Prologue - A Dying Planet

The East Sun was slowly beginning to sink behind the snow-capped mountains of Recondite, casting its last purple rays across the courtyard of the King’s magnificent palace. Its turrets rose high into Rocondite’s alien sky, which – at that moment – was a burgundy colour as the purple East Sun set, and the red North sun sat profoundly in the centre of the sky. The gold plated balconies and window ledges shined purple in the sunset, lighting the palace up like a ultra-violet beacon. As the East Sun finally finished setting, the last of its purple rays disappearing from the sky; it revealed the West Sun that it had been eclipsing. The West Sun had started to set an hour or two before, and judging from the ninety degree angle of the North Sun in the sky, it was around 8:30 at night. In an hour and a half, the North Sun would set, and the city of Sealie would sleep until the rising of the West Sun the next morning.

The sunsets in Recondite were certainly mesmerising, but as Steven Copsworth hurried across the King’s Courtyard with his wife, Marie, who was carrying their three month old baby in her arms, he had no time or desire to awe in the presence of the setting suns. A direct request from the King wasn’t exactly something you could ignore, and Steven Copsworth knew this from first-hand experience from when he first started studying the stars. The day before, he had sent the King a message, and now he had been summoned to the Palace on immediate terms. As the small family reached the huge arched doors at the foot of the Palace, Marie tapped Steven on the shoulder carefully.

“Are you sure this is a good idea, Steven?” She asked; worry clear in her voice and eyes.

“I’m not sure of much, Marie,” Steven admitted, “but I am sure that Recondite is dying, and unless we fix that, or find a new planet, we will too. And Casey will never have the opportunity to have a childhood on a dying planet.”

“I wish so much that I could disagree with you.” Marie sighed, looking down at their baby, Casey, affectionately. “But even then, what type of childhood is one without her parents?”
Steven reached out his hand and caressed Marie’s cheek. “A somewhat better childhood than the one we’d be forcing her into if we kept her here.”

Marie sighed, but nodded.

Steven pressed the buzzer by the door and announced that they had arrived. They were instantly escorted to the throne room, where the King was waiting graciously in his magnificent gold throne, studded with amethysts which resembled the East Sun.

“You have good news, I gather?” He asked Steven slowly.

Steven nodded.

“Go on,” The King pushed.

“There is a planet.” Steven stated. “A planet not so far from here. Earth. It is inhabited. By a race much like our own, too. One of us could blend right in with their kind and they wouldn’t suspect a thing. They have the same physical characteristics.”

The King stroked his beard. “And you’re suggesting that we could live in harmony with these people?”

Steven’s eyes widened and he shook his head frantically. “No, no. That would be completely impossible. There’s around six million of them inhabiting the planet, and it’s incredibly close to being over-populated. If we were to live in harmony with them, we would bring about the death of Earth, not just our own.”

“So…” The King said slowly. “You’re suggesting an invasion.”

“Yes.” Steven said in all seriousness.

“How soon?” The King asked, his eyebrows raised.

“I suggest that we send one of us to the planet. Have them observe it and the way the inhabitants live. We shall see if they’re worth saving before we invade and start a cold-hearted war. We do not want to destroy a race that could help us in the future. They have the capacity to be so much more than they currently are, your majesty. They’re a young race. We must let them grow, or it will be as if we’re murdering small children.”

The King’s eyes swept the room as he considered Steven’s proposal, his eyes coming to a halt on the bundle of blankets in Marie’s arms. “…And you wish your daughter to be the one to go, do you?”

“Anyone older than a baby will grow too quickly. Maybe even die. We have to take our chances with a newborn and its empathy link with its parents. They will grow up around these creatures, the homosapians, and will unintentionally give us all the information we need to decide whether we may need this race, as well as all the information we need to defeat them.”
The King stopped and considered this for a while. Time seemed to stand still in those few minutes. It was as if the entire planet had come to a standstill to wait for the King to give the Copsworths an answer. Eventually, he nodded.

“Prepare a shuttle immediately.” He told the guard closest to him.

“As you wish, Sir.” The guard replied before hurrying off.

