'I can't decide whether you should live or die, oh you'll probably go to heaven, please don't hang your head and cry. No wonder why my heart feels dead inside, it's cold it's hard and petrified. Lock the doors and close the blinds we're going for a ride.'

Prologue: The Year That Never Was

"Seriously, who had the idea of putting vinegar in the sink to clean it? It stinks!" a voice boomed from the back of the crowded house. There were sixteen people in the kitchen, twenty five in the living room, five on the stairs and thirty living upstairs, all in a reasonably sized family home. Anyone would think that it was just a group of people who couldn't afford the rent, or homeless.

But all these people were hiding. Hiding from the skies, and hiding from the man on the TV who had so much power.

"My fault, I'm sorry." A younger girl held her hands up, her hands covered in tattered gloves that barely kept in body heat. The heating had cut off a long time ago and it was beginning to get cold, very cold. "I'll scrub it out. And do the dinner. I'm sorry."

"You should be. God, I don't know why we let you stay here at all. You and your fantasy stories." The older woman began to chuckle, patting the younger one on the back. "I know you're my daughter, Jayda, but seriously, you're just like your father!"

"I don't have a father. Not anymore." Jayda replied coldly.

"I know your father is an absolute idiot but you an at least be good enough to acknowledge his bloody existence!" Her mum yelled, alerting the other people in the house. Jayda's father had abandoned the family at the Toclafane first contact, fearing his parents' safety, and rushed straight up to Scotland to look after them. Neither Jayda not her mother saw him again.

A younger man, around seventeen, was stood beside Jayda as she cleaned. He was simply in his own world. He did that a lot. Tap tap tap tap. Tap tap tap tap. All the time. Rumours had it that he tapped the same rhythm in his sleep. He was the only one in the ruins of the house that had managed to maintain mobile phone contact with anyone. "That woman will drive us all crazy someday."

"She drove me crazy just bringing me up." Jayda smiled as she scrubbed at the kitchen sink. A mammoth food task awaited her and she was not looking forward to it. "Would you stop that? It's really annoying. No offence."

"None taken." The man replied as he stopped tapping, though the rhythm was forever in his head.

"Still talking to that guy up in Newcastle?" She asked, referring to his phone.

"Of course I am! I'm not missing out on the football. Archangel is still working! If he wasn't a murderous, sadistic lunatic, I'd be praising Harold Saxon." He chuckled.

"That's not even funny." She replied, narrowing her eyes. "He's killing so many people, and he's up there safe and sound on the ship!"

"He's the reason why we're all hiding out in this house. Why we all have to be extremely silent at night." Carol (another woman around her mother's age) sighed, sipping her boiling hot water. "The sound of guns in the early morning haze."

"I'd kill him. Well, I'd make him see what he's done to all of us first. The human race, all of us, we're dying. And…I…I'm scared." Jayda shook, handing out some barely cooked pasta. Nobody complained though. Everyone who got it were lucky to have food and energy.

In the evening, most of the people in the house would gather on the stairs and in the front rooms to try and get a radio signal. Though tonight the radio just broadcasted static, and Jayda was forced to start conversation. "Do you know who I miss the most? I never thought I'd ever say this, but I miss Harriet Jones. Do you know who she is?" She asked a younger child.

"Yes, I know who she is." The little girl laughed, then ran to sit on her mother's lap.

"I miss when you could walk around at night without being chased by packs of wild dogs." An elderly Jamaican lady laughed, sitting by her son.

"I just wish everything was normal again." A mousy-blonde haired boy added, clutching his scarf and jacket for warmth. "I wish the legends were true. That there is a weapon that can kill him: kill the master."

"Well I heard that there's a man who can never die, so I'm guessing a lot of these legends are made up." Jayda sighed. "But I guess it's better to live with hope than to live in the darkness. The Master thinks that he can destroy us, but we can't give up without a fight."

"You sound just like her." A man added.

"Just like that girl!" A toddler giggled, pointing at the smashed TV.

Suddenly, the lights went out, and the house and its refugees were thrown into blinding darkness. Jayda carefully peeked out through the curtains to see armed soldiers looking down the streets for any people breaking curfew. Though this time, they were joined by an armoured black van. Everyone on Earth knew what this meant. Jayda gulped.

Someone had found them.