CHAPTER ONE
10 days until Alignment
New York City, USA — 6:12 a.m. local time
Mara woke, and before she was properly awake, her hand had already found the suppression band on her wrist, the way it did every morning.
Her thumb moved to the silver inlay, set where a watch face might have sat, and traced the Aries glyph engraved into it. A second silver inlay, half the size, sat opposite it against her pulse. The band sat snug against her skin: matte black, a broad burnt-orange stripe running through most of its width, the thin green status seam glowing along one edge. Too beautiful and too well designed for something that had fused itself permanently to her wrist. That was the trick, the part that made her angrier every time she let herself think about it. The thing never looked like punishment. It looked like something you might have chosen.
She lay still for a while longer, looking at the ceiling.
From the kitchen came the sound of the coffee machine spluttering through the last of its cycle and Dani banging cabinet doors. A soft, irritated “oh, for God’s sake” followed, aimed at something that surely didn’t deserve it. The smell of coffee was already working its way down the hall, dark and strong.
Mara sat up and stayed there a moment with her feet on the floor, waking in stages. Outside, a garbage truck made its way down the block, hissing brakes, hydraulic whining and clattering glass.
She dressed for work by habit: black jeans, black long-sleeve, black non-slip sneakers. The sneakers were ugly, but she’d learned her lesson after slipping on spilled milk behind the counter and sending four coffees all over her boss.
In the bathroom mirror, she looked pale, sharp-eyed and unsmiling. Her dark hair was blunt at the shoulders and still messy from the pillow. She dragged it back into a short ponytail, the shorter pieces slipping loose around her face. Mara gave them a nasty look, like they’d done it deliberately, then left them. Most mornings, she and Dani took the train together from Queens, then split underground for work in different parts of Manhattan. Today Mara was leaving early to meet Jesper for breakfast.
She walked down the hall past the clanking radiator. Dani’s work shoes were by the front door, and her tote sat beside them, overpacked, a corner of paperwork sticking out of the top. Dani had moved in after her old lease fell through, just for a few months while she found somewhere closer to work. That had been seven years ago.
In the kitchen, Dani looked over. “Morning.”
“Don’t start,” Mara replied, yawning.
Dani was in socks, her long dark hair twisted up in a clip, a few strands framing her face as she stared groggily at the toaster. It popped up but was undercooked. She frowned, and pushed the lever down again harder than she needed to.
Her phone buzzed. She picked it up and squinted at the screen. “Oh, come on.”
“What’s wrong?” Mara asked.
“Emily called in sick so I have to go in early. There’ll only be two of us on reception.”
Dani poured two coffees, pushed one across to Mara, then took a sip from her own. “I’m not rushing until I’ve had coffee.”
Mara picked up her cup and rubbed the heel of her hand over one eye.
Dani watched her for a moment. “Did you sleep?”
“Not much.”
“Thought so.”
On the television, they were showing 2035 again: a young woman outside a courthouse, hands clamped over her ears, eyes shut, perfectly still as papers whipped around her and the flags above the steps snapped in opposite directions. Behind her, the windows shuddered, then burst one after another. The footage was five years old and the networks had been running it on a loop for weeks.
Every time Mara saw it, something in her body recognised it. That was what unsuppressed power looked like. That was what they were all carrying, held back by a simple band on a wrist.
On the television, the presenter was saying, “In ten days, the five naked-eye planets—Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn—will appear to line up with a crescent moon, drawing a bright chain across the night sky. The Grand Alignment is not expected to repeat the uncontrolled events of 2035. Officials say band suppression systems are expected to remain operational, but the six-minute Alignment window remains the main concern.” The expert beside her nodded. “What we may see are temporary suppression irregularities. People make themselves dangerous when they refuse help.”
Dani turned the volume down. “Okay, you can stop talking now.”
Mara looked away from the screen and tried to push the presenter’s words out of her head.
The toaster popped up again. Dani paused, then took out two blackened, smoking squares.
Mara looked at Dani, holding back a laugh. “Almost burnt it.”
