when he wasn't around to stay in and write music or attend an audition. Luckily the owner of the mini-mart was Argentinian too and having seen her resistance to focus on anything else, he had tried supporting Elias as best as he could for being a fellow countryman.

   Seven months passed by, and Florence was finally expecting their first child. There was an immediate change in her upon realizing it. The closest he had seen her taking any responsibility, she'd stop skipping her job, and wake up before he did at times to make breakfast. There was hardly any babysitting needed from him. A small victory for him and her mother, Tatiana, who'd stick by his side in every argument. But things came back to a full stop eleven weeks into the pregnancy. The 1st-trimester screening showed their first-born would be born with an extra copy of their 21st

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chromosome. Down Syndrome was the medical term. The news was destructive for the family, but despite this, Florence was determined to pick herself up. Sadly, only herself. Months went by and his wife seemed to be a little too careless with her ultrasound appointments, it was something that despite showing a tiny bump couldn’t simply be forgotten. Weeks later, she told him she was picking a new doctor to see the baby, which seemed pretty normal if you thought she simply wanted a second opinion regarding the baby’s health. But at this point, she insisted on going alone but of course, Elias didn't take her suggestion seriously. 

    Upon meeting the new doctor, Dr. Connor Schwartz was very empathic to them both, the baby—already known as Stevee in the family—would certainly face a down syndrome diagnosis but he assured the couple that their expectations should not be low as kids with such conditions are very smart and expressive. Stevee Luna was born between cries of his own and that of his mother, healthier as he could have been, and for the longest time, he became their engine. Their source of energy and everyday purpose, Florence and him for the time being seemed to be inseparable as they took care of their only son with Dr. Schwartz’s pediatric assistance. And as if the good news couldn't stop coming, Elias was offered to work in a new upcoming branch at Ophiuchus Corp. appreciating his dedication to the company.

    Ophiuchus Corp. had set its eyes on creating a solar energy vehicle it could deploy to the scale of masses. To be more precise, a flying vehicle that could serve as a transportation option for everyday people. The future of flying cars was still really far from grasp and the company understood that very well, but a flying transportation service was tempting as they knew the skies were relatively clear taking into consideration that the vehicle they envisioned wasn't meant to fly so high up above. The blueprints initially found themselves being passed around by designers and engineers from the company across the country before any deliberations. Elias was amongst them and got paid fairly well before the launching announcement of said project. Six months later he had a brand new office at the

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Destine branch in Las Vegas and worked longer shifts than he ever imagined he would. He'd come home around 3:00 A.M., ate dinner, and briefly woke up Stevee to play with him before going to sleep for just a couple of hours to start the day again. Florence had left her job to take care of Stevee full-time while his team revised their working material a thousand times. Destine’s need for sophistication became undoubtful as time went by, which only meant a decade’s work on the horizon. The vehicle design would be that of a subway, carrying at least ten people per hovering metro-style cart, which could also magnetize itself to any encountered cart on the way with a hydraulic sensor at the back of every carriage. To keep the course of the system, a flying path needed to be mapped in different congested cities—the primary targets of the project—work that had already started years back as they needed to foresee every minuscule problem before invading the bottom line air space of each location. The investigative material collected and hard work into generating energy through thin-film photovoltaic cell hemicycles that glided at four points of the cart was their true breakthrough—these would enable them to collect solar power from whichever point the sun was during the day locked to a magnetic field that would keep them in place. Below the carts sprouted a series of turbines, they moved up and down like piano chords for stabilization. 

    In action, the machine Ophiuchus Corp. had created was much more gracious than they had foreseen, like clockwork, rising horizontally like a cableway until it reached the first checkpoint. Floating chromed balls with laser lights that shot to the next exact prototype and so on to begin a chain reaction, this laser told the vehicle what was the next direction to take through a simple software very much like an automatic train lever, each ball couldn't process more than four different routes, this limitations and variations would have to be solved in the future. And the future came. 

    Like nothing, eleven years were gone and Destine's growing popularity could not be stopped, Las Vegas had just been the beginning, affording the costs by each major city would be something that would be worked on overtime. The public tests had been a wild success a month prior. A single system

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was tweaked to perfection. Each port was on ground level like regular bus stations, establishing the first few in the right places was key, and the team worked on the final stage that same year.

