ROTWOTA: Book 1 - The Beginning of Extinction

We Have To Leave Now!

Cody was in a dream.

And he couldn't feel any movement in his body.

However, he seemingly heard screaming in the distance.

Cody jumped to his senses and found himself in a building of some kind with a man walking through the hallways of wherever he was.

The man opened a door and left it open behind him. Cody followed him silently, but the door closed in on his face. He pressed his ear against the large metal door in his way, and he thought that he could hear someone inside the room.

He had a feeling he knew who it was inside that room, yet it was too muffled to confirm who it was. As for what was being said, he couldn't pick up all of what was being said. Yet, he could pick up a few things such as "we can make millions off of you" and "you're all gonna pay the price for your screwups".

Cody was completely frightened hearing this, what was going on in there!? Suddenly he could hear heavy breathing on the door and he looked up to see a disturbing face.

It was a man's face and his mouth was spread across his entire face. His grin looked very sadistic, and one of his eyes was covered up by his hair but the other eye made him look like he was a devil.

Cody suddenly woke up from his dream out of pure shock. He looked over to his clock and saw that it was 2:36 AM in the morning. He then heard noises downstairs, who could be in his house at this time of night?

Cody carefully went out of his bedroom and tried being as quiet as possible. He managed to get to his stairs that were protected by a railing to peek into the kitchen. He saw that his mom was on the phone and his dad on his computer, what were they doing this late at night?

A voice could be heard from his mother's phone who seemed to be the person she was talking with. "Alright, we have you and your children scheduled tomorrow at 11:00 AM sharp." Said the voice.

"Thank you so much ma'am. Out goes humanity, in goes animals." Said his mother. What was going on? What did she mean "Out goes humanity"?

Suddenly, Cody's father hopped off the computer and went over to his mother. The two then hugged each other and began doing the FoxTrot. "Humanity may think they consider themselves powerful dictators but they're no more than weak mortals." Said his father.

"Exactly. They were fools to give us a chance for power. And now that the day has come, we will not let this opportunity go to waste!" Responded his mother. Cody was listening in on everything they were saying, and needed to digest everything in chunks.

Why were his parents like this? He thought. Just then, his parents disappeared from his sight. In order to not be caught spying on them, Cody rushed back us the stairs, being as quiet as he could in order not to alert his parents.

Climbing back in bed, Cody pretend to be as asleep as possible. He ended up staying in there for about 25 minutes before hearing noises, walking up the stairs and going into his parent's bedroom. Cody took this as a sign that he had gotten away with spying.

He needed to call one of his friends and decided to text Felix. Cody texted "Hey man listen r u awake?" to his friend. It took several minutes before Felix gave a response. His message wrote "Dude! What r u doing? It's fucking 3 in the morning and I have to be up at 7!".

Cody messaged him back.

"Listen dude my parents are acting weird saying something about humanity ending and they scheduled something weird for all of us tomorrow."

However, Felix shrugged it off without a second thought.

"Listen dude, you're probably misunderstanding since Elliot went missing yesterday. Go back to bed."

Cody desperately tried to get a response and didn't manage to get one. He ended up giving up after about 10 minutes and fell back asleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next morning, Cody was surprised to see his mother standing in front of his bed with his dad in the door frame. "What's going on?" He asked nervously. "We just needed to make sure you're awake, come on downstairs." Said his mother.

It took a while, but Cody managed to gather the courage to follow his parents downstairs. Surprisingly, everything seemed weirdly normal. Cody had the feeling not to let his guard down so he stayed suspicious of his surroundings. After about 10 minutes, nothing had gone wrong, but that was soon to change.

"Hey listen, wake up Justin and Emma, we're going to the mall in an hour." Said his mother. Cody was clearly suspicious of what his parents were doing. "Why are we going to the mall?" He asked.

"We signed up for something very special, it'll change all of us forever." Said his father. Cody looked in his father and mother's eyes and they had completely changed color. They had gone from friendly blue and brown to a very different orange and green, orange wasn't even a natural eye color.

"Sure, I'll go wake them up. I'll be back down in a minute." He said. With that, Cody dashed upstairs to his room. He needed to find a way to escape, but how? Suddenly he heard Emma open her bedroom door. "Cody? What's going on?" She asked fearfully. "We have to get out of here now." Said Cody. "Do you have your window open?"

"No, I don't but we can force it open. We better warn mom and dad and-" said Emma before she was interrupted. "No! They're the reason we have to get out of here." Said Cody. Cody barged into his sister's room, locking the door behind them. He forced open the window in the room that luckily looked over the garage.

How are we gonna get down there? He thought. Suddenly, he got an idea. Using the bed sheets, Cody strung them together into a sturdy line that could be used as a rope. He tied one end to the bed and used the other to climb down onto the truckbed of his father's vehicle, his sister nervously followed him down shortly after.

Without a key, they couldn't get the truck open,  so it seemed as if all hope was lost. But Cody knew he could get out of there, he just need to get Justin. Just then, Cody's father burst into the garage. "Come on buddy, no need to do this the hard way." He said in a rather intimidating voice.

Cody couldn't fight his own father! But this wasn't the kind man that had raised him, so using that strength, he grabbed one of his father's tools and prepared for battle.