PLANET AGAFRA - TOLLINDO CITY

Hyejin stumbled down the stairs when someone shoved her too hard and hit the wall with a grunt. Another person elbowed her in the jaw as they scrambled past; the disadvantage of being short. 

She was also pushing desperately to get out of the building doors herself. It was hard not to when the people behind you were pushing forward just as hard. She had heard of a ‘crowd crush’ before and didn’t quite understand what it meant until today. It felt like being slowly suffocated, quite literally drowning in a sea of people.

The mayhem swept her up as it spilled out of the building – every building – and people flooded the street all at the same time. An emergency siren blared so loud that she had trouble focusing on which direction the screams were coming from. Anxiety cemented itself deep in her stomach when she looked back and realised that Dion and Atticus weren’t right behind her anymore.

People continued to run past, threatening to trample her if she stayed put. The boys would be fine, right? She was sure they could handle themselves. They might have even left her all alone to save themselves, being law-breakers and all… right?

Hyejin bit her lip, hesitating, waiting for any sign of familiar silhouettes, or even a head of shocking blue hair. Nothing. 

She was alone.

Someone rammed into Hyejin’s shoulder, knocking her off balance. With flailing arms, she reached out and hugged the nearby streetlight tightly to prevent being engulfed by the mass panic of bodies flooding the street.

CRACK!

The racing track and open gate were on the other side of the hotel building, but Hyejin could see the crackle of red lightning peeking over the rooftops. An enormous wave of monsters poured over the skyline like an army of spiders marching to war. Bone-chilling screeching competed with the wail of the evacuation siren and the screaming crowd to the point where Hyejin had trouble telling all of them apart.

She could vaguely make out silhouettes of people on the roof and laser shots blasting in every direction. They were quickly getting overwhelmed by the number of creatures that scuttled over the facades, making their way onto the main street below– the main street that Hyejin was on. There were so many. 

A missile made of fire soared overhead.

BOOM!

Debris showered down from the roof of the hotel. The entire side of the building was crawling with monsters, yet only a few of them were knocked away by the blast. The rest remained clinging to whatever available surface would hold their long gangly legs.

Hyejin’s chest tightened and a lump formed in her throat. It was hard to breathe. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t convince herself to let go of the lamppost.

‘All civilians must evacuate the city area to prevent further casualties.’ The voice was the same as the announcer of the race. Little drones buzzed in the sky, repeating the message over and over again. The advertisement holodisplays all displayed a map that showed the nearest escape route. ‘Please make your way to the nearest underground bunker immediately.’

The crowd was so dense it was difficult to tell who was fighting and who was fleeing. Laser shots zapped through the sky like fireflies from nearly every angle. The smell of cooking seafood filled the air, masking the smell of the dust that was being kicked up by so many running feet. 

More fire missiles soared overhead, this time aimed at other buildings that were being swarmed. At this rate, there might not even be any buildings left in the end. It suddenly made sense why Tollindo was a desert city after the war with these monsters six hundred years ago.

A loud crack caught her attention again. The roof of the hotel moved on its own like it was alive. It was collapsing. The intense rumbling was loud enough to send vibrations through the lamppost she clung to. Large chunks of concrete hurtled toward the ground, crushing some of the monsters below.

Hyejin ran.

She could taste her lunch coming back up as tears blurred the world around her.

Dion and Atticus be damned– she needed to get to safety. It wasn’t like she could stop a building from falling on their heads. It wasn’t like she could stop a fire missile mid-flight. It wasn’t like she was a hero. If they somehow managed to survive it, she would make it up to them, somehow; but if they didn’t, she would try to give them a good send-off. They didn’t have any family to do it for them, it would be the least she could do.

It took Hyejin another few minutes of running to realise that the hovering drones weren’t just making announcements. They were projecting arrows directly onto the street to give escapees a clear direction. 

The masses were thinning out quickly. A little too quickly. Bodies lay among the rubble, some victims of falling buildings and some victims of the toothy crustaceans; all of them very much dead or dying. 

Hyejin ducked and covered her ears when a fire missile shot out from beside her. She hadn't realised it a second ago, but there was a metal ballista set up in the middle of the street. Even though they were aiming at the monsters, the gunners seemed to have little to no concern for the people who might be caught in the crossfire.

The people on this planet were completely insane. They had no morals at all. It was almost a surprise that they even had an evacuation plan and didn’t just wipe the city off the map altogether. The gunners weren’t uniformed. Hyejin suspected that, given the state of planet Agafra, most of the law and order was handled by local militia. There was hardly any security when Hyejin initially arrived in the shuttle.

