Lady Arya

Project Genesis

After what felt like hours, the doors to the holding room opened again.The low hum of the space shifted as more lottery winners were ushered inside, their footsteps echoing briefly before being swallowed by the quiet of the large room. Cora watched them file in, cataloging faces without meaning to. It had become a habit of being a nurse - counting people, noting posture, gauging fear. What held her attention more, though, was the soldier. He had arrived not long after she and Jack, and hadn’t moved since. Bald-headed, broad-shouldered, standing upright near the wall with his hands resting beside him. No pack. No bag. No visible personal effects at all. He stared straight ahead, unblinking, as if still waiting for orders no one else could hear.

Cora’s gaze shifted back to the newcomers. A young couple entered first, fingers interlaced so tightly their knuckles had gone pale, foreheads nearly touching as they whispered to one another. Behind them came a handful of singles—men and women, mostly around her age, give or take a few years. Strong bodies. Clear eyes. People who still looked like they had time left in them. She noticed the pattern without wanting to.

Looking back down, she found Jack sitting cross-legged on the cot. He had pulled his favorite toy from the pack—a small, scuffed animal with one ear half-missing. He ran his thumb along its fabric absently, grounding himself in something familiar. Cora swallowed and looked away.

An officer entered moments later, followed closely by two security personnel. The room seemed to tighten around them. The officer carried a tablet tucked neatly against her chest, her expression calm and neutral in the way that suggested she’d delivered this speech more times than she could count.

“Attention, please,” she said, her voice carrying easily without amplification. “We will begin personal effects processing shortly.”

A ripple passed through the room—bags pulled closer, arms wrapped protectively around packs, shoulders drawing in.

“Only issued equipment will be permitted through the tear,” the officer continued. “All other items must be surrendered at this time. Please form a line.”

No one moved. The words settled heavily, hanging in the air like a test no one wanted to fail.

Then a woman about Cora’s age stood abruptly, her movements sharp, almost defiant. Her jaw was clenched, eyes bright with restrained panic.

“Even pictures?” she demanded. “They’re just paper.”

The officer met the womans gaze evenly. “All non-issued items. This was addressed in the letter you received, no exceptions.”

Whispers spread through the room like static.

Slowly, deliberately, Cora reached into her pack. There wasn’t much left. She had already stripped her life down to survival—clothes, essentials, nothing sentimental. Or so she’d told herself. Her fingers closed around the thin fabric bracelet Jack had made her from scrap thread, colors faded and uneven. Beneath it, Adam’s ring. Worn smooth from years on his hand, then hers. Warm, somehow, despite everything. Her chest tightened.

She couldn’t.

“Form a line,” the officer said again, her tone unchanged. “If you refuse to surrender any non-issued items, you will not be permitted through.”

The finality of it struck harder than the words themselves. Slowly, people began to move. Some hesitated, staring down at their packs as if weighing the mass of memory against the promise of a future. Others stepped forward quickly, eyes down, already resigned. A few clutched items to their chests for a moment longer before letting them go. The woman who had asked about pictures didn’t move.

“I’m not giving them up,” she said, voice shaking now. “They’re all I have left.”

The officer didn’t say anything. She simply nodded once. The security personnel stepped forward.

“No,” the woman said, backing away. “You said we were chosen. You said—”

Her words dissolved into panic as one guard took her arm. She struggled, desperation sharp and sudden.

“You can’t do this,” she cried. “I passed! I did everything right!”

The room froze.

The woman’s cries echoed as she was escorted toward the door, her voice breaking into sobs that cut off abruptly when the door closed behind her. Silence followed. No one spoke. The line formed more quickly after that. Cora stood when it was her turn, her movements careful. She knelt in front of Jack, taking the stuff animal from him. Jack started to reach for it, crying out, as she kept it out of reach. She stood and stepped forward, her hands trembling as she placed the bracelet, the ring, and Jack’s animal into the collection bin.

Her gaze met the officer. No words exchanged, just a look that could possibly kill.

Cora returned to Jack, her chest aching, her hands suddenly empty. Jack didn’t understand and she couldn’t explain it to him. She picked him up and headed back to the corner of their small world. Their cot. She felt every sob, every tear of her boy on her shoulder.

Everything. That was the cost of a new life.

Project Genesis

If you wish to join, see original check.

roleplayerguild.com/topics/197488-pro…

Project Genesis

Apologies on the delay... opening post is up...

