My teacher is ranting about Michael’s grammar again. Anna is talking to a me who is not listening. Ryan is asleep. The tinny sound of the bell snaps my English class out of our ninth period funk as we run out into the halls of school. The patter of a hundred steps is a nice one, until it gets drowned out by my own thoughts. Instead of looking out the window in the hall and seeing a tree, or a baseball field, or some random person’s house, all that’s there is… nothing.

Stars look back at me with sad eyes. My old home is more than half gone. Sometimes, when I first moved to Station Nine, after the collapse, I’d just sit at this window until I felt like going back to my room, which was more cramped than a cage. It was a pod, really. For the sake of memories, I sat and looked back down at that torn, crumbling Earth.
A year and a half ago, Earth was invaded by aliens from the Andromeda galaxy with advanced technology. I was still living on Earth, in New York City, at the time. Their arrival poisoned our already damaged planet. It was 2033, and the global climate was in a battle against itself. It was freezing in the Northern Hemisphere, due to the megaeruption of the Hawaiian islands, which set off a chain of volcanic eruptions all over the globe. Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Fuji, Mt. Pinatubo, Mt. Tambora. All plunged the planet into an ice age, for a few years. Then, an asteroid knocked the Earth’s rotation out of whack, causing the Southern Hemisphere to get sweltering in winter. Antarctica’s ice melted, raising the sea levels, but turning the continent into a paradise for the rich and famous. That asteroid also happened to be the thing that alerted the aliens, and led to our invasion a year later. After the invasion and the events of 2033, widely known as the Fall, the Earth literally broke apart. The atmosphere was destroyed by the aliens. The oceans evaporated. So many plants and animals died. So many people died. As our home planet was destroyed under us, we were moved to Zero Wave, a set of space stations meant to support the remains of humanity. This was our Fraction.
Everyone I loved died during the Fall and the Fraction. I was moved onto Station Nine, alone. They tried to send me back to school, to get rid of the grief and the PTSD in this poor 15 year old girl. It didn’t work. It’s 2035. The aliens have made it towards the Zero Wave, as if poisoning our planet wasn’t enough. I’m 17, old enough to be a pilot. And I have some revenge to get.
~~O~~
Two doctors stood next to a girl lying on a hospital bed, hooked up to a machine monitoring her brain waves. A man walked into the room, and looked at the girl. 17 years old, frail, thin, with light brown hair, and blue eyes hidden under her closed eyelids. Myra Holt, her name was.
“How’s she doing?” the man asked the doctors.
“Not good,” said the male doctor.
“She’s dying,” the female doctor said, trying to look sympathetic.
The man looked on the verge of tears. There was a spike and a noise on the chart.
“What’s that?” the man asked.
“She’s dreaming, seems to be emotional,” the male doctor said.
I wonder what one dreams about when on the verge of dying.