EPISODE: 1: Freefall
POV: ALITA
The pod tore through Xanadis's atmosphere like a steel comet, and I pressed my palms against the walls as though I could keep it from killing me.
There were no lights. The only illumination came through a window no larger than my hand, and through it I could see the outside of the pod wrapped in fire — orange and white streaks of superheated air peeling away from the hull as we fell. Everything shook. The walls rattled against my back and shoulders, the floor juddered beneath my feet, and the roar outside was so loud that my own screaming barely registered even to me.
Any moment the pod would hit the ground. With nothing to strap me in, nothing to hold me down while I inevitably plunged to my doom within a steel coffin.
I tried very hard not to think about that part.
I squeezed my eyes shut, and the events that had brought me to this moment raced through my mind.
"Miss Alita Asmora, daughter of Lord Keith Asmora..."
The courtroom. Six deities seated in a row like a wall, and one empty chair among them where Sansora-Kel had sat. The man who would replace him stood at the back, watching, and I remember thinking that he did not look sorry in the slightest, about the former deities demise.
"You have been found guilty of the murder of the seventh court deity Sansora-Kel. You have also been found guilty of plotting against the good of the empire."
The court room had been completely, terribly silent. Every face turned toward me.
"Your advisor has pleaded for your banishment to the penal colony on Xanadis. There you will either live out the rest of your life on the hostile planet or perish in its environment. There will be no chance for you to return. Do you accept this sentence? If not, you will be publicly executed."
I looked to the side and found Varin. He stood among the guards, his eyes full of anger and regret. He had spent two weeks trying to stop this — arguing, investigating, calling in every favor he had. None of it had been enough. He gave me one small, terrible nod.
"I — I accept the terms," I managed. My voice wavered on the first word as I felt the last visage of hope flee my body.
And just like that, it was done.
For a murder I had not committed. For a death I had walked in on — Sansora-Kel already dying, already past saving — only to have evidence of the poison found in my quarters the next morning. My father had spent his life fighting the empire's penal colony project, the practice of exiling criminals and dissenters to uncharted worlds and calling it mercy. When he died, I had taken up his work. Apparently someone had decided that work needed to stop, and that getting rid of me was the easiest way to do so.
As the trial ended and I was pulled into an isolated holding cell, Varin came in — they had given him ten minutes to say his goodbyes.
He pulled me into a hug. "Alita, this isn't the end." His voice was quiet and certain in the way it got when he was lying to comfort me, and we both knew it. "Xanadis is just a way to buy time. I'll figure out what happened, I'll prove your innocence, and I'll bring you home. I promise, sis. All you have to do is find somewhere safe. Just a few days. Find food, water, shelter, protection if you can... just until I can get you out."
He quickly slipped something into the sleeve of my uniform, then turned me around, gathering my hair to weave it into a braid. The cool metal of the small remote pressed against my forearm, blending almost seamlessly beneath the convict bodysuit I was forced to wear. Varin leaned in close.
"It's a tracker beacon," he breathed against the back of my neck, keeping his voice low, as if he were afraid there might be cameras in the room. "Keep it on you, and don't let anyone see it. So long as you have it, I'll be able to find you."
I stayed silent. If he was caught giving me this, I wouldn't be the only one facing trial.
The bang on the door came exactly as our ten minutes came to an end. Varin stepped back with a sorry look, then offered me his hand, and I took it.
They marched us to a small drop-ship. I could only walk numbly and stare blankly ahead. I'd known nothing but these walls made of steel and concrete all my life, and within minutes, everything I'd ever known was going to be taken away from me.
When I saw the escape pods bolted to the hull — I understood exactly how this was going to go. Barely enough room for one person. No padding. No straps. Just a steel box with a hatch and a window the size of my hand.
Varin went pale.
A guard entered a code and the pod door slid open. Varin started saying something, but rough hands grabbed my arm and pulled me away before he could finish. I was shoved onto the ship and watched as the door started to seal shut behind me.
As the door shut, the world I knew disappeared, and when they forced me into the pod — everything I had once known fell away.
The memory dissolved back into the present: the roar, the rattling, the fire. My hands were numb where I had been pressing them against the walls. Fresh tears had dried on my cheeks as I hyperventilated, trying and failing to get ahold of myself.