Project Genesis

The world did not end in fire or flood. It ended in accumulation. Centuries of extraction, expansion, and waste pressed down on the planet until it could no longer recover. The air thickened first, microscopic plastics, chemical residue, particulate ash, each generation breathing in a little more damage than the last. By the time filtration became mandatory, the atmosphere itself had turned hostile. Breathing became mechanical.

On the surface, no one stepped outside without a breather mask. Those who did rarely lasted long. Lung failure was common, sudden, and merciless. Cities thinned out, then hollowed entirely, leaving behind rusted transit lines and skeletal high-rises half-buried in smog. Above it all, the domes rose. Vast aerial cities floated beyond the densest layers of pollution, self-sustaining and sealed. Inside, the air was clean. Food was cultivated beneath artificial suns. Children grew up believing the sky had always been blue. The domes were not advertised as escapes—only as innovations but everyone on the surface understood the truth.

The surface endured on what was left. Oxygen credits. Rationed water. Bartered survival. People learned to measure time in filter cycles and replacement parts. Life did not stop; it simply narrowed. Then, in one of the last regions still unclaimed by development, reality failed. The anomaly appeared without warning—a distortion so profound it confused satellites and silenced instruments. Light bent inward. Sound vanished at its edges. Matter behaved unpredictably. It was not an explosion, not a weapon, not a storm.

It was a tear.

The response was immediate. Megacorporations seized the region, fencing it off behind layers of steel and armed security. Research facilities rose where there had once been nothing but dust and dead ground. Scientists were flown in from every remaining institution, their conclusions suppressed until control was absolute. What they discovered changed everything. The anomaly was a temporal rupture, a doorway into Earth’s distant past—sixty-five million years before the present. A world untouched by industry waited on the other side.

Humanity called it hope.

Project Genesis was announced within the month. Officially, it was a preservation initiative—a controlled effort to ensure the continuation of the human species by establishing a sustainable population in Earth’s pre-collapse era. Passage would be limited. Selection would be precise. The future could not be left to chance. A processing facility was constructed at the edge of the anomaly, designed to filter people as ruthlessly as the world now filtered air. Every entrant would be evaluated, cataloged, and prepared. Nothing personal passed through unchecked.

---

By the time Cora Taylor reached its perimeter, she had already walked farther than most people dared. Her boots crunched over cracked concrete as she followed the final set of coordinates, the facility emerging through the smog like a deliberate intrusion. Steel walls rose high and seamless, floodlights cutting sharp lines through the haze. Armed guards moved along elevated walkways, faces hidden behind opaque visors.

Cora slowed her pace, adjusting the strap of her pack as her lungs burned faintly behind her mask. Twenty-seven years old, she thought distantly. And already running out of time. She hadn’t taken a transport. She couldn’t afford one. Instead, she’d followed maintenance corridors, abandoned rail lines, and surface maps traded for more than they were worth. Every step closer had felt heavier, as if the world itself resisted being left behind.

At the outer checkpoint, she stopped. Beyond the gates lay clean air, controlled light, and the machinery of humanity’s last attempt to save itself. Cora stood there for a moment longer than necessary, staring at the structure that would decide whether she went forward or stayed to die with everything else. She turned back just long enough to make sure Jack was still right behind her, his small boots struggling to keep pace with hers. His breather mask was too large for his face despite the child-sized fit, the straps pulled tight enough to leave faint red marks along his cheeks. He held his pack against his chest with both arms, as if afraid it might be taken from him.

Cora held out her hand “Stay close,” Cora said, slowing her stride, her voice muffled by the mask The little boy caught up, taking her hand.

The gate sealed behind them with a deep, metallic thud that echoed across the checkpoint. For a moment, the sound felt final—like a door closing on the world she had known her entire life. The security corridor was narrow and deliberately plain. Just smooth steel walls and overhead lighting that hummed faintly as they walked. Armed guards stood at intervals, motionless except for the slow tracking of their visors. Jack’s fingers curled tighter around her hand.

At the end of the corridor, a scanner frame rose from floor to ceiling. Pale blue light pulsed softly within it, waiting. A security officer stepped forward. His voice was calm, practiced. “Please step into the frame one at a time.”

Cora crouched in front of Jack, bringing herself level with him. She adjusted the seal on his mask, smoothing his hair back where it stuck up.

“I’ll go first,” she said. “Then you.”

Jack hesitated. “You won’t disappear?”

Her chest tightened.

“No,” she said firmly. “I promise.”

She stepped into the frame. Light washed over her, warm and vibrating, sinking deep into her bones. Her vision blurred for a moment as the system cataloged her—age, mass, respiratory damage, genetic markers. She kept her eyes forward, jaw set, refusing to show how exposed it made her feel.

