The Choice is Ugly. The Cost is Absolute.
When the music started, the world stopped to listen. It was beautiful, haunting, and universal-a global broadcast that lowered every defense and filled the streets with a shared, euphoric calm. Then it stopped, and the Archons of the Void gave their terms: humanity has twenty-four hours to select ten percent for tribute. If the world won't choose, the invaders will harvest everyone.
Black-ops veteran Kaelen Rourke recognizes the broadcast's signature. It's tied to work he once did-now turned into a weapon. As black-glass Spires settle over capital cities, society fractures fast: paper wristbands, "medical" exemptions for the connected, hospitals turned into sorting floors, and quiet lines under floodlights.
Kaelen goes off-grid with a crisis ethicist, a hunted journalist, and a paramedic forging wristbands to keep kids off the lists. Their plan is simple to describe and brutal to do: seize emergency infrastructure and deploy a countermeasure that disrupts the harvest.
The invaders adapt. The government closes in. And every hour forces the same question: what are you willing to break to keep the human race alive?