The shaking grew suddenly, violently worse. The alarm inside the pod began to scream, a metal plate whipped through the air, grazing my arm, and any remaining pretense of order fell apart. I squeezed my eyes shut and braced myself against the pod's interior — and then the pod made landfall.
My body was thrown forward. My head struck metal.
And everything went dark.
POV: UNKNOWN
I traced my fingers over the tracks in the mud, a low growl rumbling in my chest. The tracks were days old. I stood tall and let my tail sway behind me in slow, agitated arcs.
The trail I had spent two weeks following had gone cold. The human had slipped me again. I pushed forward through the undergrowth, scanning for anything I had missed: a broken branch, a disturbed stone, the faintest impression in the soft earth where a boot had pressed. Nothing. I was on the verge of snapping and losing all sense of control over my anger when something made me pause.
A light in the sky.
I looked up through the canopy at the star-filled darkness and watched something fall from above — blazing through the black sky and trailing fire — as it crashed into the trees a few miles to the east with a sound like distant thunder. The forest lit up brilliant and brief, before everything went dark again.
I held very still.
I grinned and immediately changed direction.
The hunt was back on.
EPISODE: 2: First Light
POV: ALITA
I opened my eyes to light —bright and blinding— as it streamed through the cracked hatch of the pod, so different from the artificial light I was used to.
For a long moment I just lay there, staring upward while my thoughts dragged themselves into place. I was alive. I had no particular right to be, given what the last few hours had involved, but here I was.
My head throbbed where it had struck the hull. My hand instinctively rose to my temple, fingertips brushing dried blood near my hairline. I took stock of these things carefully, the way you do when you need to establish that all the parts are still working before you ask them to do anything.
The hatch groaned when I pushed it. Sunlight flooded the pod completely as the hatch lifted upward. I climbed out carefully, boots slipping against scorched metal before hitting solid ground.
I looked up, and my breath caught in my throat.
The pod had carved a deep crater into the earth. A lush, vibrant jungle stretched endlessly beyond the crash site in every shade of blue and green imaginable. Towering trees with silver bark rose high above, forming massive canopies tangled together in layers. Thick vines draped between branches like woven cables while enormous flowers and ferns of various types filled the forest floor beneath them.
The heat hit me first. Not the dry recycled warmth of ventilation systems or the stale artificial climate of Krosa's lower sectors, but something alive, humid and heavy against my skin, thick with moisture and unfamiliar scents. Every breath tasted foreign.
The grass beneath my boots was deep sapphire blue. I kneeled down and hesitantly touched it, feeling its cool strange texture.
I could hardly comprehend the fact I was standing on an alien planet. Two red suns hung low in the pale red sky, and beside them two of the planet's seven moons still lingered in the afternoon haze. All I could do was sit there and stare out over the horizon and treeline, as my mind registered that this was really happening.
I stood there for a long moment contemplating everything that had happened. Under different circumstances, I might have been able to appreciate all of this, but I couldn't let my guard down. This wasn't some vacation or exciting extraterrestrial exploration – I was now standing on one of the most dangerous planets ever to be discovered by the empire. One that was known for being inhospitable and has been marked as uninhabitable thanks to the endless dangers it houses.
steadying myself and steeling my nerves, i turned back to the drop pod and scavenged the supply bag within, I gave myself exactly as long as it took to confirm the pod's supply bag was a deep disappointment — a knife, a notebook, a pencil, a flask, spare clothes, nothing else — and then I started walking.
I spent the rest of the day moving through the forest with my eyes on the ground and my hand near the knife. I had read enough to know that, on Earth, bright colors meant danger but this world was vastly different. Several times I heard something move in the undergrowth and found myself stopping in my tracks or holding my breath until it stopped.
I had only taken a few steps before I heard movement behind me.
I turned and froze.
Something rose from the grass a few feet, swaying gently, unbalanced, like a puppet on a string. It wasn't an animal. It was some kind of vine, blue-tinted and covered in long black thorns. I stared at it in stunned fascination as it slowly inched closer, as if seeking me out. instinctively I took a step back.
The vine snapped forward and wrapped tightly around my wrist.
I yelped and stumbled, trying to yank free, but the harder I pulled, the tighter it constricted. "H-hey! Let go!"
The vine jerked, dragging me toward the treeline. More movement followed. Additional vines slithered from the bushes, writhing across the ground toward me.
