The city sky glowed orange as the sun dipped behind towers of metal and glass. The party at Alex's apartment had long ended, but Gaurav lingered, strangely at ease. Alex and Brad lounged on the balcony, sipping cheap cola from mismatched mugs, while Gaurav quietly observed the stars with a battered telescope.
Suddenly, the front door clicked open.
Alex jerked upright. "Did you leave the door unlocked?"
Before Brad could answer, a figure stepped inside.
A girl.
Not a student. Not someone from their social circle. She looked barely older than them, maybe twenty-one, but her presence was electric — confident, precise. A white lab coat fluttered behind her like a cape, and her short-cropped black hair was streaked with violet at the ends. She wore dark goggles pushed up onto her head and carried a hard drive clutched to her chest.
"You're late," she said flatly, staring at Alex.
Everyone froze.
Brad: "Who the hell are you?"
"The one trying to stop the end of the world," she replied, stepping further inside. Her voice was sharp, clinical.
Gaurav narrowed his eyes. "You're not from our department."
She ignored him and tossed the hard drive on the table. "This contains satellite scans — real ones. Your data's fake, filtered by the government's proxies. The meteor's not months away. It's accelerating."
Alex stepped forward. "How do you know all this?"
She hesitated for a beat, then finally said, "My name's Lyra. I used to work at OMNI... before I realized they weren't trying to save us."
Gaurav stiffened. He had heard whispers of OMNI — a shadowy tech conglomerate tied to military intelligence and planetary defense systems. He had dismissed the rumors.
Not anymore.
Brad crossed his arms. "Why should we trust you?"
Lyra looked each of them in the eyes.
"Because you're not the only ones who see what's coming. But you might be the only ones stupid enough to try and stop it without a government badge."
A beat of silence passed.
Gaurav: "What do you want from us?"
Lyra smirked. "Your brains. Your network. And your help breaking into the Syndicate's data hub."
The room went still. Even the city seemed to hush.
Alex glanced at Brad, then Gaurav. "Guess we just leveled up."
And somewhere far above them, a satellite adjusted its orbit — and pointed its lens at Earth.