“Clear,” the officer said.

Cora stepped out and turned immediately. Jack shuffled forward, eyes wide. The light rose around him, softer somehow, the system adjusting for his size. He stood perfectly still, shoulders squared, doing exactly what she’d taught him to do when he was scared. The light faded.

“Clear,” the officer repeated.

Jack ran to her side without being told, pressing himself against her leg. Cora rested a hand on his shoulder, grounding them both.

“Please proceed to intake,” the officer said, already turning away.

Beyond security, the corridor opened into a wide atrium. The air shifted immediately—cleaner, cooler. Cora felt the difference even through the mask, her lungs easing despite years of damage. An attendant waited just inside, her uniform a neutral gray. She glanced down at Jack, then back at Cora, her expression unreadable.

“You may remove your breathers here,” she said gently.

Cora nodded. She knelt again, unclasping Jack’s mask first, then removed her own mask. The air filled her lungs without pain, and for a moment she had to steady herself. The attendant gestured down the hall. “Security intake will escort you to holding, joining the others in your group.”

Taking her son’s hand once more and followed the guards down another corridor and into a larger room. The holding room stretched wide beneath a low ceiling. No windows. No visible exits beyond the sealed doors they’d entered through. The walls curved slightly inward, subtle enough to go unnoticed unless you were already on edge. Cots lined the perimeter in neat rows, each identical. At the foot of every cot sat a folded blanket, thicker than anything she owned. Others filled the space, all staring at the newly entered duo.

“Let’s get settled, I’m sure they will tells us what’s next…” She squeezed her boys hand, guiding them toward an empty cot near the edge of the room. Cora helped Jack climb up, then draped the blanket over his legs. He settled in quicker than she had thought. Sitting on the edge, she placed her head in her hands, letting out a slow breath of exhaustion.

Project Genesis

Please add your characters! I'll get the first post up within the next day or so.

Project Genesis

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Cora Taylor...

.................................................... __________________________________________ 27 | Female __________________________________________ R O L E: ・Nurse __________________________________________

.......................................... H I S T O R Y Cora began her life always looking up. She wondered when she would see that “blue” sky that she had only read about. From a young age, Cora was inherently shy. She preferred observing to speaking but when she did people listened. Beneath her quiet demeanor was a keen sense of empathy. She was the girl that shared her lunch (for what little she had) to others who had none. Her traits were not her weakness but a strength that would lead her down a path that would she had only dreamed of. Through her schooling and a bit of luck, she was admitted to nursing school. Every chance was for her to prove her worth. While her more outspoken classmates shone in group discussions, her strength was in her rotations. Her quiet nature allowed her to listen and observe her patients, noticing small changes in behavior or vital signs. It was with her natural abilities that gave her a reputation, earning trust in both doctors and patients. As school finished, she found herself in one of the local clinics, where she met her husband Adam. A man with kind eyes, a booming laugh and a wild spirit that was perfect for her quiet reserve. Their relationship wasn’t dramatic in any sense; it was comforting and filled with understanding. They married a year after they met in a small private ceremony. With life uncertain on the surface, it seemed their dream of a family was decreasing over the last two years. Though, one fall night, their lives changed. A test turned positive and months later, their son, Jack, was born. An energetic child who seemed to take on more of his father’s qualities than hers. However, they were both hers and she couldn’t have been happier. Six months before she received word that she had been picked to go to through the portal, Adam was killed in a small riot at the clinic. Jack had been sick, while she opted to stay home that day. Her husband had tried to fight off the attack when he was caught in the cross fire. Cora’s world had turned upside down in a blink of an eye and now still piecing herself back together, she must face this new journey alone. Keeping strong for Jack and a silent promise to Adam to continue on.

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Hexcode . | . #4390da ........ Faceclaim . | . AI Generated ........ Creator . | . Zoie Hart

Project Genesis

Welcome!

Original Interest Here

Players:
@Zoie Hart - Cora
@Ducksworth - Chrys
@Dpmoc - Rancho
@deegee - Perez

Project Genesis

@Ducksworth @Dpmoc@deegee

Thank you for the interest! I will get the opening post and actual role-play forum started in the next few days!

Project Genesis

@Dpmoc Thank you for your interest. Please check your PMs for more information. :)

For everyone else...looking for another two. hoping for another female character.

So far we have:
Nurse (me)
Engineer (Dpmoc)
Solider (Deedee)

Project Genesis

@deegee Thank you for your interest. Please check your PMs for more information. :)