Rejected by the Alpha, Claimed by the Beast
They didn't hit the ground; they dissolved into white static before they could touch the slums below.
"What... what is that?" Elara whispered. She had crawled out from behind the glass wall, her eyes fixed on the empty space where the clouds used to be.
Behind the sky, there were no stars. There was no space.
There was **Metal**.
Massive, rusted copper pipes, thousands of miles long, crisscrossed the "Outer Heaven." Huge, glowing vacuum tubes, the size of mountains, pulsed with a rhythmic, orange light. We weren't on a planet. We were inside a **Machine**.