We fought on the plane. It wasn’t explosive (our fights never were) but it was passive-aggressive and cutting. The subject of the fight: Cassandra was writing her will on the plane. She had gotten it into her head that she would never make it back home, that she would die in Tokyo. In the days leading up to the flight, she constantly looked down at her ephemeris, trying to calculate the exact moment, the exact degree, the sun would be opposite the moon in the sky. “It’s a full moon soon,” she would mutter to herself, quietly, like I couldn’t hear.

I tolerated this, thinking that Cassandra would put the ephemeris down, just for the trip. But she didn’t. And then she whipped out her damn will. Admittedly, the sight of her will scared me. It was no secret that Cassandra was getting older, but she was active, lively, quick-witted. She was healthy. Functioning. I wanted to push the thought of death out of my mind.

“Cassandra, please just give it a rest,” I said. As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted my tone. I sounded like a frustrated parent talking to a child.

“Just let me do this,” Cassandra insisted.

“You won’t even be able to get it notarized in Japan! Do you know how much paperwork that is? Would it even be recognized back home?” I asked, exasperated.

“You know my family. I just want to leave something for you. Anything. You know you have no grounds to get anything of mine. You won’t get anything,” Cassandra scowled. She slapped the food tray table, emphasizing each and every syllable, “Not. Unless. I. Make. This. Will.”

I acquiesced. There was no harm in letting her do it. If she was wrong, and she would be wrong, it would be okay. I just didn’t like the cloud of death hanging over the trip of a lifetime.

She finished under the small airplane light, and before I could look, she quickly folded up the paper and put it into her wallet.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I longed to bury my head into her snow-white hair, to put my arm around her. Before I could say anything more, Cassandra put her wide, pale, wrinkled, and yet ever so soft hand, on mine. She squeezed tightly. This was the best we could do.

We landed in Tokyo without incident and got to our hotel without incident. We were too exhausted—or maybe it was just me—by the trip (and the fight) to take in the sights and the sounds.

Cassandra was set to work as soon as we got settled in our hotel room. By work, I mean Cassandra immediately started priming herself. We had a dinner party to go almost immediately, hosted by Cassandra’s Japanese colleagues. We weren’t the only ones, many people were flying in from everywhere to join the celebration. Clinton broke the research to the news a couple of months prior, and Japan’s Prime Minister was due to do the same shortly.

I was nervous. It wasn’t often that Cassandra brought me along to her work functions. I even offered to stay in the hotel or go explore Tokyo while Cassandra was with her colleagues. Cassandra insisted.

She stepped out of the room’s tiny washroom, all freshly made. She was wearing a long black dress that hung smartly on her, the sleeves down to her wrists and sheer. I got up immediately to take her into my arms. Her round, pale face broke into a sly smile. Cassandra was not a small woman, a little fleshy, but it was not in excess. Despite her age, there was nothing matronly about her. Instead, Cassandra was more like a magistrate, with her imposing gaze and her statuesque silhouette. There wasn’t a lot of warmth in Cassandra, but there was fire.

“Wait,” Cassandra put her hand on my arm. She pulled away from me to reach into the closet by the bed. When she turned back around to face me, she held a garment bag to her body. “For you.”

“Cassandra!” I gasped. “I already brought my own clothes—”

“I won’t hear it,” she declared, pushing the bag into me. She sat on the bed and took the complementary hotel wine off the night table. “I can wait while you try it on.”

Cassandra was already pouring herself a glass of blood-red wine when I sighed and walked into the washroom. The dress was hard to put on. It clung a little too tightly. But when I looked into the mirror, I realized that it was for the better. I barely looked like myself. I made a mental note for Cassandra to pick all of my clothes from now on.

“You’re going to be a hit,” Cassandra murmured as I emerged from the washroom, the wine glass still in her mouth.

She was right. I was embarrassed by how many times her colleagues asked about me.

“Is she one of your students?” an older Japanese gentleman asked in accented English. He gestured to me without ever really looking at me, only looking at Cassandra. We were all standing in a hotel hall, where all the stuffy academics and researchers had gathered. Everyone was suited up and sipping on champagne and appetizers.

“Oh no,” Cassandra smiled. We stood a respectable distance apart. “She is one of my research assistants.”

I tipped the glass to guzzle a little more. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the man look at me in shock. A lie. A flimsy lie. Probably the tenth one tonight. It was something Cassandra made up in a panic the first time someone she knew saw us in public. But if Cassandra had to lie, she wanted to be consistent, so that was the story we stuck with.

“Excuse me,” I said, pulling away from the group. I avoided Cassandra’s eyes and made a beeline to the appetizer table. I popped a strange looking pastry into my mouth. A delicious distraction.

“Are you lost?” a voice behind me asked.

I whirled around to see a man with a glass of beer in hand, smiling kindly. He was young, my age. He looked to be an actual student, with actually stylish hair and fashion a bit more of the time, compared to the stuffy elders in the hall, except for, of course, Cassandra.

“Pardon?” I asked, genuinely bewildered. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cassandra glancing my way. She seemed to start a step in our direction, but then stopped herself.

“You just don’t look the biology type,” the man shrugged. “I’m not one either. That’s why I could tell.”

“What kind of person doesn’t look like the biology type?”

The man grinned. “The kind of person whose eyes glaze over as soon as Dr. Sasaki starts talking.”

