Scarlett had been ready to die.

From the moment the grim news of the asteroid first struck her ear, she had accepted her fate with little more than a few tears. Worrying, she had thought, wouldn’t do any good. It wasn’t as if she could single-handedly change the course of the flaming rock by doing so, and besides, she didn’t want to spend her last hours mourning a hypothetical. A future life for her simply wasn’t meant to happen. And that had been okay.

That was the whole basis for her logic: she wasn’t supposed to survive.

So why was she the one left over? Millions of people had wanted to live, had cried and prayed and begged. Her parents, her friends, her twin sister Rebecca—they had all wanted to live. And yet was it her, not Beck, sitting on dusty floor of an old storm shelter treating knee scrapes when everyone else’s hearts had already gone quiet.

Scarlett glanced at her chipped nail polish, still stuck to her fingers from that final, fateful day. It should have been her to push Beck into the shelter, not the other way around.

Wincing, she picking up the glinting bottle of alcohol and pouring it over her leg. From the knee down stretched a canyon-like gash, gleaming with pus and barely scabbed over. Her attempts to tend to it were beginning to seem futile—an infection was clearly boiling within the wound and she had no idea how to treat that. Silent tears burned down her cheeks as she laid her trembling body down onto the cold concrete floor. God, she just wanted to be done.

There was no real reason to keep herself alive, not with everyone else gone. Besides, the asteroid’s impact had likely mutilated the outside world in ways Scarlett couldn’t even imagine. This was no future, she thought, squeezing her swollen eyes shut. Survival wasn’t worth the pain of living in a world such as this.

There was a feeble tapping against the door, so quiet that Scarlett was unsure if she’d even heard it. Either way, she didn’t bother to move; it wasn’t worth the effort.

Then it came again, louder and much more distinct. Knocking, Scarlett realized with a start. The rhythm was unmistakably human, yet impossibly so. She’d assumed death had stolen everyone already; could she possibly be mistaken? Had Beck come to get her after all? Breathing heavy, she pushed herself up, face frozen as she reached for the door handle, her own words ringing out oddly in the space around her.

“Is someone there?”