Foreword

Sci-fi often likes to promise us gods and grand destinies. It gives us chosen ones with immaculate weapons, benevolent artificial intelligence coming to save the day at the eleventh hour, or miraculous cures discovered just before the credits roll. CARRIERS was born out of a very different, quieter question: What happens to the regular people when no savior is coming? When the sky fractured and the prion spread, it didn't choose saints or heroes. It caught sheriffs, doctors, mechanics, parents, and frightened children off-guard in the rain. They weren’t trained to rebuild civilization—they were just trying to get through the night without letting their hands shake too noticeably in front of the people depending on them. This story is a survival thriller, but at its heart, it is about trauma, memory, and endurance. It is about what happens when the past isn't just something you remember, but something you literally carry in your blood. It's about how fear makes monsters out of good people, and how hope—real, stubborn, inconvenient hope—is an active choice you have to make over and over again, even when every metric tells you to give up. To everyone reading along as this 40-chapter serial unfolds across Inkitt, Tellura, and beyond: thank you. Thank you for stepping into the damp woods of Tillamook, for sitting with these characters in their quietest, darkest moments, and for carrying this story forward alongside me. Keep your head down, hold onto your humanity, and mind the electrical tang in the air. — Nexus Prima Autumn 2026