Above Us – Hostile Aliens / Friendly Aliens – Paperback

ABOVE US
Hostile Aliens / Friendly Aliens

Daniel Hart is a signal repairman. Radios gone quiet, aerials bent by wind, small boxes that carry a voice from one room to another and then, one morning, carry nothing but hiss. People bring him the hiss and ask him to find the voice inside it again. Most of the time, he can.

Then, one night above his town, a line of stars goes out. It comes back, one by one, as if nothing had interrupted it at all. There is a hum with no source, and lights moving in the sky that make no sound. Daniel writes it down, plainly, before the morning can explain it away – because he has made the mistake of writing “nothing” once before, and he will not make it again.

What follows is not a single visitation. It is a presence above an ordinary town, visitors who do not agree with each other, and a conspiracy underneath it, built from rooms inside rooms, a deal no one will admit, and explanations that change every time they are questioned.

Lena Marsh is looking for her brother Milo, an engineer who has vanished into that hidden arrangement. Sara Reyes, a pilot, carries a recording of an impossible encounter in the air, and a rewritten report she does not believe. Silas Grant, the Keeper, holds a list he can no longer carry in silence. Cole, the neighbour, remembers everything a little too well. Aeliana, a tall, pale stranger, warns Daniel – and warns him that a warning can also be a price. And Nina, a girl nearby, drew what she saw in the sky accurately, before adults told her what to draw.

Daniel’s search for the truth will cost him. A broadcast traced back to him. Evidence he gets wrong. A choice with no clean answer, and a sacrifice that cannot be undone. Lena must decide what she will – and will not – pay to bring her brother home. Milo, when he is found, must decide whether he is still himself. And the town, divided and afraid, must decide together whether to accept protection, or to hold the square and refuse, knowing refusal has a price too.

ABOVE US is a full-length, cinematic science-fiction conspiracy thriller: fast, human, and unsettling, about hostile visitors, friendly visitors, and the space between fear and trust where a town’s freedom is decided. It is fiction, based on stories and claims people tell about visitors, secret programmes, and lights in the sky – and it asks, all the way to its final, ambiguous signal, what we are really agreeing to when we say yes.