EMMA

  Emma panned her view over the lights of distant hab-domes on the darkened section of the moon, and tried not to think about the rest of the sky.

  "Sector seventeen," She whispered. "Which one of you is sector seventeen?"

  She didn't know why she was bothering. The magnification wasn't that strong, the most she would get out of this was the knowledge that she had found the specific patch of lights she needed to look at, to maybe have someone looking back from an observation deck.

  But they were never going to see each other again, and if there was any day where she would be at the top of the dome looking back for sure, it would be today.

  Tonight.

  While an emergency broadcast crackled over the long range radio with the same shelter-in-place warning plodding through the same words of instruction in between piercing tones.

  They had played it twice in the last year, and five more times Emma could remember before that. But things had never quite come this close, and the broadcast had never before included the addendum about travel checkpoints only permitting military personnel through.

  Taking her face away from the eyepiece of the telescope below her chin, Emma leaned back against the waist-high retaining wall, slipping her feet out of Calen's sandals. The dirt yielded as she dug her toes into the chilled, rusty brown dust of the backyard.

  Emma reminded herself to breathe.

  Five seconds exhaling, emptying her lungs a tiny, fractional amount for the last two seconds of the count to force herself to calm first, and then five inhaling, making sure to fill the bottom of her lungs first. That same box breathing pattern kept her calm in moments like this.

  After a minute trying her best to stay within the pattern, she found that there was still snow out there. Her eyes were drawn to the last defiant white line of snow tucked in the shadow of the dog-eared wooden fences. The illumination of the kitchen made it pop against the darkened buildings on the horizon.

  The blacked-out city carved an eerie jawline through the stars, but left the rest of the sky mostly untouched. ‘One-light’ orders were usually scheduled as part of a drill, but tonight was an unplanned opportunity to take some time alone with the sky.

  The calm afforded by her little meditation slipped away when a shadow danced across the yard. Someone was moving through the kitchen, pressed up against the pane-glass doorway that was casting their allotted one light over the yard. Emma turned and waved to Calen from her perch along the back wall of the garage.

  The blond mop on her brother's head bobbed once in acknowledgement. He stuck a single thumb in the air before pointing back to the phone on his shoulder. She waited for more, but he was just making his way to the refrigerator. Emma rolled her eyes and turned back around when he started perusing the same four flavors of ration packets they had been sharing all week.

  It was just dad on the line, worried and having him check on everything, not news.

  Or cake. With just the two of them home, he would want to do that at midnight, and Emma had been fairly certain it was only a few minutes past eleven right now. Somewhere along the way, Calen had become convinced that the stroke of midnight was both of their birthdays, instead of just the boundary marker between them.

  She hadn’t even needed to ask him to handle the call, when the phone had rung, drowning out the prerecorded message playing on the radio. He had just picked it up, and waved her back outside.

  They both knew she wouldn’t be able to keep her composure, and mom and dad would worry about something they couldn’t change. Maybe they would try to go argue at one of the checkpoints, which might risk Emma having to redo her psych evaluation, if they actually explained why they were trying to get an exception to the travel restrictions.

  All Emma wanted to do was go to bed, to forget, to wake up tomorrow to the news that negotiations had gone well, everyone was fine, and mom and dad were on the road again.

  Wind rippled across the rooftops of suburbia, giving Emma just the briefest rattle of warning to slap her palm over the haphazard packet of printer paper on the wall beside her, before it could soar across the backyard.

  The cover of the packet was an article about the satellite collision, hastily printed and sixteen whole pages of information Emma already knew, rephrased a hundred different ways, to be more understandable to anyone who was confused. That amount of orbital debris being added to the cloud would make exiting the atmosphere close to impossible within a month, as it was shredded and dispersed. There was no solution that would work in time to save them.

  She had forced herself to stop chewing at her lip after the tenth page had been spat into the tray, worried Calen would wander back over before she could finish shuffling the map of lunar districts into the pile, or worse, notice her nervousness.

