The rest of the day passed in a blur to Karyn. After the Sontarans left, paramedics and reporters rushed on the scene. The aliens had thoroughly trashed the entire facility in their arrival and there were countless casualties. The news that night was abuzz like nothing Karyn had ever seen before.
Apparently no one had actually seen the Sontaran’s spacecraft, but the accounts of hundreds of witnesses - as well as the hole in Sarah McMillan’s head - made their existence hard to dismiss. The true meaning of the Sontarans’ appearance that day - the definitive answer to “are we alone in the universe” - had caused an even greater tidal wave throughout the entire community.
Through it all, somehow Jon’s disappearance was glossed over, a fact Karyn found bitterly ironic.
Since her parents had picked her up from the chaos at the shopping mall, they hadn’t let Karyn out of their sight. Riots and fervor had broken out in some parts of the neighborhood after the attack and they didn’t think it would be safe for a teenage girl to be out in the streets. Not that she'd want to be out in such a mess, anyways.
Karyn confined herself to her room that evening. She paced and cried and spent long periods of time just staring up at her ceiling from her bed, her thoughts light years away from Earth. All her thoughts were about Jon. Was he safe? Had the Sontarans taken him back to Sontar already, or was he somewhere in-between? How badly were they hurting him and how badly would they hurt him when they realized he had just as much an idea where his grandfather was as they did?
It was this horrible sense of not being able to do anything that truly upset Karyn. If she only had the wishing stone, she might be able to fix things... Several times that night she considered escaping through the window, though her room was on the second floor and she really didn’t trust herself to not tumble off the roof before she’d barely even started. Her parents would be watching her door that night, she was sure, and they would spend much of the night watching the television, watching the doom and gloom play out. All she could do was pace and cry and stare listlessly up at the ceiling from her bed…
She woke sometime later to a darkened room. A full moon shining through the window. A quick look at her phone told her it was two hours past midnight. Judging by the stillness of the rest of the house her parents had also gone to bed. She lay still for a moment, listening for any signs her parents might still be up. Hearing none, she quietly slid out of bed.
Her only thought was the wishing stone. It wouldn’t be easy, but she had to get to it if she wanted any chance of saving Jon and it felt wrong sitting around all night doing nothing.
At the doorway, though, she hesitated. It shouldn’t matter how long she took to get the stone realistically. All she had to do was wish none of this had happened or something and no one would ever know the difference, not even Jon. And it’d be easier to get to the stone too. She could pretend she’d left something in Jon’s room or that she was there to see Jon’s sister Zoe.
Karyn bit her lip, her mind torn. After a few moments, though, she decided.
