I could feel a searing pain in my skull as I slowly opened my eyes. I looked around to see that I had crashed my car into a fire hydrant located on the side of the street. As I came back around, my mid began to flood with the memories of what had transpired. I exited the car and witnessed the destruction unfolding around me, the city burning with the sounds of explosions ringing through my ears. The street was lined with the bodies of people whose faces I must have seen countless times, making me feel sick to my stomach. As I realised the situation I was in, my thoughts turned to my family who were still at home, in the middle of a warzone. I made my way to the nearest teleporter pad, only to be disappointed to discover it had been obliterated in a nearby blast. Due to the fact that my car was now out of commission, I had to make my way to home on foot, it should at least take me 10 minutes if I sprinted the whole way (without stopping). It was pretty obvious who was attacking our city, it couldn’t be anyone else. Although none of us really ever believed that the humans would go this far, it wasn’t surprising. Humans would do just about anything to be considered the best race in the galaxy yet their preferred course of action was sabotaging a planet’s government and slowly watching the threads holding them together slowly start to come undone. You see, years ago our people (the Sylicans) and humans lived together in harmony... in fact, we were exactly the same. But fifty years ago, a virus spread throughout Earth and affected approximately half of the population. At first, the effects didn’t present themselves, yet over time it started twisting the minds of those affected, changing their innocent thought into those of violence and power. Soon after, all of those who weren’t affected were relocated to another planet and were designated as a new race. Even so, that didn’t change how the humans felt, were out of sight but not out of mind. In their opinion, we were ‘tainting their image’ but in reality… they were the tainted ones. Nearly every planet in the galaxy didn’t want anything to do with the situation, afraid of what catastrophe would be inflicted upon them. I turned the corner of the street to see my house, burnt to the ground with pieces of it strewn all over the lawn. It appeared to have been hit directly by a small-scale, atomic weapon. The air around me was toxic and lightly constricted my throat. I looked down at my feet to see one of my daughter’s favourite stuffed toys, looking up at me, it’ beady eyes and sewn up smile staring me in the face, causing my heart to pull itself apart. In my mind’s eye, I could see my daughter’s beady smile and soft blue eyes, my wife’s flowing chestnut hair and plump, pink lips. I fell to my knees and let the tears stream down my face. I screamed as loud as I could, trying to block the sounds of terror and pain surrounding me. The longer I stayed there, the more my lungs burnt… it was a welcome feeling. Over time, I started to feel light-headed and the burning spread to the rest of my body. I fell to the ground, blood starting to stream out of my ears. As I started to lose consciousness, I could see my wife in the distance, holding our daughter in her arms. They were both smiling… and I knew I was about to leave this world feeling content… almost happy.