Dani dropped both slices onto her plate. “That happens to be how I like it.”
She reached past Mara for the butter, wrist clean and bare. No band. No little green seam telling the world she was behaving.
Mara looked too long, then burned her tongue on the coffee.
Dani smeared a thick, yellow slab over one piece of toast, stared at it briefly, and gave up. “You still meeting Jesper?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“When?”
Mara checked the time on the microwave. “Just before eight. At that diner he loves, near Seward Park.”
Dani leaned against the counter. “You’re having breakfast with him at a diner, then working all day at a diner.”
“I work at a café,” Mara said, feigning offence.
“Sure,” said Dani.
“And I’m not going into work early just so I can eat there.”
“No, but you could at least–” Dani’s phone buzzed again. She snatched it up and flung it towards the couch without looking.
It landed squarely on the remote and the television switched off.
Dani looked at it for a second and blinked.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I might come by at lunch if I can get away. It’s the last day of the chicken pot pie, right?”
Mara knew she should leave it alone, and didn’t. “You said the clinic was understaffed today.”
“It is.” Dani put the plate in the sink. “But I still get a lunch break.”
“Won’t that leave just one person on reception?”
Dani looked at her then, not smiling.
“I mean—” Mara said.
“I’m capable of planning my own lunch break.” Dani said.
“I know.”
“Just checking.” Dani started rinsing the dishes in the sink. “I might be home late tonight.”
Mara looked up. “Why?”
“I’m meeting that cute guy from the pharmacy near the clinic. We’re going for drinks.”
“Oh. Okay.” Mara straightened slightly. “Text me once you’re with him?”
“Yes.”
“And if it gets really late, take a cab,” Mara went on. “The subway isn’t great late at night. Text me where you are and I’ll book it for you.”
Dani stopped, halfway through washing the mug. “Don’t do that,” she said.
“Do what?”
Dani turned the tap off and rested both hands on the sink. “Don’t turn my plans into something you need to manage.”
Heat prickled across Mara’s cheeks and her eyes began to sting. She blinked hard and turned away before Dani could see. She went to the large bowl by the front door, grabbed her keys and checked that she had her handbag and phone.
Dani sighed, crossed the kitchen, caught Mara before she could leave, and pulled her into a tight hug.
Mara let herself be hugged for one breath, then hugged her back.
“Mara. I love you,” said Dani. “But please don’t take over my love life.”
“I’m not taking over.”
“You’ve got my keys.”
Mara pulled back from the hug and looked down at the keyring in her hand. Dani’s little plastic skeleton hung from it, one arm missing.
“I knew that,” said Mara, putting them back and taking her own.
She grabbed her jacket from the coatrack and opened the front door.
“See you later,” Dani said, smiling.
“Later,” Mara said, and left.
Behind her, Dani swore at the toaster.
Mara closed the door and let the apartment’s warmth fall away behind her.
Outside, the city was still pretending this was going to be another normal day.
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
Across the city, in an Authority underground garage, rows of white vans waited in charging bays, washed clean from the night shift and plugged into the wall. Their shiny panels reflected the fluorescent lights overhead.
Officers moved between them in black undersuits, carrying helmets, checking tablets, loading field equipment into racks and containers. No rushing. No shouted orders. Calm, methodical, organised.
Van Twelve’s first pickup was still more than an hour away.
An officer crossed to it with his helmet under one arm. Without any armour, he looked tired and ordinary—just a man at the start of an early shift. The side door of the van was already open. He set his helmet on the floor inside, opened the passenger door and lifted the tablet out of the front console.
The screen lit up with the day’s jobs.
At the rear of the van, another officer loaded tether launchers into the inner wall rack, counted them, then checked that the latch was secure. "How many are we taking in today?" he asked, not looking up.
"Twenty-five across the sector." The officer kept reading the screen. "Only five yesterday."
"That's a jump."
"Well, they want them picked up before people realise what this is." He scanned quickly down the list of targets, then tapped on the first one.
The collection instructions appeared first.
LIVE VISUAL REQUIRED.
