I’ve been awake for an hour, but my body was still shaking to its core. The nightmare felt so real.

I was in my parents’ house, taking care of my younger brother, who suffers from an autoimmune disease. We were in his room, talking about the latest horror movie he saw with his friends. He’s into this type of movies, so I let him tell me the story, even though it creeps the hell out of me. After he finished with it, I went downstairs to pick-up his medicine from the kitchen, when suddenly the house began to quake, like a sudden large jolt followed quickly by stronger tremors.

The shaking felt violent and it was nearly impossible to stand up straight. The contents of our house were all over the place and I desperately tried to reach to my brother. Running to the second floor, I stumbled on the stairs when my breath was taken away. I gasped and only managed to whisper my brother's name.

A strong pressure held me to the ground, making it hard for me to breathe. I was literally crawling on the stairs when suddenly the windows blasted into thousands of pieces with such a sound, I thought I'd gone deaf and, in that moment, I knew I was about to collapse.

Someone grabbed my hand and pulled me up the stairs, but being more unconscious than awake, I couldn't figure if the earthquake stopped, or it all happened in my head. I was feeling weak and my body was floating. Somebody was there with me. Someone was holding my injured arm and all I could feel was pain and a skull-splitting headache. And there was a voice, screaming at me: "Up! DON'T!".

"What?"

I opened my eyes and there they were: two eyes staring at me intensely, touched with blue.

"DON'T!" The voice screamed.

Then I woke up.

Sweating, shaking and screaming my brother's name.

The room was gloomy and these eyes were still there every time I blinked. I was afraid to get out of bed, like every move I could have made would have brought the nightmare into real life. After a few minutes of listening to the world’s noises from outside, my breath came back to normal. I took a long shower.

In this dream, there was something I felt was really bad. An evil, brought to destroy this world and its inhabitants. An evil who was full of resentment, fury and hatred. Lucky for me, it was just a nightmare.

I tried to take my mind off about that and repeat, for the 5th time, the presentation that will be held in front of all the important people. If they would buy what I was selling, my boss would give me the much-desired promotion. It was definitely not a good day for nightmares and apocalyptic shit.

My anxiety got worse when I thought about Trevor. He’s my colleague, a bastard who makes my life hard to bear. Once the promotion was mine, Trevor would become my subordinate and I was dying for that to happen. He was a miserable piece of shit, with barely any semblance to a human being.

Maybe I was being harsh.

But he still was a major asshole.

When I got out from the taxi, I politely saluted the driver while making sure that I didn’t forget anything on the back seat. I entered the tall and prim glass building, taken by assault by all the office workers dressed up and ready to “conquer the world”.

Right.

I lived in a rented apartment which was smack-dab in the center of Bayas, the capital of Carayan. I’m 22 years old and I loved the modern and complicated life of the 21's century, like every ambitious young person with big dreams ahead. I worked for a big company with lots of opportunities. Opportunities that demanded many sleepless nights in order to have a chance at any of them.

Long story short, I was hyping myself up, on the way to the elevator, when I heard a voice greeting me.

“Mia, good morning!”

“Good morning, Daniel! Looking good! Big day?”

“Not bigger than yours. If you fascinate us again, as you did with the oil project, it’s all yours, babe. Guaranteed!” Daniel said confidently with a large pearly smile.

“Be ready, Daniel. I'm coming up with a pretty controversial topic... for some people.”

“Ha-ha! For Trevor, you mean?”

“Oh, God no. You give him too much credit. Unfortunately, this project is of interest to all top companies and the debates will get very heated.”

“Ok, you caught my attention already. See? You just won a vote.” He said winking.

“Then it's almost mine.” I said laughing nervously.

“Thanks for your moral support, Daniel!”

“Anytime, princess.”

Daniel is a handsome, smart and perfect, in every was that counts, Don Juan who is always tallying up great deeds. Which also happens to include a large number of girls in his bed. He made his move on me three years ago, when I got hired. After a month of teasing each other, he realized that I wasn't going to sleep with him. But we still stayed in a good relationship, almost friends I would say.

When I got out of the elevator, I headed to my office, left my stuff and then went to the lady’s room. Unfortunately, it was next to the men’s room. Which meant after a moment I’ve suddenly come face to face with Trevor, who had instantly changed his surprised look for an impish one.

“Mia Russell! You look like you just lost a project.” He grinned.

“Trevor McAss! You look like my future soon-to-be-fired subordinate.”

And without waiting for his reply, I stormed into the toilet, swinging the door into his face. I could have bet that it was paler now than it was before.

Loser.

Trevor is a 23 years old, frustrated man, who hasn’t been helped by his intellect, looks or drive to achieve the two things he wanted most: to be manager and to bang Ms. Bauer, the Director of the Sales Department. She just got married with a German businessman, the 3rd husband she has so far. The missus doesn’t seem to be a consistent woman, but we all know that Trevor had met all three of her husbands, so we can allow her a dose of consistency here and there, however.

The meeting was about to start, as I saw the world gathering in the meeting room.

The real purpose of this meeting was to impress my boss, Ken Olsen, the potential client Ken has hunted for years, Alexander Petersen and his IT consultant, Andreas Reis.

I was already in the room with all the presentation materials arranged, the video projector open and my heart in my throat. I saw Ken right in front of the door and over his shoulder, a pair of eyes were looking at me intensely. I couldn’t tell why, but in that moment my heart started to beat its way out of my chest and a second later…

Day Zero started.

Broken windows. Screams. Crying and prayers were everywhere, breaking my eardrums with the wind whipping at my face. The building seemed about to collapse, sounding like a child who was crying and screaming at the same time. I was desperately looking for Ken, but all I could see were images overlaying with other images that lasted for mere seconds, each and every time I tried to open my eyes. As if I was in the dark and the light-bulb turned on and off continuously, giving me a migraine and a feeling like I was about to vomit.

Someone grabbed my hand so hard that I thought it was going to be torn off and I didn't understand who would do something like this in such a moment.

Trevor?!

Then I felt like I was floating, like the earth was no longer under my feet and only my arm, which was in terrible pain, was holding me anchored to... someone?

I was trying to open my eyes, while my mouth was busy screaming something incomprehensible, when a gigantic wave of energy swept all the buildings, cars, us and our lives.

I found out later that all of this lasted for less than a minute.