The Beginning of Our Lives.

Page 1: The collection

Deep in the cold silence of space, an enormous vessel moved through the dark. Inside, transparent pods stood in long, blue-lit rows. Human bodies hung motionless within them. The light travelled across closed eyes, slack hands and clothes that still belonged to ordinary lives on Earth.

A communication screen flickered awake. An Alizean soldier straightened at the console. “Transmission established. Homeworld is responding.”

Beside him stood Figi, the ship’s chief scientist. His gaze passed over the readings without lingering on the faces beyond them. “Report our success.”

“The specimens have been secured. We are returning home.” Static scratched through the reply. “And the collection?” Figi answered without hesitation. “Complete.”

Along one row, a hand moved. Fingers curled against glass. Mr Bigg’s body twisted, fighting something the other captives could not feel. His eyes opened. For a moment there was only blue light, the pressure of the pod around him and the terrible certainty that he could not breathe freely.

“Help… somebody…!” His voice struck the thick enclosure and came back to him. He clawed at the glass. A red light flashed above his head. The first alarm broke the ship’s steady silence.

Meet Figi

Alizean ship’s chief scientist

Figi oversees the human collection aboard the Alizean transport. His manner is controlled, his observations precise, and his curiosity difficult to satisfy.

He is accustomed to treating a completed procedure as a settled fact. An unexplained result can command more of his attention than the person experiencing it.

Page 2: Still alive

The pod opened with a hiss. Bigg tumbled onto the metal floor and stayed there on his hands and knees, coughing. Each breath hurt. He drew another anyway. Two figures were already moving toward him.

They were tall, broad and armoured, with small tusks rising beside their lower lips. One raised a device to his face. Bigg flinched from its cold light. “Where am I? What happened to me?”

“Subject is conscious,” the guard said. The words were a report to someone else. “I asked you a question!” Neither guard answered.

They hauled him through the corridor and into a bare chamber. A field shimmered across the entrance with a low electrical hum. Bigg staggered upright and put his palm against it. The barrier held. Beyond it stood a bald Alizean in an ivory tunic and a deep teal sash, watching him with a scientist’s concentration.

“You can’t keep me in here!” Bigg shouted. The observer tilted his head. “Interesting.”

“What’s interesting?” Figi turned to leave. “You’re still alive.”

Bigg stared after him. He had been angry enough to forget his fear. Now it returned, gathering around the unanswered question in the corridor: what had they expected to happen to him?

Page 3: Beyond reach

Bigg lowered himself against the wall. The field hummed on. He listened for footsteps, for voices, for anything that might tell him how large this place was or how many people were inside it. Somewhere beyond the chamber, machinery changed pitch.

The engines ignited. Space bent around the enormous hull, drawing the stars into a tunnel of light. Earth dwindled behind the vessel until it was scarcely more than the blue dot that had first caught Almag’s attention.

Below those distant clouds, families would be searching streets and calling phones. Humanity did not yet know that a ship carrying its people had already left the solar system.

Far beneath the Atlantic, another vessel lay in darkness. Its ribbed hull was torn open. Water filled the central chamber. The lights that had once traced its length were dead.

Three Maggis remained alive inside the wreck. Battered and cut off, they moved through the surviving compartments, searching for something the battle had not destroyed.

Page 4: What the wreck kept

In a compartment still sealed from the sea, the scout raised his damaged wrist device. A weak light flickered against his pearl-grey skin. He tried the channel again. Nothing answered.

“No signal from the mother ship.” The warrior’s fractured helmet caught the failing glow. “Then we are stranded.”

The smaller Maggis with the luminous staff had stopped beside a sealed compartment. He pointed. Beyond the doors, two compact exploration pods remained secured in their berths. The wreck had carried them down without crushing them.

“Not anymore.”

Pale green light gathered along the first craft’s seams. A moment later, the second answered. The three survivors stood in the glow, looking at the only way out they had found. Above them lay the ocean. Beyond it lay a world that did not know they were still there.

Page 5: One hundred absences

Three weeks passed. Missing-person posters spread across walls. Families crowded around televisions, listening for a name, a place, a mistake in the count that might mean someone had come home. Streets that had once felt ordinary filled with questions nobody could answer.

“Authorities have confirmed that one hundred people have been taken across Edo, Eko, Kano and Imo,” the news anchor said. Photographs followed: men, women, children. “There have been no ransom demands, no claims of responsibility and no communication from the abductors.”

In one living room, a mother held a photograph of her missing husband. Her daughter sat beside her, watching the television. “Mummy… will they bring Daddy back?” The mother opened her mouth. Nothing came. She pulled the girl close. “I don’t know, my love.” Her eyes stayed on the screen.

At a government briefing, microphones crowded the lectern. “Do you believe this is the work of a foreign power?” a reporter called. “We are investigating every possibility,” the spokesperson replied. Another voice rose before he could continue. “Then why have you found nothing in three weeks?”

The spokesperson paused. Behind him, a digital map marked the affected locations. He looked at the reporters, and for a moment the composure left his face. “We will not abandon the search.”