LIMIT EXPLANATION.
KEEP PUBLIC MOVING.
He pressed his thumb to the screen. The tablet accepted his print, assigned drone surveillance for the relevant contact window, and moved the first pickup from pending to active.
At the rear, the second officer worked his arms into the last piece of his armour. The van sat patiently, doors open.
The tablet now showed a name. A photograph. Her predicted morning movements:
CONTACT WINDOW: 8:20–8:40.
SEX: FEMALE.
AGE: 27.
SUBJECT LIKELY ACCOMPANIED BY ADULT MALE.
LOCATION: EAST BROADWAY / SEWARD PARK AREA.
By then, Mara Chen was outside her building, heading for the train that would take her to meet Jesper at his favourite diner near Seward Park.
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
Roosevelt Avenue was already moving, even if half the storefronts were still asleep. Delivery men dragged crates over the sidewalk. Steam leaked from a cart at the corner and blew sideways through traffic. A man in a puffer jacket shouted into his phone in Spanish, then changed to English halfway through the argument.
Mara kept her hands in her jacket pockets and walked fast, shoulders tucked against the cold, making herself narrow through the morning foot traffic.
Above the station stairs, one of the giant screens had changed overnight.
GRAND ALIGNMENT: 10 DAYS
KEEP YOUR BAND VISIBLE
KEEP YOUR DAY MOVING
She read the last line twice.
Keep your day moving.
Nice of them to worry about her schedule.
An Authority drone held position above the avenue, matte black against the pale morning. It hovered at the height where they always were—routine enough that most people had learned not to look directly at it. It made small corrections in the air, the triangular white status light steady at its base. It had been there long enough that people were already adjusting around it—heads dipping, bags shifting, a man near the fruit stand pulling his sleeve down over the green thread of light on his band, like he had meant to do it anyway.
It watched everyone below. Its query, when it came, went through the band.
Mara felt it find her as she reached the stairs: a short, sharp buzz beneath the smaller silver inlay at her pulse.
The strap tightened for half a second—dense, engineered fabric, slightly rigid at the edges, warm from her skin and nothing else.
Her band answered: Mara Chen. Aries. Suppression active.
She continued down the subway stairs.
The platform was crowded all the way back to the pillars. Mara leant against one, checking the latest news on her phone. A kid in a navy coat cried quietly into his mother’s coat. Behind her, someone’s headphones ticked with thin, leaking bass.
Near Mara, a woman was holding a paper coffee cup. She was mid-thirties, maybe, tired in the way that made age hard to judge. The woman’s band carried the same burnt-orange stripe, with the Leo glyph curled into the outer silver disc. She took a sip, made a face, then glanced once along the platform and pressed her thumb harder against the cup. A faint golden warmth showed between her fingers, and the seam on her band pulsed once.
Steam rose from the coffee.
It was nothing. Legal micro-use. Warmth—logged and measured. The Authority allowed that much, then spun it as generosity and lenience.
A man beside her shook his head and gave a disgusted sigh.
The woman ignored him.
He looked around first, checking who might agree with him. Mara saw the calculation before his mouth opened.
“Seriously?” he said.
The woman had the cup halfway to her mouth. She lowered it slightly. “Sorry?”
“You have to do that here?”
She looked at the cup, then at him. “I warmed my coffee.”
“Yeah, I saw.”
“It’s legal.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t.” He shuffled back a step, making sure she saw it. “I just don’t need it happening near me.”
Heat moved up under Mara’s tongue before she swallowed it back.
The train came in before the woman could answer. Air shoved hard along the platform. The doors opened and the argument was lost in the movement of bodies. The man stepped into the train first, his point made. The woman with the coffee waited one extra second, then followed.
Mara got into the same subway car as them.
She hated that she had done nothing. But she knew exactly what would have happened if she’d stepped in.
The car was overheated and packed, coats and bags making the crowd feel even tighter.
When a seat opened, the woman took it quickly and kept her eyes lowered. A little later, another one opened opposite her. The man claimed it, settling back with his chin lifted and feet planted wide, looking entirely satisfied with himself.
