by Casey, Ryan
And sure. She knew she was different. She knew she wasn’t like the other kids. Especially with the scar above her collarbone where they’d inserted it. Used to get funny looks in P.E. at school. A few whispers behind her back and glimpses of disgust.
But she didn’t mope about it. Didn’t dwell on it.
She just got on with her life.
But this pain, right now. For some reason, she wondered. Even though she’d been to the hospital, and they’d insisted her heart rhythm was normal and everything was in order… what if something was different now?
What if something was wrong?
She swallowed a lump in her throat.
You’re just being paranoid. You’re absolutely fine. It’s nothing to worry about.
She went to start up running again when something happened.
It was so instant.
First, the fireworks, making her jump out of her skin.
The cacophony of light above.
But also something else.
Something stranger.
Something weirder.
The lights all around her.
The streetlamp.
The lights inside houses.
Just as the roar of “Happy New Year!” went up, those lights dropped.
She stood there a few seconds. Sweating. Heart racing. A weird ghostliness to the air. A sense of unease. Like something just wasn’t right.
That’s when she felt the pain in her chest.
Like an explosion.
That’s when she felt the palpitation; the palpitation that felt stronger than any she’d ever had.
And that’s when she collapsed to the road, and everything went black.
Chapter Nine
New Year’s Eve
23:58
Two Minutes Before the Event…
* * *
Christian Hart sat by the side of his father’s hospital bed and prayed for a better year ahead.
It was late at night, but it could be any time of day at all. He’d spent so long in here that the boundary between day and night didn’t really mean anything at all. The critical care ward was in the basement area of Preston Hospital, so there was no daylight in here. Just a screen over at the far side of the room, where a bright artificial white light pumped in constantly, not fooling anyone with its false illusion of the day.
Christian sat by his father’s bedside. He wanted to hold his hand, but he couldn’t because he was advised not to. He listened to the bleeping of the life support machines. Watched his father’s chest rise and fall as the life support machine kept him alive in his state of unconsciousness. And he wanted to speak to him. He wanted to say so many things to him. Wanted to talk about the times when they spent playing football when he was growing up. Or the late nights playing Tekken on PlayStation when Mum was sleeping. He wanted to talk about so many things.
But he couldn’t. Because it was pointless. He heard the talks of people chatting to relatives in comas. The rumours that it was “good for them” based on some pitiful human ideation that everything was within our control even when it really wasn’t.
He should know. He’d studied medicine. He knew an induced coma was a state of total nothingness. When people spoke about dreams they had when they were under, they were mostly referring to the final stages when they were coming round and being woken up.
The other state?
Total blackness.
And yet, there was something peaceful about that state. Something reassuring to Christian, knowing his dear father wasn’t suffering. That he wasn’t going through nightmares. That all of this would pass like a finger click, and before he knew it, he’d be back up and on his feet again.
“You’re going to get better, Dad,” Christian whispered. Realising right away he was breaking his own policy of not talking. “You’re going to make it.”
No response from his father.
Just the rise and fall of his chest, again, again, again.
Christian thought about his dad’s final few years. How sad they’d been. The fallout with Anya, Christian’s sister, over something so petty Christian could barely remember it. But the pair of them were stubborn to the point of never resolving their differences.
Christian remembered ringing Anya when Dad caught pneumonia, which eventually descended into sepsis in hospital after a routine operation. Telling her about him, how he was going into intensive care. Asking her to come down and see him before he went under because God knows whether he’d wake up again.
She acted upset. Said all the right things.
But she never turned up.
And Christian hadn’t been able to get hold of her since.
So Dad went under with just Christian by his side.
He looked up at Christian before he’d gone under with a smile on his face. And Christian looked back at him. “What you smiling about?”
Dad smiled back at him. Shook his head.
“Go on. You’d better tell me now. You’re not going to be so chatty for the next couple of days.”
He looked around at Christian, tightened his grip on his hand, and he smiled.
“I’m proud of you, son. And no matter what happens here… I know I won’t be alone. I know you’ll be here. Always.”
Christian felt a tear creep down his cheek as he sat there beside his dad. He knew he didn’t have long in critical care. But it was better than during the coronavirus pandemic, where you weren’t even allowed to visit a relative.
He looked along the rest of the bodies in their states of suspended animation. Saw a nurse washing the forehead of a woman a few beds down with such tenderness, such care.
He saw it all, and then he heard the fireworks from above.
His first thought: oh, shit. It’s New Year. Would you believe it?
His second?
The lights went out.
Just for a moment, everything seemed to stop.
Everything went black.
The bleeping stopped.
The machines stopped.
And outside, the fireworks went off.
And then, a split second later, the machines were back on again. Although there was a louder noise this time. The generator kicking in, clearly.
