Isolation

Chapter 31

Sara's head was throbbing. She touched her temple and winced. It was sensitive to pressure. She tried sitting up. Someone pushed her down.

"No no, don't get up," someone said. "You hit your head pretty hard."

She didn't know that voice. It was dark, but she could see an orange light flickering off the wall. Her left eye was covered with a bandage.

"Who is that?" She asked.

"Name's Cassidy," she said. "You probably can't see me cause it's dark. Not being self-racist or anything. My comm doesn't work for some reason."

She looked with her good eye. It was just barely, but she could see the girl's outline.

"Am I blind, or...?"

"No, I don't think so. You had a cut above your left eye, so I patched it for you."

"Wait. Tim! Where's Tim?"

"Easy," she pressed. "He's fine. He took a tumble, too, but he's okay."

"Where are we?"

"Where I've been for almost a week eating the gross cafeteria food. That stuff is disgusting. Do you know what they put in there?"

"No, I mean... how?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. I haven't found a way out, yet."

"I don't think you understand. The school shouldn't still be here. It was destroyed, along with everything else."

"I assumed so, given the debris field that appeared after the crazy quake. As for how I'm still alive... I don't have a good, logical reason. Luck, I guess?"

Sara tried to sit up again. Her head was swimming.

"Nothing is making sense," she said.

"Then let's stop going in circles. I'll start with what I know, okay?"

"Okay. Shoot."

"I know there was a seismic event, and I made it nowhere near the TransArks. I was knocked out. When I woke up, I was lying out here, and that," she pointed, "was there."

"What were you doing at the academy on a weekend?"

"I'm a geek, okay? I like coming here on the weekends to do research. There's so much information that you can learn at the academy. Well, could. The archives stopped working after the quake."

"Okay. My turn. That quake wasn't a quake, Cassidy. It was an explosion. A planetary explosion."

"What happened?"

"Pluto is gone," Sara said. "The whole planet was destroyed."

"Hmm. Plausible. So I'm just free-floating in space?"

"That's what I can't explain. When I saw the courtyard, it was like looking at it on a 2D screen from one side. From one direction, it's like it doesn't exist."

"It sounds like a dimensional rift," she said.

"Dimensional rift? Where did you pull that out of?"

"Quantum mechanics can allow spaces to exist between spaces. With enough energy, the academy could have been thrown into a safe place before the blast could destroy it."

"Got any other theories?"

"Yeah, but that's what I would expect. I studied diagrams of the Drax's weaponry. They use plasma, which gives off massive amounts of energy. I'm guessing they had a very big ship with a very big gun."