Mara edged down the car and stopped beside the woman, one hand closing around the pole, her banded wrist where he could see it, the Aries symbol catching the carriage light.
He saw it. His gaze flicked from the band to her face. She was waiting for him when it arrived.
He looked away first.
The woman glanced up and gave Mara a faint, grateful smile.
She was still holding on to the offending coffee.
Somewhere, the warmth in that paper cup was already logged.
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
By the time the train reached East Broadway, the windows had gone from black tunnel-glass to brief flashes of tiled wall and platform light. Mara stepped out with the crowd, let herself be carried up the stairs, and came back into daylight. After the subway heat, the cold cut clean between the buildings. Traffic dragged itself through the intersection in short, bad-tempered starts.
Jesper was where he said he’d be, standing outside the diner.
He was hard to miss. Tall, broad through the shoulders, red hair shoved under a black beanie, short red beard roughening his jaw. His nose had gone pink from the cold, making his freckles look darker against it. He had on his work jacket over a hoodie, hands shoved deep into the pockets.
From half a block away he looked like the sort of man people crossed the street to avoid.
Then Jesper spotted her and broke into a wide, excited grin, lifting a small brown paper bag like she was supposed to be impressed.
By the time she reached him, close enough to read her face, his grin had faded.
“You alright?” he asked.
“Fine.”
He waited.
“You look annoyed,” he said.
“That’s because I am.”
“At me?”
“Not yet.”
He took that in, then tipped his head a fraction.
Mara exhaled through her nose. “Someone on the train was being a dick.”
“To you?”
“No,” she sighed.
“Right.”
She gave him a look.
“Okay,” he said. “Not talking about it.”
He let it drop, but his eyes stayed on her a moment longer.
Mara looked at the brown paper bag, now tucked under his arm. “Please don’t tell me you already bought food. We’re about to have breakfast.”
“I was starving.”
“You’re holding food.”
“It’s emergency food.” He raised it slightly.
“What’s in it?”
He looked down, then back at her. “Food.”
“Jesper.”
“It’s one bun.”
“One.”
The bag crinkled under his arm. “One and a half.”
“How do you have half a bun?”
He glanced away. “Something happened.”
Mara almost smiled, which annoyed her.
“Inside,” she said before he could notice.
A small bell over the door jingled when Jesper shouldered it open. Inside, the diner was narrow and warm, the front window steamed at the edges from the cold outside. A counter ran along one side and booths along the other. No chalkboard trying to be charming. Just laminated menus, metal napkin dispensers, a coffee machine working through order after order, and a woman at the register who looked like she’d been done with people since 2009.
Mara had worked enough breakfast shifts for all of it to feel deeply familiar. Two construction workers ate at the counter, hardhats by their feet, laughing over their plates while they ate too fast. A woman in scrubs stood near the register, checking her phone while she waited for her coffee and bagel. In the last booth, a father in an office shirt watched his son drown pancakes in syrup.
Mara chose a booth far enough from the door to avoid the cold every time it opened. Jesper slid in opposite her, knees only just clearing the underside of the table.
He put his paper bag on the table.
“No outside food,” the woman at the register said from across the room without looking up.
Jesper froze with one hand already inside it.
One of the construction workers looked over and shook his head, amused.
Mara looked at Jesper, as he slowly eased the bag toward his jacket.
The woman looked up and fixed him with a glare. “I’m putting it away,” he said.
“You’re hiding it.” She tried to keep the stern look, but a smile got through.
A waitress came over with a pad. “You two ready?”
“Eggs, potatoes, sausages and rye bread,” Jesper said immediately. “And she wants egg-and-cheese on a roll.”
Mara looked at him.
He looked back, bland as anything.
“I’ll have the egg-and-cheese,” she said.
“Pickle on the side?” the waitress asked.
“Yes,” Mara said.
“Extra,” Jesper said.
Mara kicked him under the table.
“Ow.”
The waitress looked between them. “Extra?”
Mara handed the menu back. “Normal amount.”