One of the nurses looked over at Christian. Smiled. “It’ll be okay, love. Power outage. We’ve got good generators here. All be back online in no time.”
Christian nodded. Looked back at his dad, who was breathing away with assistance again.
He had no idea of what was ahead.
And he had no idea that the generators only had 96 hours of fuel left before the power ran out completely.
Chapter Ten
New Year’s Eve
23:59
One Minute Before the Event…
* * *
Michaela Harrison stood in the elevator of her apartment and wanted nothing more than to get back home.
It’d been a shocking night. First off, she’d seen Dave, her boyfriend, getting off with another girl. And as much as he insisted it was just a laugh, she wasn’t buying any of it. She knew what she’d seen. He was a dickhead. He did it all the time, even though he insisted he loved her, and it was only her he cared about.
She stood there, tears stinging her eyes. A slight taste of nausea and vomit in her mouth. Hammering the button to take her back to the fourth floor and wondering if she should take the stairs instead.
“Stupid thing,” she said, her head spinning a little. She hated the spins. Always got them when she’d had too much to drink. “Always jamming when I need you to work. Why can’t you just work?”
She hit the “up” button a few more times before finally sighing and giving up.
She went to step out of the elevator when the doors suddenly slammed shut on her.
She stepped back, sighed. Rubbed her fingers against her temples. She felt so sick. So rough. She just wanted to get back. Back to bed. She knew she’d regret missing the fireworks in the morning. Knew she’d feel awful for missi
ng seeing in the new year with her friends.
But they always said she had a penchant for being dramatic when she was drunk. And as much as she denied it, she figured they had a point.
“I just want my bed,” she muttered. “I just want to get back and get to my bed and…”
The elevator stopped.
The lights flickered, just for a moment.
A moment’s horror. Total terror.
Then the door opened.
She was about to roll her eyes and curse under her breath when she saw a guy wander in.
“Sorry,” he said, smile on his face. “Got off at the wrong floor.”
He was handsome. That’s the first thought that struck Michaela. Handsome. Not “fit” or “buff” but handsome. Tall. Black. Short hair, looked well-groomed. Dark brown eyes and this beaming smile that made her shake at the knees a little bit. Holding on to this rucksack, which looked heavy.
So despite her annoyance, her irritation, and her drunkenness, she smiled back. “Sure. No problem. Which floor you heading to?”
“Fourth floor,” he said.
“Oh. Fourth floor. Same as me!”
He nodded, smiled. Smelled… expensive. Like good quality aftershave. Not the cheap shit most lads wore. Dave being one of them, dare she say it.
And she knew it was wrong to be feeling this way about a total stranger. She knew it was unfaithful to even flirt with somebody. And she knew how glaring her own double standards were here.
But she was drunk, and she was pissed with Dave, so hell, yeah, was she going to flirt a bit.
“So,” she said, fluttering her eyelashes. “What’re you doing here on a night like tonight?”
He turned to her. Frowned. “A night like tonight?”
“New Year’s Eve.”
“Oh! Oh, yeah. Sorry. I, erm. Well. I guess I just moved here recently. So not got many, y’know. Friends.”
“Oh,” Michaela said. “I’m sorry. That sounds kind of… sad.”
“Well, that’s me. Sad Oliver.”
“Oliver. Nice to meet you. I’m Michaela.”
He held out a hand, which Michaela took. Tough, but soft enough to feel respectful, too. “You can call me Oli.”
That beaming smile that melted her from within.
“So, I’ll ask another question,” she said.
“Fire away.”
“You don’t know anyone. So what’re you doing here?”
Oli rolled his eyes, smiled some more with that drop-dead gorgeous smile. “Oh. I’m doing a delivery.”
“Delivery?”
“Yeah,” he said, holding up his bag. “UberEats.”
“Oh,” Michaela said. “I use UberEats all the time. Shame we’ve never met before.”
“Well, we can meet again some time. If you fancy?”
She looked into his eyes, and she smiled. She liked his confidence. But what she liked most was that even though they were in what could be seen as a pretty threatening setting for a woman on her own, she didn’t feel intimidated by this guy. Not remotely.
“Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have suggested that. It’s… it’s not really appropriate, is it?”
“No,” she said. “But not for the reasons you might think.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve…”
She was going to tell him she had a boyfriend.
Then she saw Dave flash in her mind, tongue down the throat of whatever slag slapped up in fake tan came before him.
“Actually,” she said. “Forget I ever said anything. It’d be great to see you again sometime.”
She pulled out her phone, shaking with the adrenaline of what she knew was a sin.
Held it in front of her.
“My number,” she said, fully aware she sounded a bit eager. “It’s…”
And then something weird happened.
Her phone died right then.
“Weird,” she said. “My phone. It just froze.”
