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«You CAN'T GO!» he roared. I kept absolutely still, not wanting to set him off again. «You cannot get through that door. It will never open again, do you hear me? You can try all you want. That door is locked for good and you're stuck here.» I stared at him in shock. I spun on my heel and ran through to the interconnecting room and pounded on the metal door. «Let me out! Let me out!» I gasped. I looked around for panels of any sort, but there was nothing.

«Listen to me," Cedric shouted from the other room. My head was pounding and my blood rushing through my ears. Everything was so loud. «Why?» I asked. I didn't expect an answer, but I got one. I turned and Cedric started talking from the doorway.

«Europa…it doesn't exist. It's there, but it's just…it's just snow and ice.»

«I don't believe you," I said.

«Whether or not you believe me, it's true. I have known Europa isn't habitable for a long, long time. The whole story started as an attempt to calm people down when the first floods came. They sent out a vessel, sure, but it never made it to Europa. They told everybody that it worked, that Europa was inhabitable. People accepted it. People calmed down. People are so STUPID!» He yelled the last part.

«What is this? If Europa is fake, then what is all this?» I gestured to the enormous spaceship around me. I was stalling. «What are we doing? Where are we going?» A horrible thought entered my mind. «Where is everybody from the first Leavings?»

Cedric laughed. It was hollow and bitter and it made me cringe. He turned around and walked back to the control room. I followed him and stood next to the desk. «See that?» he pointed to one of the screens. I saw Earth, turning slowly. «That is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. They chose me to protect it. If we stayed on Earth, we would've let it burn. We would've burned it for the heat it produced and at the same time poisoned ourselves with the fumes. We would've eradicated everything so that we would be the last to go… And then we would go. We would go so horribly, suffering right up until the last minute, desperately trying to catch onto some form of hope. And the last people would've died on the empty planet that could have been so full of life.»

Cedric turned to me, his dark eyes glittering.

«They chose me to protect Earth, all the animals and the plants and the water and the rocks, and they chose the right person to do it, because I will sacrifice," he was still staring at me, «anything for that planet. They didn't put much effort into appearances for the first leavings. This one, however, OH, you know us humans. We want to go out with a bang. You want to know where the first Leavings went? Here, boy, I'll show you firsthand.»

There was a moment of calm and then there was chaos. I saw him lunge towards me, stretching his hands out. I grabbed for the half–empty glass bottle on the table and swung it through the air. He was staring a bit to my left, a manic smile on his face. My hands were clenched around the bottle neck and I saw his head snap to the side a split second before I heard the smash. The cold glow from the screens made the glass shine blue as it scattered in the air and droplets of red accompanied it. I closed my eyes as a thump sounded, the sound of a body hitting a metal surface. Exhaustion ran through me as breaths tore in and out of my chest. I opened my eyes and saw what he had been aiming for.

A large button stood out obnoxiously on the plain metal surface, small white lettering printed neatly on the black plastic. A key stood upright, stabbed into the keyhole that opened the covering of the button. The lettering read, 'Self Destruct.» I turned my head and almost looked at the heap on the floor. I couldn't. The air smelled like copper and salt. I believed him. Just like that, everything went dull and I was numb. The room was blurry. My hands were blurry. I wasn't aware of the piece of glass still held in my pressure–whitened grasp. My chest lifted up and down and I shook. I didn't notice the irony, that I was in the same condition in which he had been when I first entered the room. We had nowhere, we had nothing. My future was replaced by a black hole, a void, and I stood and tried to comprehend the mass of emotion that everyone on this ship would never feel. I realised that my mother and father were gone. Floating in space.