Apocalypse: A New World

Chapter X: An Icy Mess

Phoenix Drakos

The moment I entered the planet's atmosphere, I knew there was no hope. I was going to die. Unless, of course, there was a way. But my thought then? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

What the Krazy was going on?

"Apollo!" I cried, once my "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!" thought diminished a little. "Apollo!"

I was exactly falling down straight as I expected. In the beginning, I was rotating round and round the planet before dropping a height. The planet looked strangely familiar, but it just couldn't be...

Then I began falling almost straight down. It was icy. I put my hands down as though they were longer than my body and stop my fall through it and then something amazing happened. Remember the forcefield I had used in the ship against the guards? The repulsion from my hands? The same thing happened, but on a much larger scale. I was actually lifted a few feet upward before I crashed on the ice, which started having cracks. I quickly moved on to another piece of ice.

I looked around. It was sort of a collection of icebergs with water on one side and ice on the other. In between were small icebergs, where I was. Here and there were huge icebergs, and then to one side, it was completely solid ice that went on beyond my field of view. One person was there in the astronaut suit.

Then I noticed there were cracks on my helmet. And the other people who had fallen were stirring. One swam up to the iceberg I was on. Two were on ice. How did they survive? Then I realised. The forcefield I had created had been extremely powerful.

Melissa grabbed onto the iceberg. She had swum like a pro. I jumped onto another iceberg. Together, with the help of each other, we reached the actual ice-land, or whatever you want to call it. There were two people standing there. Miraculously, the glass of our helmets was still not broken. It must have been some kind of a special glass. Remember, I'm not a genius like Pole.

If this place was what I thought it was, could I risk removing my suit? I was itching to try it out. But then I noticed that if a place is made out of ice, it's bound to be freezing.

Right then, not too far from us, something fell out of the sky. I noticed it and began to sprint and hobble at the same time. When the four of us finally reached the object, I realised it was Ajax.

"Aah," said a voice from it that was definitely not Ajax's. "I honestly thought I was going to die alone."

I stared at Ajax for a while. Finally-

"Mum?" I said, just to confirm. "Are you a recording or something?"

"I haven't got much time," she said in a constrained voice. "Oh, this is not good at all... but at least I'll be free."

"Mum," I said, sinking to my knees. "But- how?"

"Well," she said. "I guess let's start from the part I died. The last thing I remember before that was that the machines had killed me. The next thing I know, everything changed."

"What do you mean?" I said.

"Well," she said. "It felt weird. I was in another body. This one, in fact. Your father was working on this robot and explained everything it could do. I was marvelled at how fast the technology had progressed, honestly. Then there was the fact, that the background was no longer recognisable. I was on a raised platform and below the platform was all lava. It was pretty roomy. Then your father, the clever man that he was had put a tracker on your ship. He put one on me. Then he put a flight tracker on this body. Once I reached you, I gave word to your father to never communicate with any one of you."