Chapter 1

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What is the first thing you notice when stepping on a bus? A train car? A plane?

Is it the open seats, or the lack of them? The quality of the vehicle you’re about to ride in? Is it the driver, conductor, or pilot?

No, more often than not, all your brain initially sees is the other occupants. First impressions are made in a moment, firm beliefs are established in seconds. Your mind determines which of these fellow travelers nearby might be worthy of your trust, who among them you could depend on in an emergency.

In a heartbeat, you have imagined the rest of your life in relation to those surrounding you.

For the people on Flight 1781, those fleeting thoughts would become an anchor, a part of the past that connected them against the horrors of their reality. They would remember the morning of May 8th with fondness and anger in equal measure, such emotion inevitably creating a Nexus in time, powerful enough to bind all those connected to it.

Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let us return to that day, and that early flight from Chicago to Hawaii.

Marie lay her head against the window, half asleep and uncaring of the slight turbulence shaking the plane. This was the first “self-paid” vacation she’d ever been able to take. Sure, the family had gone to a few places when she was younger like Disneyland or the Grand Canyon, but this was different. She was all by herself and heading to the beautiful island of Oahu. Sandy beaches, gorgeous views, tropical weather, and she would have a full two weeks of it. Plenty of time to wind down and lose the build-up of stress she’d been feeling.

More shaking of the plane, this time enough to warrant a broadcast from the pilot. His confident voice belied no concern, though he did mention a possible delay if the weather continued to deteriorate. Worst-case scenario, they might have to divert to Seattle for a couple of hours to let the storm front pass by.

The next few minutes passed in relative quiet, most passengers still engrossed in a movie or already falling back asleep, Marie being one of the latter.

Then… everything stopped.

For a moment, the world simply hung suspended, its rotation halted. A stasis field appeared and covered the surface of the planet, visible to all.

A message, vocal only, rang in the ears of every living creature.

“Attention! This world has been claimed by the Galactic Union. All sapient creatures will now be transported to a designated relocation planet in accordance with Galactic Law. The remaining ecosystem will be auctioned off and the planet core harvested when terraformation has been completed. Thank you for your understanding.”

With this proclamation, the entire population of Earth disappeared.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Except those individuals currently traveling over 100 feet above the planet’s surface. For them, the true horror of their situation had only just begun.

On Flight 1781, Marie watched chaos descend. Multiple people were screaming, almost everyone was shouting, and the plane was shaking so bad it felt like they were about to fall apart. The Captain’s voice broke through the din of noise, his commanding tone now traced with anger.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain. I need everyone back in their seats NOW! Fasten your seatbelts, put on your oxygen masks. Flight attendants, prepare for possible hard landing! Assume crash positions!”

That was enough to get most of the passengers to shut up, everyone suddenly very focused on grabbing the now deployed oxygen masks. Marie did the same, her breath coming fast and short as adrenaline spiked through her system. Out the window, she saw what appeared to be a wave of fire crossing the Earth’s surface, the lights from civilization going dark. She felt a heaviness in her stomach, a feeling of impossibility surging to her mind. This couldn’t be happening, this was all a dream, it wasn’t real.

The plane dropped.

Screams filled the air, muffled by the masks and sound of wrenching metal as the aircraft barely held together. One of the flight attendants who had been running down the aisle was thrown into the luggage bins, breaking several open. She was smashed back down as the plane tried to level, crying in pain as the seats caught her weight, before being buried under a pile of suitcases.

Marie jerked her head back to the window, watching the ground below rise far faster than it should. The world was lit in an odd hue, like the setting of a sun perpetually caught in one moment of fiery death. Her sightline was suddenly obstructed as the plane twisted, the pilot desperately turning a dive into a hard turn. She grasped the armrest, trying to ignore the flailing of the man beside her.

This was it. She was about to die.

For over five agonizing minutes the massive commercial jet continued to shriek downwards, five minutes of running through every possibility in her mind, every fear and desire and success and failure in her life. Five minutes of heart-wrenching horror, of knowing she would never see her family again, never hug them, never tell how much she loved them.

Then, Marie got angry.

She started thinking about the Voice, the message everyone had just heard. The fact that for the first time in knowable history, the question of whether humanity was alone in the universe had been answered. Earth was a speck in the void, so inconsequential as to be considered fodder for other civilizations. All their preparations, all their technology, all their hopes and dreams, were worthless. Humanity was worth nothing.

The apocalypse had arrived, and the world had not been ready.

But if she survived… if she survived.

Hope is such an odd thing. Intangible, unmeasurable, irrefutable. There is no rhyme or reason why some people feel the things they do. And while hope is not, and never has been exclusive to Earth, there are few other races that can so easily and instinctively use it.

Marie wasn’t the only one at that moment who decided against acceptance of the inevitable end; and whether that choice was made through anger or fear, through love or denial, what remained was hope. Hope for survival, for revenge, for the future. Across the world, in situations similar to her own, and even on the same plane she now rode to the ground, a desire to live burst forth.

Barely leveling out, the plane began to slow, engines rumbling. Gear down, flaps out, brakes locked. The ground rose to meet them. The impact was sudden and brutal, the plane shuddering as the landing gear snapped. The fuselage gouged into the runway, right-wing finally snapping as the engines caught the earth and spun the plane on its belly.

When Marie reawakened, noise filled her ears, with constant smoke and flames obstructing her vision. The plane was not moving anymore, but people were still screaming. Someone grabbed her, roughly unbuckling and shoving her towards the aisle. She felt emptiness and stumbled forward, hands grasping the seats nearby. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get her bearings. Collapsing to the tilted floor, she continued to crawl forward, pulling herself from seat to seat.

She wouldn’t die here, not now. Blood ran freely from a wound on her head, she tasted its coppery tang on her tongue. Pain screamed from her leg. Something felt wrong, twisted down there. She gritted her teeth and kept crawling. The floor was suddenly gone, this part of the plane torn in the crash. Heat rising from all sides baked into her skin. Where was safety, where was everyone else?

A foot tripped into her, a body falling past, their scream cut short as they impacted the torn metal below. She shivered, feeling cold. Reaching out, she shoved herself across the seats, letting gravity pull her towards the ground. The heat continued to build. Someone shouted, close by. Strong hands grabbed her, pulling her free of the wreckage.

The fire roared forth, her saviors dragging her backward as she stared at the behemoth that lay dying. They only stopped once several hundred feet had been crossed, finally reaching the side of the runway, where other people huddled together.

She lay on the ground for a time, trying to breathe, to ignore the sight of the dead and the cries of the dying. No sirens or flashing lights raced to greet them, to provide safety and security. No firefighters to beat back the blaze of the crashed aircraft. They were alone, in the cold.

But she was alive and that was a start.

At some point, she passed out.