500 : The Five Districts

In 2025, an asteroid hit the earth and killed ninety percent of humanity. A hundred years later, the survivors are still underground, in the Bunker.

It had not been built for them. It was an ark for seeds and livestock, sealed against a catastrophe nobody expected to be this one. Nobody alive has seen the sky.

They say the asteroid controls humans and empties them of their souls. They say nobody knows how to destroy it. What is certain is that since the impact, interference has blocked every signal, and nothing has come in or gone out.

Five districts hold the place together. Scientists, fighters, farmers, scholars, alphas. You inherit your father's district the way you inherit his hands, and you die in it.

Every year, each district sends one of its own through the door. They are called explorers, and they are honoured on the day they leave. Not one has ever come back. Five hundred names are carved on a wall at the bottom of the Bunker, and hardly anyone remembers them any more.

Aaron Marsh is a farmer's son. He has never seen the sky, never felt wind, never breathed sea air. He knows all three the way you know a history lesson: true, and finished.

This year, he wants to be one of the explorers.