I noticed Carrots wasn't there that morning. It was sort of weird not having her sit behind me, sniffing and pushing her glasses up. It could have been my imagination, but I thought Chubby Kid looked a little forlorn. He had managed to tame his hair today, and he had a clean shirt on and neon high tops. I wondered if he was disappointed at Carrot's absence. 

Mr. Slouch began droning the minute he stepped into the room and I flipped idly through the text book and tried my damnest to ignore Morgan and Aden. It was difficult, especially since Morgan, who was wearing a dark purple, low cut blouse seemed content to amuse herself with poking my foot with her toes under the desk. I kept a straight face and eventually she seemed to lose heart and retreat. I sat staring blankly at my book, thinking about the feeling I'd had before I fell asleep. Did I really believe it was my sister looking out for me? That was ridiculous, right?

 I glanced over at Aden beside me. She appeared to be studying her book intently, her hair escaping its pony tail in little wisps around her face, her dark lashes lowered as she looked down. There was an impossibly beautiful angel of death sitting beside me in my summer class, so how improbable was the ghost of my sister watching over me?

We were halfway through the study of DNA, when the sound struck. For a split second I thought it was the low rumble of a passing semi, but instead of gradually fading it grew louder. I stared stupidly as the entire structure of the building seemed to sway. Someone, one of the girls, screamed as chunks of white showered us from the ceiling. Mr. Slouch's body seemed to be moving in slow motion as he dove for his desk, wiggling his way underneath. Jagged cracks appeared in the ceiling and suddenly Morgan was there, she was yanking me down, screaming at me. I ducked my head and shut my eyes, my body felt like it would shake apart, DNA pelting across the room like shrapnel. Morgan was pressing her body into mine, forcing us further underneath the desk. It felt distinctly wrong somehow. I should be sheltering her, but my body refused my commands to move. I squeezed my eyes shut, terror rising up into my throat as the ground bucked violently and unnaturally beneath me. The sound filled my head till I felt it might explode, a deep, guttural roar that drowned out all rational thought. I could only think over and over.

I'm going to die...going to die....going to die.

Abruptly there was silence. I opened my eyes and then shut them when they immediately started to water fiercely. The flash of the room I'd just seen looked ghastly. Large pieces of the ceiling and shattered glass covered the floor, and the entire place was filled with thick white dust.

Morgan's arms were still tight round me, I heard her cough. Rubbing the grit out of my eyes I peered at her blurrily."What the hell just happened?"

"Earthquake." For once her unflappable exterior was shaken. She looked scared, and her cheek was red, bruised. I reached up and touched her face cautiously, "You're hurt."

"It's nothing, something clipped me."

I frowned, feeling horrible. Why the hell had I let her shelter me like that? I should have been the one with the injury, not her.

"You..."

A groan from nearby cut me off and Morgan uncurled herself, crawling out from the shelter of the desk. On all sides were huge chunks of ceiling and over turned desks. The dust was so thick that when I opened my mouth to call after her I started to cough and choke. She shouldn't be walking around in this building, it was probably unstable.

The groan came again, and I heard Morgan called out, "Aden?"

Aden, shit! I sat upright, bashing my skull on the metal underside of the desk. Morgan had vanished into the dust and I hurried to catch up, scrambling over piles of splintered wood, kicking desks out of my way. The shape of Morgan kneeling beside someone became clearer as the dust slowly thinned, escaping through a huge, jagged split in the far wall. I stopped, feeling the blood drain from my face. Aden lay on the classroom floor in a bright splash of crimson. She was lying alongside a huge wooden beam, one arm vanished underneath. Her face was serene, and her eyes were shut, black lashes resting on the snow white curves of her cheeks.

I swallowed hard. "Is she..."

Aden's eyes flew open, "No, I'm not dead, idiot. But my arm is stuck and it hurts like hell." Still snarky, and to think she'd looked like some sleeping Disney princess a minute ago.

"Your arm..." I gestured at the spreading pool of blood she lay in, and she grimaced and shook her head. "Not mine, his."

I looked were she was pointing, feeling my stomach lurch at the sight of one neon-colored high top poking out under the beam next to her.

"That's..." I turned, clapping my hand over my mouth as my stomach gave an unpleasant heave. Instead of losing my breakfast I accidentally sucked in a big lungful of dust and bent over double in a hacking, gagging fit. My throat burned and my eyes stung. When I straightened up Morgan was at my elbow.

"Go help Aden," I gasped.

"I'm fine."

I jumped, turning to see Aden standing behind us, her clothing covered in blood and coated with dust. She was cradling her left arm.

