Author's Note: This is my first attempt at a multi-chapter story. Let me know if you think it's worth continuing.
Prologue: Solitude
Tori Vega had never dreamed that she could hate silence so much.
Although singing was, of course, her passion, she had always appreciated the calming and healing effects absolute silence could bring. When she was younger, and a showering Trina's discordant attempts at show tunes echoed through the house, she would often close her bedroom door, slip on a pair of noise-cancelling earphones, and meditate, on her future, her friends, the nature of existence – whatever struck her fancy. It was peaceful, blissfully peaceful.
Now? She loathed the quiet. She would have given every cent she had for car horns honking, stereos blaring, street peddlers noisily trying to coax passing tourists into buying souvenirs they would discard the moment they got home. Anything to break the unrelenting stillness that hung over the city of London like a shroud.
It was some comfort to know that she wouldn't be alone too much longer. Jade and Beck were off foraging for food and supplies in the shops along Oxford Street, but they would be back before sunset; they always were. She almost hoped they would be arguing, so starved had she become for human interaction, even if it was vicarious. Andre, Robbie (plus Rex), and Sinjin were at their usual posts along the Thames, watching and listening for any signs of life. Trina was trying on clothes at Harrod's, but even a self-absorbed fashionista like her would grow tired of that eventually. As for Cat – she would be off in some park or back street, rolled up in a tight ball, sobbing. They had all offered words of comfort time and time again, but it did no good; the Vanishing had shattered her always fragile psyche. Sooner or later she would return, craving companionship, but it might not be for days. And Sikowitz was surely continuing his quixotic search for a coconut depot; he was already in the first stages of withdrawal, physically shaky and emotionally snappish. They could scarcely afford to lose him; for all his quirkiness, he had stepped up to the plate and showed genuine leadership in the aftermath of the Vanishing. Without his glue to keep them together, there was no telling what might happen.
Meanwhile, thanks to a mixture of her own carelessness and horribly poor luck, Tori was stuck at their home base, nursing a throbbing leg that, without medical attention, might never heal properly – or at all. Andre and Beck, gentlemen that they were, had offered to stay with her, but she insisted that they not break from their daily routine; she was determined that her foolish mistake wouldn't prove to be the ruin of the entire group. She still felt that she had made the right decision, but right at this moment, she desperately longed for Andre's warm embrace to comfort her and his rich voice murmuring in her ear.
She stared out the window of Leighton House into the garden – beautiful as ever, but already showing hints of descending into wildness after weeks without tending or weeding. A soft rain, barely more than a mist, had begun to fall.
A month, she thought. An entire month since their little group had inexplicably become – so far as they knew – the last human beings on the face of the Earth.
A shiver ran through her. The English summer had been uncharacteristically tenacious this year, and the group had enjoyed a long period of relative warmth; but autumn would no longer be denied, and a chill afternoon wind was blowing from the river. She pulled her shawl tightly about herself and sighed.
She could not help but think back on how it all began.