Panic surged through me. I dug my heels into the dirt and clawed at the vine, barely managing to wrench my wrist free before falling hard onto my back.
Another vine immediately coiled around my leg.
I screamed as it dragged me across the ground toward a dark burrow beneath a massive tree. Dozens of smaller vines writhed inside the opening, surrounding a horrifying maw-like pod lined with rows of thorny, tooth-like protrusions.
My stomach dropped.
I grabbed desperately at a nearby root to stop myself from being pulled inside. The vine tightened painfully around my leg, thorns piercing through my suit and into my skin.
"Please—!"
My hand fumbled for the knife at my belt. With shaking hands, I slashed downward.
Green liquid splattered across my hands as the vine recoiled violently with a shrill hiss, retreating back toward the burrow. The others followed immediately after it, disappearing into the darkness like wounded animals.
Breathing hard, I scrambled backward until my back hit a tree trunk. My leg throbbed where the thorns had pierced flesh.
I didn't stop to recover.
The second I could stand, I started to run.
I ran until my lungs burned.
Branches clawed at my clothes as I pushed through thick blue undergrowth, too terrified to slow down. Every rustle behind me made my heart leap into my throat, every dangling vine looked ready to grab me again.
Only once the jungle finally grew quieter did I stop.
Bent over and gasping for breath, I looked around wildly. No vines. No movement. Just dense forest stretching endlessly beneath the fading red light of the twin suns sinking beyond the canopy.
Night was coming.
A chill crept down my spine as the jungle around me began to change. Strange noises echoed through the trees, followed by distant cries of animals, and rustling somewhere high above the canopy.
I tightened my grip on the knife and forced myself to keep moving, this time slower and more cautiously.
That was when I spotted it.
A burrow hidden beneath a cluster of tangled roots at the base of a massive silver-barked tree. The entrance was narrow but deep enough that I couldn't see the back of it.
I hesitated. After the vines, the idea of crawling into another hole on this planet felt unbelievably stupid.
Still... being out in the open after dark felt worse.
Carefully crouching near the entrance, I picked up a fallen branch and poked inside first. Nothing moved. No hissing vines. No teeth.
I exhaled shakily and crawled a little closer to inspect it when suddenly a deafening cry echoed somewhere far off in the jungle.
The sound was massive. Deep. Almost bird-like, yet distorted into something monstrous.
My blood ran cold.
Without thinking, I scrambled into the burrow and pressed myself against the back wall, clutching the knife tightly against my chest.
Outside, the last light of the suns disappeared beyond the trees, and I drifted off to sleep.
A sharp crack echoed from somewhere just outside the burrow.
My eyes snapped open instantly.
For a brief, disoriented moment, I forgot where I was—then reality came crashing back all at once. The jungle. The crash. The things lurking outside.
My heartbeat lurched painfully against my ribs as I pushed myself upright inside the cramped hollow.
Silence.
The chirping insects and distant animal calls from earlier had vanished completely, leaving only the faint rustling of leaves swaying in the night breeze.
Holding my breath, I carefully peered out from the burrow entrance.
Moonlight spilled through the trees in pale silver beams, but the jungle beyond remained thick with shadows. I could barely make out the shapes of twisted trunks and dense undergrowth. Nothing moved.
I waited several long moments, listening for another sound.
Nothing.
Slowly, I crawled out of the burrow and stood, stretching my stiff muscles with a wince. My entire body ached from sleeping curled up in the cramped space. My head still throbbed from the crash, and my throat felt painfully dry.
As I glanced around warily, something nearby caught my attention—a faint shimmer reflecting moonlight through the trees.
Curiosity pulled me closer.
A shallow ditch cut through the ground a few meters away, rainwater pooled at the bottom. The surface reflected the moons overhead like a mirror.
I crouched beside it and drank greedily until the burning dryness in my throat finally eased.
Breathing slower now, I stared down at my reflection wavering across the water's surface.
My long white hair hung in a loose braid over one shoulder, strands sticking out wildly from sleep and panic. Dirt smudged my face. I looked exhausted.
I sighed and used some of the water to wash my face.
At least I was alive...I just needed to hold out for a few days until Varin came for me.
I could do that... right?
The water gradually stilled...And only then did I realize I wasn't alone— something stood behind me in the reflection.