The sky was filled with darkness and all was silent.

I heard Adam rustle through the pages of an old book.

"Shush!" I whispered, afraid of what would happen if

I spoke aloud.

"It's okay to speak louder, Eva. The machines aren't

anywhere near here. They've all gone to celebrate our

destruction."

"What are we going to do next, Adam? We can't go back

there Adam. There's nothing left for us there. We

can only go away."

"Where? Where can we go Eva? The only place we've

known as home is Zion."

"I guess we could try to find another place just like

Zion."

"There are no places just like Zion, Eva."

I walked into the street where I stood, staring up in

the sky, and wondering what was out there, besides Zion.

I beckoned to Adam to come outside and pointed up to the sky. "Look Adam. There's a star up there that you can see anywhere in the world. Sailors used to use it to guide from when they were far away from home. It was a constant part of their charts, because it was always there, every season, every place they went."

"A star to guide on."

"Wherever we go, whatever we do, it will always be there to guide us. If we get separated look up at the sky and find that star and I'll find it as well. Then we know that we'll be looking at the same star. It'll connect us."

We were both silent, just looking up at the night sky thinking about our futures, or if we were going to live through the next day.

After about five minutes of contemplation Adam said to me "I can hear them celebrating our downfall, screaming in a weird computerized language, if you can even call it a language. They're saying that we are just pawns in a game in which they are queens and kings. We must prove them wrong. We can change the world or at least help our people to survive. That's the least we can do."

"What can we do to help them? They are all dead."

"No they aren't. I hear voices, whispering to each other, afraid of what will happen next. We must help them, Eva. It is our obligation as human beings."

He started quickly walking back to the settlement, almost running. I said a quick wish to our star and then ran back to catch up with him.

When we made it make to the settlement both of us were exhausted, yet filled with an incredible amount of energy. I started shuffling through the rubble, picking up pieces of various shelters. "Help us," came a thin, piercing voice from behind an old aluminum sign. I quickly rushed towards the sound and started digging through the pile of ashes to get to the voice. Adam was already a few steps ahead of me, into the clearing that had been created by the destruction. He picked a young boy by the name of David and started to ask him where the rest were.

David said in a quiet, meek, little voice," I don't wanna to talk to you. I wanna to talk to Eva." Adam put him down and he sprinted over to me. "Eva, Eva come help. People all round corner. Bring him too." Adam and I followed David into a wooden shack that hadn't been touched by the machines. Inside were about fifty people, all in various states of injury, ranging from the children who just had scrapes and bruises, to the elders who were near death. The place smelled of burnt flesh and blood.

"Well, let's get working," Adam whispered to me. "The machines believe they killed everyone, so they won't be coming back, at least anytime soon."

My eyes scanned the room, looking for someone I knew. There were only a few people, and I barely knew them. I had taught their children how to read. That was probably the farthest thing from their minds now. I crept around the room, checking people's vital signs and assessing their injuries. I stood up and I heard my back crack.

Adam was already giving water to those who could swallow it, and bandaging minor wounds. I went around methodologically, putting pressure on major wounds and bandaging them to hold the pressure. When I reached the end of the first row, I took a sigh of relief and went to start on the second row.

I don't know how many hours or even days it was, when both Adam and I could sit back and relax. We had set the children with very minor injuries to work giving people water and taking care of minor wounds. I assessed our situation once more. About a fourth of the people that had survived the attacks, died soon after. Many were cases that were so far gone that all we could do was clean them off with water and make sure they were still breathing.

Slowly people starting getting better, healing from their wounds, and gaining energy. I resumed teaching the children, while Adam was still working in the shack, helping the slowest healers get back on their feet again. Instead of teaching the children about reading, since most of them knew the basics already, I taught them information out of the medical textbooks I had rescued, so they would know how to take care of the injured if anything like the destruction happened again and I wasn't there.

One night, quite late, Adam told me something that he hadn't told anyone else. "They are going to take us away from here, so we can help the rebels. No, not the machines, Eva. Something or someone else. We need to get them ready to survive on their own before we leave, since they will die if we don't. We can't tell them, because they would try to keep us here."

I went to sleep that night thinking of who would take us away from our family to help the world.

A few months later I was cleaning up the shack after the last person left and I heard a rustling sound outside in the rubble. I ignored it because often some animals like to burrow in the rubble. Instead, the rustling sound stopped and I heard a thudding sound on what passed as a door to the shack. "Who is it?" I called. "Bring Adam and come with me," the voice said.