Eventide [ON HOLD]

EXTREMITY

I stared at my reflection in the mirror.

I looked pretty much the same except that I was thinner and pale as a ghost. I had just taken a shower in supposedly eighteen weeks.
God I must have smelled so bad.

I brushed my dark brown hair and put it up in a ponytail. I put on my favourite jeans and a T-shirt which was laid out for me when I got to the dressing room. My mother must have brought along some of my stuff with her when she came here.

As I made my way to the cafeteria, I found that this place is not really as damaged as they say it is on the outside. It was actually pretty meticulous and well planned that it was like they knew that this might happen.

The walls were painted white and the corridors were filled with empty rooms. I saw some people wearing all white and neatly pinned hair and I felt so out of place. They stared at me as I walked past them and into the cafeteria.

The cafeteria was actually better. It was at least more normal. There were children running around and teenagers in groups devising a plan to stop this invasion and middle aged men and women talking wistfully about their present lives.

I searched for my family in the crowd and found them sitting at a table at the far end of the room. I saw Oliver and he was playing on his Nintendo, which Aunt Colleen got for him on his eighth birthday. As I went to the table, he set it down and squeezed me tightly.

"I missed you so much, Aletheia! I am glad you're okay."

This was the first time he ever said anything like that to me. Since we don't get along much, we generally fight or just avoid each other.

A lump formed at the back of my throat. I squeezed him so tightly and said, "I'm glad you're okay too. I love you, little brother."
He smiled at me and pulled me to sit next to him.

For breakfast, I had two slices of bread and some energy drink which makes you not feel hungry as frequently. And that was all you get, because there is not enough food left to sustain all the people who have survived. So each of us got small portions of food, as less food is better than having no food at all.

"Aletheia Roberts?"

I turned around and saw Amber Perkins standing there, smiling at me.

"Oh my god! You're alive?!"

Amber was the It girl of Dougherty high. She was glamorous with silky, blonde hair and she was all heels, skirts and dresses. Though she was popular, she never was a mean girl. We were friends for a while in middle school, but that was before I met my best friends, Michelle and Kayla in freshman year. I hope that they are somewhere safe.

"Yeah, I guess so" I said.

She didn't look like a queen bee or the perfect girl who everyone loves and adores. She just looked like a regular girl who, like the rest of us, is trying to get out of this loophole.

"I'm glad you're okay. I never thought you would survive in there. They were going to send me in next, if you..." She broke off.

If I died, I thought.

Captain Baker interrupted us, "Hello Miss Perkins, glad to see that you are giving Miss Roberts some company." He smiled.

He then smiled at me and said, "Your parents told me that you wanted to see what exactly is happening. Why don't you come with me to the control room and take a look?"

I still thought that he was uncanny and I did not trust him. He was very deceptive, like he was wearing some kind of a mask.

"Sure." I told him.

I told Amber that I would talk to her sometime later and I followed him as he led the way through a long corridor from behind the cafeteria.

Everywhere I looked, there were the same white walls with brown doors leading into empty rooms located at small distances from one another.

He then led me into a room, which looked same as the other rooms from the outside but on the inside, it was dark and there were five computers, all connected to a large screen almost the size of an entire wall. There was no one in the control room when we went entered.

I pulled up a chair and sat facing the screen while Captain Baker was operating the computer in order to project the video on the screen. Then, the video started playing. It was a live footage all the way from Japan.

"This was taken almost two months ago. There it is. There is the black hole. Can you see it?" He pointed at something.

I strained my eyes to see it. At first I thought there was nothing there, it just looked like it was night time. But then I saw it.

It was darker than the night sky. It had a clear boundary and it did not have any light. It looked so small on the screen, but I knew it was huge.

I thought that I was familiar with darkness when I was in the cave, but even that darkness had some light. But this was unlike any darkness which I had seen before.

"It extends to about thirty kilometres as of now, but it is gradually increasing. It is pulling everything and everyone within a thousand kilometre radius. So now Japan, Indonesia, Korea and parts of China are all wiped out. If this continues, the United States will be wiped out in less than three months." He explained.

I was completely horrified by what I had just seen. I had majorly underestimated the situation.