Page 49 of Shattered Home

Emmanuel shook his head. “No, they raided our lab before we could estimate a timeline. For all we know, it could be fifty years from now. But…” he trailed off.

“But they wouldn’t be doing all this if it wasn’t close,” I finished for him, putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

“Alessia, I think you should look at this.” Mina sat on my right side and I leaned over to glance at the paper in her hand.

At the top, there was a ton of scientific language that I didn’t understand. The decoding of some of these papers would have to be left to Emmanuel, the only one who seemed to understand it. But it wasn’t the statistics that Mina was pointing out, it was the sentence that started with Antonio Accardi. Dad.

Scanning the sentences as quickly as I could, I tried to absorb the information. Antonio Accardi is the lead scientist on Project XII. He has determined the path of meteoroid 10086. He determines the specimen is three kilometers wide. The projected path of 10086 will land in the Western United States. The projected time of entrance into the Earth’s atmosphere is on December 19th, 2024.

I stopped reading at that, swallowing roughly. When I glanced up, all eyes were on me, but this time I didn’t feel the pride of being in charge. My stomach roiled with a sick feeling, knowing I was the one who was going to break the news that we had less than six months left.

“I thought you said you didn’t continue working on the project?” I asked Emmanuel, not yet prepared to say the words out loud. Mina looked at me with sad eyes, having read exactly what I just had.

“We did. They took all our research and threatened us to stop.”

I held up the single sheet of paper, breathing roughly. “According to this, my dad continued to work on it.” I looked to the sheet as I said the next words, knowing I couldn’t look any of them in the eyes. “And according to the work, he estimated the meteoroid would hit the Western United States in December.”

Shocked gasps surrounded me, but no one spoke. No one knew what to say. The world was ending. If Emmanuel hadn’t confirmed it, these papers did. But that didn’t answer why they had set fire to our homes and corralled us into camps like cattle.

Rainer was on the same wavelength as me and asked the question aloud. “Then why go through all this trouble? Why force us into camps and take people from the woods?”

None of us had the answer. Without speaking, all of us got back to reading through the papers, a new determination present. We may not have the answers, but these papers might. And right now, they were our only chance.

***

The sun was setting, making it harder to read. We had all congregated around the fire, trying to use its light to continue reading. We found more information on the meteoroid, but none on what was happening around us.

We should feel happy that we got some answers, but when the answers pointed to your imminent death, it was hard to feel content. We needed more.

“Are you doing okay?” Aiden asked, whispering low so the others wouldn’t hear.

I knew he wasn’t asking about my injuries, although those were still aching. I had finally replaced the bandages, using more pieces of torn clothing.

“What was Dad doing? Was he working for them?” Aiden didn’t need to ask what them I was talking about. Was Dad working with the men like Vex? I couldn’t wrap my head around placing him in the same group as that vile man.

“I don’t know, Lessy,” Aiden said on a sigh, wrapping an arm around my shoulder. “We may never know. But I do know that he would have done everything to protect us. He would have never let us be harmed.”

I knew it was Aiden’s way of reassuring me that Dad wasn’t like Vex. He wouldn’t have inflicted pain on innocent people.

“Holy shit,” Sasha exclaimed, a paper pressed against her face. Her eyes scanned side to side quickly and when she finished, she looked to us all with wide eyes.

“They’re building bunkers.”

“Bunkers?” Murphy asked, leaning over to try to read the paper.

Sasha continued to nod, her expression shellshocked as if she didn’t quite believe what she had read.

Murphy continued speaking for her. “They believe that the bunkers can protect from the initial impact of the meteor. After the initial impact, they’ve estimated that they can survive in the bunkers for up to fifty years with the proper resources and rations.”

As with the first revelation, no one knew what to say. Finally, Mina was the one to speak up. “If they’re creating bunkers, why are they doing this? They have a solution.”

Murphy simply shook his head in horror, but it was Rainer who answered her question, always one step ahead. “Because there’s not enough space for everyone. They’re choosing who lives and dies.”

Epilogue

Rainer

No one wanted to stay awake much longer after Sasha’s findings. Everyone went back to their corners of the clearing, trying to come to terms with the news. The world was ending. Only a few would survive. And to no one’s surprise, we weren’t on that selective list.

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