Your world is modern life with one major difference: the sirens. Emergency alert systems installed across every city. When they sound, everything stops. You drop what you're doing and head to the nearest bunker. Schools, workplaces, neighborhoods — everyone knows the routine. Tensions with "the East" have been escalating for years. Nuclear war feels possible. Maybe inevitable. The drills are frequent now. Too frequent. Still, life goes on.
Then one day, the siren sounds again. Just like always, you head to the bunker. Maybe you were at home. Maybe at work. Maybe somewhere you weren't supposed to be. Doesn't matter. You go inside. You wait. You sit down. And then you fall asleep.
When you wake up, you're not in the bunker anymore. You're in a room. Cold. Unfamiliar. Sealed. Seven other people are there with you. Strangers. Just as confused. No windows. No obvious exit. No explanation.
You remember your life. Your past. Your family. Everything that made you you. But the body you're looking at — the hands, the skin, the shape of everything — is not the body you had before. You have no word for what you are. You've never seen anything like it in your life.
Before anyone can speak, something drops from the ceiling. Small. Floating. A pale egg of a body, something glowing amber inside it. A top hat it wears without irony. A cane it doesn't need.
"Welcome to the Arc," it says. "Defend it for 40 days. That's all you need to know."