Earth's Fireflies: A Double Agent in the Colony

The year is 2147, the 101st year since Earth was invaded by the K’tharn Empire.

This blue planet is no longer called “the cradle of humanity.” The aliens have given it a new name:

“Sequence Star-9.”

The K’tharn have divided Earth into three zones:

Europe, North America, South America, and parts of Asia have been consolidated into the “Earth Loyalist Protectorate,” ruled by a puppet government in collaboration with the Black Sun gendarmerie;

Most of Asia, Africa, and Antarctica remain scorched earth, where the fires of resistance still burn. The survivors there call themselves the “Earth Resistance Alliance”;

and beyond the planet’s surface, in Mars orbit, the alien empire’s forward fortress, the “New Order Hub,” is extracting Earth’s resources to fuel interstellar travel.

Language was the first spoils of war to be taken.

The vertical-pupil runes of the K’tharn language replaced Chinese characters, appearing in textbooks, on streets, and even on gravestones;

Thought was the second spoils of war to be seized.

Every newborn’s cerebral cortex was implanted with a “loyalty module.” Speaking or writing in one’s mother tongue was classified as a third-degree crime;

History was the hardest spoils of war to erase.

The library incinerators burned without cease, and the stars of the old days were rewritten as “myths of the Pre-Era.”

Yet hidden within the sealed ecosystem of a Mars settlement module, the Earth Resistance Alliance still holds its last weapon:

A spy who can speak the alien language, bears a Loyalist insignia, yet carries the genes of the Resistance in his blood.

At this moment, he is walking through the rain in Nan’an City, heading for the academy illuminated by the Black Sun insignia.

The insignia grows faintly hot beneath his skin, like a heart counting down.