“That’s odd,” Oli said. “Mine’s the… mine’s the same.”
She looked up at Oli. Saw the concern in his eyes. Felt the weirdness as they stood there in this lift.
“Hope it’s nothing to do with that weird solar storm,” Oli said.
“What weird solar storm?”
“You know. The one they’re on about on the news. Wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But then I wouldn’t have thought anything of a global pandemic threat and look what happened there.”
The thought scared her, just for a moment. A solar storm. She didn’t know what the hell one of those was, but it didn’t sound good.
“Well, it’s a good job I’ve got you here to look after me, isn’t it?”
He smiled back at her.
She knew this was wrong.
Very wrong.
But she wanted to kiss him.
She wanted—
The lights of the lift went out.
Everything stopped.
“What…”
And then she felt the lift give way and hurtle down.
Fast.
So fast she could barely even hear herself scream.
And as she plummeted below, all she could think of was that this was punishment for contemplating cheating on Dave.
And then the smell of the fries in Oli’s delivery bag.
And then his shouts and cries and her own screams and—
A bang.
Then, nothing.
Chapter Eleven
New Year’s Day
00:00
* * *
It all happened so fast.
One second, the countdown ended.
The crowd erupted, cheering.
The guy switching the lights on hit that button, and for a moment, just for a solitary moment, there was light. Bright light, illuminating the entire square of Preston City Centre that people were crammed into, as Max stood there, watching.
One second, light.
Then a bang.
All the lights went out.
A few screams went out. Laughter. But more than anything, fireworks. Fireworks erupting into the night sky, lighting everything up. And everyone just stared up there as a few people groaned. The lights had gone out. The music had gone out.
And the more Max looked around, the more he realised something else.
The lights. All the street lamps. All the lights outside the shops. Or in the houses and the flats. All of them had gone out, leaving total darkness.
He stood there and looked at the crowd of people before him. The bulk of them pointing their phone cameras up at the sky, something that really annoyed him. Why not get right in the moment instead of recording it for bloody Snapchat or whatever it was called? Why live life through a screen?
After all, who the fuck even cared about the fireworks if they weren’t there? One of humanity’s greatest delusions, that. The misguided belief that other people really gave a shit about their crap.
Why bother recording a gig of a band somebody else doesn’t even give a shit about—and then go on to bore them to death by making them watch it?
People were so full of themselves.
But right now, Max noticed something different. Something unusual. Something odd, amidst the erupting blast of the fireworks, the flashes in the sky.
The phone screens. They were black. All of them were dead.
A few people lowered them, looked at them. Hit the power button. Tried to switch them on again. But nobody was having any luck, by the looks of things.
And Max had to admit there was something weird about it. His first thought when the lights had burst and the power had tripped was that the electrical grid was down. There’d been a lot of talk about it from the council, especially having already got the Christmas lights plugged in. Fears of an overload. But fears they were going to ignore anyway because they wanted people to really enjoy New Year and put on the biggest show after all the COVID shit last year.
Really, Max knew that just meant they were strug
gling for cash and wanted an excuse to charge an extortionate amount for residents to watch a shit, Z-list band, probably a mate of the council leader’s wife, and rake a bit more money into the pockets of the higher-ups around here after a challenging year.
But now, seeing all these phones out and all the confusion that came with it… he had a weird feeling about everything.
Something didn’t seem right.
He heard the chatter. Heard the shouting. Heard the nervous laughter. And most of all, he heard the tension. Because it seemed like literally everybody’s phone was out here.
And humanity wasn’t supposed to be disconnected. Not anymore. Not when you had notifications for everything. Not when you had the government basically running you via your smartphone. Not when you had this window to the world in the palm of your hands at all times.
Max remembered his dad telling him tales of how everyone was going to be “microchipped” one day. How it would be billed as a way of making things easier—infinite access to information, payment methods linked to the person and not a cheap little card, that sort of thing.
But really, it was a way of spying. A way of keeping tabs. A way of making people reliant.
Max was always sceptical. He figured humanity would never sign up to an experiment like that in their droves.
Turns out they didn’t need microchips planting under their skin, after all.
Mobile phones had been the Trojan horse for that whole exercise.
He reached into his pocket for his old Nokia, a phone he barely used. Only ever used it for calls, mostly work-related. Couldn’t be bothered with any texting or social media or anything like that. That wasn’t his world.
But when he lifted his phone out of his pocket and saw it was dead, too, he started to get an even weirder feeling about all this.
“It’s the solar flare,” someone muttered. “You saw the weird lights earlier, right? Solar flare’s taken all our electricity out. We’re fucked. We’re utterly fucked.”
He sounded panicked. But the sorts of glances he was getting were those a madman talking about the end being nigh would get in the streets. Nobody was taking him seriously, even though all the proof Max could see suggested…