She wondered what had happened to her parents, to her partner, Peter Costella, to everyone she’d ever known and loved. It would be a mystery, like the disappearance of her sister, Carrie.
Veronica didn’t comment further. They folded the jumpsuits, one after the other, while the huge commercial washing machines filled with water and spun, tumbling the next load around in circles.
The laundry room was stark-white, a hospital feeling of cleanliness and sterility to it. Kendra speculated what it was going to be like doing the other tasks. She’d never been much of a cook, so that was going to be an interesting experience.
They chatted a little about themselves, but didn’t speak further about their situation, as if discussing the world’s end would help make it come true. An hour later, they were finished.
“What now?” Kendra asked.
“We take them to level twelve where they’re laid out for tomorrow’s delivery.” Veronica pointed to the carts, which separated the jumpsuits by sizes.
Kendra grabbed the women’s cart and rolled it forward, the door automatically sliding open as she neared it. This place was state-of-the-art, and it was almost impossible to believe they were underwater. With a hundred floors to explore, Kendra had only seen a tenth of what it likely offered.
After Andrew’s reunion with Val, and finding Roland, they’d eaten dinner and settled into their rooms. Kendra was happy to learn she was sleeping next door to the Marine. They were outsiders here, and she drew comfort in knowing the two of them were going to be close at hand. Tony and Diane were taken to a separate level, one with the other teenagers and younger people.
She was told Diane would be placed in some sort of classes for the time being, and that they could see her whenever they wanted. The girl was eight and had been through so much. She’d lost her family like everyone else, but now, here in their new underwater world, she had no parental figure. Kendra wasn’t sure she was the one to take the role on. Surely someone more qualified and maternal would be better suited to the task.
“Here we are,” Veronica said, and Kendra smiled at her, trying to make nice with the woman. She was in a strange mood, but given the circumstances, she didn’t think it was unwarranted. While she was happy to be included in the one thousand people underwater, she still wished Hound would share his plan with them.
Kendra pushed her cart out of the elevator and started down the hall, following Veronica. The rest of them had been there for a month; some a little longer, others—like Andrew’s daughter—only a week or so. Her work partner knew her way around the facility, and Kendra stayed close, watching everything with wide eyes as they walked through level twelve.
Everyone in this section sported blue jumpsuits, indicating they were Hound’s hand-selected administrative team. Kendra heard beeping sounds emanating from a room, and she stopped short in the middle of the corridor. It was quiet on this level, with only a few people about. It didn’t appear that there were residences nearby, and Kendra tried to grasp what the rooms were for.
This particular space gave the impression of a server room. Dozens of silver boxes stood in a row, floor to ceiling. Wires were neatly wrapped above, connecting the machines to one another. The room hummed with energy, and Kendra assumed she’d found the life-source of the underwater facility.
A woman paused and regarded her, before returning her attention to the tablet in her hand.
“Carrie?” Kendra whispered. The woman certainly resembled her sister, but Kendra had seen her almost monthly since her disappearance. She was an apparition, a mask over other people’s faces, a trick of her trauma-riddled mind. This woman wore her hair short; it was darker than Carrie’s had been, and she had better posture, a surer sense of herself, and she didn’t wear glasses.
“Are you coming?” Veronica asked, and Kendra moved forward, forgetting the cart had a wheel lock in place. She bumped her shin against it and hissed out a curse.
“Kendra?” a voice asked.
“Veronica, I’ll be right there,” Kendra said, and it took her brain a second to realize the woman in the blue jumpsuit had spoken to her.
Her blue eyes sparkled from across the server room, and she rushed toward Kendra.
“It can’t be,” Kendra muttered. But this time she knew it was, and tears flowed freely as her sister ran to her, wrapping her arms around Kendra so tightly she couldn’t breathe.
“Kendra,” Carrie said, her voice the same. Kendra leaned into her, the embrace so obviously Carrie’s. She smelled like her sister, she sounded like her sister… her hug felt like her sister’s.
“How?” Kendra squeaked out.
“It’s a long story,” Carrie told her as they separated.
Staring at her now, this was no trick of her imagination. Carrie was here, in front of her, and apparently worked for Lewis Hound.
Kendra laughed, unsure what else to do. A million questions circled around inside her head, but she pushed them aside for the moment.
“I found you. After all these years, I found you!”
* * *
Roland
Final Day…
“Rollie, you’re going to get yourself in some serious trouble,” he whispered to himself.
It was late, and everyone was sleeping. Hound had everyone on a curfew: eleven p.m., and Roland was okay with that. It made it easier to sneak around when they were all sawing logs.
Roland’s room was on the thirty-fourth floor, and after eleven, the elevators didn’t function unless you wore a blue jumpsuit, which Roland hadn’t secured. Not yet, but he was working on becoming part of the team. He hoped that showing value would allow him more perks, and with that power would come knowledge. He needed to figure out what was going on. So far no one had spoken about the end game, as if the entire one thousand people brought to the facility were under a non-disclosure. It was eerie, and he didn’t appreciate being kept in the dark.
The message from PiedPiper19 had given him a countdown, which he’d initially thought to be a timeline to the natural disasters’ culmination. Only those were over with, or at least, a lot of them had already occurred, leaving the world in distress.
The information on the screen glowed against his face in the otherwise dark room, and he scrolled through the data, trying to determine what had happened. The last transmission from Japan stated that the majority of the country was under water. Africa’s population had been decimated by toxic fog as the potency had increased over the last week, and Europe was either covered by ash or enveloped by molten lava. Magma had rained mercilessly onto the continent, leaving destruction in its wake.
