Evolution

You have to always be tough, putting yourself on the line day after day, keeping everyone focused on the goal. I want nothing more than to find a place to rest and call home. I can’t have that, anymore. I’m fighting for that future, and for the future of everyone else. We all are.”

He paused, letting me soak that in.

“I need you to step up if anything happens to me. It can’t be Makara. It can’t be Anna. It has to be you.”

“I can’t imagine someone like Makara ever following me.”

Samuel nodded. “She’s stubborn, but you’ve changed. She’d be a fool not to follow you. I don’t think you see it yet, but you have yet to reach your full potential. You don’t realize what I see in you. When we go down there, something in you is going to flip. You’re going to feel it. It might happen instantly, like a switch, or it may be more gradual. I don’t know. You’ll become who you were always meant to be, and everything will be different.”

I sighed. There was no getting out of this.

“I don’t pretend to know exactly what you’re talking about,” I said. “But I’ll do it.”

Samuel nodded, and turned to Ashton.

“You won’t be alone, Alex,” Ashton said. “I’ll be up here, letting you know the latest information. If anything changes, you’ll be the first to know. Right now, it’s just Samuel and I, trying to figure out everything and make sure we make the right moves. We let you guys know as soon as we discover anything. We just want to be ready for any possibility.”

“I’m not easily killed,” Samuel said.

“I guess all that’s settled, then,” I said.

“Get some rest,” Ashton said. “We’ll see you all off in the morning.”

Samuel and I walked out of Ashton’s office. Makara and Anna waited against the wall. I could see both of their eyes, questioning. They could sense something was different, even if they didn’t know exactly what it was. Anna gave me one last glance before going into the office. The door hissed shut behind her.

Samuel and I walked quietly back to our habs. His hab was close to Alpha Tunnel. He turned off, and pressed his hand to the entrance button.

“You alright?” I asked.

He forced a smile. “As good as I can be. I know it isn’t easy, but nothing is.”

He looked tired. Even after two months, he hadn’t really been resting. He and Ashton had been planning everything while the rest of us got to relax. I think it was then that I realized just how much responsibility being a leader was.

“We have a big day tomorrow,” Samuel said. “Everything changes.”

Samuel shut the door behind him, and I headed back to my own hab — about as far from Alpha Tunnel and the hangar you could possibly get in Skyhome. I looked a couple doors down, to where Anna stayed. I considered waiting for her to come back. For some reason, I decided against it. I went inside, and shut the door behind me.

Chapter 4

“Do you believe in God, Alex?”

Khloe and I were lying on our backs on her bed, staring at the ceiling. Her parents were out. When she had invited me to her bedroom, I had not expected a discussion of the metaphysical. The question hung in the air a moment before I answered.

“No.”

“Why?”

I sighed, thinking. “If there is a God, he wouldn’t have let Ragnarok happen.”

Khloe did not respond for a moment. “You think so?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

Again, she was quiet, as if deep in thought.

“I keep thinking of what Father Nielsen used to say, before he died. How God let it happen because we let ourselves go too far, you know? We forgot about Him because we loved things more. And…Ragnarok was his way to take away all the things that made us far from Him. Now, we need Him more.”

“Couldn’t he have taken the things, and left the people alone? Was having all the machines, all the computers, all the money, really so bad?”

“Of course it was,” Khloe said. “That’s why Ragnarok happened. We’re in the last days.”

“Well, I can agree with you on that point, at least.”

We laid there for a while longer. It was a bit awkward, as it always got when Khloe and I discussed religion. I had stopped going to chapel years ago. My dad never went, and when my mom died when I was seven, that’s when I stopped going, too. I stayed out of there as much as I could. Father Nielsen was a nice man, but for some reason, his words didn’t sit right with me. I was tired of hearing about how bad we all were, so bad that God had to wipe us all out with a meteor. I don’t know why Ragnarok came. No one did. When people don’t have a reason for anything, they make one up. That’s what I think happened with Ragnarok. People can’t stand random chance. There has to be a reason for pain, even if there isn’t one.

That’s what my dad says, anyway, and I’m inclined to agree. Then again, dad hasn’t really been the same since mom died. That was a while ago, but he smiled more, back then. He hadn’t been so harsh about life.

“You need to have faith in something,” Khloe said, breaking me from my thoughts. “Otherwise, what’s the point of anything?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I feel like I have plenty to live for.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Live for life?”

Khloe rolls over the face me, her face framed by dark brown hair. Her green eyes are young, bright, and beautiful. Full of hope, still. Even at sixteen, I already felt I had lost a little bit of that.

“Well, I hope He’s there, and I hope He’s listening. I hope there’s someone listening. I hate to think we’re left to ourselves, because we need someone to protect us.”

I wanted to tell her that I was listening, and that my listening was enough, but somehow, the words never made it out.

* * *

A siren wailed, piercing my hab in Skyhome. I shot up in my bed, remembering that horrible night almost three months ago, where a similar siren in Bunker 108 had marked the end of my old life, and the beginning of the new.

I was covered in a cold sweat as the emergency red lights flashed on and off. The sirens continued to shriek like banshees.

Proximity alert! Foreign mass incoming, velocity: four kilometers per second. All inhabitants, take shelter in an airlock or escape pod. Impact in one minute: thirty seven seconds…

I rushed out of bed, throwing on my clothes. I grabbed my Beretta from my nightstand, and threw on my backpack. It was always packed and ready to go. Outside my door came panicked screams and running feet.

My first thought was going to Anna, and making sure she was safely out of her hab.

As the emergency warning blared again, I rushed out the door into the Mid Ring, running straight for Anna’s room. While every other hab door was wide open, Anna’s had remained closed. It was supposed to open automatically in an emergency.

I felt panic clench my chest.

“Anna!”

I pounded on the door. From within, I heard her scream. I could not decipher the words, but she was terrified and the goddamned door wouldn’t open.

“Hold on!”

I mashed the open button on the control panel. It didn’t respond. It was as good as dead. And Anna was too, unless she could open it from the inside.