The Countdown Begins
The System pulsed its warning every hour:
<< Hollowed Kin Node 2: Activation imminent.
Signal spread: exponential.
Infection vector: non-physical, semi-sentient signal fragments.
Time remaining: 146 hours. >>
Julian stared at the global map on the Aurora Citadel's command deck — continents lit with hundreds of spectral overlays. The alien signals didn't obey geography. They moved through resonance, not radio. Frequencies twisted like serpents through neural hotspots, memory storage fields, and even dream-analysis clouds.
Aya zoomed into one sector:
"Northern Pakistan. Activity spike in the Karakoram."
Lenya pointed to another:
"Rift Valley, Kenya. There's something stirring under the crust."
Julian frowned.
"Split the team. One target each. I'll take Antarctica."
Aya blinked. "Antarctica?"
Julian nodded slowly.
"There's a null zone down there. No signal. Which means something's blocking it — or trying to hide it."
Aya: The Karakoram
Aya's dropship carved through the mountain winds, sensors scanning for abnormal EM and bio-cognitive echoes.
She landed in a remote village where the dreams of the locals had turned violent. One woman, eyes glowing faintly, whispered:
"They walk behind our minds. Hollowed. Whispering…"
The System detected a psionic fracture below an ancient shrine. Aya rappelled into the ice caves beneath and found an altar humming with alien carvings.
Her Julian moment?
She crafted a resonance disruptor from her grav-glider's motor coil and the villagers' ceremonial chime rods. When activated, the device destabilized the memory-form that had been growing like mold through the cave.
The "signal ghost" shattered like glass in the air — and the villagers awoke from their shared nightmare.
But before Aya left, one fragment of sound lingered in the System:
"…the seed is beneath the ice…"
Lenya: Rift Valley
Lenya's target was a geothermal rift where the Earth's crust had thinned — and something non-terrestrial was mining upward.
Her transport hit resistance — a feedback wave of bio-empathic static that caused machines to hallucinate. Drones crashed. Soldiers went mad.
Lenya used a compound visor crafted from Julian's nanite lens tech and minerals found in the Rift's dust fields. It allowed her to "see" the invisible signal paths.
She found a fracture — not a machine, but a living interface grown from the planet itself. It pulsed with Hollowed Kin code, leeching neural patterns from local wildlife.
Lenya used a hydrogen flare and magnetic coil trap to seal the signal root, buying time. But the signal wasn't extinguished — only redirected.
"Whatever this is," she said through her comms, "it's looking for something it already owns."
Julian: Antarctica Null Zone
Julian descended into the eye of the null zone in a stealth skimmer wrapped in cognitive-scrambler veils. The Antarctic base — once a UN listening post — was now abandoned, buried in ice.
The System detected:
<< Hollowed Kin entropy signature. Low. Buried. Dormant… but watching. >>
Inside, he found the base frozen mid-evacuation. Coffee mugs still steamed, but the people were gone. Entire memory backups were blank, like something had erased time itself.
Then he found the mirror.
Seven feet tall, circular, rimmed with alien metal. Its reflection shimmered like water — showing not the room behind him, but another base, somewhere else, warped.
Julian's System flared:
<< WARNING: This is not a mirror. This is a gateway node fragment. Partial synchronization detected. >>
Breaking the Bridge
Julian noticed the frequencies humming from the mirror didn't stabilize until they matched his own biometrics. That meant the mirror was adapting — or targeting.
He quickly used frost-reinforced coil cable, his quantum-link drone's core, and an ancient Soviet microwave weapon found in storage to create a harmonic disruptor.
He placed it next to the mirror and pulsed it.
The reflection screamed — literally. The mirror cracked. The temperature dropped instantly by 70 degrees.
The gateway collapsed.
But before it did, he caught a final glimpse of what lay on the other side:
A fully active node — with Hollowed Kin vessels emerging from it.
Back at the Citadel, the team reassembled. Aya uploaded her data. Lenya detailed the Rift. Julian showed the partial footage of the node.
