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  I remember glancing at my clock when I’d been woken by the first hit. It had been just after 2:50 a.m.

  “So what does that tell us?” I was thinking out loud. “That the asteroids were able to change their trajectory, and they were able to hide from our radar.”

  Mike cocked his dark eyebrows. “That doesn’t sound like any kind of asteroid I know.”

  I twisted my lips at him. “Me either.”

  “So they weren’t asteroids,” Casey said.

  “If they weren’t asteroids, what were they?”

  “A weapon?” Mike suggested.

  I nodded. “Yes, that’s most likely. But a weapon owned by who? Have we had any communication from other races claiming the attack yet?” I didn’t need to explain to him that I was talking about alien races rather than human.

  Mike shook his head. “No, but then I wouldn’t expect that kind of communication to come through here. It would be directed up far higher.”

  “The White House?” I said.

  “Yeah, the White House.”

  “Do you think this might be the first strike?” I asked Casey.

  He shrugged. “We have no way of knowing, but I’ve been watching the radar and I haven’t seen any signs of more asteroids. Of course, they might be hidden by whatever shielded the first strike, but I’ve got the feeling that kind of technology can only be used for short periods, which is why we were able to spot them in the first place.”

  “And no signs of strange spacecraft in our atmosphere?”

  “Nothing showing on the satellites, but again, they might be using shielding.”

  My mind was going at a million miles an hour, trying to predict what we might be about to face—Earth under attack. An alien race attempting to eradicate us. Humanity at war.

  Ice-cold flooded through my veins at the thought.

  Aleandro must have noticed the shudder that worked its way down my spine. He slipped his arm around my shoulders, and gave me a squeeze, pressing my other shoulder into the side of his chest. “It’ll be okay, Camille.”

  I looked up at him, holding back tears. “Will it? I’m not so sure. You didn’t see what it was like out there, Aleandro. Buildings were on fire. People were screaming and crying. Cars were in pileups on the road where people were trying to get away.” Tears trembled in my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. The possibility that there was more horror to come was unthinkable.

  He reached up and used the pad of his thumb to brush away the tears. The intimate contact made something quiver inside me, and my breath caught. Our eyes locked, and I was lost in his dark gaze.

  “We’ll do everything we can to protect you, Camille.” His voice was a deep rumble. “You have to remember that.”

  The trouble was, it wasn’t me I was worried about. It was my sister, and my friend, and all those other hundreds and thousands of people out there who had no idea what might be coming.

  Hell, we had no idea what might be coming, and it was our job to know.

  I glanced up at the giant glass dome above our heads and realized the sky was lightening. Morning was coming.

  Unlike other monsters that hid in the dark, I couldn’t help but feel the daylight worked to shield whatever was attacking us now. At least when we were able to see the stars, I felt as though I had some connection to the other planets, but now they were no longer visible, winking out, one by one, as the sun began to rise, it was as though they were using the daylight to hide.

  We didn’t need the night to track what was out there, of course. Our satellites did that for us. Only this time they had failed us.

  My fear of the coming day wasn’t only down to no longer being able to look up and see the stars. It also somehow made what had happened more real. In the daylight, we would have a better idea of the sort of damage that had been caused and the number of lives lost. We’d also have to decide which of two ways we’d be going—would we be rebuilding, or would we be under attack and readying ourselves for war?

  Casey spun around in his chair. “How much sleep did you get, Camille? It’s almost morning.”

  I shook my head. “A couple of hours, but I’m fine, I promise. You guys have been working all night.”

  Mike frowned. “But we already knew we had the night shift, so we were prepared for it. You worked late yesterday, as well.”

  I was exhausted, my eyes sore and gritty, but this wasn’t the time to sleep. We needed to keep working and try to figure this thing out. “Don’t fuss,” I told them. “I don’t need to be babied.”

  “We’re not babying you,” Mike said, his tone a little frustrated. “But you’ve been through a lot. We’ve been sheltered here, while you were the one who had to get across the city and rescue your sister and friend. That kind of thing takes a lot out of a person, physically, mentally, emotionally.”

  He was right. I was drained.

  “Besides,” Casey said, “we don’t know how long we’re going to be here for. We might as well make ourselves comfortable. We won’t do anyone any good if we run ourselves into the ground.”

  We had a number of separate rooms that were used as staff rooms for the people who worked at the Observatory. They were each equipped with a couple of large couches for comfort, and suddenly the idea of putting my head down on one and closing my eyes appealed.

  “I need to go and find Molly and Tara,” I told the guys. “They’ll be tired, too.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Aleandro offered.

  “Okay, thanks.”

  Together, we left Casey and Mike to their work and headed to the cafeteria. We saw several other people along the way, each working in their own departments, nodding at each other with tight smiles as we passed. Everyone here had been sheltered from the chaos of the city, but as more news filtered in, I felt sure they were starting to understand how catastrophic the asteroid strike had been.

  The cafeteria was quiet at this time of night. The main staff didn’t work night shifts, but there was a self-service refrigerator which held sandwiches, covered salads, fruit pots, among other things, plus a vending machine for snacks, and another for hot drinks.