The King then turned to Steven and Marie. “Take note, Mr and Mrs Copsworth; I have no power or authority to keep your child safe. A new born can die as easy as an eighty year old. Little Casey’s safety is in her own hands. As soon as the shuttle departs, there is nothing at all we can do to assist her on her way. She must make her own path. You shall have no contact with your daughter whatsoever. The empathy link you share will be severed and connected to me.”

All the blood seemed to drain from Steven and Marie’s faces, yet the both of them nodded in unison.

“So we have an agreement?”

White as sheets and looking as if they had seen a ghost, the Copsworths nodded once more.

“Thank you, Mr and Mrs Copsworth. That will be all.” The King said finally, walking over and taking the bundle of blankets from Marie’s arms. “I will not be needing your assistance again in the near future, so if you have any more worries, you can take them to your Sealie’s Royal Representative. I have no part in your little experiments anymore.”

After being escorted back out of the Palace, as the Copsworths were making their way back across the courtyard once more, the rays if sun reflecting onto it now red as the North Sun began to set, they looked into the sky and saw the last glimpse they would see of Casey for a very long time.

A white ray of light flew across the sky from the Palace and out to space. To anyone else in Sealie, or anyone else on Recondite for that matter, the small ray of light could have been interpreted as a shooting star. A rare occasion – the star-gazers like Steven would have been confused yet fascinated out of their brains, for there were normally only shooting stars in the third quarter of a Recondite year (in Lujy, Tausug and Beetmerps – July, August and September in Earth months, Steven had discovered). Yet Steven and Marie knew the truth; the ray of light that had been dubbed as an out-of-season shooting star was in fact Casey.

And Casey would be the only thing stopping the genocide of the human race, or the genocide of her own.

1. Ordinary Casey

“Keep her safe, she’s not like you.”

I had read those seven words so many times in my lifetime yet they had never really made sense to me. I imagined they never would. Yet I kept the small piece of crumpled paper, admiring the beautiful cursive hand-writing the message had been written in, and wondering how on earth I had anything in common with the person who wrote it, let alone genetics.

The note was the only thing I had from my real parents. One tiny scrap of paper. Seven simple words. One huge message beyond my understanding.

“She’s not like you.”

How? How was I not like everyone else? What was I, then? An alien or something? No. No, I didn’t think so.

Well I guess I should explain a few things. My name is Casey Copsworth, I’m sixteen years old, I live in Nottingham, England (Ilkeston, actually, but people tend to know better when I say Nottingham because that’s where Robin Hood comes from), and attend Kirk Hallam Community Technology & Sports College. When I was a baby – barely three months old – I was left on the doorstep of Elephant Orphanage in Sheffield, which was about an hour away. I was at the orphanage for two or three weeks before I was adopted by Elizabeth and William Harris. I’m glad from what I’ve heard, orphanages aren’t very nice places to grow up in. But who can’t resist a new-born baby with springy red curls and emerald green eyes? Apparently my adoptive parents couldn’t.

So there I was, at my home. Yet, it never really felt like… home. Sometimes I felt like I didn’t even belong on the same planet. I was the same as everyone else, yes, but I also felt that I couldn’t be more different. I didn’t know why, but that was just how I felt. Elizabeth said all teenagers felt that way, and the only way to fix those feelings was to discover yourself – to find out who you truly were. I had no clue who I really was. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to know, either.

Anyway, I sat at my desk in my small bedroom, reading and rereading the message my parents left me with all those years ago. I wondered where they were. Who they were. If they were happy… If they missed me at all…

I shook my head frantically as if to shake the thoughts away. I reminded myself that, biologically or not, Elizabeth and William were my parents, because thinking about my parents got me angry and sad at the same time, and I ended up turning into one big, blubbering emotional mess. I couldn’t afford to be a big, blubbering emotional mess at that moment; I had to get ready for school.

I pulled my uniform out of my wardrobe, happy to see that Mum must have ironed it the night before; it meant I wouldn’t be getting detention again for having creases in my shirt. I pulled on my white blouse, being sure to button it properly (I’ve never been good at buttoning shirts), slipped on my boring, navy blue pleated skirt, and rummaged through my drawers to find my tie. After I found it and put it on, I grabbed my navy blue wool cardigan from the end of my bed and threw it on over the top. I may have been early autumn at the time, but even in summer England wasn’t that warm.

