Author’s Note

I have always been drawn to the question “What if?” What if the world we know tilts just a little further into chaos? What if the things we take for granted—air, food, a stable climate—were no longer certain? These questions sit at the heart of my writing.

Fast Moon: Book One grew from imagining a future where the world’s condition has worsened: the average temperature continues to rise, the air grows thinner, and most of Earth’s fauna slips into extinction. What if survival becomes less about progress and more about endurance? What if the remnants of humanity must navigate not only a harsher planet, but the darker corners of their own choices?

This book is my attempt to capture that tension between the familiar and the speculative—where today’s warnings become tomorrow’s reality. It is also only the beginning. I am already working on the second book in the Fast Moon series, which will dive deeper into these questions and the characters shaped by them.

Thank you for stepping into this world with me. I hope it lingers with you, not only as a story but as a thought experiment: What if this could happen? And what would we do?

If you would like to continue the journey, you can join my reader group by subscribing to my newsletter. You can also read more about me and my work here: reelikalootusbooks.com.

— Reelika Lootus

 

 

Copyright © 2025 by Reelika Lootus
Published by Blockrat OÜ

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means—including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods—without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews, articles, or scholarly works.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For permissions requests, please contact the publisher at:
info@blockrat.eu
ISBN: 978-9916-4-3322-5

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

Torches flicker from behind, closing the distance fast. Annie glances back over her shoulder, trying to keep her balance. Quiet but nimble footsteps—too many, too heavy—send chills down her spine. And it’s hot. Damn hot.

“Don’t look back.” A voice says—steady, as though the speaker wasn’t running. “Keep your pace!”
Commanding, but with a comforting authority—this is a voice she wants to follow.

She wraps her arms tighter around the tiny bundle she’s holding, pressing it close to her chest as she does her best not to fall behind. The deep darkness from minutes ago is already giving way to dim light, revealing rocky walls bending over them.

“Keep running—almost there,” she hears, hissed through his teeth.

They must be close to the opening of the tunnel by now. The hot wind and the dampness it carries glues strands of hair to her face, blurring her view. But she keeps running.

Until firm hands stop her.

“No!” The word flies from her mouth. “No … we need to stay together…” She presses her face into his chest, sobbing quietly. “…We have to protect her… We need to stay together…” She keeps whispering, listening to the galloping of his heart, hoping their plan isn’t about to take the worst turn possible.

“Darling…” he says, his whispered words rasping in his throat. He swallows. “…you know we can’t. We have to—”
He pushes her back, eyes widening, peering off behind her.
After a moment, he grabs her once more, holding her tight between his arms. “Go! You know what to do. Go!”

Annie turns, gently hugging her now stirring baby closer. Her throat is tightening, her eyes welling. She tries to force the feeling down but is unsuccessful. She coughs out a cry as she moves through the cave’s exit where the fast-moving moon is spilling it’s silver light, showing the path she’s meant to take.

 

 

 

Kadri jerks awake. Covered in cold sweat, she swipes her forehead with the back of her hand.
The dreams—they’re more frequent now.

Sweltering afternoon heat dances just beyond the window. Hot air shimmers, twisting the daylight, changing the view from nothing into something. When the far mountain tips finally kill the sunlight, the heat hardly fades. Night offers no relief.

Another screech. Clanging, squealing, a horrifying rumble surges closer. Then it passes, leaving the air trembling in its wake. Kadri counts the seconds until the sound is gone completely. Silence returns. Only the hum of distant industrial clatter remains… and the wind, that constant, howling wind.

She paces. Fast, but quiet. Back and forth. Eventually she stops by the worn-out dark green couch in the far corner, furthest from the window. She sits, still but anxious, eyes tracking the dust motes as they drift in the last rays of the setting sun—still burning hot.

She leans back, careful not to rouse the old springs of her seat, listening to the apartment’s ostensible silence. Faint noises from the street bleed through the walls, broken only by the rhythm of her own heartbeat, which rhythmically dampens the sound of things as it continues to squeeze blood through her veins.
Soon. Soon the day will be blissfully quiet.

Her fingers unconsciously clutch a flat black gadget until it’s slippery with sweat. She wipes it on her trousers, the heat of her skin drawing her focus back to it. She tries scraping dirt from its edge with one of her nails, but she’d just recently cut them—they’re too short to be useful.
Phone—that’s what they used to call it, back when people used these sorts of things.

