PROLOGUE

EVIE

Age 13

My lungs were burning, and my legs had turned to lead, weighing me down to a crawl.

I couldn't run further.

It didn't help that my space suit was too large and cumbersome to move around. It didn't help that my oxygen tank was almost as big as my suit, and sweat was pouring down my back, my chest, and my forehead.

The cooling system in my suit had turned off.

On New Earth, where the surface could be well over a hundred degrees in the daytime and freezing at night, having a temperature-controlling suit was necessary to survive on the surface.

"I wish I can take this off!" I shouted.

"Request denied," a female voice said from my helmet.

"This suit…it's weighing me down. I can't run," I yelled, barely able to catch my breath.

"For your safety, your request has been denied," the calm leveled voice said.

"I could kill you, Sally," I said. "Let me out of this suit now!"

"If I did, you would die of suffocation. There is no oxygen on the surface. Don't be an idiot."

"Great," I said. "My suit is talking back to me."

"That's the least of your worries, Evie," Sally said. "In approximately five minutes, they will be all around us."

"That's why we need to move," I said. "Now!"

"Get up and move, then," Sally said, with a bit of an edge.

"I can't when you're weighing me down," I said. "And your temperature-control system is off. I'm sweating to death here."

"Analyzing the situation," Sally said. "Hold on, it appears the connector valve between the air condenser and me has been dislocated."

"That's it," I said, trying to reach the back of my oxygen tank with my gloved hand to grab the tube… only to find there was no tube. "It's missing," I said.

"Four minutes," Sally said. "Before they reach us."

"I need to reconnect the tube to the suit," I said.

"No time for that," Sally said. "Get up and run."

"Run?" I said. "I weigh close to a ton."

"Just temporarily," Sally said. "Hold on."

"Are you kidding me?" I asked. "I can't get up. How can I even run?"

Instead of the authoritative female voice answering me back, a swoosh sounded in my ears. Then a rush of cool air swept through my suit, giving me an instant relief from the heat. "Oh that feels good," I sighed.

"Good. Now get up and run!" Sally said. "You have three minutes."

"But my legs…" I protested.

The air around my legs filled up to the point where the suit ballooned. I was now barely floating above ground. I took a step, and it was like I was bouncing off the ground, leaping distances forward. "Whoa!" I exclaimed.

"Wait until you see this," Sally said. "Run and jump at the same time."

I did as she said and saw that my speed accelerated double, even tripled. "Wow!" I ran and jumped forward.

"Keep going!" Sally said calmly. "You're not out of the woods yet. They're still coming after you."

I kept running and jumping forward as fast as I could for as long as I could keep going until I reached a cliff.

"Can I rest now?" I asked Sally.

"Yes," Sally said. "You are far away enough to elude them for a while, but not too far. You have a few seconds to catch your breath, Evie."

"We must've traveled miles and miles," I said.

"You can rest when you get to the ship," Sally said. "Do not underestimate the speed and determination of them. They will be here before you know it."

"The Monsters," I said.

"You've been fortunate to not have encountered them when you were in the shelter with your mother," Sally said. "But out here, they are everywhere."

I shuddered, remembering everything I've known about them.

Ever since I can remember, THEY have always been here.

First, they appeared on Old Earth. They came out of nowhere suddenly. Unremarkable and unassuming.

No one knew about them until it was too late.

There wasn't time for humankind to even give them a name…so they were just called, "The Monsters."

I scoured all I could on them through the database of knowledge that was in the hidden wing of the Shelter. No one seemed to know what they were.

Thousands of accounts and filmed footage pulled up when I did a search for them. Taken from people's own cameras and posted through social postings. People running frantically through the streets as though something terrifying was chasing them.

When the people stopped running, they stood still as though in a trance. The next thing they all did was cover their ears, close their eyes, and sink to the ground, huddling and shaking with fear before letting out a blood-curdling scream right before they die, frozen with that face in utter terror.

It reminded me of the painting called "The Scream" by Evard Munch painted in 1893 which portrayed a man or a woman, you couldn't tell which, holding their elongated wavy head with both hands, while screaming as though their very soul was dying.

The sky and air around the screaming victim seem to twist and turn into waves as the victim is engulfed in agonizing pain and fear. As though they had witnessed the gulfing flames of hell and had died of fright.

Evard Munch's own poem describing his painting reaffirmed my suspicion about this:

"I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous infinite scream of nature." - Edvard Munch

But this was something else more terrifying. The Monsters were attacking people with this wave of fear in masses. Like a horrible unspeakably evil storm, waves of people were engulfed in this terror, unable to escape, until it was too late.

