Like the Moon

Prologue

I enjoyed the strain. I craved the heat in my veins and the rush of air in and out of my lungs. I couldn't have cared less about the cheers that had come from the student section, that's not what I did it for, and that's what made me the best.

My mind would go elsewhere. There was only my body, the chemicals in it, and the end goal as I sped towards it. It was the way I lived, especially now.

It was the only way I knew I'd make it. Make it through adulthood. Make it through life. Make it through the invasions.

The first one had been a joke. It might as well have been a low-budget science fiction film. It felt like a prank with a projection of blue hologram lights in the sky. They called themselves Keronians, and they had made a big spectacle about taking the remaining humans back to whatever stupid place they had come from. Then the hologram cut off, there was a big boom from the sky, people braced, and braced, and nothing happened.

For days, the people of my community hid and cowered like mice, all for nothing. A different kind of heat sparked in my veins. The kind that made me get mad the way my dad use to when one of my competitors would bump my elbow to throw me off.

Then, twenty days afterwards, when my rage subdued into dormant anger, and we started to get back to normal, the real threat came, and it was no joke.