  Calen had still complained that she would have had access to better information in a few days anyway, but had immediately gone back to bantering into the headset and scratching out arithmetic in between rolling a handful of dice every ten minutes. He had been doing it since at least the ungodly hour of ten in the morning, which was a ridiculous time to be awake on a Saturday.

  Paging through the loose paper, Emma tilted the diagram and compared it to the web of lights in the sky before readjusting the tripod of her telescope. It wobbled, but she wanted a seat near the wall, to keep a firm grasp on her papers.

  Emma squinted down at the cluster of hab-lights making up her most likely candidate, sucked air through her teeth, and shivered as the wind blew. Denim scraped on stone as she shifted away from the aperture again to rub at her forearms for warmth.

  Sandals had been an optimistic choice for the night. Emma slipped them back on anyway.

  The squeak of rubber gliding along a door frame and that same shadow from earlier shrinking across the yard announced her brother’s arrival on the patio. He firmly shut the single-pane sliding glass door behind him. The slap of bare feet and the scrape of metal being dragged across stone rattled between the wooden fences guarding their tiny personal slice of the suburban district.

  "Hey, sandal thief," Calen sang behind her. "Find the key to the Kessler window yet?"

  Emma snorted, and sat on the papers so he wouldn't be tempted to pick them up. She was helping with clearing existing orbital pathways that amounted to best guesses, not joining some dramatic hunt for a perfect solution. That kind of thing was way above her head.

  Calen would pretend either way, so she let him. It wasn't like he actually believed himself; she had explained it too many times for him to misunderstand.

  "I start helping with that next week, assuming the world behaves long enough for that to matter. I'm out here for fun. Saturn—" She pointed off to the corner of the yard to her right. "—Is supposed to be that way. Maybe visible tonight, with the one-light order."

  "Supposed to be, she says. Someone save us all from my slob of a sister, she’s not even at an observatory yet and she’s already lost an entire planet. One of the gas giants, too," her brother drolled, folding his legs on the seat he had dragged up behind her. "While committing footwear theft. Those are not safe workplace attire, by the way, crushing hazard."

  Emma made sure he saw her roll her eyes before she kicked his sandals off again, pulling her feet up onto the wall under her and wrapping her arms around her knees.

  The sweatshirt also wasn’t technically hers, but it certainly wasn’t Calen’s. With her face resting on a too-short sleeve that ended at her wrist, it was harder to resist the urge to inhale, and risk plunging back into the pit.

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

  Emma took a breath without pressing her face further into the cloth. The smell had been gone for months anyway. Believing otherwise would just be the force of habit and wishful thinking tricking her brain.

  "Dad also packed your shoes before they took the truck," she guessed, before he could try to prod at her real reason for still being outside.

  "Yeeeup." Calen shivered and rubbed the goosebumps forming on his arms. "He got everything but the necessities so we all fit in the car next time though, get to take our last trip in a few days when this clears up. They’re at a hotel in the middle of nowhere, the world almost ending again is totally destroying dad’s itinerary."

  Apparently shoes weren’t a 'necessity' for a week at home with just the two of them, because the fridge was stocked. They had no reason to leave.

  "Where did they get stuck? Are they… halfway, at least?" She asked hopefully, looking for a distraction, and then felt stupid.

  Halfway meant nothing if they didn’t make it back, and there again, which wouldn’t happen unless travel restrictions for the lifeboat program applicants were lifted early.

  Which would be a bad sign for negotiations. A sign that things weren’t working out, that they were preparing to turn on the defenses anyways, and wanted everyone with a theoretical spot in the bunkers on-site when they did.

  It only mattered if she thought the apocalypse was actually happening. Which would be crazy. Nobody actually wanted to end the—

  "Maybe halfway to Kansas," Calen said, either oblivious to Emma’s mistake, or faking it. "Not halfway to here. Cake for two means we can do it at midnight, though. Unless you want to try to save it."

  The hopeful note in his voice made things too easy.