For a moment, she stares at the dark screen, watching her smudged reflection. Then she taps twice on its centre.

Despite its age, it still works.
“Keep it safe. This one’s the only one you can use. It’s not trackable.”
Her mum had repeated this as far back as she can remember.

She thumbs in the code.
“I’ll come later today.” It’s a text from exactly a week ago. Then she taps open a file and finds an old video she knows well. Muted—there was never any sound. Her mum had told her to keep this one. She’s never explained why.

“Never forget this. Never delete it,” she’d said. “Study what they have, the secrets they carry. One day, you’ll appreciate what this is showing you.”
Her voice echoes in Kadri’s head, but as the video plays, all she sees are random clips—it’s all she ever sees: smiling faces, then serious, angry, ones. Trees. Animals. It’s a life she never had.
It feels unreal.

Then the video shifts. Clip after clip, the world turns darker, becomes what it is now. Kadri sighs.

Her head slowly drops back, eyes wide, gaze pinned to a blank patch on the yellowed ceiling.
“Where is she?” The question spins in her mind, as it’s done a million times now. She’d always come back before nightfall. Always.

Kadri has never understood why her mum insisted on trying to protect her. She’s strong. She can handle herself. The city isn’t so dangerous… not if you know the rules.

She breathes in short bursts, syncing the rhythm with her pulse, hoping it’ll calm her down. It doesn’t.

Time creeps.

“Up. Kad, should the need arise, you have to go up.” Her mum’s voice again. Agitated. Ominous. Her request had never made sense.
“But why?” she’d replied.
“Just listen. It’s not safe here… it won’t be, not after.”

This is it, “after.” Kadri swallows hard. The thought has been with her for a while. She’s never truly considered going “up.” Going up is suicide.

Her eyes sting. She blinks, hard. It helps a little. Then she pushes herself upright.

She slips into her long dark brown duster, pulling up the hood before putting a thin black leather jacket over it. This wasn’t for warmth. It’s never been about warmth. But the sun, the wind, the dust and sand would torture her skin if she let it, skin she must hide.

She studies her bleached brows and lashes in a large mirror that takes up most of one of the walls, bending closer to get a good look. Carefully, she inserts colourless lenses. No foundation tonight, not like in hours of daylight, when she has to blend in, has to be acceptable, normal.

“Well, Mum… I’m invisible. And I’ve trained, just like you said. I never stopped. Not even after you left,” she whispers to the mirror like it might answer back, like her mum might come out of the bedroom at any moment to check on her.

“But you’re not here,” she says, scanning the small flat. She sighs.

In minutes, it’ll be dark. Her skin tone will help her blend better now—hide faster. By sunrise, she’ll be far from this cursed city. Most likely fighting for my life, she thinks. The words feel sharp in her skull.

She wraps a scarf around her hair, and looks at herself in the mirror one last time. She looks like any citizen in this dying world, yet mismatched.
She looks like her mum. Different.

Her eyes sweep the room. She grabs a folded piece of fabric from the table. It’s heavier than it looks, covered in tiny glassy plates—a solar charger, modified.

She wraps it carefully around the phone and slips the whole thing into the inner pocket of her jacket. A risk. But she takes it.

She checks the lining, the zippers hiding the truth. Water supply—still secure. Her inhaler—still there. That’s all she needs.

She keeps counting trains as they pass, eventually flipping on a light, staying away from the window. It was a ritual, one followed every night, though this night was different. Now she’d wait until the street noise die, until the ground stops shaking, until there are only distant roars from off in the dark.

She left me alone… The thought gnaws at her, a rising panic threatening her logic. Something’s happened. Kadri knows it. Her mum would never leave her like this.

Bad things always come too suddenly.

She counts to a hundred. Then she does so again. Now. She judges it safe, switching off the light and moving slowly over to the window. She stares at the huge silver moon—no edges, no detail. Heat rises from concrete and stone, blurring everything.

She focuses on the empty streets. No movement. No visible threat. But she knows better than to let herself feel comfortable.

They’re watching her—they always are.

 

CHAPTER TWO

The moon shines brightly over the quiet of NetherHafen, a town blown through by emptiness. To look at it is to feel as if the whole world had been abandoned. The night is young. Hours remain before the city awakens—before its inhabitants crawl out of tunnels, as the burning sun rises, and the underground transport starts again, bringing muffled metallic squeaks to the surface.

