Isle of Sanctum | The Aya Thrasher Chronicles | Book 1 |[Editing]

Chapter Thirty

CHAPTER THIRTY

AYA

That night, I watched Brennan hard at work, trying to crack the coded page. With everything that had been happening, I had almost forgotten about the page's existence. Brennan, however, was pretty much spending all of his free time on it. I had overheard him asking Soren for assistance. He thought Soren could put his computer skills to good use, but even Soren was having trouble with it.

I went out to the roof where Brennan and Soren were working. I wanted to call my dad and tell him I was okay. We had missed our weekly call, and I'm sure my mother didn't bother to update him about my whereabouts. All of our parents were supposed to be notified about where we had been taken, but my mother probably didn't even care.

Flipping open, my communicator, I noticed a first beam of fire that shot through the sky. It forced me to stumble back. It was a deep yellow light and it's warmth radiated in my direction. At first, I thought maybe I was just imagining things, but then it repeated, and I knew something was wrong.

The others were starting to gather around one of the outside tables. Piper had made pizza — not the best, but not bad for homemade pizza. Soren thought he heard a thud, but continued to stuff his face, and chalked it up to a looming thunderstorm. I tried warning everyone, but Soren and Piper thought I just saw lightning. Issa and Ace agreed with me. They thought it made no sense. It wasn't even raining.

Boom! The thud repeated ten times stronger than before. If it was the rain, I would have expected tiny drops of water to start parading down on us, but that was not the case.

Trevor was smoking even though he wasn't supposed to be. "Hey guys, you should come check out the fireworks."

Piper, Rayne, and Hayes didn't get up from the table. Soren followed Trevor to the other side of the roof and leaned up against the railing. Explosions of yellow and burnt orange lights appeared in the distance, like someone had thrown up a handful of confetti into the sky.

It didn't look like any of the fireworks I had ever seen before. I waited. It repeated itself, this time it was closer, and a squiggly cloud of smoke invaded the night sky.

"Guys, this isn't fireworks," Soren pointed out.

"Well then what is it genius?" Trevor slapped Soren lightly against the back of the head.

"Missiles," Lake blurted out.

She was right. "Exactly," Soren said. "I think they may be coming from Earth."

"From my calculations, the second one came from Manchester, New Hampshire," Lake said. "Oh wait. Never mind."

"What?" I asked.

"It can't be. We're on a different planet," Lake replied.

Soren looked at her. "No, you might be right. The smaller burst could be attacking Earth," he explained. "They're attacking both of us at once."

My stomach felt like an endless abyss, even though I had just had a slice of pizza. Emmy was right. Something was definitely going on, but that wasn't what was bothering me. It was the guilt of not being able tell my friends the truth about what was going on. 

Trepidation. That's the word that filled my mind as soon as missiles were mentioned. The end of Earth was coming sooner than we all had expected.

We went back inside with our new babysitters, Fox and Sadie. Some of the news stations broadcasting out of Woodport were down, but we found one that was working.

On the television screen, fire and debris were everywhere. It reminded me of a warzone. It was much worse than even before. A male reporter with ash stains on his cheeks, stood under a tent -- his face looked that painting "The Scream" — terrified.