It was a promise he could make. An explanation was still beyond him. So were the first abductors, already travelling far beyond Earth’s reach.

Page 6: The resistant human

Aboard the Alizean vessel, Figi enlarged the scan. Patterns pulsed through the hologram, repeating an answer he had checked more than once. A soldier entered the laboratory. “Chief, what are your orders concerning the resistant human?”

“His body rejected the sedation.” The soldier studied the image without understanding it. “Should we terminate the specimen?” Figi turned sharply. “Absolutely not.”

He looked back at the readings. “In all our exploration, none has resisted this way.” “What makes him different?” the soldier asked. Figi’s expression hardened. “That is what I intend to discover.”

Bigg was sitting against the wall when Figi returned to the containment corridor. He watched the scientist approach through the shimmer of the field. “What do you want from me?”

Figi stopped. “To understand why you resisted.” Bigg rose slowly. His legs were steadier now. He could look his captor in the eye. “Who are you?”

For a moment, neither spoke. Figi studied him with renewed interest. Then a faint smile appeared. “Perhaps you may be of value after all.” He walked away, glancing back once.

Bigg remained at the barrier. On Earth he had built laboratories to ask questions. Here, he was the question, and the man holding him had no intention of letting it go unanswered.

Page 7: Home, for someone

A vast world filled the forward windows. Almag. Across one hemisphere, the light held. Beyond the dividing line, the other half lay in darkness. The vessel turned toward the sunlit side.

A city rose beneath it: immense sandstone towers, bronze structures and luminous bridges spanning the spaces between them. Strange vessels moved through the bright air. Long shadows lay between the buildings, but the sky above them belonged to the endless sun.

Inside the cockpit, the crew watched their homeworld draw closer. “Home at last,” a soldier said. Figi stood before the observation window. “Prepare the specimens for transfer.”

Through a narrow viewing panel, Bigg saw enough. Structures larger than any he knew passed beyond the glass. His reflection trembled over the city, familiar features laid across a place where nothing else was familiar.

“What have I gotten into…?” he whispered. For the crew, the journey was ending. Bigg watched the ship descend into the shadow of a colossal tower and tried to imagine what would happen when the doors opened.

Page 8: The sea gives them back

On Earth, three weeks of fear had become a routine people could hardly bear. Shops reopened. People returned to work. The posters stayed on the walls, but some had begun telling themselves that whatever had happened was over. They needed it to be over.

Under cover of darkness, two exploration pods broke the surface of the Atlantic. Water streamed from their ribbed hulls. Green light cut through the spray as they turned toward the coast.

The scout brought the nearby settlement onto his display. “Life signs confirmed.” Beside him, the warrior watched the lights gather. “How many do we need?” The staff-bearer’s reply came from the second craft. “As many as we can carry.”

A man stepped out of his house to investigate a sound. Green light closed around him. His feet left the ground. He screamed, reaching for the doorway as it fell away beneath him. Across the street, another person vanished in a flash. Then another.

Doors slammed open. People ran without knowing which direction was safe. Someone pointed upward and shouted the words the whole street had been afraid to hear. “They’re back!”

Page 9: What is to come

A driver glanced up at the sky. The car struck the roadside barrier with a crash that disappeared beneath the rising hum. People scattered around it. Above the street, the Maggis moved swiftly, collecting their targets before those below could find cover.

Inside the lead pod’s cramped operations area, a tally flickered into view. Thirty humans. The scout looked at it again. His hand hovered over the communication device. This time, when he opened the channel, the distant base answered.

“My lord, we were attacked. I think we are all that remain. Thirty humans have been collected.” His voice tightened around the report. He waited.

A voice crackled through the device. “And the humans? Have they discovered your presence?” The scout turned toward the settlement. Doors stood open. People were running beneath the lights. There was no answer he could make sound better. “They know we are here.”

A pause. Then the order came. “Show them what is to come.” The scout remained at the window for a moment longer. Below, the people who had escaped the beams were still trying to get home.

Page 10: One hundred and thirty

The two exploration pods climbed into the night with their captives aboard. Sirens rose along the coastline. Then weapons flashed beneath the hulls. Shots tore through Eko without warning, striking buildings and streets as the vessels passed. Smoke rolled across the lights. People who had been running from the beams threw themselves behind whatever cover they could find.

Across the country, an emergency broadcast interrupted television programmes. The confirmed count had risen to one hundred and thirty. The anchor looked into the camera. “Another wave of abduction. Be safe out there, people. God be with us.” The screen broke into static.

High above Earth, the scout opened a channel to the Maggis base. “My lord. Your wish has been fulfilled.” A distorted voice answered. “Proceed to the rendezvous point. A team is ready to bring you home.”

The scout looked through the cockpit window at Earth. From this height, the damage was already disappearing beneath the clouds. He turned toward the controls. The two pods accelerated into the dark, carrying thirty more people away from everything they knew.

On Almag, another group waited to be taken through unfamiliar doors. On Earth, families watched screens that could no longer tell them anything. Between those worlds, the ships vanished into the stars.