    The entire launching operation was finished by the time Stevee was thirteen, most of the first-world cities had been mapped and functioned to some degree. This had been Elias' work of a lifetime, and he remained in the branch for another year. At fourteen, Florence was pregnant again, one more joy to come. Elias had sat with his teenager and spoken to him of his brother on the way, while he drank a beer on their rooftop. The nights were really cold, but watching the skyline in the hints of the warmth of their heavy jackets as his father left the grill outdoors cooking carne asada and peppers was something they enjoyed doing frequently. His son would watch in awe every time he descended the roof to look at the steaks and then come back up to climb the walls, which made him giggle.

    Stevee had always been the quiet type, prone to mood swings. His mother took him to track-and-field competitions all the time after special education school, athletics was something that made him happy. He loved hats too, all sorts and he wanted to collect them, baseball caps, rodeo hats, berets, fedoras, and top hats too because they reminded him of magicians. Miss Krissy, his teacher, had been instructed to sit next to him during meal times to make sure he ate his food, he didn’t like that and had the habit to make fits because of it, except with Miss Natalie, who’d always wanted to kiss and confessed his father several times.

    The second ultrasound confirmed another little man was coming, who they had decided to call Tobey, no Down Syndrome this time. Florence had always picked the names, everything American had been her obsession, certainly immigrating had been their best decision to make a family in Elias' eyes, no matter how difficult his wife had been in the past. But days after Tobey was born, he received a text message from Dr. Connor Schwartz's phone requesting a video call. He took the call as he was heading out of his office, but he didn’t expect Connor to appear on the screen along with his wife. Who feverishly explained to him Florence had been texting his husband on and off for years and was

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making this call now upon her discovery. Connor had been looking at the texts all this time without responding to any of her advances with the mere exception of naked pictures, which he had responded to with a thumbs-up on every occasion. His wife had also found an extra smartphone she didn’t know of and confirmed that she was amongst his most recent texted contacts, and on which they talked openly. The doctor's face was the most genuine demonstration of abasement he had seen on any man, and Elias felt like throwing up at any moment. Whether there had been sexual encounters neither Connor's wife nor Elias could tell, he wasn't being cooperative so they both assumed the worst of scenarios without haven't been able to look through their entire conversation.

    Nothing could remove from his vision the way their family doctor had touched the belly that contained either of his children. And it began to dawn on him whether his children were actually his own. He stayed in the office a little longer and thought about the way to deal with this on his drive home. This would go on for a matter of days in solitude as he went through the screenshots of text messages and nudes, Florence could tell something was bothering him. Destine was still a project that needed to be monitored and updated either way, and she didn’t assume anything else going on but general stress. Finally, her husband was determined enough to call Tatiana. He planned to fly Florence’s mother to Las Vegas while he took the kids so she wouldn’t be alone for the divorce, and also give up the house in the process. To be fair, he had begun to think about moving out of the city to forget everything. Elias spoke with Ophiuchus’ founder Boone Armstrong to be transferred to a new branch of the company even though he didn’t want to leave Destine. The old-timer would call him back a week later. His options were Washington D.C. or Colorado, he chose D.C. and called a Real Estate agent, and picked an apartment that needed serious repairs. But he’d sort things out with the owner once he was ready with his hotel reservation. At some point, his wife began to see a pattern, but he pretended to be immersed in his work, Stevee noticed the constant discussions about it during dinner

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time. His father wasn't eating much either, his face had these rough edges that started making him look sick and tired.

    Finally, one morning, he woke up with his heart in his throat, it beat so fast as anxiety kicked in, and he realized what time it was. His wife thought he was going to work that morning, but he left the bed at 4:00 A.M., as usual, to wake up Stevee instead. He promised a road trip, and told him to grab his favorite clothes and toys, and put them in this cool bag, a new empty suitcase that he’d kept hidden in his car. Meanwhile, he got Tobey’s stuff sorted out. Tatiana would get home at 6:30 A.M., and thinking now, he hoped his wife would have complied, and not tried to screw him over with the idea of taking the kids, it had been his biggest fear. Against that he couldn’t have done anything. 

    Once everything was packed, it all went to his Amarok and he kept watch by the door as Stevee ate breakfast and Tobey slept in his arms. Stevee wanted to wake mommy, but Elias told him to let her rest. He looked at the clock and it was 6:45 A.M. and he felt he was losing it, slowly. Another five minutes, and he heard Florence flushing down the toilet, he knew what was coming.