  I spotted Molly and Tara at the far end of the cafeteria, wedged into plastic seats, side by side, huddled into each other. I’d always taken Tara as the strong one, given that she was older than Molly and always seemed to be edgier, but it was Molly who had her arm around Tara. Two plastic cups of vending machine coffee sat on the table in front of them, but neither drink looked as though they had been touched.

  They both glanced up as we walked in. From the white streaks down Tara’s face, I could see she’d been crying, and pride at my sister for comforting my friend, even though she’d been through the same horror, swelled inside me.

  “Hey, guys,” I said softly. “I thought you might be tired. It’s almost morning, and none of us have really slept. There are some rooms upstairs with couches. I’m not sure I’ll be able to find many blankets, but they’ll be more comfortable than down here.”

  “Okay, thanks,” Tara said, getting to her feet.

  Molly stood as well. “Is there any news from outside? Does anyone know what happened yet?”

  I wasn’t sure how much I was even allowed to tell them. Much of the work done here was classified, and if I was following the rules, they shouldn’t even really be inside the Observatory. But, considering the situation, I wasn’t sure the rules mattered any more.

  “We don’t know much yet, sorry.”

  “But they still think the asteroid strike hit all over the world?”

  I nodded. “Yes, it looks like that.”

  “So who is going to help us?”

  I gave my sister a tight smile. “We might have to help ourselves.” I just hoped we were capable of doing such a thing and there wasn’t worse to come.

  Molly had paled at my comment. Maybe she’d hoped there was somewhere that hadn’t been impacted that we could all run away to, but unfortunately, that didn’t appear to be the case.

&nb
sp; “We’re safe here,” I told her, wanting to make her feel better. “And we have to remember that. We’ve still got power, and the phones and computers are still working. We have plenty of food and water. We need to be grateful for that.”

  She nodded. “I know. I just keep thinking of all those poor people we drove past in the city, screaming and crying and covered in blood, and there was nothing we could do to help them.”

  Shards of guilt speared through me. Should I have stopped to help? Molly might be saying there was nothing we could have done, but couldn’t we have stopped to help one person, or two, or three? The sheer scale of what had happened made me feel as though I couldn’t have made a difference, but it would have made a difference to those handful of people. But I’d needed to get to the Observatory. If there was any way of stopping a second attack happening, I needed to be here. By being here, I hoped I could help the entire population of Las Vegas eventually.

  We went back to our station, and I showed Molly and Tara where the couches were. I was bone tired myself, but I wanted to make sure they were comfortable before I closed my eyes. I also didn’t want to miss anything that might be happening, though both Casey and Mike were manning the computers. They would be exhausted, too, and then they’d need me to take over, and I wouldn’t be able to do that if I didn’t get some rest myself.

  “Any news?” I asked them.

  Casey glanced over his shoulder at me and pushed up his glasses with his forefinger. “Nothing yet, but I’m taking that to be a good sign for the moment. At least there are no more strikes happening.”

  “And there’s absolutely nothing unusual showing on the satellites?”

  “Not a thing.”

  I cupped my hand over my eyes, suddenly dizzy with the magnitude of what was happening. Was our world ever going to be the same again?

  “Hey, Camille. Are you all right?”

  Mike had gotten to his feet and was looking at me, his head tilted slightly to one side. His question made me want to cry again, but I blinked back the tears.

  “Yeah, just tired and overwhelmed, but I’m sure I’m not alone in that.”

  He surprised me by taking hold of my wrist and then bringing my arm to his lips and kissing the inside, sending pleasurable goose bumps across my skin. “Go and get some rest. We’ll wake you if anything changes.”

  “Thanks Mike.”

  And I turned and left them to it.

  Chapter Six

  A hand shook me awake.

  “Camille, you have to come and see this. A broadcast is being sent out.”

  I was instantly alert and on my feet. Casey had been the one to wake me, and I left Molly and Tara still sleeping and followed him out to his computer. I couldn’t help staring at the way his muscles moved beneath his shirt as he walked. With his short blond hair, smart shirt, and glasses, Casey was neatly put together and could easily be tagged as a geek, but even from this distance I could tell his body was lean and powerful beneath his clothes.

  Mike and Aleandro were already standing around his computer screen, both with matching expressions of concern on their faces. My stomach churned as I wondered what I was about to see. Had an alien race claimed responsibility for the asteroid attack? But, instead of seeing an alien race, it was our own Madam President on screen. She was standing outside the White House, and the camera shot had been cropped close, I assumed to hide whatever damage had been done to the building behind.

  “What we are facing here is a catastrophe,” she said, addressing the country. “As of this morning, there doesn’t seem to be a single country left on our planet Earth that wasn’t affected by last night’s asteroid strike. As well as its severity, we must consider the reasons behind why no nation detected the strike before it happened. Our country is at a state of national emergency. I have deployed the army and ask civilians to remain in their homes. Help is coming, and I ask for your cooperation and calm at this difficult time. Eventually, we must work together to rebuild our great country. God Bless America.”

