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The reverberations of the blast were all I could hear. The trees were red with flame, the air was choked with soot.

My legs felt like they had been stabbed a dozen times. I didn’t dare to look at them. Instead, I crawled upon clumps of gravel and broken glass. The other passengers of the wrecked bus were crawling across the ground as well, a few of them were limping. But there was a difference between them and I.

They were straining every muscle fibre in their body to get away from the point of impact. But I was headed in the opposite direction. Towards the piles of the earth and wood and flesh which, unbeknownst to the others around me, were the edge of a crater.

Unfortunately, most of the meteorite would have been destroyed in the impact. But at the centre of the crater, I knew the core would have survived. And at the centre of the centre, more precious than life itself, the device.

Notes

This was written in 10 minutes during a Joy of Writing meetup.