ZINAG AND THE X KIDS

I REMEMBER THE LIGHT.
It was blinding. Everything turned white, and then. . . everything turned black.
I remember the sound. It was ear-shattering. A long, sharp shrill, like a drill boring its way into my eardrums.
I remember falling. Dropping down to a pitch-dark, unknown abyss, flaying my arms, groping for something to hold on to.
I remember thinking before I lost consciousness: This is it. This is how I die.
But I didn’t die. I survived.
I wish I didn’t.

***

When I open my eyes, the first thing I see is a white ceiling. I blink several times, wondering where I am. I get up and sit, finding myself on a bed.
The second thing I see is the girl. She’s a pretty girl with gold curls and blue eyes, wearing a white scrub suit. She’s standing at some distance from me, beating her fists against a glass wall, and she is screaming.
“Help! Help me! Get me out of here!”
“W-what?” I stand up, lifting my heavy, overweight body. My knees are wobbly and unsteady, my mind foggy. I drag my feet forward, my legs feeling like jelly.
As I walk towards her, her expression increasingly becomes frantic. Her eyes widen in fear as tears stream down her pink cheeks. Her fists beat the glass in a frenzy. Her mouth distorts into an ugly grimace, and she keeps on screaming.
“Help me! Help! Help! Please! Please!”
“Okay, okay.” I hurry to reach her as fast as I can.
But before I can reach her, she freezes—before she disintegrates into a million pieces, her ashes falling to the floor in a heap.

***

I stand there, a few steps from her, my mouth agape and pupils dilated, unable to grasp the horror I just witnessed.
“There was nothing you can do to help her, you know.”
I turn to the left, from where the voice came. It’s a boy, sitting on the floor, his legs crossed. He’s about my age. His face is sharp, angular, and fierce. His head is shaved, his body skinny underneath the scrub suit. His lips are turned up into a sly smile, which doesn’t quite reach his black, sullen eyes.
It’s his arms that catch my attention. They’re full of burn marks–red, grotesque, deep scars–like a map of islands that I’m pretty sure extends to his whole body. They look like second-degree burns, and it must have hurt a lot. I feel sorry for him.
I hastily look away, up to his face. He catches me staring at him, and even from the distance, I feel his anger simmering.
But he doesn’t speak. Instead, he points a finger in front of him, signalling me to do the same.
I thrust my hand forward—and it touches glass.
I gasp. The boy is right. I couldn’t have helped the girl even if I wanted to. Like her and him, I’m on the other side of a glass wall.
But. . . wait.
This isn’t a glass wall.
This is a glass cage.
I swivel around.
I count five glass cages formed in a pentagon. In the center is an empty space where the girl had been. The glass cages each have a single bed. Three of the cages each contain kids around the same age as mine. The cage to my right is empty.
We are all wearing white scrub suits.
“Glad you’ve woken up. We were afraid you’d be disintegrated as you sleep,” a soft voice chips in. This time, it’s a girl.
She’s prettier than the one who died. Her face is heart-shaped, tapering to a pointed chin. She has straight, shoulder-length brown hair with a widow’s peak. She sits on the edge of her bed, her hands folded primly on her lap. She reminds me of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, but younger.
Oh, and she’s wearing glasses. They weren’t able to hide her eyes though: her left eye is of the color brown, and her right eye is white, and, I suspect, blind. A congenital anomaly.
There’s something entirely different about her, though. I can feel it in my bones.
“But that would be a good thing, right? Because then, he wouldn’t feel a thing.” Another boy, sitting on a chair. This one is miles different from the first one. He has an open, smiling face, and gentle, brown eyes. His long hair is tied in a braid which reaches to his waist. Even from this distance, though, I notice his left leg is shorter than his right. A polio victim during his childhood, perhaps?
I get the same vibes with him as with the girl. They’re not as ordinary as they look.
“W-why?” My hoarse voice comes out like a croak. My throat is dry and scratchy.
“Why what?” The first boy smirks. “Do us a favor, will you, Fatso? Slam your head against the glass so you can come fully awake and we can have a proper conversation.”
The girl frowns. “Nimuel, you’re so rude calling him that. And don’t you remember what it was like when you first woke up?”
“I’m not calling him anything that he’s not. He really is fat,” the boy shoots back at her dryly. “And I do remember, Issa. That’s why I’m telling him to slap himself awake.”
My blood boils. I don’t like this boy, Nimuel, and his arrogant attitude. And yes, I’m a bit on the heavy side. There’s nothing wrong with being fat. But must he rub it in?
“I. . . I am awake!” I blurt out between clenched teeth.
The other boy smiles. “Don’t let Nimuel get to you. He’s okay. He’s just tired and frustrated trying to find ways to escape from here.” He waves a hand at me. “I’m Gio. She’s Issa. What’s your name?”
I wet my dry lips. “Zinag. I’m Zinag.” I shake my head to clear the cobwebs. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember much. What day is it? What happened? How did I end up here? And where is ‘here’?”
“Today is Friday, the 13th.” Gio’s eyes became hooded. “Aliens invaded us three nights ago.”
“Aliens?” I scoff with disbelief. “Aliens aren’t real. What are you talking about?”
“It’s true,” Issa insists. “Aliens are as real as you and me, and they invaded Earth.”
I think I dropped my mouth to the floor. I am tongue-tied.
Nimuel speaks. This time, without spite or sarcasm. “They had this giant, powerful laser. It destroyed the continents in one blast. There’s almost nothing left, just fragments. You can see for yourself. Look down on the floor.”
Much as I hated to obey him, I do as he told me. The floor is also glass. It’s so transparent that one can see what’s down below.
I gasp out loud when I see only water.
An endless expanse of water stretching to the horizon, reflecting the black skies. It’s no longer the Earth I knew. The continents are submerged, and only a few mountain peaks are visible above the water. In the distance, I see a lone fragment of land—a sliver of land surrounded by an infinite sea.
Gio adds, his voice trembling, “We think almost every person on Earth is dead. Those who weren’t killed by the blast were taken prisoners here. Maybe they fished you out of some wreckage or something.”
I remember I had been on a bus when it happened, on my way to Manila. Maybe Gio’s right. But how can I still be alive if the bus crashed? And where have I been all that time?
Flashes of black and white flit through my mind—vague memories I can’t make sense of.
I swallow hard and face them again. “Okay. So aliens, Earth’s gone. Where are we now?”
“We are inside a gigantic battleship,” Issa says, “waiting for the arrival of their leader, whom they call Vzu.”