"What...how?" I looked from Aden to Morgan, they both shrugged. "Right, angels or whatever. I guess you both have some sort of freaky magical strength or something."

No one spoke. Sirens wailed in the distance. It would probably be awhile before they got here. Whatever, it was just us...

"Mr. Slouch!" I whirled suddenly, remembering our teacher. The girls followed me, and we reached the teacher's desk after fighting our way through the debris. We found him there, curled in a jittering ball in the inside corner. His lips were moving rapidly as he mumbled to himself, and his glasses sat crookedly on his nose.

"He's fine," Aden said, she looked disgusted. "Brave soul that he is. Come on, let's go."

I looked around us, wondering if we should stay put and wait for emergency workers. My eyes ended up coming to rest on the bright high top and the pool of blood.

"Alright, let's go."

There was no telling what the rest of the building looked like, so instead of using the door that would take us into the hallway, we made our escape through the giant crack in the wall.

Emerging into daylight was a relief; We all paused to gasp in air. I was bent over double, sucking in huge lungfuls. When I stood up my relief turned to disbelief."Oh my God!"

"Exactly," Morgan said, and shot a grim look at Aden.

I ignored them. It was too much to take in. I don't know why I thought the earthquake would have been contained to our little school. It wasn't. The landscape looked like some galaxy sized giant had jumped up and down on the turf. The roads stretched out in front of me, gaping black cracks ran in spider web patterns. Across the street had been a pizza place and a little ramshackle building called "the video hut". The pizza shop had crumpled, its white roof caved and fallen in on itself, and the video hut had cracked down the middle, one side leaning drunkenly on the pizza shop next door. Buildings up and down the street had shaken apart. Not one structure remained intact. In the distance, car alarms wailed an eerie duet, as if sounding the alarm, and thick black twists of smoke were already curling up into the sky on the horizon, fires starting in the city.

"Oh hell," I ground my fists into my eyes, like I could rub away the sight. It was like one of those disaster movies. What was the last one I'd seen? I couldn't remember.

"This earthquake was pretty big," Aden observed casually, as if she were talking about normal, daily occurrence. She was looking at Morgan, who nodded thoughtfully. "This can't be good."

I stared at them, "Of course it can't be good! Not one building is still standing, our teacher is catatonic, and all that's left of Chubby Kid is a pool of goo and a sneaker!"

Aden lifted an eyebrow at me. In the silence I suddenly had a horrible thought."My mom!"

"She's fine," Aden said quickly. "We have people watching her too."

I paused, letting the significance of this slide over me. "You knew something like this would happen?"

She shrugged. "We knew that Sloan was getting desperate and he might do anything."

"Sloan? God's first name is Sloan?" I said, incredulously.

"That's his name," Adan said. "I mean, it was his name before the switch, so that's what we call him now."

"The switch?" I shook my head. "Can you please just explain what the hell is going on?"

Morgan checked her watch. "Explain it to him, keep under cover though, we can't be sure if he's descended or not. I'm going to check."

It was Aden's turn to look incredulous, and at first I thought she was going to argue with Morgan's sudden take charge attitude. Instead she said, "You really think he would use the dissention to get to him?"

"Loop holes." Morgan's face was grim. "He's desperate. Stay here. I'll be right back."

She turned, and I watched in confusion as she walked around the side of the ruined building."Where..."

"There's a payphone around the corner, she'll use it for a doorway." Aden explained. "Come on, let's get back against the building. It's better than no cover at all."

"What's the switch?" I demanded.

Aden sat down, leaning her back against a section of wall that hadn't crumbled or fallen down, she let out a deep breath, as if preparing for a lengthy speech. "The switch occurs naturally every thousand years. There are three major players, or at least, that's what the lore says. Malevolent, Benevolent and Neutral." She shook her head. " That's bullshit though, Abbadon isn't malevolent, he just wants to be done his job and make the switch, but Sloan has gone off the deep end, he doesn't want to give it up," She noticed my look of utter confusion, "Right, sorry, I know this is confusing. Every thousand years the roles of Malevolent and Benevolent are passed on, each one picks the other's successor. The chosen has to be a human. It's always been that way."

"So." I tried to keep it straight in my brain. "Sloan picked Abbadon's replacement and vise versa."

"Right." She seemed happy, like a school teacher who feels delighted that a bunch of kindergarten kids are actually listening. "And the replacement are kept secret until the time comes, only this time it was leaked."

A light was dawning, ever so slowly, like the sun crawling up the eastern sky. "And Sloan knows and he's gone crazy and is trying to kill..." I couldn't say the words.

Aden was nodding, "His replacement."

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