Soon, just because they have to, the old pavement on the surface will fill with people desperate to hide from the sun, their heavy gasps and coughing saturating the air, mingling with the irritating smell of sweat and grime. But for now, the night still offers some respite, relative though it may be.

A man pauses at the corner of the street, then walks forward only to stop again, uncertain of what to do or where to go. A now-familiar, yet still strange, sickening sensation—like someone squeezing his heart—rises in his chest.

He remembers how it started: the cold metal against his neck, the sudden shock of an injection, the dizzying sensation as icy liquid flooded his system. Yes, this peculiar anxiety had never been there before that moment, and now it both bothers him and, inexplicably, brings him relief.

Nervously, he briefly moves before stopping yet again.

Shadows shift in the dark. He knows a shadow’s owner never means well, but he can hear their breathing—wheezing here, there, and further off. It’s easy to locate them—as long as he can quiet his own breath. He knows they’ll be gone soon; they’re weak. They need to hide and rest.

Not long after the silent sizing up, the shadows and the people who brought them move on. His gaze fixes on a single lit window on the fourth floor of a red-stone apartment building. He softens his breathing even further—now the sole sound beneath the bluish light of the night sky. Taking a couple of steps back, he ducks beneath the bleached sunshade of a house across the street, now holding his breath to listen. His gaze remains locked on that one window.

Despite his breath control, his anxiety stays with him as he rolls down the leather of the glove on his left arm, confirming that another hour has passed. It’s time to send another message to his master.

NO CHANGES, he types. That is all.

He knows the master doesn’t like it. Even though he never receives a reply, he knows this silence signals discontent.

For a moment, he looks down at his boots. Rats scurry through the filthy streets, emerging from their lairs—the empire they’ve built beneath the roads and houses. After kicking one aside, he lifts his gaze back to where it should remain.

The light is gone.

It takes him a second or two to find the window again. The same had happened yesterday, and the day before. It’s been the same for weeks, he notes to himself; the girl must know she’s the mouse in this game.

“I’m getting tired of this scene,” he mutters under his breath before turning abruptly and walking away.

His slim figure, clad in dark clothes that hug tight to his form, melts into the shadows.

Months have passed like this. His assignment: babysit the girl.

He doesn’t know the purpose of his mission—only that his target, whom he’s forbidden to kill, looks different from anyone else in this ghastly city, despite her desperate attempts to blend in. And blend in she does. She’s good at hiding.

Suddenly, he stops. Something feels different. He closes his eyes, tilting his chin slightly, as though he can see something in the night sky through his eyelids. That familiar squeezing sensation around his heart is still there, always there; only now, for reasons he can’t be entirely sure of, nor does he care to be sure of them, he feels it as a sign, a signal to himself, that his target is near. A faint smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth in recognition.

Yes. That must be why.

He turns back, moving faster now, sticking close to the walls and lightening his steps on the concrete. He goes back around the last corner he’d turned, trying to catch up with the thoughts racing ahead of him.

She can’t be far. He feels it.

He likes working at night. It’s the only time the air is remotely breathable. The humidity drops. The temperature becomes almost tolerable. And the sun’s deadly beams no longer scorch the earth.

It’s the only time the city gets a brief respite from its endless fight for survival—for air, for water, for life itself. It’s the time they should feel most alive, yet they spend it resting instead.

Before turning the next corner, he pauses, listening to the wind rustling through the leaves.

This street—lined with trees—is unique, the only one in the city. In fact, he’s pretty sure it’s the only place in the world where anything green still grows. Acid rain and ultraviolet rays have done their work over the century, yet these old oaks still stand, majestic, perfectly lining the two-lane boulevard. Only seven remain, shielded from direct sunlight by worn grey covers, their roots watered by pipes that draw from a treatment plant. Water good enough for trees but not for citizens; however, most have no other choice but to drink it anyway.

His gaze flicks over some strange shadows in the distance. They might just be a symptom of his tired mind, he tells himself, as his eyes scan the faintly glowing bluish street. Then again, they could also mean success. He studies the dark corners and shadowed spots. Rustling leaves cover the sound of footsteps nicely, and the pillaring plants are great for hiding behind; it’s a good place to lose someone.

He stands statue-still, ready to catch his prey even without seeing her. But he can feel her, smell her fear, imagine her gasping for air not far from him.

And afraid—she should be afraid; no creature like her should roam the streets after nightfall.

He counts the minutes in his head, unwilling to so much as raise his wrist and risk giving away his position.