Then came the System's final alert:
<< Node 2 located: Lunar Under-Vault
Coordinates: Far Side, Impact Crater Alpha-7
Status: Activation 94% >>
Julian leaned forward, eyes steeled.
"They buried one on the Moon," he whispered.
Aya: "They always planned for us to evolve. They wanted us to find them."
Lenya: "What if the moon itself is one of their ships?"
Julian turned to the display.
"Then we're about to board the enemy's flagship."
The Broadcast Echoes
Julian's global speech — broadcast across every major planetary colony and Earth-bound system — continued to reverberate.
He had lit a fire, but not everyone welcomed the light.
From orbital embassies to Martian cities, from Earth's underground megacorp bunkers to floating ocean-state parliaments, a single fear echoed:
"Julian isn't saving us… he's ruling us."
The narrative was easy to feed.
A trillionaire with godlike tech.
A private army with off-world weaponry.
A system in his body linked to an alien ring.
Access to knowledge beyond human civilization's cradle.
It was, as one Sol Council senator called it, "the beginning of a benevolent dictatorship wrapped in a messiah complex."
The Divide
On Earth:
Governments debated deploying black-ops teams to track Julian's activities. Some factions began quietly forming counter-coalitions — covertly weaponizing AI or seeking their own alien tech caches, willing to risk infection for parity.
On Mars:
The Martian Confederacy, already wary of Earth-born control, issued a formal statement:
"Mars recognizes the Hollowed Kin threat, but rejects unilateral action by Earth-born sovereigns or independent actors."
In Orbit:
Several orbital megacities voted to restrict JulianTech's satellites, demanding transparency.
And in hushed corners of the Lunar Helix Council, a whisper circulated:
"What if we let the node activate… and study the Hollowed Kin up close? What if they offer something better than Julian's control?"
Inside the Aurora Citadel
Julian stood alone in the observatory dome, watching protests erupt in Nairobi, a rogue drone swarm over Beijing being intercepted by his defense satellites, and an emergency broadcast on the Venusian colonies demanding Julian's recall from "extraterrestrial sovereignty."
Lenya approached, her holographic tactical cloak dimming.
"Sol Prime's president issued an ultimatum," she said. "Either you submit the Arc Command to multi-national oversight, or they'll freeze all JulianTech assets Earth-side."
Julian raised an eyebrow. "Bold, considering they're using my orbital grid to shield their cities."
"Which you built without asking permission."
He turned to her. "I asked the Hollowed Kin either. They didn't wait for diplomatic protocols before trying to overwrite human thought."
A Dangerous Proposal
In a deep bunker beneath Geneva, a private summit took place between three of Earth's greatest superpowers and three of its most powerful AI councils.
They debated Project Equinox — an operation meant to replicate Julian's ring-system interface using stolen genetic data and bootlegged alien tech fragments gathered from Julian's previous missions.
The cost:
Massive cognitive casualties.
Possibly unleashing Hollowed Kin tech on Earth.
Violating every planetary law on AI manipulation.
But if successful?
They'd create a rival to Julian.
A new god to balance the old one.
They voted.
Five out of six agreed.
Equinox was greenlit.
Julian's Preemptive Move
The System flagged the Equinox chatter before the Council even finished voting.
Julian acted before they could even notice he was watching.
Using covert nanite satellites, he destabilized the rogue tech vaults meant to store Equinox components. A carefully timed algorithm released public files of the Council's illegal bio-AI experiments to news hubs across all colonies.
He didn't frame it.
He didn't deny it.
He just exposed it.
The world's attention shifted.
But this time, Julian said nothing.
He didn't need to.
Julian gathered his inner circle: Aya, Lenya, Kael (the ex-corporate war tactician), and two newcomers — a Martian terraformer named Idris and a Venusian void-pilot named Yara.
The briefing table displayed the Lunar Under-Vault, deep beneath the surface.
Aya frowned. "We've silenced the noise for now. But not the war drums."
Julian nodded.
"Let them march. While they're busy pointing fingers, we'll be halfway to the Moon — and halfway into hell."