Page 178 - Demo

178 THE CLARENCIAN 2024-2025did not need to shout,Giving it to her baby, she whispers again, %u201cI should be the one to starve to death.%u201dA pale child coughing up phlegm all night, Her temperature burns as the afternoon sun; Beside her, a mother paralysed in fright, Sleep-deprived and peace of mind sacrificed. A gunshot heard from two rooms away His first instinct is to rush his students out the nearest window; With no time to save himself, he silently prays,%u201cLord, take me but let my children go.%u201dThe oldest of five fighting to not break down, While his mother%u2019s corpse in front of him lies. Not a tear on his cheek, not even a frownAlways tough for his siblings; on the inside, he dies.No sacrifice is easily made,With threads of love, they are carefully spun;While the outwardly-ones tear and their colours fade, The true sacrifice remains the silent one.Alyn Sankar Paninjath12 Science%u201cIced out,%u201d he transmitted to Laura. %u201cThe Blitz%u201d was the name given to the sudden blizzard that had swept across the entire world a few years ago, plunging the surface of the globe into a sub-zero wasteland. Kyle added another tally mark to his diary. He calculated that it had been at least six years since the blizzard had hit.In the year 2028, to combat rising global temperatures, the Harris administration of the United States partnered with a shady company to develop a cold machine. The company%u2019s owner was aware of a developing fault line beneath the Atlantic Ocean. He deliberately built the machine on this fault line, and when an earthquake hit, the earth tore open and the active machine plunged miles below the surface. It survived long enough to hit the core of the Earth and cool it down, causing the Earth%u2019s surface temperature to drastically drop. As the Earth cooled down, most of the world%u2019s moisture turned into ice, covering the Earth in it. The top layer of every ocean was now a thick layer of ice and any alien visitors would wonder why their ancestors had once called it a %u201cblue planet.%u201dThe people of Earth called the sudden downpour of snow %u201cThe Blitz%u201d. However, no one ever knew why or how the planet had suddenly been blanketed in white. To be %u201cIced Out%u201d meant being trapped indefinitely beneath the surface, in a base shielding people from the cold. No one knows what happened to the company or its owner, but it seemed he had died by the hand of his own invention. Kyle Roman peered out of the upper viewing room. He rubbed the foggy window with his glove and saw what he had been seeing since the first day.Iced Out