Chapter 1 : The island that never slept
It was small. Far too small for all the people who lived on it. From the air the island looked like a tiny bunch of land surrounded by endless ocean-little houses crowded together, winding paths between the stalls in the market and the school and hospital. Ships arrived only once every couple of weeks, bringing with them all the food, medicine and supplies the island had. The island's inhabitants had adapted to live on very little but they had never imagined that one day, they would have to fight for the right to live off each other.
North Bay School stood in the middle of the island. It was the largest building on the island, its large, concrete walls and wide playground giving the building more the look of a fortress than a school. Children laughed in the yard each morning. Teachers scurried through the corridors. And hidden where no one would ever think to look, deep within the building was a secret. Dr. Elias Carter locked the little metal cabinet within the school medical room. His hands trembled slightly. Inside the cabinet was a small, metal box and inside the box...a single syringe. A vaccine. Or so Elias hoped. For months, he had been researching a peculiar virus that had been spreading among the islands nearby. It spread quickly and distorted the people with it horribly. No one understood how the disease worked. Elias had desperately wanted to prevent the island from ever coming into contact with the illness but had come up with... This. But Elias had no idea if it would work at all. 'Not ready,' Elias whispered. The syringe in the box pulsed a weak light under the medical lamp. If it worked, it would save them all. If it didn't... Elias closed the cabinet and put the key in his pocket. 'Not yet,' he murmured.
The sun blazed down on the playground as outside students began to end their classes. Sitting under a tree in the field were four boys. Will quietly and seriously sketched in his notebook. William leaned back against the trunk with his gaze on the sky. Nova kept tossing a rock and catching it. Dauut complained, 'I swear this island keeps shrinking!'. William laughed. 'That's you that's growing!' Nova flipped the rock into the air once more. 'Or more people are being born!' Will finally looked up from his notebook. 'Why don't we ever just leave?' he asked. 'Leave?' Dauut repeated. 'Where would we go?' 'The mainland,' Will said simply. William smiled, 'Maybe someday.'. The smell of sea spray filled the air as a breeze whipped across the playground. For just a fleeting moment, everything was peaceful. Normal. They had no idea that within the next few days... Most of the people they knew would simply disappear. Inside the school, in a quiet classroom down a dimly lit corridor sat one student alone. He was Will and he was pale. His hands were shaking, sweat pouring from his forehead as he clutched his stomach. Something felt deeply wrong. 'Ugh...' he moaned. The room was spinning and his vision was beginning to blur. The school medic wasn't here today and Will was about to be the first mistake which would eventually end up changing the island forever. Far away in the medical room behind the locked cabinet, the mystery vaccine remained in hiding. And beyond the island, across the dark ocean, something else was already heading their way.