    She came into the kitchen-diner, sensing something was wrong. “S-stevee, darling? Where’s daddy?” It was the sight of his son, eating breakfast when school started at 8:00 A.M. that took her aback. She looked at the front door, and there was her husband holding Tobey, looking like he needed a drink.

    “Elias, ¿pero qué está pasando?” (Elias, what’s going on?) She reached out for the baby between his arms, but he jerked away from her. Having no control over how he looked at her in that instant. “¿Elias?”

    “Su esposa me llamó hace unas semanas.” (His wife called me a few weeks ago.) He blurted out. Her eyes grew big, and he saw her thinking for a nanosecond before her eyes dropped to the floor. Her mouth was suddenly wide open.

    “Matt es solo un productor que conocí hace poco . . . ” (Matt is just a producer I met a little while ago . . . ) She breathed out with dawning tears in her eyes, not daring to look up.

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    “Pará un poquito . . . ” (Hold right there . . .) He didn't know what to do with himself any more, but he felt Tobey moving in his arms and it reminded him to be gentle. “¿Hay otro pibe aparte de Connor . . . ?” (Is there another man aside from Connor . . . ?)

   Her mind was spinning, her husband could tell as she tried to look for support on the back of their sofa. Something in her was breaking, snapping like a heavy branch that could not hold against the wind any longer.

    “!¿CONCHA DE TU MADRE! QUÉ HAS HECHO?!”(DAMN IT, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!) Tobey began to cry at his father’s sudden outburst.

    “¡POR FAVOR DAME A MI HIJO!”(PLEASE GIVE ME BACK MY SON!) She cried. Stevee ran to his mother and wrapped his arms around her waist. The boy spoke between cries but his parents were shouting at each other so loudly that Tatiana frantically knocked at the door seeing what was going on through the ornamented glass, the taxi driver got out of there fast. Elias unlocked the door for her while his wife shouted at him hysterically, seeing what he had done. He would have opened the door for her mother but Florence was all over his face.

    “Florence, pará ya! Cariño!”(Florence, stop right now! Honey!) Her mom is heard between their exchanges. Elias managed to turn his back on her for a second to slip Tobey into Tati's arms, grabbed Stevee by the shoulder, and told his eldest son to follow his grandmother back to his room on the second floor. They were at the foot of the stairs when Florence hopped on his back and they both crashed over some wooden furniture that split open under their weight. She was trying to hit him on the face, palms open but Elias got up on his feet and pushed her with such force that she hit the floor a second time and started crying again. Between wooden pieces on the floor and having realized they broke one of their drawers, he saw an old flip phone lying on the ground which was certainly not his, and that probably was in that furniture, hidden somewhere. He picked it up at once, the screen was somewhat broken while his wife turned to scratch him trying to get ahold of the primary evidence of

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her infidelity. Elias kept pushing her away, as he stood back and looked through the messages, tailed by her, who grabbed a cushion to hit him hard on the face in full-blown slaps. A neighbor peeked in and hesitantly said he had called the police, hoping not to turn into a target then returned to his home.

    Florence had started trying to wrestle him. Elias knew all he could do was shove her out of his way with enough force, and wait for the police no matter how much his instincts told him to hit back, that a single hit would make her sit down. But the next thing he knew, he had dropped to his knees, then hit his head hard on the floor shaking like a blender, a fast knockout. He saw his wife staggering above him as if she were drunk and falling on her seat bones as well. Before he could recover movement, he saw Stevee run downstairs and exit the house through the wide-open, front door. Florence got up as she could and went after him, her track-and-field boy escaped her grasp by far but she didn’t stop.

    Elias stumbled to his feet, realizing one of his eye lobes was pouring blood and he’d stained the floor a bit. He ran after them too, catching a glimpse of Tatiana sitting atop of the stairs shouting her daughter’s name while she held Tobey and her nose bled abundantly. It didn’t have ever crossed his mind how beautiful their neighborhood was, how endearing and prosperous it looked, but that’s exactly what came across his mind as the morning sun shone on the horizon. He would have found out sooner that this thought wasn’t his, but all he could focus on then was catching up with Stevee, who’d already crossed the street and run further into the suburbs with his mother after him. He dashed, shouting his name at the top of his lungs, but the second wave struck. He saw the police patrol on its way to the family home driving towards them, just ahead of his son as the car stirred out of the road and towards the sidewalk, Florence pushed his son out of the way before getting hit. The car crashed into someone’s house after entering their driveway and breaking a fence. The police officer inside the vehicle was convulsing and hit his head repeatedly against the steering wheel until the constant head

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traumas put him out of his misery. Elias turned pale as a ghost as the image of his son pulling on his mother’s shirt—who quivered on the ground with her eyes open—was forever seared into his memory. He heard wails, it was Tatiana, stumbling from the other side of the street with Tobey. He knelt over his wife with tears as he patted his pockets looking for his phone. And as his nerves found it difficult to dial 911 he jolted when Florence firmly gripped his arm and opened her mouth.