I dragged my school bag out from under my bed where I had thrown it the Friday before and unzipped it noisily, allowing the school books it contained to spill out onto the floor. I dug through the pockets until I found where I had left my planner, and, checking my timetable, I swapped around my books before standing up, swinging the bag over my shoulder and prancing down the stairs to the kitchen.

Mum caught me as I missed the bottom step. “Good morning,” I smiled, kissing her on the cheek after regaining my balance. As I made my way to the fridge I did the same to Dad as I passed him, noticing the bold headline on the newspaper he was reading.

“Crop circles?” I asked. “Aliens? Really? I’m pretty sure it’s probably just drunken people with lawn mowers.”

Dad raised his eyebrows. “Scientists seem to think otherwise – they found materials from space around the edges of the crop circles.”

I rolled my eyes. “Obviously drunken scientists too. There’s no such thing as aliens, Dad.”

He smirked mischievously, almost as if he knew something that I didn’t. “You never know, Casey,” he muttered, “you never know.”

I smirked back at him, before noticing the clock in the corner of my eye. “Shit!” I exclaimed, picking my bag up off the floor near Dad’s chair and running to the front door.

“Hey! Watch the language, missy!” Mum chided.

“I’m late for the bus!” I yelled.

“Have a good day, honey!” I heard Dad call as I shut the front door behind me.

I sprinted down the road to the bus stop, nearly collapsing on the ground when I got there. I looked around the group of about twenty school kids waiting for the bus, searching for my school’s uniform. I took a sigh of relief when I noticed my friend Hannah standing to one side of the group. I pushed through the crowd of people and tapped her on the shoulder.

She jumped slightly and turned around, throwing her arms around me in a tight hug. “Casey! I didn’t think you were coming! I was tempted to run down to your house and murder you if you didn’t turn up in a few minutes!”

I laughed, breaking her grip around my neck. “Well, it’s lucky I came then, huh?”

“I wouldn’t have really murdered you though, because then I’d be a loner on the bus every day, and I’d have all the boys hitting on me every day because you wouldn’t be there to tell them to piss off,” she explained, “and yeah, that would really suck.”

Hannah was probably the most gorgeous girl in the world, yet she honestly had no idea. She was ever o modest and never had a clue why packs of boys would try to subtly follow her everywhere. She was so nice to them all and then wondered why she got asked out all the time. She saw herself as nothing special, and because of that she’d never said yes to any of them. I was pretty sure she’d never had a real boyfriend, but I was also pretty sure she wouldn’t get one until she was confident they were the right person for her.

That day she wore her curly blonde hair out, leaving it to cascade down her shoulders in loose ringlets. Her bright blue eyes were highlighted with a thin line of black liquid eyeliner, and her already long lashes were lengthened with mascara. That was all the make-up she wore, but it made her look like a model nonetheless. All the girls in school were so incredibly jealous of her natural beauty, and all the popular girls were constantly trying to convince her to hang out with them instead, but she never did. She was so loyal, yet she was so awkward around people she didn’t know, so she just stayed with the people she was comfortable around.

“You’d be so lost without me, wouldn’t you Hannah?” I asked with a smirk on my face.

“As much as I hate to admit it, yes, yes I would be.” She said, her smirk mimicking mine.

The bus rounded the corner then, barely skidding to a stop beside us. The door clanked open noisily and the students surrounding us started filing in. I walked up the steps on the bus wobbly as it was shaking because of everyone rushing to get the backseats, and handed the driver a pound fifty before making my way to an empty seat near the middle of the bus. I sat down and shoved my bag by my feet as I noticed the boy sitting in the seat in front of me staring intently at Hannah and, I’ll put it this way; he wasn’t exactly admiring her eyes.

“Oi,” I said, whacking him over the back of the head with my hand. “Put your eyes back in your head you miserable twat.”

The boy sitting in front of me turned around in shock, his eyes wide. For a second we took one another in. He had chocolate brown, messy hair which he was fussing with as is bright blue eyes looked me up and down. His eyes were framed by thick, black rectangular frames. He had a cute baby face and all the girls sitting behind me on the bus practically swooned when he turned to face me.

