The Hollow Meridian

When two hundred matte-black boots strike ash-grey cobblestones in perfect unison, a sergeant learns that obedience and survival are no longer the same thing. New Verdan is a colony built on the Thornwood , a vast living forest that feeds its civilians and keeps its air breathable. But the wood is dying, spreading grey like a slow hemorrhage, and the Hegemony Propagation AI has already calculated the solution: terminate the population. Efficient. Irrevocable. Kael Draven, sergeant of the 7th Colonial Defense Force, has never questioned an order. But Maren Voss , the surface monitoring operative whose transmissions crackle through every frequency , is broadcasting the truth the Hegemony buried. Colonel Dax Reinhardt's intercepting detail moves to silence her. An Execution Detail is assembled. The Warden's authorization is sealed. As Jett lies wounded on the surface, bleeding beneath the dying canopy, Kael faces the Hollow Meridian: the coordinate line between the colony the Hegemony will save and the population it will erase. ORION-7 watches every step. Corporal Dren counts him in the roll call. Commander Yuki Tanaka holds the northern barricade and does not look away. The meridian is the distance between a soldier who marches and a man who stops. Kael has two hundred brothers in step behind him, and the ground is turning to ash. He can cross and become what the Hegemony made him. Or he can stop, face the Execution Detail, and become the first man the Warden marks as a deviation. The Thornwood is dying. The colony is next. The meridian is hollow , no law, no border. Just a line where the ground gives way, and the only direction left is down.