Restlessness creeps in, but he knows patience always pays.

Several minutes pass. He’s still motionless, still scanning.

Finally, he spots movement beneath the fifth oak tree, but he isn’t quite convinced—not yet. It could be his eyes playing tricks after staring so long into the dark.

He hates that.

Seconds later, his gaze locks on a moving figure. Her outline slips smoothly between the trees, pausing behind each trunk before sprinting again.

She’s good.

He lets her pass, his eyes following her, breath held. Only when it’s safe does he move.

Slowly, he lifts the air scarf from his neck, adjusting the netted breathing hole until only his eyes remain exposed. Pressing his back to a wall, he lets his silhouette blend with the night.

He waits. Then follows. Five blocks along, he finally understands they’re leaving the city.

Even in his line of work, he knows never to go out there. It’s been drilled into them all. Realising this, the path they’re taking begins to fill him with something unfamiliar.

Dread.

Fear.

It all seeps into him, stiffening his joints, strangling his breath, letting only his racing thoughts remain in motion.

What if she goes too far…?

 

…

The still, discernible contours of the city lie far behind, with a dead, quiet wasteland yawning in between.

Though he can’t see them, he can hear the faint hum of electric guard fences in the distance. From here, the urban jungle they call home looks abandoned, but he knows the truth.

He must be mad to have accepted this job, he thinks now.

In haste, before he can think on things further, he fixes his gaze ahead on the silhouette moving, cat-like, up towards the mountain road. The distance between them grows too quickly.

This girl is crazy. Truly crazy...
He repeats these words in his head, matching them to the rhythm of his heavy steps.

Even though he’s only just resumed, he’s forced to stop again, bent over and breathless. His chest tightens, lungs scraping raw. Instinct claws at him—reach for the inhaler, pull it free, breathe. His hand twitches at his pocket, but he doesn’t. Not yet. He has to save it for later. For when it’s worse.

Forcing himself onward, never losing sight of the girl, he presses on.

The torture in his chest and the burning sensation in his lungs compel him to rip open the tightly fastened collar around his neck and pull the airscarf from his face, but this brings little relief.

The dust—relentless and invasive—finds its way into his lungs, eager to finish him.

Anguished, he turns his eyes to the cloudless night sky, silently pleading for more time, but every agonising breath draws him closer to the moment when the burning sun will rise behind the mountain.

He feels the pressure of every inhale; it’s unbearable. His lungs are aflame.

Desperately, he raises the inhaler to his lips, draws in one fierce breath of relief. His chest loosens, but only for a moment. The burn claws back, sharper than before. With a ragged curse, he lifts it again—another dose, deeper, greedier. Lifting it to eye level, he shakes it. Nearly empty. He has no choice. He must keep going. There’s no going back now.

More than the fear of his master—or the certainty of death—he feels a strange, personal pull, an inexplicable, consuming interest. He hasn’t the slightest clue as to why this girl matters so much to him, why he seems drawn to her, but here he is.

The deep dust clings to his boots, leaving a floating trail behind his faltering steps, the particles slowly vanishing in his wake.

The full moon looms above, majestic and mocking, its light betraying the girl’s easy, graceful movements up the distant slope.

She seems impossibly far—yet agonisingly clear.

Draining the last furious sip from the small inhaler, he collapses onto the narrow path.

His eyes remain open, locked on the girl’s shadowy figure as it disappears from sight.

Dust swirls around his fallen body, invading his already faltering lungs, suffocating him slowly.

I will not die. I will not die like this. I will not give up...
These thought loops through his mind, uncoiling with growing intensity. His will is strong, but his body refuses to obey.

Blinking heavily, he struggles to move his hand, managing only to pull the airscarf back over his face.

“Yes... come back...” he whispers. The words are barely audible, hope flickering in his chest.

Something stirs. It moves closer—just a hint of its presence.

But then, the dark shadow remains still. Watching him.

“No, no, no... keep moving... come to me...” he gasps, the plea escaping in a hoarse whisper, barely carrying beyond his lips.

His ears buzz, distorting the sound of his own voice into something alien, something far away.

A long way up ahead, a dark form uphill blurs and blends with its surroundings.

He squints, trying to assess its size. It seems larger than before, heavier, somehow.

He wonders if he’s delusional. The girl was slim, fragile. Nothing like the hulking shape before him now.

The air shifts. He feels it as something distinct.

Then everything goes black. Blissful, quiet darkness envelops him.