    “P—pick up. Pick up. Pick up the phone.” She urged him, wrapping her fingers around his. A second later, his phone was ringing. And it was Boone Armstrong on the line. He tried swiping away his call, but the hanging-up button didn’t work. Florence insisted as Tatiana tried her phone horrified, but had no reception. “Pick up. Pi—pick up. Elias. Elias. Elias. Pick up. Pick up. Pick up . . . ”

    He was finally tearing up as she was trapped on a loop. It was then that his wife’s mother looked around to see the entire neighborhood had come crashing down. People were acting strangely. Some spoke to themselves as they walked past, eyes lost ahead. There was a man doing chin-ups on a nearby tree, and another man using a fire extinguisher at a car that was not on fire. An old lady undressing, folding her clothes and putting them on the ground. A young woman stuck her tongue to the sky to taste rain that wasn’t there. When had these people walked out of their homes?

   Crying, Florence’s mother snatched his phone and picked up Boone’s call, activating the loudspeaker. He looked at her stunned as she sat on the ground beside her daughter, wrapped an arm around Stevee. His mother slowly drifted to sleep from which she wouldn’t come back. Elias sat down beside them as well, rubbing Stevee’s back. Looked at Tobey and saw him unharmed as well.

    “Elias? Are you there? Hello? Hello?”

    “B—boone, hi. It’s m—me. I’m right here.” He sniffed, “My . . . my wife . . . ”

    “Son, I know . . . it’s all over the news. The casualties can’t be estimated right now, that’s how bad it is. I don’t know how I am alive myself if I’ve been honest.” The old man sighed. “How are the kids?”

    “They are okay, I—I have them here with me.”

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    “Listen, son, I hate to bother you at this terrifying moment of our lives. I’ve been trying to get a hold of anyone from the Destine team since 5:00 A.M. but I’ve had no luck.”

   “Boone, the world is ending. I’d rather not—”

    “Elias, the world hasn’t ended for all of us just yet, there are thousands of people trapped. Destine has shut down for many at midair.” He fell quiet for a minute. “I can’t make it work, I have a couple of people here looking into it. But none of them are from the original team. As far as we can tell it's happening all over the country. We are trying to refresh the data from the European, South American, and the rest of the servers but the computers are showing nothing at the moment. Please, I need your help.

    Upon hearing those last words Elias searched for answers in his mother-in-law's eyes, red and teary, she rubbed her wrist against her sappy nose and looked down. He saw her kiss her daughter on the brow and run her fingers through her hair. He told Boone he'd called him back in a few minutes and hung up, wrapping an arm around his dead wife's back and the other beneath her knees. Carrying her to their home with Tatiana and his baby, and Stevee tailing him all the way there was the longest walk of his life. He realized the last time he'd carried her this way had been a long time ago back when they used to live in Los Angeles. When everything was right between them.

    He placed her body on the dining table, and turned the flatscreen on to look for the news, then told Tati he'd help her place her luggage in his Amarok because the neighborhood didn't look safe anymore. She said she'd go anywhere her daughter went, but he reminded her it wasn't healthy for the kids. After discussing it for nearly ten minutes she finally desisted. Meanwhile, the news spoke about an unidentified object entering Earth's atmosphere and interfering with handpicked signals like those of some Ethernet companies, television, and smartphones. Power plants and radio frequencies, however, were running untouched by whatever had sunk in the Atlantic Ocean.

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    Elias called Boone as he had promised, and asked if he still needed help because he was on his way. His boss thanked him, but the Argentinian told him he'd need to help him get out of the United States fast after fixing Destine. The old man asked what exactly he needed. He said a plane. A plane that could take him to Argentina. Armstrong laughed, but his employee remained quiet at the other end of the line. He picked up his mood really fast and agreed, with the only condition that Destine had to run work soundly by the time he ended. The engineer was not slow to accept these conditions.