The man loading the projectiles noticed her staring at them and gave her an aggressive expression. “Move on, lady. Trigbies will eat you if you stand around doing nothing,” he warned, turning away to continue reloading the ballista.

BOOM!

Hyejin’s mouth suddenly felt dryer than Tollindo’s desert. 

Trigbies. Now that they had a name, she remembered reading about them in natural science books. They were giant parasites capable of wiping out entire populations with their almost limitless hunger. One planet in the galaxy still wasn't inhabited after a trigby outbreak hundreds of years ago. When scientists sent probes in to investigate, they found that the monsters had started eating each other when there was nothing else left to devour. The planet's surface was described as a nightmare; all they found were trigbies and desert.

An understanding Hyejin never thought she would have washed away her judgemental attitude. She hated to admit it, but it was better to lose lives in the crossfire than lose a city to trigbies. If you lost a city, you lost a planet. Yesterday’s Children had gone too far. They’d never been so aggressive in the past.

SKREEE!

Hyejin jumped out of her skin. She turned on her heel and locked eyes with a monster that was barrelling down the street, aiming for the ballista. Its mouth was open wide, showing all four rows of sharp jagged teeth.

Another fire missile flew past Hyejin, landing in the creature's mouth before it exploded in a spray of innards. The fishy-smelling meat rained down and she wanted to be sick all over again. The viscous fluids seeped into her new clothes, warm and sticky.

“Move on, lady!” the gunner stressed again. 

Hyejin didn’t need to be told a third time.

According to the evacuation maps, the nearest shelter was conveniently under the Tollindo Starport. Perfect. Hyejin didn’t want to be in this doomed city anymore. She wanted to go home and take a long, long shower with at least five different scented soaps. 

This whole trip had been one disaster after another. Who was she kidding with this whole plan in the first place? And for what? To investigate a sixteen-year-old potential murder case? It was a stupid, stupid idea from the start. She knew that, but now the hopelessness was truly set in her bones.

WHUMP!

A trigby corpse landed in front of her, missing her by a hair. She didn’t have time to stop, instead smacking straight into the hard exoskeleton with a surprised squeal. Pain shot through her side where she caught on a tooth as she stumbled over a long crab leg. She landed on the asphalt hard enough to skin her knees through her dense trousers.

“No, no, no, no!” she muttered, tentatively touching the spot at her side. Her fingers came away bloody. Not good. Trigbies were venomous. If their saliva got into the nervous system, it had the potential to leave a grown human paralysed if not treated quickly.

Her chest heaved. Her head swam. Her clothes were too tight. Her mouth was too dry. She clutched a hand to her chest, her heart beating faster than the speed of light and gasped desperately for breath.

What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?

A small number of people ran past, desperately clambering over fallen debris. Monster screeching pierced Hyejin’s brain and she clapped her hands to her ears again, using the dead trigby to hide from the very much alive one that chased after the group. 

At the rear of the human group was a young man, shooting at the monster as it ran at them. He backed away from it, keeping his eye on the trigby the whole time, but he stumbled over his own feet and landed on his back. 

The gun skidded across the ground toward Hyejin and their eyes locked for a brief moment. It was long enough to see the terror in his soul. They both knew there was no hope. They both knew he was a dead man. He screamed wildly and held his arms up to shield himself as the monster came down on him.

Hyejin's eyes clamped closed as hard as she could, her hands tightened at the sides of her head to try and drown out the horrific wet noises. More screaming followed. She knew it was the rest of his group. The ones he tried so hard to protect.

SKREEE!

She couldn’t stay there. Not if she wanted to live.

Hyejin tried to open her eyes again, but as soon as she did her stomach lurched. She couldn’t control it. The smell, the heat, the sticky sensation permeating the fibres of her clothes… it was all too much. Her stomach emptied itself despite her best efforts. Tears streamed down her face and her body shook violently.

C’mon. You are Hyejin Choi. You are not weak. You are not pitiful. You have this.

Cautiously, she slowly crawled out of her hiding spot and picked up the gun the poor unfortunate soul had lost while the trigby was preoccupied. The mana gauge still had 80% left. The starport wasn’t much further away, it should be enough to get there as long as she didn’t run into too many of them. She just had to make sure not to miss.

She glanced at the mess that used to be the young man and took a deep breath.

Hyejin aimed the gun at the freshly-fed monster and fired. 

SKREEEE!

It turned to her and charged, its gaping maw stretched wide and ready. It was so fast!

Four shots aimed at the roof of its mouth hit their target, sizzling holes through the flesh and into its brain. It collapsed dead in front of her without a fight. Thank goodness her father made her study those natural science books.

Hyejin stood up tall.

I am Hyejin Choi. I am not weak. I am not pitiful. I have this.