“Coffee?” the waitress asked.
“Two please,” Mara said.
She brought the mugs first and filled them from a pot on her next trip past.
The place kept moving around them. The kitchen bell rang once, then again harder when nobody came fast enough. Above the register, the clock clicked over to 8:15.
Jesper’s phone buzzed. “JAVI” lit up his screen. He checked it, winced, and turned it over.
“You need to go to work?” Mara asked.
“After this. Javi’s got two motorbikes on the floor, a van half-stripped on the lift, and the owner standing there watching him work.”
“So go.”
“I worked late last night, so I’m starting later this morning.”
The phone buzzed again. This time he didn’t look.
“Yesterday Javi was going on about Authority vans hitting apartments and workplaces.”
Mara looked up. “Doing what?”
“That’s the part that keeps changing.”
“What do you mean?”
Jesper rubbed at a mark on the table with his thumb. “He’s heard that they’re pulling in people who aren’t even cuffed.”
Mara frowned. “No band? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know.” For once, Jesper didn’t reach for the joke waiting between them. “That’s why I want it to be wrong.”
Mara had been ready to dismiss it. Workshop gossip. Javi’s cousin’s neighbour had heard it from somewhere. The usual. But Jesper wasn’t treating it like the usual.
The waitress arrived with the food before Mara could respond, setting Mara’s plate slightly out of her reach. Jesper nudged it closer to her hand, then picked up his fork and started eating.
For a minute, the ordinary noises of the diner settled over them: cutlery on plates, the register drawer slamming, the cook calling food up through the service window. At the counter, the woman at the register told a man not to touch the pastry case unless he was buying a pastry.
“Jesper,” Mara said, pointing at his wrist.
A blob of egg yolk covered half the Sagittarius glyph on his band.
He gave it one careless wipe with the corner of a napkin and kept eating.
Mara shook her head. Jesper noticed, looked briefly pleased with himself, and took another large bite. He didn’t eat quickly. He simply never stopped, one steady forkful after another. Mara watched him with equal parts fondness and disgust. It reminded her of a dog she’d had as a child, whose face disappeared into its bowl at dinner time and didn’t re-emerge until there was nothing left.
By the time Mara had finished half her sandwich, almost all of Jesper’s breakfast was gone. He sat back, wiped his mouth and looked at the untouched half of her sandwich.
“No,” she said.
“I was just looking.”
She moved the sandwich closer to her. “So. Any progress with the food truck?”
“Depends what you count as progress,” Jesper said.
“Well, is the engine running?”
“Sometimes.”
“Have you driven it yet?”
“Not far.”
“How far?”
“Javi and two others pushed it across the workshop while I steered.”
An old food truck had come into the workshop a few weeks earlier and its owner had baulked at the repair bill. Jesper had spent enough time inside it and underneath it to become attached, so he bought it for almost nothing, got excited about bringing it back to life and named it Hot Mess.
“I’m hoping to have it up and running in a month or so. I’ll start serving a couple of basic things, see how that goes, then decide how much more money to sink into it.”
Through the front window, a little girl in a yellow jacket stopped near the glass.
She held a scooter by one handle and chewed the edge of her mitten, while her father crouched in front of her, fighting with the helmet strap.
The mother stood behind them with two shopping bags hooked over her wrist, watching the father make a mess of it.
He said something Mara couldn’t hear.
The mother laughed, quick and real, while the father kept fighting the buckle.
The little girl saw Jesper looking and stared back.
Jesper lifted one hand in a small wave because he waved at children and dogs and once at a mannequin he had mistaken for someone he knew. Mara had never let that one go.
The little girl waved back with her soggy mitten.
“Don’t,” Mara said.
Jesper looked back at her. “Don’t what?”
“Make friends through windows.”
“She started it.”
“She’s six.”
“She still started it.”
The woman from the register came past, looked at Jesper’s empty plate, the paper bag badly hidden inside his jacket, and the half of Mara’s sandwich now wrapped in a napkin beside his elbow.
“You done?”
“For now,” Jesper said.
