The Ash Below

The Ash Below

Author: Word Jelly M

 

I. Broken Earth

Dustan Vale had never seen the stars.

Not really.

The orbital dustfields left after the Burn-Off blocked most of the night sky over Zone 8. The government said it would clear in a decade. That was twenty-seven years ago. Now the ash just floated down, soft as snow, eating away roof tiles and old steel like it had teeth.

Vale rubbed it off his jacket as he stood near the outer fence of the Comms Yard. From the west came the low crackle of power lines. From the east, nothing—just black dunes and the distant echo of boots.

He lit a cigarette with a shaking hand. “You sure this is the spot?” he asked.

Behind him, a woman crouched over a rusted panel. Slim, tightly wound, scars crossing her knuckles like branches—Kessa, his contact. She didn’t answer until she had the relay open.

“They pinged a relay spike here, yes.” She tapped her transmitter, voice hushed. “Burst signal. Same structure as the last one.”

Vale narrowed his eyes. “And you’re sure it’s alien?”

Kessa looked up. “It ain’t ours. And it sure as hell ain’t corporate.”

 

II. The Quiet Kind

Back when the dust first came, people thought it was war. Then they thought it was climate collapse. Then they stopped thinking about it at all.

Now, they worried about the usual: food credit rotations, breathing filter rations, and the silent patrols of drones that never landed.

But some people noticed the anomalies—relay towers singing for no reason, children whispering coordinates in their sleep, drones redirecting mid-flight. A few claimed they’d seen “the Quiet Kind.” Humanoid, hairless, silent, eyes like molten glass.

The government denied they existed. But Vale had seen one. Two years ago.

It didn’t move like a person. It watched like one.

 

III. A Message in the Static

The relay was buried under six feet of sand and scrap, but Kessa’s gear picked up the pulse: a steady five-note chime that repeated every twenty-seven seconds.

Vale tapped it out on his thigh, frowning.

“You recognize it?” she asked.

“It’s a start-sequence code. From the old lunar mining rigs.”

Kessa raised an eyebrow. “You saying the aliens are using our codes?”

“No,” he said slowly. “I’m saying someone’s been talking to them.”

They looked at each other for a long time. Then Kessa quietly shut the relay and said, “We need to find the others.”

 

IV. The Outer Rings

The next three days were a blur of dust, hunger, and exhaustion. They crossed forgotten trade tunnels and burned-out shield posts, moving only at night. It wasn’t just the drones they were avoiding now—it was people.

Zone 8 had factions. Most didn’t care what you believed. Only what you brought with you. Food, information, fuel. Loyalty.

Vale and Kessa brought none of those.

But when they reached the ruins of an old observatory outpost in Zone 10, something shifted.

The tower was still intact. A body hung from the top rail. Stripped. Sun-bleached. Its limbs bent wrong.

Inside the facility, under layers of soot and silence, they found what they were looking for: another relay.

And beside it, a symbol etched into the wall—spirals made from three interlocking rings.

“That’s not human,” Kessa whispered.

“No,” Vale said. “It’s theirs.”

 

V. Interference

Back in the capital, Commander Loran adjusted the tuning dial of his surveillance feed and watched the Zone 8 footage shimmer into focus. A voice beside him coughed—Agent Merral.

“They’ve activated three nodes now,” Merral said. “Old World frequencies. Hybrid modulations. Looks like they’ve made contact.”

“With the Quiet Kind?”

“With something. Could be a faction playing at ghosts.”

Loran leaned forward, face unreadable. “Send a clean-up team. Quiet. And if they’re speaking for something off-world… I want to know what it’s saying.”

 

VI. The Stranger

They found her near the canyons.

She wasn’t breathing, exactly. But she was alive.

Vale held his pulse rifle tight as Kessa knelt beside the figure. Humanoid. Ash-colored skin, like ceramic. Blood? Maybe. Maybe not.

The woman—if she was a woman—opened her eyes. They glowed faintly orange.

“You…” she said, and the word cracked like ice under weight.

Kessa leaned closer. “Do you understand us?”

“No.”

Pause.

“Yes.”

The being sat up slowly. Her spine moved wrong. Like there were too many bones.

“I am Syen.”

“Are you one of the Quiet Kind?” Vale asked.

“No,” Syen said, tilting her head. “They are gone.”

“Gone where?”

“They left when the ash began to think.”

 

VII. Signals in the Dust

Syen didn’t sleep.

Instead, she stood outside their shelter each night, head tilted toward the sky, fingers twitching in the ash. She didn’t eat either, but sometimes she touched the dirt, murmured numbers, then fell still.

“She’s calibrating,” Kessa said. “Like a compass.”

Vale rubbed his temples. “To what?”

Syen answered from behind him: “To the song they left behind.”

 

VIII. The Broadcast

It came without warning. Every screen, every broken transmitter, even the old motion-billboards flickered on for nine seconds. No video. Just sound.

The five-note chime. Over and over.

Then a voice.

“The one who thinks in ash has cracked the sky.”

People lost their minds.

In Zone 3, mobs burned every drone port they could find. In the capital, the government declared a blackout and martial protocol. In the Outer Zones, factions began to vanish without trace.

And in Zone 10, Vale, Kessa, and Syen sat in silence.

“They’re coming back,” Syen said. “Not to land. To decide.”

“Decide what?”

“If you’ve learned to stop destroying your own.”

 

IX. Capture

The clean-up team found them by the heat signature of Syen’s skin.

Kessa didn’t go down easy—she took out three before they cuffed her. Vale was quieter. He’d expected this.

Syen said nothing as they dragged her away. But the dirt around her had started to glow.

In the capital, under the Grand Dome, they interrogated her. Her answers came in loops. Metaphors. Songs that made the glass hum.

“The sky is not empty,” she told them. “It is waiting.”

Loran tried to threaten her. She didn’t blink. He tried to bribe her. She just stared at the lights in the ceiling.

Then she smiled—slowly, deliberately.

“You taught the ash to think. But not to feel. That’s why you failed the first time.”

 

X. Fracture

Two nights later, an orbital tremor split the outer moon in half. No explosion. Just a tear.

And every Zone—1 through 12—lost power.

The sky above the capital cleared for the first time in decades. Stars spilled across it like a wound.

And hovering in low orbit, silent and massive, were three obsidian shapes. No lights. No sound. Just presence.

The factions scattered. Drones fell from the sky. And people looked up, truly looked, for the first time in a generation.

In the darkness, a new chime played.

Six notes.

And every child who heard it began to hum.

 

XI. Ashkind

Vale and Kessa were released, dumped near the ruins of Zone 7.

No one stopped them.

Syen was gone—vanished from every feed, every sensor.

But something had changed.

People were listening.

Not to governments. Not to broadcasts. To the silence between things.

Vale lit another cigarette, watching the ash swirl upward for once, as if rising toward something.

“You think they’ll stay?” Kessa asked.

“No,” he said. “But they left a mirror.”

She looked at him.

“What do we do with it?”

He dropped the cigarette. Crushed it under his boot.

“Try not to flinch.”

END.

 

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