She needed to untangle the chaos of the unfolding situation. For a journalist, an event of this magnitude was a career-defining scoop—the kind that comes along once in a lifetime, if at all.
The moment she cleared the building and hit the pavement, she instinctively scanned her surroundings, half-expecting to witness scenes of burgeoning panic.
By now, the footage of the mysterious airships hovering over the border must have saturated every screen in the city. She braced herself for a stir, a riot, or at the very least, a visible tremor of unrest among the masses.
Yet, the reality was eerily serene.
Cars surged through the intersections with their usual frantic energy, and pedestrians hurried along, draped in a practiced, urban indifference. Through the windows of nearby restaurants, people dined, laughed, and chatted in a display of mundane tranquility. It was the quintessential weekday lunch hour in the City.
Though it was just past noon and the sun hung high, the biting sub-zero air still stung her skin, staining her cheeks a deep, vivid crimson.
After finding a vacant seat in the café, Natasha took a long, deliberate sip of her Raf coffee
She marveled at the decadence of it—a rich concoction crafted entirely with heavy cream rather than milk. The cream had been transformed into a velvety, latte-like foam that melded seamlessly with the espresso.
As the sweet, heady scent of vanilla filled her senses, it offered a brief, blissful sanctuary from the looming storm.
"The world might end tomorrow, yet here I am, intoxicated by the scent of coffee. Ridiculous," Natasha muttered under her breath.
She flipped open her laptop and typed six words that felt heavy with the weight of history: THE GREATEST EVENT IN HUMAN HISTORY.
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Beside her keyboard, her phone screen flickered, incessantly playing viral footage of the celestial crafts. Staring at the silent, silver giants hovering on the screen, she began to pour the chaotic thoughts swirling in her mind into the document.
1: Is this a genuine encounter with an extraterrestrial civilization?
2: The design is suspiciously cliché.
3:There is no visible aggression.
4:They appear peaceful.
5:The scale is surreal.
6:Why reveal themselves in the middle of this war?
7:Who is inside those hulls?
8:Is this an arrival, or an invasion?
9:What becomes of us now?
10:Should we fight, or should we talk?
Only one thing is certain: our lives will never return to the way they were.
Natasha let out a long, ragged exhale. "Haa..."
As she stared down at the list, a cold reality surged over her. She realized she had absolutely no concrete information. She hadn't seen the crafts with her own eyes, she didn't know the true atmosphere at the front lines, and the government’s official stance was a total blackout—a literal black hole of silence.
Speculation, she realized, was hollow.
If she wanted the truth, she needed the one thing no one had managed to capture yet: the perspective of those standing directly beneath the bellies of those massive ships.
What she needed was a firsthand account from someone on the ground.
She closed her eyes. Who? Who is left? Names and faces blurred past until one memory, sharp and distinct, snagged her attention. Yes. It was him. A boy from high school—Vadim. He had been so painfully transparent, his face flushing a vivid crimson whenever she so much as glanced his way. He used to spend hours staring vacantly at the open-pit mines near the city’s edge, lost in a world she never cared to enter. "Vadim..." Natasha whispered the name, a slow, calculating smile playing on her lips. "It had to be Vadim."