OVER THE SIRENS🌸

Chapter One: The Sound That Never Sleeps

The city was never silent. Not anymore.

Even at midnight, when the towers cut through the black sky and the streets emptied of people, a hum lingered. A deep, droning sound like an ancient machine stirring beneath the ground. But that wasn’t what haunted Maeve Arlowe.

It was the sirens.

They screamed at odd hours, always there to remind everyone of the rules. At 5:00 a.m., it would blare its morning shriek, waking the population of District 12. Workers filed out from their homes, each person slotted into their designated role, pushing against the early-morning fog as they marched toward the gates. No one questioned the sirens. No one disobeyed their call.

Maeve sat by her window, half-dressed in her gray uniform, staring out at the dim, industrial cityscape. The skyline was fractured by smokestacks and distant walls—those walls meant to separate what was "safe" from what wasn’t. The Fog was out there, rolling like an invisible predator in the wastelands. The Council said it was the sirens that kept the Fog at bay. They said if the sirens ever failed, the Fog would swallow them whole.

But Maeve no longer believed them.

She reached for the small tablet resting on the edge of her desk. Its screen blinked softly, almost innocuously, but its contents were far from innocent. A message, encrypted and dangerous, pulsed across the display. She hadn’t wanted to open it at first, afraid of what it might say. But now that she had, there was no going back.

The Fog is not what they say it is. The Sirens control more than you think.

The words had appeared late the night before, just as the curfew siren had begun its dreadful wail across the district. Maeve had thought it was a trick, some malicious hacker trying to spread chaos. But something about the message burrowed under her skin.

Her stomach churned as she stared at the blinking text. She’d worked for the government for years, maintaining the siren systems, ensuring that every sector was properly equipped to handle the next wave of the Fog. She was a technician, one of the highest-ranking engineers in her district. If the sirens were a lie, what did that make her?

The tablet buzzed, breaking her thoughts.

New message:
“Meet me. Midnight. Old Tower 17. There’s more you need to see.”

Her heart raced. The message was signed with a symbol she recognized—a mark used by the Resistance, a secret group whispered about in the alleys and shadowed corners of the districts. The Council had worked hard to erase any memory of rebellion. The Fog kept people too terrified to venture out, and the sirens kept them obedient within.

But there were rumors. Always rumors. Of a group that lived beyond the walls, in the depths of the wastelands where the Fog was supposed to be lethal. Of survivors who had figured out how to evade the sirens' grip and the Council’s control.

Maeve knew it was madness to even consider meeting them. The Council had eyes everywhere, and the sirens were embedded into every structure, every street, programmed to monitor and listen. Yet, a strange curiosity burned inside her. If there was even a small chance the Fog wasn’t as deadly as they said… if the sirens were part of some greater lie, then the life she’d been living was a cage.

And she wanted out.

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