This story starts with the moment I died.
It was in the second year of the alien invasion. Until then I had managed to survive by hiding in basements or, more often, in the woods, close to abandoned towns.
That first day, when the first ships arrived, I was on my way home from school. I had to walk – of course there were no more buses, only people running in the streets. By the time I got home that side of the city was emptied (that was what the few survivors I met in those years called what was basically the enslavement of the human race, one block at a time).
So, getting to the moment I died… Let me tell you first that it wasn’t a bad thing, before you start feeling sorry for me. Or before you close this book – I promise, it’s not sad. Actually, it was the best thing that happened in my life.
You see, when I ran into that alien patrol that night, I thought it was all over. They shot me down, ram pa pa pam, ram pa pa pam… Really, I was shot. With an alien gun-thing. It stopped me from breathing, moving – anything but drooling. It wasn’t heroic, I wasn’t shot during saving orphans or kittens. I was just careless during an alien invasion. We’ve all been there, right?
And that was the moment when the miracle happened.
I revived. Surrounded by a bright light – I was floating up, to heaven. Just as I was wondering how that could be real, my vision adjusted and I saw what was really happening: I was floating because I was under one of those mini-spaceships the aliens used for patrols.
I still don’t know what those ships use for power, but that’s when it happened: I got superpowers!