They Were Never Here — Part 5: Static in the Sky

 They came faster than we expected.

I barely had time to pull Kas and Milo out of the bunker before the drones descended—sleek, black things with wings that didn’t flap and eyes that didn’t blink. They didn’t make sound like machines should. Just silence, and that silence followed you.

We ran, ducking beneath branches and roots, the forest working with us. Like it remembered, too.

We made it back to the edge of the city by nightfall.

And that’s when we saw it.

The sky—glitched.

Like a broken TV, the stars wavered and then reset. Entire constellations disappeared and reappeared in the wrong places.

Kas whispered, “The signal’s messing with their architecture. They built their lies into the fabric of our reality. Now it's unraveling.”

Billboards flickered. Signs changed. News broadcasts cut to static, then came back with anchors blinking, confused, murmuring, “We interrupt this program…”

People were waking up.

But not all at once. Some were screaming. Some just collapsed, overwhelmed. And others—those with glossy eyes and calm smiles—they didn’t seem surprised at all.

Milo called them “Deep Sleepers.”

“They’re the ones who were rewritten the deepest. You know them by how peaceful they are when everyone else is losing their minds.”

He was right.

At the corner of a shattered café, a man sat sipping a cappuccino calmly while buildings shook and alarms blared. He looked at me.

“You shouldn’t have remembered,” he said.

Then smiled.

And vanished.

We found a safehouse in what used to be a library. Real books, real paper. Smelled like dust and truth.

That night, Kas hacked into a closed government node. We watched as resistance cells lit up like fireflies on her screen—Berlin, Mumbai, Nairobi, New York.

“It’s happening,” she whispered. “The signal worked. We’re not alone anymore.”

But I could feel it. In the back of my mind, something knocking. Something trying to rewrite me again.

I grabbed a pen, and began writing this journal. My words. My voice. My proof.

Because they’re already adapting.

At 3:17 a.m., I woke up to Milo shaking me.

“You were talking in your sleep.”

“What did I say?”

He hesitated.

“You kept repeating one sentence: ‘I am not me.’”

Tomorrow we move again. South, toward the Signal Tower. That’s where it all started, and maybe where it ends.

But if I don’t make it—

If they take this from me again—

If you find this journal, and nothing feels quite real—

Ask yourself one thing:

Who told you the sky has always looked like that?