Chapter Three - Aftermath and Investigation

 The walk back to their house was long, and difficult. Annabelle stopped every once in a while to regain her composure, truly unable to grasp what had happened this day. Every second of the walk back Tom and Annabelle would hear sirens, crying, screaming, and the sound of firefighters attempting to put out the numerous fires across the town. By the time Tom and Annabelle had gotten back to their home, the lights which were knocked out by the meteor shower had come back on, and it was past nightfall. 

They walked through the front door to be greeted by sounds of Scarlett crying, with John comforting her. Maria was on the phone with her boss down at the news station, and Mei was on the phone with Elliot who was down at the firehouse organizing search and rescue parties. 

Walking past all these people, Annabelle and Tom walked up to the former's room, which was on the top floor. Once again, she started to cry but Tom caught her shoulders. 

"Don't cry Annie, please." Tom said. "Please ? It hurts me to see you like that."

 "I don't know what else to do." Annabelle said. "So much pain, so much destruction, and I couldn't do anything about it. I saw the meteors, Tommy. I saw them as they hit the atmosphere. I don't know how I did, but I was too late to... to warn everyone." 

 "No!" Tom said, "The Annabelle I know would never blame herself for what happened today. You are stronger than that Annabelle!" 

"But I-"

"Even if you had seen them before, there is no way you could have gotten the alert out. If you had ran any further before I stopped you then you would have been killed too!"

 "But..."

"Dry those tears Annie-Belle."

Annabelle looked at him clearly, and did as he asked. She hadn't heard him call her "Annie-Belle" since they were five, and she missed it. Suddenly, she lunged forward and hugged him.

"Okay, Tom. I'll dry them, but on one condition."

"What's that?"

"You stay here tonight. I don't want to be alone."

 Tom thought this over for a nanosecond and said "No problem, Annie."

 As Annabelle slept...

 

Tom stayed awake, making sure she was safe. 

The next morning.

 Annabelle was woken by a nightmare, and looked over to the chair to see if Tom was still there... He wasn't. Felling abandoned, she almost broke down again until she heard a distinct snoring sound from across the room.

 

----------------------------

 Around the time Annabelle had woken another young member of the household was getting out of bed. This was Kelly Coen, Tom's cousin and Elliot and Mei's daughter. Kelly spent much of her young life reading books, anything ranging from adventure to science fiction, but her favorite genre of novels was the detective series. Even as a child Kelly could memorize lines from novels featuring famous detectives like Sherlock Holmes. 

As she woke, Kelly's detective intuition was telling her that something was off about the meteor shower. She was looking through a telescope for days preparing for the night it would have lit the sky like flying diamonds, which was SUPPOSED to be a few nights after the day before. Instead, they had killer meteors that wiped out everything that Kelly held dear: townspeople, the park, and the school. 

 Thinking that she could outwit nature itself, Kelly ran to her dresser and put on her favorite blue outfit, then ran outside her room only to find her mother waiting for her.

"Going somewhere?" Mei asked.

"Yah, I'm going to the park to see if I can find anything that will help my hypothesis!"

Mei shook her head. "Hypothe... Kelly, you're ten years old! Kids your age should be playing with their friends, not seeking out the answers to a mystery! Besides, the park is too dangerous since the meteors hit."

"Oh come on mom, I talked to dad last night and he said they got the most dangerous parts cleared, it's safe to walk on."

 "PPPLLLEEEAAASSSSEEEE?!? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!"

 "Okay okay! If it will make you happy you can go to the park! Just PLEASE be careful."

 "Thanks mom!", Kelly said, then she was off to what remained of the park. 

 The impact crater that used to be Sunset Valley's Central Park rested as a cruel reminder of the day before's events. Kelly almost choked up walking through it, both because of the emotional distress looking at this place caused as well as the smoke that kept flowing out of the craters. 

 While walking through the park, looking for anything out of the ordinary, Kelly spotted a strange device lying on the ground in the middle of a crater. She walked up to it  and picked it up. It was heavier than it looked, and as she struggled to hold onto it...

 Kelly accidentally pressed a button triggering it. Suddenly she heard another violent whistling sound, like the one before.

 She dropped the device as a meteor crashed right into where she had accidentally pointed it. Luckily there were no people in this impact zone, but Kelly couldn't believe her eyes. What was this thing? Why was it here in the middle of the impact zone, and how could it have summoned a meteor?

More importantly, could it have been responsible for the meteor shower?

 Wasting no time, Kelly put the device in her pocket and ran straight for the police department, where she explained what she had seen as she handed it over to the officer at the front desk while a team was dispatched to the new meteor impact. While at the police station, Kelly overheard two officers talking about a strange occurrence at a house down by the beach, the only house in the entire town to be hit by a meteor. She decided to go there next to continue her little investigation.

 

 

Near the back of the house, Kelly found a strange metal box sitting next to some white object. She pressed the button on the box but it didn't open, she then picked it up and started to shake it, and to her surprise a book fell out of the bottom, hitting the ground and stirring up dust which made Kelly sneeze. After a few moments she picked the book up and opened it, and halfway though was some formal-looking letter glued to the page.

  

"Dear Dr. [the name was torn out, resulting in Kelly not being able to read who this was being directed to.] 

"While we commend you on your recent completion on Project gravity, we are unable to proceed with development, and as such must cease all production on the device. Your recent test in Sunset Valley resulted in the destruction of a home belonging to a single mother, and after a short deliberation we have decided while it would be interesting to be able to direct space debris to hit a target, it is just too dangerous for Military Use. We apologize for the inconvenience, but are compensating your losses. 

Commander Tho-" 

The rest of the letter was torn up. Kelly couldn't comprehend what she had just read, so she walked over to a damaged chair, sat down, and re-read the letter again.