Chapter 4: Recruiting the Crew

Act I: No One Saves the World Alone

The Erebus hovered in silence above Earth’s atmosphere, cloaked in layers of distortion that bent light, radar, and probability itself. From the pilot’s seat, Thomas Morgan watched the planet turn slowly beneath him—blue, fragile, alive.

He had seen Earth from aircraft before. From satellites. From grainy recon feeds.

This was different.

Up here, there were no borders. No flags. No ideologies. Just a single world spinning quietly through the dark, unaware that something ancient had finally noticed it.

Despite the vastness of the Erebus—the impossible technology, the power humming beneath his feet—Thomas had never felt more out of place.

“So,” he said at last, breaking the silence, “this is the plan.”

“Yes,” Solace replied, its voice calm and unchanging. “You possess the genetic compatibility to pilot the Erebus. You do not possess the full range of expertise required to utilize it effectively.”

Thomas snorted. “You mean I can’t save the world by myself.”

“Correct.”

He leaned back in the seat, rubbing his hands together slowly. For years, he had survived by minimizing dependence—on people, on systems, on promises that rarely held. Trust was expensive. Isolation was predictable.

But predictability wouldn’t stop an interstellar empire.

“Specialists,” Thomas said. “That’s what you called them.”

“Individuals whose knowledge, skills, and perspectives increase collective survivability,” Solace replied. “Your species refers to this as a team.”

Thomas exhaled. “Yeah. I know the word.”

The irony wasn’t lost on him. He had spent years avoiding exactly this—responsibility for others. Now the survival of billions depended on his ability to convince a handful of people to follow him into something they could barely comprehend.