I laughed. It was true, as much as I tried to get interested in Cassandra’s work, I found it dreadfully boring. Really, it was the fire in Cassandra’s eyes that I liked to watch when her work came up, but add another person to the mix, and I would hardly be able to concentrate.

“And if you’re not a biology person, what are you?” I asked.

“I’m an archaeologist,” the man smiled. His smile seemed to stretch out across his entire face. Just past his cheek, I could see Cassandra looking our way again. “I just came back from an expedition in Antarctica. We found something quite interesting there. Maybe something that your president would want to announce too.”

I made a face. “You can’t just say something like that and not say what it is.”

“I don’t know if I can say…” the man hesitated.

“You’re around a non-scientist here,” I coaxed him. “I won’t understand a thing.”

“I don’t understand a thing, either,” the man admitted. His eyebrows furrowed in concentration. “We found remains of a humanoid being. But not like your typical Homo sapiens. Something… much more ancient. Maybe even alien. The biggest question is how it got in Antarctica in the first place?” He suddenly looked up. “Which is why I am here tonight. If we can finally map out the entire DNA sequence of a human being, maybe we can map out the DNA of that thing.”

Before I could respond, I eyed Cassandra striding in our direction. I was about to take a step towards her when the ground rumbled. It was a more than light rumble, causing a few people to fall to the ground. Cassandra jogged over to me, eyes wide.

“A small earthquake,” the man chuckled, looking from me to Cassandra. “It happens all the time.”

“Yes,” Cassandra laughed nervously. She smoothed out her dress and looked at me. “We should get going.”

“Sure,” I said, disappointed. I looked over to the man, who was hurriedly digging through his pockets.

“My business card,” the man said, bowing as he extended the card with one hand, the other hand still clutching the beer.

“Thank you,” I took the business card from him and looked at it. It was all in Japanese, but there was a little dinosaur fossil embossed in the top right corner.

☄☄☄

It wasn’t until we were back in the hotel room that we learned, to some degree, somewhat, of what happened.

By chance, Cassandra turned on the TV. It defaulted to the news. We were staring at Antarctica or, rather, what was left of Antarctica. Instead of ice and rock, it was a red lava-like slush. The news reporter spoke quickly and calmly. An infographic replaced the shot of the lava lake. It was a picture of the globe, and a ring expanding from the centre of Antarctica. A little timer in the corner of the screen was counting up as the ring expanded. By the time the ring reached Japan, the screen showed “11:34”.

“What does this mean?” Cassandra asked in a shrill voice. We stood looking up at the TV mounted on the wall.

“I don’t know,” I said, eyes glued to the screen.

The infographic transitioned to an animation of glass windows breaking and trees bending from wind.

“An asteroid?” I suggested, my mind still trying to connect the dots. “Air blast would take a while to reach us from Antarctica.”

“We need to leave,” Cassandra said quietly. I wanted to protest, but she was already at the hotel phone on the bed-side table, dialing numbers. I looked back at the TV. It kept switching from the view of Antarctica, to the air blast radius, and to the windows breaking. For some reason, I was mesmerized.

The sound of the phone slamming down woke me up from my trance. I looked over at Cassandra. “All planes are grounded,” she said, still looking down at the phone. “The entire Southern Hemisphere is burning as we speak.”

I tried to find words to say, but couldn’t. Nothing I could say would be reassuring. We were stuck in Japan.

The hotel phone started to ring, bringing me out of my second trance that I didn’t even know I was in. Cassandra picked it up.

“Hello? Yes. Yes… Thank you. Thank you. Bye.”

“Hotel management,” Cassandra said wearily. “There’s a tsunami incoming.”

☄☄☄

We found ourselves sitting on the rooftop of the hotel, still in our dresses, with about a hundred other people watching the horizon. The dark mass was slowly absorbing the buildings. It didn’t look fast, but the hotel management assured us that if we were on the ground, we would be swept out faster than we would expect.

Underneath the thick blanket given to us, Cassandra had a death grip on my hand.

“I’ve made peace with it,” Cassandra whispered. Her head was buried in my neck, her breath was hot against my skin. “I’ve seen this coming for a while, and I’m okay with it.”

I gulped. “You’re okay with it. But—”

“You’ll be okay,” Cassandra said, looking up at me. “You will.”

“I don’t know,” I whispered, squeezing her hand.

We sat in silence, even when the wall of water pushed against the hotel. The hotel did not give in, but I could see the gears in Cassandra’s mind turning. How long could the building last with the force of all the melted ice from the South Pole pressing on it? We sat there, waiting.

At one point we must have fallen asleep from the adrenaline and probably even the jet lag, for a scream jolted me upright. People were pointing at a giant piece of a building, moving with the water, straight towards us.

“Cleo,” Cassandra said, in a half-panic. She looked into my eyes, a mixture of grief and fear.

“One last kiss,” I pleaded, putting a hand on her chin and directing it towards me.

☄☄☄

The next time I opened my eyes, I was staring at the sky. Whatever was beneath me was slightly vibrating. I rolled over to my side and saw water everywhere and trees and tops of buildings breaking the surface every once in a while. I winced. My head was pounding.

Sitting up, I realized I was on a small, simple motorboat, smoothly cruising through the water. I looked behind me at the navigator. It was a man, wearing a ball cap and sunglasses. He sat at the stern of the boat, one hand on the tiller. I squinted and held back a gasp. It was the archaeologist.

He looked down at me and grinned his face stretching grin. “Ms. Not-a-biologist. You’re awake.”