  The broadcast shut down, and I glanced to each of the men. “Rebuild? Do we really think we’re in the rebuilding phase yet? We don’t even know what has happened. This might just be the start.”

  “The president can’t say that, though, can she?” Casey said. “Think of the panic it would send rippling through our society.”

  “I think the damage has already been done on that front.” I bit my lower lip. “You didn’t see what it was like out there.”

  But Casey shook his head. “I have now. There’s footage all over the internet.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to see but felt I had to. “Show me.”

  He leaned over his computer and used the mouse to click open a number of screens. There was London, its distinctive structures of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Tower Bridge, and Big Ben now gone. Smoke rose into the sky from numerous different points across the city. He clicked out of that screen and brought up another one, this time of Australia, the Sydney Harbour Bridge collapsed in the middle, and the white sails of the Sydney Opera house destroyed. Seeing it like that made the scale of what had happened even more real, and my eyes filled with tears.

  “Are we ever going to come back from this?” I shook my head in dismayed horror.

  Casey’s arm slid around my shoulder, and he gave me a squeeze. “We will. We have to.”

  “I’ve heard from control,” Mike said. “The rumor that they might be sending more people our way to coordinate with us had been confirmed. They’re definitely going to use the Observatories as a home base.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “What kind of people?”

  “Mainly military,” Aleandro joined in, “but also emergency services and some government officials, too. So many places were damaged, they need a place to control everything from, and it looks like the Observatories are the best option.”

  “They’d better not interfere with our work,” Mike growled, his fists bunched at his sides.

  I kept my mouth shut. A part of me couldn’t help but feel like we’d failed. We had spotted the asteroids—at least a few of them—but we hadn’t done anything. Casey had come to me and asked me if they looked strange, and I’d just dismissed him. Maybe if I hadn’t, we’d be in a different situation right now.

  Casey glanced over at me from behind his glasses, as though he’d plucked the thought from my head. “It wasn’t our fault, Camille. There’s no possible way we could have predicted what happened from what we saw.”

  I sighed. “I just can’t help wondering. The two things must have been connected. We should probably contact other Observatories and see if anyone else witnessed the same thing in their own skies.”

  “Yes, if nothing else, if they are connected, it might make another attack easier to predict, and then at least we can be ready for them.”

  Mike’s teeth dug into his lower lip, and he shook his head. “How can we be ready for something we can’t even see? We didn’t even locate the asteroids until they were already in our orbit. Even if we tried to disintegrate them, by the time they were that close, we’d end up blowing apart our own cities.”

  I lifted a hand to stop him. “Even if we can’t stop the next one, we still need to share the information. At this point, the tiniest piece of information might be important.”

  He nodded. “Yes, you’re right.”

  I looked between the men. “How long do we think it’s going to be before the new arrivals show up?”

  “Not long,” Aleandro said. “They’re all going to be fairly local to us.”

  I didn’t like the idea of others stepping on our territory any more than the guys did. But as much as I was happy with us all hiding away in our little bubble, I knew there were far bigger problems happening in our world right now, and whoever these new people ended up being, we needed to find a way to work together.

  Casey lifted both hands as though to calm us down. “Right now, I think we all need to take a break and go down and find something to ea
t and drink. It’s been a long night, and it’s going to be an even longer day.”

  I nodded. “You’re right. We’ll eat and then swap shifts. You guys need to get some rest, too.”

  Mike hid a yawn with the back of his hand, and Casey slipped off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Above our heads, the sun was fully risen. I couldn’t imagine what the carnage in the city must be like in full daylight.

  “I’ll stay here and monitor the controls,” Casey said. “You guys go down, and then we’ll swap.”

  I frowned at him in concern. “You’ve been working while I’ve been sleeping. You should take the break first.”

  He waved me away. “It’s fine. Get yourself sorted and then you can take over.”

  “As long as you’re sure.

  “I’m sure.”

  I was starving, and thirsty, too, and I knew I was going to need a good injection of caffeine to keep my brain turning over.

  Together with Aleandro and Mike, we went down to the cafeteria in the basement. None of the staff had come in for that morning shift, and I wasn’t surprised to see the shutters still pulled down over the kitchen. I could hardly blame people for not coming into work. Hell, they might even be dead. My stomach twisted at the thought.

  Aleandro went straight over to the kitchen area. There was a door located at the side, and he disappeared through it. A moment later, the shutters lifted with a whir and a clatter

  “Coffee,” I said. “I need coffee.”

  The tattooed young man beside me agreed. “Me, too.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at Mike. “You’re supposed to be getting some sleep after you’ve eaten. You’re not going to do that if you’re wired on caffeine.”

  He gave me a cheeky half-smile and a wink. “Nah, I drink so much of the stuff, I’m practically immune.”

  Aleandro was already at the huge industrial refrigerator door, pulling out packets of meats and other things I hadn’t identified. He appeared to know what he was doing, though this was far from his usual territory.