The darkness covered the Earth. The only glimpse of light was the blood red of the flames underneath the dark clouds from explosions that came with unattended fires running rampant, caused by accidents.

"Mom?" I asked while helping her make dinner. "I can't see the Monsters from any footage people took of them. It's like where they are supposed to be, there is only a wavy blurred image. Can they be seen?"

"Not with the human eye, Evie," Mom said. "That is why they are so formidable. We can't see them."

I shuddered. A cold chill went down my spine. "Then how are we supposed to fight them? How did Dad tried to fight them?"

"Ever since we were attacked at New Earth," Mom said. "I've been trying to figure that out. We knew a little bit about them before building the Shelter. We also knew a little about them before we tried to colonize New Earth. The Monsters travel like the wind, appearing suddenly out of nowhere, and feeding off people's fears, destroying them with their own worst fears."

"We fight them psychologically," I said.

"Yes," Mom said. "By being strong and grounded in something more powerful and stronger than they are."

"How did Dad tried to fight them?" I asked.

"He helped build the Shelter. We knew we had to block the Monsters from feeding into our fears."

"Mom, doesn't fear and other emotions, come from the brain?"

"Yes," Mom said. "And that's how we triggered the security measures for the Shelter."

She showed me how it worked and where it was around the Shelter.

"There is another thing you should know about The Monsters, which I realized your father knew, but the rest of us didn't. They can evolve. Change shapes. When they solidify, we might be able to fight them then. So…"

We hit the martial arts gym Mom had set up. Instead of the usual mats and wrestling gear, now there were spears, archery, and other weapons. "What's this for?" I asked.

"For when they solidify so we can take them down," Mom said, gritting her teeth. "Because no matter how big they are; we will never go down without a fight."

*****

"Wake up! Break over," Sally's voice woke me up from my brief nap.

"I didn't know I fell asleep," I said. "I must've been really tired."

"You should be," Sally said. "You've been walking for days, searching for your mother. Searching for the ship she had set out to find. You barely stopped looking."

"Until just now," I said.

"You slept like a rock," Sally said. "A common activity for humans to recharge their bodies. And a must for a 13-year-old girl like you to grow. The teen years for humans are the crucial growing years where getting enough sleep is important."

"Well, Sally, I don't have much time for sleep," I said. "I don't know what happened to my mother. She left a month ago looking to find supplies from one of the ships that brought us to New Earth. She was supposed to return to the shelter, but she didn't come back."

Thinking about my mother almost made me tear up. She was the only person I knew on New Earth. My mother and I were the only survivors from Old Earth and now New Earth.

Now she was gone, and I was all alone.

I got up and looked all around me. How much further must I walk before I find something?

"Sally," I said. "Can you scan around so we know where we are? How far is it back to the Shelter?"

"About five days' worth of walking," Sally said. "You have provisions on you for only one more day."

I shook my head. "I can't make it back to the Shelter now, can I?"

"There is an object in my perimeter," Sally said, scanning ahead. "It is a larger mass, not indigenous to the area."

"How far is it?" I asked.

Sally laughed. Actually laughed. "A hop, skip, and a jump away."

"What?" I asked.

"Down there," Sally said, raising my right hand to point down the cliff.

I gulped. "It's a long way down there," I said.

Swooshed. Again, there was that swoosh. Sally was inflating the suit until I was floating in the air like a human balloon. "We'll float down."

I didn't have a choice in the matter. With a push, Sally was controlling the suit, floating down off the cliff. I almost closed my eyes, but I didn't.

The float down into the bottom of the cliff was awe-inspiring. Different shades of reds, pinks, and oranges colored the beautiful, jagged cliff. My eyes went wide with wonder. I haven't seen such beauty on New Earth. In fact, I haven't been outside of the Shelter before to see what was on New Earth. The only times I've been outside the Shelter was when I had to fix the cameras outside the perimeters of the Shelter or the solar panels and other fixtures that help run our Shelter. My entire life had been within the Shelter, the only home I knew. Mom and I had decorated and made the Shelter into what Mom remembered of Old Earth. Although I had seen photos and films of beautiful places on Old Earth, like the Grand Canyon, this cliff I was floating down onto was similar, but with richer reds.

"There!" Sally said. "In front of you. There's the mass I told you about."

"I can't believe it," I cried out. "It's a ship. A ship, Sally!"

Right in front of me was a circular metallic structure which reminded me of the spaceships from Old Earth's 1950s alien films. "Could this be the ship Mom was looking for?" I asked.

"It could be," Sally said. "There's one way to find out, Evie." We floated straight down in front of the entrance.

"Let's hope Mom is here," I said.