Chapter 1: Falling Stars
For most people, each day comes as expected as usual. You follow your daily routine and it's ins an outs. For most people there aren't dramatic changes each day, you don't live like a terrible soap opera. You're normal by most standards. And for Danielle Wiseman, she never expected her life to be anything but straightforward. That was very far from the truth.
It was a late summer's evening, Danielle had gone out with friends for a drink at the local pub, and by midnight she was exhausted.
"Dani, are you sure you don't want a ride home?" asked one of her friends Olivia.
"No, I'm fine. My house is only over the hill anyway." she turned down politely.
"You know if the Mr. Louis catches you going through the electricity powerhouse again that he's going to press charges."
"It's a good thing I'm not going to get caught again."
"Yeah, well promise me you'll at least go around it. It's dangerous running through there and when you end up getting yourself electrocuted you'll wish you had listened to your old friend!"
"Alright, I'll go around the power station!" Danielle lied.
"Good. Well I'm off, see you around!" Olivia waved Danielle and drove off in her car. While Olivia meant well, she could be a serious pain in the butt sometimes. So Danielle took off her high-heels and began her walk home.
For as long as she could remember, Danielle had always used the hole in the power station's fencing as a shortcut home. She was always careful, and she almost never got caught. It was only on the first night that Mr. Louis (the council caretaker) put in security cameras that Danielle found herself up at the local police office facing fines of trespassing, did she get found out. Since then she worked out the exact blind spots of the cameras and created a path through the station in order to sneak past it every night with ease. Never in a million years did she think that anything worse than getting caught trespassing could happen in her little lifeless town. How wrong she could be!
So this night, she push out her little gap in the fence and began to make her way through the maze of cameras, when something in the sky caught her eye. It was especially clear this night that the clouds, that usually hung over the small town of Gainsborough, were no where in sight and the twinkling evening sky could catch even the most unaware of people. Staring up into the sky, she had to stop herself, a particular star was shining brighter than all the rest. It was getting bigger, wait that couldn't be right. But it was, the star was getting bigger and brighter by the second. A falling star! Danielle closed her eyes and began to make a wish.
Gainsborough wasn't a busy town, in fact it was so small that everyone knew one another. With a population of 134 it was hard not to! More than anything Danielle longed for an adventure, something to get her out of this town and into the real world. So it wasn't hard to guess what she was making a wish for.
"I wish that something will change my life forever, for the better, and get me out of this hole of a town and on an adventure."
She opened her eyes again, and continued on her way out of the station, the other hole in the fence just in her sight.
Suddenly there was a huge bang, one that shook the ground in which she was standing. The falling star had entered the atmosphere and was heading straight towards the ground. I was heading towards Gainsborough! Danielle froze with fear, she couldn't move an inch. It could have been a comet or an asteroid, but whatever it was it looked dangerous! To make matters worse it was speeding up and before anyone had the chance to react it came crashing down in the field beside the power station. Danielle screamed and covered her head as flying debris went in every which direction.
But the object didn't stop, it continued, smashing through the fence around the power station and into the generators. Cables were flying everywhere, and by chance Danielle had been loucky she froze in her spot. Another step to her right or left and she'd be fried by live wires. She couldn't go anywhere and she didn't dare to test it either. In front of her sat the destroyed columns of generators and controls, the barbed wire fence caved in underneath it all. The asteroid or comet or whatever it was, lying straight in the middle. Danielle fished inside her pocket for her mobile phone hastily dialing for the emergency services.
"Um... hello? My name's Danielle, and I'm standing caught in the middle of live cables at the Gainsborough Power Station. Something fell from the sky and crashed into it and there are wires everywhere. Please send someone soon." she pleaded over the phone terrified. As if things couldn't get worse, the universe decided to answer Dani's wish upon a star at the most inappropriate timing ever. Because the thing that fell from the sky was no asteroid.
It was ever so small, especially for one of it's kind. It turns out that was all Dani ever needed. She was still frozen as the rescue sirens could be heard in the distance. She sighed relief, it was going to be okay! Until she heard a clicking noise. It was hard to describe, almost as if someone was putting together metal joints together creating a scraping noise across the metal surfaces. It certainly caught Dani's attention.
"Are you kidding me. Oh my god... it's an alien. I bet you it's a little green man getting out of his space ship and I can't move and they're going to find me with my brains sucked out of my eyes!" Dani started to scream and panic. Amongst all her hysteria, the sound came to stop and over the mound of destroyed generators popped up a odd metal type creature. It was about the same size of Danielle and just as terrified, it looked like it had no idea where it was. Dani stopped shouting and stopped to stare at the creature that was gently making its way towards her, unaware of her presence. Without warning Dani let out an ear-piercing scream that caught it's attention straight away. It turned to look at her and began to cry out as well, both jumping back with fright. Both jumping back onto a live wire.
Their screams changed, rather than screams of fright they became screams of pain. Thousands of volts of electricity ran through the both of them, setting off another explosion that started a fire. The electrocution suddenly stopped as the fire-fighters had been able to turn off electricity to the whole town through what was left of the control room. Danielle's entire body was riddled with pain, she couldn't move a muscle, she couldn't speak, she could barely breathe all the while her eyes trained on the thing in front of her that mimicked her. The fire was spreading, sparking everywhere. With visible fatigue the metal creature raced forward and grabbed Dani by the waist, covering the back of her head as a huge explosion set off behind them, thrusting the two through the left over fence.
A generator lay over the back of the creatures legs, who in turn had protected Danielle from the fire. She was not singed in the slightest, although her legs were grazed and cut by the rubble around them. As much as the creature had tried, by covering her head, she was still slipping in and out of consciousness. It pushed away the generator, as the fire-fighters and medics had begun to shout out. There was blood, so much blood. Something it had never seen before. This girl, so frail, lay dying on the ground as torches shone over the mess searching for her. It was so frightened. It couldn't be seen though, so it did the only thing it could think of. Run.
Danielle was watching the creature fret and try and tend to her. Then black. It was running away as she could hear voices. Black. People lifting her onto a stretcher. Black. Sirens. Black. Black. Black...
No one could ever explain the explosion, whether there was still some electricity left in the generators or whether there was some link between what crashed or even if they had been tampered with. All anyone ever knew, in the small town of Gainsborough, that that was the last day Danielle Wiseman could walk.