  "Oooooh, midnight is, like, a whole hour away," Emma teased, then relented before she even looked up and saw his expression. "Only if you light the candle. It’s your turn this year anyway."

  "Deal." He lurched in his seat as if to get up, and then paused.

  Emma leaned over the aperture again, quietly turning the focus knob as she tried to ignore him.

  For one second. Two. Three.

  He hadn’t moved by then, so he wasn’t going to do anything except worry, if she delayed more.

  "What?"

  Her tone had been too curt. If he hadn't already known, he did now.

  "Do you want me to try again, when they reopen the communications buffer?" He asked fearlessly.

  "No," Emma lied. "Why would I?"

  "Because you've been out here since eight thirty, and you're not pointing that thing at Saturn," Calen said. "I could try Mark again, see if she'll take a message from him."

  "Won't he be busy right now?"

  They both knew she was just making up excuses. She did it anyway.

  Getting a reply would be too much right now.

  "Totally routine irregularly scheduled deterrence patrol, yeah," Calen admitted. "He'll be back from it when the world is done almost ending for the tenth time since the start of senior year."

  "Eleventh." Emma corrected him.

  The stubborn idiot was still waiting for her to say something, five seconds later.

  "The world is never going to be done almost ending. This is life, now. For everyone," Emma said.

  "Not for us, after next week," Calen said. "Thanks to you, we all get to make it."

  Calen was busy being ridiculously optimistic. 'Making it' just meant they would get to live out the apocalypse in a windowless concrete box, when it finally happened.

  "Not everyone," Emma said through grit teeth. "There were only so many slots. Some people will end up outside, because we got them."

  The dummy kept talking. He even said what was actually bothering her out loud.

  "She knew you wouldn't give it everything, if you were competing with each other. And you keep saying you barely made it in—are you gonna give it back?"

  Clenching her fists made it easier to pretend her blood wasn't boiling. It was a ridiculous question to entertain, on a personal level.

  But if she wanted to solve the problem, and the best way to do that was to let someone who was a better fit take her slot in the program?

  "Shouldn’t I? If I thought it would fix things faster?" She asked.

  "I don’t think it would. I think they picked you because you're the best they could get their hands on." Calen tossed his sandals onto the retaining wall next to her as he stood up. "And I am too cold to debate it with you out here. March is not Spring this far above sea level, and I don't care what the calendar says about the angle of the sun."

  "Wuss." Emma rolled her eyes, taking the ‘out’.

  She startled again as the light spilling across the yard from the kitchen died without warning, plunging the backyard into starlight.

  It didn’t take long for Emma to give up her illusions that it was a problem local to them, as the rest of the neighborhood’s already-anemic illumination also winked out at the same time. Suburbia became quieter still, as the distant hum of appliances faded away to nothing. Lights flickered in the distance, too, the last man-made illumination disappearing from the organized blocks of concrete and steel on the horizon.

  Even the radio towers and antenna lights went dark for a moment, before their backup power flickered them back to life.

  "Did you hear a transformer go or something?" Calen asked. "Or was that just… all at once, the entire neighborhood?"

  "All at once. And the city, too," Emma confirmed, trying not to let her voice quake. "We might need that candle sooner than you think."

  "Cake at maybe-midnight, on the way." Calen said enthusiastically, as if nothing was wrong. "Do you think Mr. Isaacson wants a slice? Dad said he offered to check on us if there was an emergency."

  The ridiculous question grounded her in reality. Nothing was happening, there were plenty of reasons for the grid to go down. Reasons that weren't connected to directed-energy weapons being aimed at the sky.

  Emma gave him her best withering look, but it must have gotten lost in the dark, so she tried to put it in her tone instead.

  "You think he wants to get out of bed for a slice of cake. At midnight. During a power outage." She measured out the sentences.

  "I mean I kinda assumed it meant any time. And the power outage is what makes it an emergency," Calen offered over his shoulder.

