Begin

"S-sorry..." I stuttered as I accidentally bumped shoulders with a heavily armed officer.

Thankfully, the man ignored me as he was on duty. That in itself was a blessing. I disliked talking to people unless it was an emergency.

"Why are you apologising? He should see where he was going," my best friend, Belicia, said shrewdly.

I nodded my head as a signal of understanding. However, I most likely would do so again as it was a habbit. I did not know how that habbit came to be.

"Hang out after school?" Belicia asked.

I nodded ny head again, barely listening to what she was saying. I was deep in thoughts. Many strange phenomena were happening for the past few months. Most of them were dissmised as hallucinations by most witnesses. I, personally, had witnessed all of those. I was convinced that what I saw was real. More than a hundred people had seen those happenings. Scientist told personally came down to our school to dismiss our claims. Stating that it was a trick of the light.

That's so stupid. A trick of the light? There was no light at all on the fifth happening and someone died under the cover of the dark, I sneered inwardly.

Belicia pulled my arm to snap me out of my thoughts. Recess was over. I squeezed through many slow walking pupils and officers. I felt a chill run down my spine as I noticed all the officers simultaneously grab our shoulders. Everyone stopped walking. Some pupils even took out wepons. Belicia, however, was an exception. She brushed off her officer's hand and grabbed my arm, dragging me up to the school hall. I took a swift look at my peers. Their faces showed expression of fright and shock at the same time.

"Weak motherfuckers," I heard Belicia mutter.

I snickered as she said it. She was brave yet so impulstive and naive. We entered the school hall which was heavily guarded. A teacher anxiously ran up to us and questioned about the location of our peers. I promptly answered him with a hint of innocence. I heard my officer trying to stiffle a laugh. We were considered closer than other children were to their assigned officer. I elbowed him in his stomach. After the teacher let us sit with the rest of our classes, I was bombarded with a ton of questions, most of which I answered with a 'I'm not sure'.

"Shi En, why were all of the officers on guard just now?" I asked curiously.

"A report of unidentified creatures were approaching," he answered truthfully before walking off to guard the hall.

By the time we finished talking, most of the pupils had mustered the courage to walk into the hall. After a quick headcount, we were all sent back into our classrooms.

Most of us were not paying any attention at all. Lessons were increasingly boring. All the teachers were getting more and more stressed out with the ever increasing risk of dying any second. Many reports were made about mysterious people destroying buildings, parks and landscapes in various countries. The disaster that was happening to other countries seemed to be getting closer and closer to Singapore. finding ways to protect ourselves was the best option but most influential polititians made sure that most people were under a false sense of security.

"So the ministry is full of idiots and jerks. What's next?" I said sarcasticaly to Marcus Ang, who was sitting next to me.

I saw him trying to hold in hold in his laughter for a while before replying," I agree with you to an extent but don't say it so loudly. You might get arrested.".

I nodded. Taking his words seriously usually a smart move. He would occationally be sarcastic but it was easy for me to detect when he was serious from past experiences.

"Both of you. Alena and Marcus. Would you mind sharing with us what are you talking about?" Mrs Teo, our Science teacher, asked sharply.

Although we were the top in class, we had a bad reputation. Therefore, we ignored her and continued chatting. Other people might think that we were being selfish but we had different oppinions. In times of crisis, learning such things would not increase our chances of survival. We should be tought how to suvive in different scenarios not how energy works. Although that information was important if we wanted to go to secondary school, that was not our goal. It was to survive, thrive, live and studying something like energy was not really necessary. Upon seeing us ignoring her, Mrs Teo was definitely unhappy. She walked up to our desks and started repremanding us. Although she was right infront of us, we continued ignoring her. Mrs Teo, even more irritated by us continuing to pretend that she was invisible, lost her cool and slapped me on the face. I heard the class gasp as teachers were not allowed to hurt students in any degree. A public canning was allowed if the student in question was breaking school rules. Other than that, we were not to be touched. I could still feel the sting of her slap when I packed my bag and left the classroom, Marcus following close by. Mrs Teo obviously tried to stop us but we just walked out of the class. Shi En was shaking due to suppressing his laughter.

"I can't seem to figure out your sense of humour,"I commented while walking down a flight of stairs to the parade square.

"I'm going home. How bout' you?" Marcus asked.

"Staying. Bel and I are going out."

"Oh..."

I sat on a bench beside our school's bookshop. I started getting lost in thought again. I still had two hours to wait for Belicia so I had plenty of time to waste so I took out my headphone a d phone to listen to music. I did not panic about what would happen if a teacher saw me. Most of the time I would just run away. I was not considered very fast in class but what could a teacher do when a kid is running at top speed towards an exit? Even PE teachers did not run to catch me as I had started to be able to have short busrsts of energy to sprint extremely fast for a short period of time. When lost in thought, I would also lose track of time. By the time Shi En snapped me out of my thoughts, Belicia had been standing there for a few minutes. I apologised. Luckily, she was quite patient. We joined a queue to pass through an identity check. We would each have to answer a different question that only we, ourselves, would know the answer to. I thought that they were quite stupid. Someone with skill for hacking might be able to get the information to pass through if the information was something about their birth and was keyed into a system.

After passing through the test, Belicia started talking about what she liked about this new system. I, honestly, did not like it. There was an especially strict curfew that was ridiculous in my eyes. Anyone caught after the sky got dark would be jailed for three days. There were several cases when I was caught. Most of the time, the sun was about to set when I got caught. Shi En would have to explain that I was out to buy dinner and thought that the sun would still be up by the time I got home. The police were doubtful when they heard the excuse but they had to let me out because Shi En was known for being impartial to anyone and he was a high ranked official. I was very thankful for the numerous times he bailed me out of a tight situation. We just got out of the school building when I saw a turquoise shadow flash past me. Soon after I noticed it, a rumble could be heard from behind us. We instinctively turned around, only to see the bloody ruins of our school with a humanoid figure standing on top of it. It was shaped like a girl with turquoise skin. She had hazel eyes and brown frizzy hair. Her eyes were big and filled with curiosity. I could see them darting around in their sockets.

"The end of the world is near," The girl said.

Her voice was very sweet and innocent. I could see that everyone else around us were afraid of this simple girl. I grabbed Belicia's hand and gingerly tread on the most stable parts of the rubble, making sure that Belicia followed suit. I was quite curious about her. A stranger with turquoise skin and an innocent look just destroyed a building that withstood a world war. She was dangerous. The girl took notice of my appearance and smiled at me. I stood roughly a meter( 3.3701 Inches) away from her.

"Hi, my name's Una! What's yours?"She said cheerfully.

I was quite thankful for the fact that she could speak English. How else would I converse with her otherwise?

"Alena. My friend here is Belicia," I replied without hesitation. She seemed friendly.

"Hello. You brought her along just for emotional support, right?"

"So you can hear my thoughts?"

"Yes. By the way, I'm from a different universe. One where all the inhabitants are just immaginations in your world"

"Oh. Una, can we talk somewhere else?"I requested softly.

"So this isn't a good place to talk? Okay, then."