“You’re amazing!” I said incredulously as I ran past her, bending down quickly to get through the gap that she had created. She followed hurriedly after me and we ran straight through the broken foyer doors that were falling from their hinges, into the pool area.

The sound of our footsteps reverberated on the concrete tiles that surrounded the pool as we ran towards the shower block. I looked down and saw that the pool had massive cracks throughout it and that the water had mostly drained itself through them. Bits of debris from the roof lay scattered along its bottom and piles of dust were positioned haphazardly amongst it.

I gulped as I wondered who’d had swimming training and gym class that morning and I wondered why the concrete of the pool hadn’t protected them.

We rounded the corner at the back of the room and made our way into the nearest changing rooms, throwing ourselves into the closest shower cubicle, diving onto the cold painted concrete floor as fast as we could.

The piercing sound started again, hurting my head. We both put our hands up to cover our ears as the sound grew in volume. Pink light started to pulse through the windows above the gymnasium roof and filled the room.

We crouched down in the corner of the shower and made ourselves as small as we could. I could see the streams of pink light fill the locker room to the side of us and scan the area, sending my heart racing faster than it already was.

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I closed my eyes and hoped with all my might that the light would miss us. I could feel Reese’s heartbeat through her chest as she cradled into the side of me. I tried to focus on regulating my breathing so I didn’t start hyperventilating and spiraling back into panic.

With everything that was going on and Dad’s disappearance on top, I thought I couldn’t take much more stress and overwhelm. My nerves were frayed and my heart was close to exploding, I was sure of it. But a strange quiet feeling rose within me, filling my thoughts with a calm warmth, telling me that I had to survive this moment and all the moments that I was about to face because my life and millions of other lives depended on how I dealt with the outcome. It calmed me then disappeared back from where it came.

Stunned, I tried to process what it meant.

‘Did I have something to do with the solution to this situation? And to who or what was causing it? And there were millions of lives depending on me? Woah!’

‘That’s a lot of pressure for a sixteen year old to bear.’ I contemplated as the thoughts circulated like they were in a tumble dryer in my head, but the strange calmness held and the thoughts eased then went away.

The piercing sound gradually came to a stop, and everything around us was silent again. I opened my eyes and withdrew my hands from my ears and looked at Reese, suddenly realising that Roderick wasn’t with us.

“Where is Roderick?!”