Roland scrolled to news of South America and the United States, finding the East Coast appeared to have been devastated by hurricane after hurricane; the West Coast no longer habitable. Everything in between was dying, the ash clouds and toxic fog killing the population off.
He wasn’t sure where Hound had gathered all this information, but it was hard to read. Roland closed the window, rubbing his eyes. The screen gave him a headache, the news a heartache. Nothing would ever be the same.
Roland peered over his shoulder, confirming no one was watching, and he set to breaking through the barrier protecting this facility’s network. Hound was smart, and already he saw tripwires strategically placed. Roland carefully sneaked around them, his fingers moving quickly over the keyboard. An hour later, he was confident he’d accessed the deepest level he’d be able to. This was the clearance he’d have if he were one of Hound’s people, so he didn’t feel too bad about hacking into it, confident that role was coming to him soon anyway.
“What are we inside of?” Roland asked quietly. Living underwater long-term made no sense.
Finally, he found what he’d been searching for: schematics of the facility. His jaw dropped as it clicked, the picture coming clear. He kept his eyes on the screen and found a map, a trajectory laid out.
“You have to be kidding me.” Suddenly the countdown made sense. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead, and he wiped
them away nervously. He closed the digital window, erasing any sign of his hacking from the server. He couldn’t be traced to this. If what he’d just seen was real, Hound was either crazy or a genius… perhaps both.
Roland sneaked to his room, part of him wishing he’d stayed in that night instead of snooping. He crawled into bed, pulling the covers tightly to his neck, assuming sleep would never come again.
Epilogue
Lewis
Final Day…
As usual, it was six a.m. when the alarms went off to wake everyone in the facility, but this time there was a message to accompany the alarm, and flashing red emergency lights.
Lewis Hound spoke into the intercom from the control center. “Attention all personnel, please do not leave your rooms. Follow the flashing light strips to the nearest emergency station and unfold it from the deck or wall. Once deployed, lie down and buckle your safety harness. You have five minutes. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill. You have five minutes to buckle in at the nearest emergency station.”
Eric Keller watched him with a frown, scratching his cheek through his beard. “You should tell them why.”
“And spoil all my fun?” Lewis asked.
“People could get hurt.”
“The worst that will happen is they’ll get knocked around and pinned to the floor. Besides, they need to learn to obey without questioning my commands. If they don’t pay attention to this, what will happen when there’s a real emergency?”
Lewis left the comms station, patting the operator on the shoulder as he went, and walked down a short flight of stairs to a pair of empty seats in the middle of the control center. Eric followed him there, and the two of them buckled in.
“T minus four minutes,” the nav officer called out.
Everyone on the bridge went about their final preparations, and Lewis noticed light pouring in overhead as the dome-shaped center of the flight deck began opening up like a metal flower.
The sky was dark with soot and ash from the volcanic eruptions—not to mention smoke from the firestorms that were raging from the ejecta raining down.
“T minus three minutes!” the nav officer said.
All of the seats on the bridge reclined by ninety degrees until the entire crew was supine, staring up at the seemingly transparent dome above their heads. Of course it wasn’t actually made of glass; the radiation in space was too hazardous to have real windows. There were technologies to deal with radiation, and even to generate gravity and buffer the inertial effects of sudden acceleration, but none of the people on this flight could be allowed to know that he had access to those advances.
“T minus two minutes.”
Primitives, Lewis thought, smirking to himself and rocking his head from side to side on his headrest.
“Is everything all right?” Eric asked, appearing to notice the expression on his face.
“Just fine, Mr. Keller.”
They passed the rest of the time in silence, hitting the one minute mark, and then the nav officer counted out the last few seconds.
“T minus three, two, one...”
A mighty roar started up somewhere far below them, and the deck shuddered violently before they were lifting clear of the launch silo, racing up through falling sheets of ash toward the smoke-stained sky. Lewis was pinned to his seat; the engines rumbled and roared, and dark clouds swallowed the view for several long minutes.
At last, the darkness receded and blue sky appeared. The color grew rapidly deeper and more vibrant as the hazy screen of smoke faded. Blue gradually turned to black, and stars pricked through, quickly multiplying until there was a glittering sea of them. The acceleration eased, returning to normal Earth levels. All of the chairs on the bridge righted themselves, and Lewis reached for the controls in the armrests of his chair.
He toggled a rear view on the dome-shaped viewscreen that capped the bridge and the nose of the ship. Earth appeared, magnificent and close below them, and wrapped in angry black clouds. The dark side of it was peppered with bright orange specks from fires peeking through the smoke. The entire planet looked like the aftermath of a bonfire—charred black, and freckled with glowing orange embers.
Some of the crew gasped. Others began weeping softly. Eric cursed under his breath. But Lewis just smiled.
Everything was going according to plan.
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Final Days
Final Days (Book 1) | Colony (Book 2) | Escape (Book 3)
Ascension Wars
First Encounter (Book 1) | Occupied Earth (Book 2) | Fractured Earth (Book 3)
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Under Darkness | Into the Unknown | In Time for Revenge
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Nathan Hystad is the best-selling author of The Event. He writes about alien invasion, first contact, colonization, and everything else he devoured growing up. He's had hundreds of thousands of copies sold and read, and loves the fact he's been able to reach so many amazing readers with his stories.
Nathan's written over twenty novels, including The Survivors, Baldwin's Legacy, and The Resistance.
Jasper Scott is a USA Today best-selling author of more than 20 sci-fi novels. With over a million books sold, Jasper's work has been translated into various languages and published around the world.
Jasper writes fast-paced books with unexpected twists and flawed characters. He was born and raised in Canada by South African parents, with a British heritage on his mother's side and German on his father's. He now lives in an exotic locale with his wife, their two kids, and two Chihuahuas.
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