He smirked. “Sorry, freckles. Haven’t you seen the view?”

“Freckles?” I asked incredulously. “How original.”

“I’m a very original person,” he winked.

“Hold on a second,” I said, a quizzical look making its way across my face. “A second ago you were staring at my friend like she was something to eat, and now you’re flirting with me? How does that even work?”

“I’m posing a psychological question.” He told me. “Which is better, a hot blonde with a swimmer’s body or a cute little freckled red head with gorgeous eyes and one hell of an attitude?”

Hannah finished up with the bus driver and started to walk over to me. She stopped when she noticed the boy talking to me, instead simply giving me a thumbs up and a wink and sitting a couple of rows in front of us. It was obvious to me she was listening to our ridiculous conversation, but the boy probably wouldn’t have noticed.

I decided to ignore the fact that he had just called me cute. “Since when is that psychological? Do you even know what psychological means?”

“Of course I do! It’s psychology, obviously.” He rolled his sparkly blue eyes at me.

“Well, do you even know what psychology means?” I pressed. “Because it doesn’t sound like it.”

He sighed deeply. “It’s the scientific study of the human mind and mental states, duh.”

“How long did it take you to memorise that one from the dictionary purely so you can wow pathetic girls with your charms?” I asked slyly.

“I’m gonna let you in on a secret,” He smirked. “I couldn’t possibly be a ladies’ man if I tried.”

“Really?” I asked, not believing a word. “You sure look like one. And I’m sure most of the girls on this bus would highly disagree.”

“I pretend to be, but usually when it comes to talking to girls, I choke up and forget how to speak. But you…” He paused, thinking, “You’re something different altogether.”

“Oh, how lovely.” I commented as the bus pulled up to the school bus stop. “What am I? Your good luck charm?”

“Only if you want to be, lovely.” He said, winking at me and making his way off the bus.
Almost against my will, my legs forced me to run after him. I grabbed his arm before he got any further away.

“What’s your name?” I asked, a curious smile playing around my lips.

He smirked, breaking my grip on his arm. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

He went to walk off again, but I stopped him. “Yes, actually, I would.”

“Well, in that case,” a half smile appeared on his face and he held out his hand, “Matthew Rodgers, at your service.”

A giggle escaped my mouth – a very un-Casey-like giggle that I wasn’t very proud of – and I shook his hand. “Casey,” I smiled. “Casey Copsworth.”

He let go of my hand, a smirk on his face. “Casey Copsworth…” he mused, “sounds very fairy tale.”

“My life’s about as far from a fairy tale as it could get.” I told him.

“If you ever want someone to help make it one,” he said flirtatiously, taking my hand and kissing it, “just come and find me.” He let go of my hand almost as quickly as he had grabbed it and started walking away.

“You’ll have to brush up on your charms first, Mr Rodgers,” I called out to him.

He shook his head. “I don’t think the world’s quite ready for that yet.”

I didn’t think I was quite ready for that, either.

I turned around, a small blush appearing on my cheeks as I smiled at the ground and began walking to the spot where my friends and I sat. Someone remind me to look where I’m going when I walk – I walked straight into Hannah. Then again, she probably made sure I walked into her on purpose so she could hear about my conversation with the mysterious Matthew Rodgers.

“So,” She smirked, dragging out the “o” sound. “What’s the verdict?”

I laughed. “I’m not quite sure yet,”

She raised an eyebrow.

I felt all the blood rush to my cheeks and gave in. “He’s… somewhat decent,”

“Somewhat decent?!” She asked, almost incredulously. “You were the envy of every girl on that
bus! He’s obviously more than somewhat decent

,”

“Well, he’s only somewhat decent to me,” I smirked. “The whole reverie kinda shatters when he opens his mouth.”

She laughed. “What do you mean?”

“Do you want an example?” I asked her, raising my eyebrows.

“Obviously,” she giggled.

“The first thing he said to me was ‘Sorry, freckles’.”

“Freckles! Ha!” She started laughing so hard I thought she was going to be sick.

“Come on,” I said, laughing along with her, “let’s find the others.”

Impressum

Texte: Sian Webster
Bildmaterialien: Sian Webster
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 10.12.2012

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