Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead

Can you imagine how life will be in 3019? Exactly a thousand years from 2019 human life would be very different. All the fossil fuels have been long depleted. The human race will have to face far more bigger challenges as they are unknown to how enormous amounts of energy is supplied to them to keep the futuristic lifestyle going. There comes a helping hand from another planet! But they ask a heavy price in return for all the energy they will supply to Earthlings. Heinous crimes are committed, humans turn against humans and the whole of humanity is ultimately at stake. Romance will brew, darkest of betrayals will be felt, deception will be the norm and survival will be the end game. Join this adventure with Rosa and unravel the mysteries to see what lies ahead in store for the human race.

Some people are trained to disappear. Others are trained to make problems disappear. Reid Calder operates in the space no one admits exists. His team is untraceable, unacknowledged, and brutally efficient. They are deployed when the mission cannot fail and cannot be traced. Control is the only reason it works. Distance is the only rule. Alexis Harper is not part of his system. She’s a linguistic and counterintelligence specialist designed for environments Reid’s team can’t survive. Unassuming when she wants to be. Invisible when it matters. Dangerous in ways that don’t leave bruises. She’s placed into his unit without his consent, into a world built on silence and authority, and she refuses to play small. They clash immediately. Reid sees her as disruption. Alexis sees him as arrogance wrapped in control. Their arguments are sharp, relentless, and impossible to ignore. Every room tightens when they’re together. Every exchange feels like a challenge neither is willing to lose. The closer they’re forced to work, the more volatile the tension becomes. Because some battles aren’t about dominance. They’re about restraint. And when two people trained to never lose control are pushed into constant proximity, the fallout is inevitable. Proximity Hazard is a slow-burn, enemies-to-lovers romance packed with covert operations, razor-sharp banter, forced proximity, and tension so thick it borders on reckless. Perfect for readers who crave dangerous men, brilliant women, and chemistry that feels like a threat.

To scrape together my mother's surgery money, I worked myself to the bone at this company for three straight years. My performance was always number one. By myself, I supported half the sales department. Then, a newly hired HR director decided every desk needed an AI camera, claiming it was to optimize efficiency. Every blink, every breath I took was measured and calculated by the system. "Warning. Employee Nathan Gray blinked more than twenty times within one minute. Mental distraction detected. Fine: 50." "Warning. Employee Nathan Gray took 3.5 seconds to drink water, exceeding the standard by 1.5 seconds. Slacking detected. Fine: 100." "Warning. Employee Nathan Gray's mouth corners drooped for over thirty seconds. Suspected spread of negative emotion. Fine: 200." The most ridiculous part was the way he stood in front of the entire department, pointing proudly at my data on the giant screen. "See that?" he said smugly. "This is the power of technology. In front of AI, you lazy freeloaders have nowhere to hide. Nathan, your bonus for this month has already been wiped out by the system. If you don't like it, get lost. Plenty of people are lining up to take your place." What he didn't know was that the AI system he trusted so blindly had its core code written by me. Tonight, I was going to show him what happened when he angered the one who built the machine.

On my way to a meeting at work, I call my daughter, who is at home. Instead, I hear a voice identical to mine over the phone. She claims that she is me three years in the future. "Dezarae, go home to Liv right now. Your daughter is in danger." I am stunned. I argue in disbelief and question who is behind this prank. When I step on the accelerator, she stops me sternly. "Do not drive ahead any further. There will be a traffic accident at the intersection where Peace Street is." In the next second, at the intersection that is less than 30 feet away from me, two cars collide. Cold sweat starts to trickle down my back when the woman with a voice identical to mine says, "Liv will fall off a building and die in three hours. This is your only chance to save her."

When the mission ends, the real war begins. Captain Jack McCormack has lost everything that mattered. His partner, Lieutenant Michelle Richards, was killed during a covert operation in Iraq—her death a brutal reminder that even the best can fall. Months later, his ASIO team—friends, family in all but name—were systematically executed during a routine bonding session at a suburban paintball park. It wasn’t an accident. It was a message. Now isolated and hollowed out by grief, Jack tries to disappear into the shadows. But when a dangerous new synthetic drug called Supernatural starts flooding the city streets, he’s forced back into action. Jack knows this drug. He’s seen what it can do—what it did before, in a mission buried so deep it was meant to stay forgotten. With ASIO compromised and political forces tying his hands, Jack turns to the only people he can trust—his retired SAS brothers, elite operators with scars of their own. Together, they launch a black-ops investigation to uncover who’s behind Supernatural… and why the same shadows keep reaching into their past. But some ghosts aren’t just memories. Some are still alive.

My sense of direction has always been terrible since young. Getting lost is a norm for me. When I was eight years old, I had to face the worst consequences of getting lost. That time, I almost got kidnapped by human traffickers. So, my older sister, Aubrey Cochran, gifts me a GPS watch and repeatedly teaches me how to use it. "As long as you follow the GPS, you can find your way home. Have you remembered it yet?" I nod heavily. Since then, the watch stays strapped onto my wrist. But later on, my adoptive mom has found her actual son. That's when the entire family's attitude toward me begins shifting. They no longer panic even when I don't return for the day. This year's Thanksgiving holidays are coming soon. Aubrey decides to take me on a trip out of the blue. Our trip lasts for more than a dozen days. Our last stop is a remote village. There, Aubrey takes my watch from me and fiddles with it for a long time. At the start of the next day, I can't get in touch with her no matter how hard I try. As I stare at the unfamiliar GPS coordinates on my watch, I feel realization dawning on me immediately. When I'm about to leave, a villager looks at me in confusion. "You're leaving too, eh? Where are you headed to?" I smile at her. "I'm going home." Since Aubrey doesn't want me anymore, I shall grant her wish.