Car alarms went off in unison and there was the sound of glass shattering as the store windows blew outward.

Screams.

Sounds of agony.

All mixed into chaos.

People were trying to get away.

Someone stepped on my leg and tripped before scrambling forward and breaking into a run.

In the back of my mind now…I could feel the pain from my fall…the blood running down my forehead.

But all that was like a dull ache in the recesses of my mind for when I glanced behind me…everything else was forgotten.

The meteor was shrouded in dust and smoke.

It had landed on my favorite sandwich shop and I gulped back the immediate sense of distress that rose within me.

There’d been people inside…

I could have been inside.

Gripping my head with one hand, I leaned on my other elbow as I tried to rise.

What the fuck just happened?

My eyes remained on the impact site, watching the dust and smoke settle to reveal a large…

I don’t know what I expected to see.

A huge, black space rock with rough edges maybe.

But this…this wasn’t rough…or black.

It was…a metal orb, glistening in the sunlight.

It was smooth and reflected everything around it like a mirror.

For a moment, I don’t think any of us knew what to do.

There was silence again. Or maybe I just couldn’t hear what was going on around me.

It all felt like it was happening in slow motion.

Me getting to my feet and turning fully so I could stare at the thing.

And then…

The air vibrated.

There’s no other way to describe it.

A sound almost too low to hear, but one that I felt across my skin.

The hairs on my body stood on end.

The sound alone sent a chill down my spine.

Some baser instinct within me told me I should run, yet…I could not move.

The air vibrated again, the sound passing through us all, and I staggered backward as the orb moved.

Dust billowed from the building it had leveled and something came forward.

A long, winding, metallic…arm.

A metal claw.

It closed around a man standing right beside me.

Screams punctuated the air as people began running once more. Yet, I stood.

Unable to comprehend what I was seeing.

Unable to believe.

The old sandwich shop shook, what was left of its walls crumbling as the orb stood, rising through the dust and ash to stand on three legs.

It kept rising, and rising…and my gaze followed it.

What was this thing?

It was as tall as a tower. Taller than anything else around it.

It dwarfed us.

The man it held in one of those metal arms screamed as he struggled to release himself from its grasp.

He was screaming for help, his arm stretching toward me.

But he was too high.

I couldn’t reach.

Even if I could, I couldn’t move.

And then…that chilling sound. That deep boom.

Liquid wet my face as the man’s screams suddenly stopped.

Even as it ran down my face, my body, staining my arms red…my mind refused to accept what it was.

Someone bumped into me as they ran.

I don’t know who they were, I don’t know if they survived, but I owe them my life.

For if they hadn’t collided with me, I might have stood there as that bloodied metal arm descended again.

But I was awake now and fear pushed me to turn.

And run.

Chapter Two

ADIRA

I lost everything that day.

Everything that mattered.

Family.

Friends.

Me.

I lost myself.

Who I was…

Who I am.

What do you become when everything you know is ripped apart?

What do you do when an unbeatable enemy comes to destroy everything you’ve ever known?

We tried to fight.

For once, humanity had a common enemy and all other human problems seemed minuscule in comparison.

We were miniscule.

Governments got on the ball pretty quickly.

Missiles.

Bombs.

Air raids.

Nuclear bombs.

All for…

Nothing.

Nothing we did worked.

Whole cities were leveled.

Bathed in death.

Blood.

Destruction.

Nowhere on Earth was safe.

At least, that’s what I heard before the phones stopped working. Before radio stations were cut off. Before communication was lost.

New York fell.

Los Angeles.

Paris.

London.

Sydney.

Berlin.

My own city was leveled…and then, no more help came…

The fighter jets slowly reduced in number till there were no more.

Tanks lay abandoned in the streets.

The sound of fighting slowly died.

In the recesses of my mind, I want to imagine there’s somewhere safe out there…but even as the aftermath settles in my consciousness, I know this isn’t true.

The orbs…their huge metal legs…they trampled…everything.

And they just kept on going.

It seemed their only purpose was to destroy the single planet we call home.

We were like ants to the metal beasts—for that’s all we know them as.

Giant, metal beasts.

No one knows what’s inside them.

No one knows who controls them, or if the orbs themselves are sentient.

They have no faces. No one has gotten close enough to see inside them.

At least, no one has gotten close enough to survive and tell the tale.

These…machines.

All we know is that they kill us all.

One way or the other.

But maybe those who died in those first few moments were the lucky ones.

They didn’t live to see the horror of what life has become.

It must have been days that I’d been hiding, but it felt like weeks.

Hiding anywhere I could. Alone.

Cellars were the best bet. They were underground.

If the building above crumbled, there was a chance of survival.

But when you find a good shelter, the next thing you have to find is food.

Resources were scarce; it was everyone for themselves.

The other humans I managed to come across, those still surviving, those still free, they were usually only looking out for themselves.

So I did too.

By some miracle, I survived.

I was going to survive.

Again, I was wrong.

It happened one night.

I was sleeping.

The machine…it found me.

I still do not know how.

Something woke me from my sleep.

A noise.

Nestled in the cellar, wrapped in some poor child’s old blanket, I squinted into the darkness.

It only took a second. One second for me to see the reflection of starlight against metal.

But it was too late.

It took me.

A scream tore from my throat as the metal arm closed around me.

I was whipped from my hiding spot, the feel of the ice-cold metal chilling my bones as I was pulled from my hiding spot and brought high into the air.

I’d always known the orbs were huge.

Tall.

Taller than towers.

But being lifted by one sent newfound terror through me.

There hadn’t been any orbs close by when I’d fallen asleep.

They were so big you could see them for miles.

But somehow…this one had found me.

The wind was knocked out of me as it swung me, my body flailing like I was a ragdoll.

It lifted me high in front of itself, as if it was looking at me, and for a moment, I stared back at it.

Tears blinded my vision but hatred burned through.

Pure, raw, hatred.

A scream filled with frustration left my throat as the orb swung me downward.

This was it. It was going to trample me.

Squish me like it did that man in those first few moments.

…but it didn’t.

Instead of killing me, the orb brought me toward itself.

Maybe I was dreaming… Maybe the blood loss had affected my perception of things…but the metal softened and I went right through it.