Chapter 1: The Girl Who Looked at the Stars

The night sky always felt like a mystery waiting to be solved.

Rose had spent countless evenings on the rooftop of her modest home, tracing constellations with her eyes and wondering if someone—something—might be staring back. Maybe that’s what made her so curious. Maybe that’s what led her here.

The soft hum of a coffee machine buzzed in the kitchen as she tightened her ponytail, tucking strands of long black hair behind her ears. Her big green eyes blinked slowly in the morning light, still adjusting after another restless night. The sharp scent of dark roast filled the small house, barely masking the silence that lingered in every corner like a ghost.

Rose lived with her father, Dr. Charles Hartwell, once a bright and talkative man. Now, he rarely spoke unless necessary, burying himself in hospital shifts, emergency calls, and clinical studies. Her mother’s death had taken a part of him that never came back.

She was only eighteen when it happened.

Cancer. Fast. Unforgiving. The kind that didn’t wait for goodbyes.

Since then, Rose had filled the silence he left with books, microscopes, and late-night research articles. While other girls her age chased parties or perfect selfies, she chased academic journals and biology textbooks. Her dream had always been simple: to understand life itself, how it worked, why it failed, and maybe—just maybe—how to stop it from breaking down too soon.

And she was good at it.

Valedictorian. First place in her graduating class. Offers from public institutions and prestigious research labs flooded in, but her father’s old friend, Dr. Lionel Cross, had given her something better—an opportunity.

“Come work with me, Rose,” he had said after her graduation ceremony. “We’re doing things here no other lab in the country has clearance for. It’s private, discreet… but it’s real science. The kind that makes history.”

She had hesitated at first. Private labs always came with strings. But Dr. Cross wasn’t just anyone. He had been like an uncle to her since childhood, always slipping her new science kits every birthday and inviting her to shadow him at his clinic in the summers.

So she said yes.

And that decision had changed everything.

Rose now worked at Stellanova Research Facility, a place hidden deep within the forested outskirts of the city, guarded by high-tech security and silence. Officially, it was a life and earth sciences lab. Unofficially… well, there were things she still didn’t fully understand.

The work was unlike anything she’d ever imagined. Biogenetics. Experimental flora. Energy anomalies. Classified samples she wasn’t allowed to question. But she loved it—every test tube, every microscope slide, every data point made her feel like she was uncovering something the world wasn’t ready to see.

It was exciting. Addictive, even.

But it was also isolating.

Most of her coworkers were older, clinical, and secretive. She often worked alone, running cellular analysis on microscopic organisms or cross-referencing environmental samples with planetary data. Some nights she didn’t leave until the moon had taken over the sky.

Still, she preferred that to going home.

Home, where her father would be passed out on the couch, exhausted from another twenty-hour shift, the TV flickering silently in the background. Home, where the walls still held pictures of a woman who no longer existed.

Rose hadn’t fully processed her grief. Not really. She’d tucked it into the folds of her work, sewing her pain into curiosity. It was easier that way.

This morning, as she sipped her coffee and reviewed her lab notes, she felt a strange heaviness in the air. Not in the house—but in herself. Like something was approaching, something unseen but inevitable.

She shook the thought off and grabbed her backpack. Her phone buzzed with a message from Dr. Cross:

> “Urgent. Meet me in Lab 4 as soon as you arrive. Don’t speak to anyone. Level 7 clearance.”

Her heart skipped.

Level 7?

She wasn’t even Level 5.

She slid her phone into her bag, adrenaline starting to rise. There was a tightness in her chest that wasn’t fear exactly—more like anticipation.

Something was happening.

And whatever it was, it was going to change everything.

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