ARC I: [Shadows Over Mars]
Chapter 1: The Sewer Boy
They didn't call it Earth anymore. Not really.
The rich called it Terra. The politicians called it the Cradle. But the ones who lived in its gutters, where light didn't reach and no law dared walk, had a different name for it.
The Graveyard.
Kale Drayen was born in Grave Sector 17, deep under the ruins of Old Nairobi. Born into piss-stained concrete, flickering power grids, and the lullaby of gunfire echoing through pipe-choked streets. No clean air. No real food. Just rust and the stink of chemical runoff that leaked from the megacity's rotting arteries above.
He didn't know who his father was. His mother died when he was nine. Shot during a turf war between two gangs over a cache of synthetic protein bars. The man who pulled the trigger didn't even look at Kale afterward. Just stepped over the corpse and kept firing.
Kale never cried.
He learned quickly: you either got used to it, or you died.
---
By seventeen, Kale had already earned a reputation among the guttersnipes and ghostrats. Not for being the strongest—he wasn't. Others had muscle. What Kale had was foresight. He knew when to disappear, who to bribe, how to pit one gang against another just long enough to slip through the cracks. He never tried to lead. Leaders in the Graveyard didn't last.
He just survived. And in a place like that, survival was a kind of brilliance.
He kept to himself, living in a shanty made from collapsed tram panels and scorched rebar. He worked scavenging circuit boards from collapsed drone hubs, selling to black-market tech dealers, and sometimes... running messages no one else would.
Risky ones.
Then came the day the sky changed.
---
It was raining acidwater again when it happened. Kale was elbow-deep in a storm drain, trying to yank a working capacitor out of a fried purifier unit, when a drone's shadow fell over him.
He froze. Not because he feared it—he feared everything already—but because this one wasn't corporate or gang-owned.
It was naval.
Military-grade, black and blue with the UEN crest pulsing across its dome. It hovered in silence for three seconds before a voice spoke—calm, mechanical, and far too loud for the alley.
> "Kale Drayen. Civilian designation: No Citizenship. Criminal record: Null. Genetic profile: Tier 1 Neural Spike Potential. By order of the Unified Earth Navy, you are selected for candidate evaluation at Olympus Mons Naval Academy. Mars. Report within 72 hours. Failure to comply results in permanent disqualification."
The drone blinked red once. Then it was gone.
Kale stared after it, rain dripping off his brow, the capacitor still clutched in his hand.
He waited.
Ten seconds. Twenty. No one jumped out. No one opened fire. No joke revealed itself.
He stood. Wiped his hands on his coat. Looked up.
And for the first time in his life, he saw something behind the haze-choked sky.
A door.
---
He didn't tell anyone. Not the gang kids he half-trusted. Not the woman who sometimes traded warm food for tech parts. Not the old man with no teeth who used to claim he fought in the Jupiter riots.
He just packed a broken solar charger, his mother's locket, a change of rags, and the smartknife he'd stolen two years ago from a dead enforcer.
No one stopped him. No one cared.
When he climbed onto the freight crawler heading toward the orbital elevator, the only thing he felt was the weight of silence.
Like the Graveyard was finally done with him.