    The sound of the doorknob twisting five feet from him made him cower, ready to hit anyone with the rifle butt, for an instant, picturing the face of an enemy close enough to hit them on the jaw. A man with bloodied eyes and a trembling smile. His mind had been fooled as usual as he sat there on the floor beside Tobey and Stevee, the latter had not woken up yet and rolled on his side away from his younger brother. Marshall was picking on his victims collectively much earlier than usual this morning, he thought. But standing by the door was Tatiana, the breakfast tray between her hands. A tray she'd crowd every morning with grapefruits, oatmeal, coffee, carrot juice, and poached eggs.

    Tobey clapped and hummed. “Hola, mi amor bello . . . ” (Hi, my beloved . . . ) She smiled and said under her breath, tiptoeing towards Elias to leave the tray before him. She then picked up the baby and sat on the floor cross-legged next to his father.

    “So . . .  How serious could this get?” Tatiana faked a smile at her grandchild, who chuckled with a fist in his mouth.

    “The bear traps and the razor wires won't keep them away for long according to the neighborhood committee.” Elias rubbed his eye and grabbed some juice. “We’ve tried everything with them. They keep saying we are hiding something they want, despite the tour we gave them. They shot at our houses all night out of pure fun and we shot back. They were drunk out of their minds and laughing, we got into a fistfight with them at some point while guarding our yards.”

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    “Let's give them all of our food. Tell them to let us leave the neighborhood so they can search further.”

    “Tati, this has been going on for a handful of blocks here in Mar del Plata, and no one is allowed to leave until they find what Marshall is looking for. Mariano has heard much, a revolt is coming if someone dies, but these people won't hesitate to use the machine guns against us. They are deranged. They worship Marshall, whatever it's looking for, they will do the dirty job.”

    “Then, what are our options?” Tatiana whispered, “I did what you told me to do, took Stevee to Mariano's so they'd teach him how to use a gun properly. There's nothing they taught him that you didn't already.”

    “I don't want him thinking twice when shit hits the fan, the world we lost is far gone. Otherwise, you wouldn't have a shotgun hanging from your belt.” He pushed an entire egg into his mouth, pointing at her mother-in-law's waist.

    “Are you really thinking about joining Mariano's forces this time?” She looked at him as if he were despicable. “Calling you his 'Golden Egg' is no compliment, don't you understand?”

    “What will Stevee and Tobey do if neither you nor I are around?” He dug his teeth into a piece of grapefruit. “At least I'm not the 'Golden Goose'.”

    “What does that even mean?!” Tatiana hissed.

    He stood up to look out the window, rifle again between his fingers. “It means I'm just a goon, a good one for whatever he'll need me to do. If Marshall gets angry, it will be his head on a silver plate and not mine.”

    “You are not thinking straight, it's you—” Elias left the room running and almost tripped going downstairs. “Elias?!” Tatiana bolted to the window to see first the shores of the coast of Argentina and then 'Los Adoradores' (The Adorers) a block away from her going door to door with their guns. Searching person by person and seemingly beating them to death afterward. She had no option but to

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wake Stevee between shoves and cries. He instinctively picked up his automatic rifle from a trapdoor beneath the white carpet, something his father made him practice almost every single day.

    Elias ran out to the backyard ready to hop on the fence in hopes of watching over the house but as soon as he propelled himself forward a man hit him in the face with a club. He fell on the grass with his nose broken. The guy looked down at him from above and smiled devilishly.

    Stevee ran to his side and saw at first hand his father's stupefied look. The long, coal-black beard and eyes of this man were none other than the features of the man that had flashed before him as the grandmother of his children walked in with breakfast a moment ago, his trembling smile and popping veins now live before him. His son looked around to realize Los Adoradores were already watching them from the surrounding rooftops. Tatiana came out running with Tobey in her arms but the man with the club was carrying a revolver too. Elias felt Marshall snooping in his mind, and looked back at his mother-in-law and baby son as it was the supercomputer's wishes that he saw her fall back lifelessly. Along with his younger son. The time it took that devil to shoot at them four times. He scrambled to his feet and was by their side in a heartbeat, but he fell to pieces over them, they were already gone. It was Stevee who let out a long burst of bullets all over the rooftops, the group of worshippers jumped off, many of them injured and others died after being reached by the projectiles. Mariano's forces came in right after and took both father and son out of that house's dreadful shadow amidst the beginning of a merciless shooting.

END OF PROLOGUE