The air inside the command center buzzed with barely contained tension, but for once, Elara felt herself drifting—detached from the present, her mind pulling her back to where it all began. The team wasn't just assembled overnight; each of them had arrived here through a series of choices, circumstances, and sometimes, sheer luck.
And in many ways, it all started with Ezra.
Nine Years Ago – The First Connection
The war-torn outskirts of Algiers were far from the sterile halls of a research facility. Dust hung thick in the air, and the distant echoes of gunfire reminded Elara that this wasn't the place for mistakes.
She had been here under the guise of an academic mission, a classified study on geopolitical destabilization and the role of advanced technology in modern warfare. But in reality, she was hunting for a different kind of intelligence—something that had been leaking through secured channels, bypassing firewalls as if they were wet paper. Someone was broadcasting coded messages using a system that shouldn't even exist.
That's when she met Ezra.
He wasn't the rugged field agent she'd expected. He was perched on an old crate, adjusting an improvised transmitter, dressed like he belonged anywhere but here. A hacker, a signal expert—one of the best in the world, if the classified files were to be believed. And, most importantly, a thorn in the side of every intelligence agency that tried to recruit him.
"You're not with them," he had said before she even introduced herself. "If you were, you wouldn't have found me."
Elara had smirked. "And yet, here I am."
Ezra had stared at her for a moment before chuckling. "Fair point. So, what does an overqualified scientist want with me?"
She didn't answer right away. Because, truthfully, she hadn't expected to like him.
But she did.
What followed was a strange, reluctant partnership. Ezra helped her track the signals, and in return, she pulled him out of Algiers before the wrong people found him. He never fully admitted who he was running from, only that he had "crossed some lines" he shouldn't have. But he owed her after that. And Ezra always paid his debts.
Seven Years Ago – The Divergence
Dana had been a different story.
By the time Elara met her, Dana was already deep in government contracts, a rising star in quantum data analysis. Unlike Ezra, Dana had never been outside the system. She was methodical, disciplined, and believed in the chain of command.
Their first meeting had been at a classified facility, analyzing anomalies in deep-space signals. Back then, the "observer" theory was still just an idea, a curiosity to be shelved alongside a thousand others. But Dana had seen something in the patterns—something that no one else had noticed.
"They're watching," Dana had whispered one night, long after the other analysts had left. "Not interfering. Just… watching."
Elara had frowned. "How do you know?"
Dana hesitated, then tapped on her screen. "Because the moment we started analyzing them, they started analyzing us."
It had been their first real breakthrough. The first time Elara realized that Dana wasn't just another analyst—she was a visionary.
But Dana had resisted joining the team. Unlike Ezra, she wasn't running. She had security, a structured life. It had taken years—and undeniable evidence of something bigger—to convince her to leave it behind.
Four Years Ago – The Breaking Point
The last piece of the puzzle had been Prometheus itself.
By then, Elara, Ezra, and Dana had already worked together on several classified operations. They had history. But when the first real hints of Prometheus surfaced, everything changed.
What had once been theoretical became undeniable. Prometheus wasn't just an idea. It was active. Moving. Adapting.
The team had been formed out of necessity. It wasn't about trust—not at first. It was about survival. They needed each other, whether they admitted it or not. And as the years passed, they became more than just colleagues.
They became a unit.
Present Day – Back to the Storm
"Elara?"
She blinked, snapping back to reality. Ezra was standing beside her, hands in his pockets, his usual smirk replaced by something softer. "You good?"
She exhaled, rubbing her temple. "Yeah. Just thinking."
Ezra tilted his head. "About what?"
She glanced at Dana, who was analyzing new data at the console. At the screens filled with unknown variables. At the anomaly growing more unpredictable by the second.
"About how we got here," she said finally. "And where we're going next."
Ezra followed her gaze. "Funny. I was just thinking the same thing."
For a moment, the past and present blurred together, and Elara felt the weight of it all. Every choice, every risk—it had all led to this moment.
And whatever was coming next, they would face it together.
To be continued…