  There was no way their overly serious neighbor would care to do more than go through the motions anyways. But Calen was still on his way out, giving her peace back for a little while and leaving her the choice.

  Emma shook her head, tucking her hair into a too-small hood that pulled the hem of her sweatshirt up over her waistline as she hunched in on herself.

  "He’s probably too asleep to notice. And we shouldn’t do it now, it’s definitely not midnight yet anyway." She argued.

  Calen still looked like he was about to say something.

  "If he comes over to check on us, I’ll offer." She agreed, forestalling further negotiations. "My slippers are still under the bed if you need shoes. I’ll bring this in soon."

  Calen held a thumb out, followed by the sounds of cursing as he stubbed a toe finding the doorstep in the darkness.

  Emma suppressed a frown at the language, and looked back down as she heard the door glide open and shut.

  The air was still and quiet.

  Panning the telescope. Checking the papers.

  Not for anything real, just back and forth so she wouldn’t get lost in the sky. Or find the moon again.

  It was too late to change her mind about a message now, with the power out.

  A light smeared across the aperture. Maybe an eyelash.

  Emma blinked it away, saw it still there, and leaned back to look up, hand halfway to one of the knobs in case it was a problem with lens alignment.

  She froze, chin pointed at the stars.

  Real auroras were supposed to be locked to near the poles. Emma had seen pictures. Video, too. They also usually stretched across the sky like ribbons, not lumpy clouds. They were green, not white. They crept over the horizon until they covered it.

  They did not steadily spread outward from a single point, high, high above the ground.

  Her throat locked up as she wiped her eyes with a sleeve. It came away dry.

  She heard the wind whip paper off the wall next to her, rustling into the darkness. The light above continued to blur, and a hint of red crept into the spreading mass at the near edges.

  She knew what it was. Knew she should get inside, under the cover of a roof with Calen, away from windows.

  A dispassionate white eye glared down at the continent, the ionized rays from the high-altitude nuclear detonation tinging red around the edges as they entered the atmosphere.

  Emma shook off the superstitious thought. It couldn’t really see, not any more than the dozens of satellites it had just rendered actually blind.

  Opening her mouth to call out just left her gawping at the display, unsure of what to even say, how to warn Calen. She tried to move, but her feet were locked to the ground.

  So she stayed to watch the world end.

  Even that plan only worked perfectly for the first few seconds.

  Emma’s eyes were drawn instinctively to the first flash of light against the darkened horizon, just in time for the double flash to send searing pain through her retinas.

  A fireball bloomed in the distance, the first mushroom cloud incredibly close against the horizon, creeping skyward. The world rumbled as her vision began to blur, only half of it from tears, and her face began to prickle and burn.

  Emma slumped to her knees in the dirt, curling up against the retaining wall to watch the sky. They were dead. Not yet, but it was over.

  There would be more bombs on the way, ICBMs carrying dozens of MIRV-style warheads to saturate the atmosphere above her, maximizing the number of successful detonations even if some of the missiles were shredded by fast-moving atmospheric debris or intercepted before they reached their targets.

  It was happening again, to them this time.

  She knew better than to hope it might stop. This time, the missiles had been launched on purpose, by superpowers, and everybody knew it.

  The house behind her rattled from the muted shockwave of the first detonation as a second fireball climbed skyward, this one much, much closer, scouring away the rest of her vision into a cloudy mess.

  She briefly hated it for missing, for not ending her suffering instantly, but doused the feeling with a wave of guilt. Calen was still in the hou—

  "Em?" She heard, muffled through the glass door.

  "No! Calen, stay insi—" Emma started to scream.

  The shockwave from the second detonation tore through the yard, knocking Emma's breath out of her more thoroughly than any sparring mat ever had.

  She heard glass shatter as the telescope flipped against the wall beside her.

  Kessler Syndrome is the theorized state in which Earth's atmosphere becomes saturated with high-speed debris, exponentially complicating satellite launches and space exploration until all 'safe' orbital paths are removed.

  Next chapter in a few hours!