The woman took the plates and left the check on the table. Jesper left enough cash to cover it as they began to get up.
Through the front window, the family had reached the crosswalk.
A white Authority van pulled in beside them, neatly aligned with the curb. Not screeching. Not dramatic. It slid into the morning as if it belonged there, clean and square and quiet.
Mara stopped halfway out of the booth, one hand still braced on the table.
It was taller than an ordinary van, all flat panels, black seams and dark glass. Only a small Authority triangle marked the side.
The family barely noticed it. The father glanced over his shoulder, then went back to watching the crosswalk lights.
Its doors opened and four Authority officers stepped out in pale grey armour, their visors down. Not riot gear. Not quite soldiers. Something more specialised. Their tether launchers—wide-muzzled, white and graphite—stayed low against their thighs.
Two of them walked straight toward the family.
The father saw them coming first and turned. He said something to the officers, too muffled for Mara to catch through the glass.
But she knew the shape of it.
Sorry. Can I help you? Some ordinary sentence reaching for ordinary rules.
One officer stopped in front of them. The other kept walking, passing the father before curving around to the far side of the family. The movement was casual enough to seem meaningless, until Mara realised he had quietly closed off the obvious escape route.
The mother drew her daughter closer.
The first officer lifted both hands, palms out.
The gesture was careful. Patient. For witnesses.
Above the scene, a drone dropped into place with a layered wasp-thrum: high insectile whine over the deeper pull of its ducted fans.
That was when the sidewalk began to change. Two people approaching from behind the family turned away rather than walk through the scene. Farther down the block, two NYPD officers held pedestrians back, watching the Authority deal with the family but making no move to intervene. A police uniform and sidearm offered almost no protection against someone who could set the whole street on fire with their bare hands.
The mother gently pushed her daughter behind her, the shopping bags slipping lower on her wrist. The little girl pressed against her leg.
The drone held above the street, compact and black, its shrouded fans making constant corrections. Its underside was crowded with lenses and recessed ports, all angled down around a steady white triangle. It already knew there were two bands on the other side of the diner window. Now it wanted to know who they belonged to.
Mara felt the scan before she looked up. It pressed against her pulse, then she felt the strap contract slightly—a small, creeping squeeze like something testing its grip. Closer than the scan earlier that morning. More deliberate. A moment later, Jesper looked down at his wrist as his band answered too.
“What did she do?” Jesper said quietly, staring at the woman and her family.
Mara tried to get a glimpse of a band stripe. A red status seam. Anything that made the scene make sense.
The officer nearest the mother said something. His voice stayed mild, as if the only problem were that she hadn’t understood him yet.
The mother listened to him then shook her head once.
The little girl looked up at him, not understanding a thing.
Mara’s fingers tightened around the strap of her bag.
Jesper saw it.
“Mara,” he warned.
The father was trying to stand in the right place and finding there wasn’t one. The mother had made herself a wall in front of her child.
She lifted one arm, maybe to pull the little girl closer, maybe to keep the officer back.
Her sleeve slipped back.
Bare wrist.
No band.
The cold went all the way through Mara when she saw it. She pushed the rest of the way out of the booth. Her hip caught the table; she barely felt it. She was already moving down the narrow aisle toward the door.
Jesper was right behind her.
The morning hit her as she pushed outside. Behind her, the diner door swung shut. The bell over the door gave one sharp jangle and fell silent.
The father was saying, “Sorry—sorry, what is this?”
“Step back, sir,” the nearest officer said.
“She hasn’t done anything.”
“She has been flagged for pre-Alignment assessment.”
One of the officers began preparing the restraints in the back of the van.
Jesper shook his head slowly. “They’re really taking her?”
The father went right up to the nearest officer. “No. Wait. She’s not—she’s not one of them.” He was explaining himself to people who hadn’t come to be explained to. “She hasn’t got a band,” he said, panic making him laugh in the wrong place. “Look at her. She hasn’t got a band.”
The officer’s tone did not change.
“We know, sir,” he said. “That’s why we’re here.”