Chapter 1

A Chapter by MMC

“Ow! Ow! Ow!” whimpered Louisia with each quick, pained breath. Her mother, a registered nurse, tenderly removed her mitt in one gentle tug.

“Yep.” concluded Mrs. Brantley after a brief examination “Definitely broken.” Louisia’s once pale hand looked crumpled, purpling bruises lead halfway towards her elbow.

“I’m sorry, Lou.” Jen apologized for the fiftieth time “I didn’t mean to break your hand.”

“And arm.” Hissed Louisia, scowling.

“Geez, Jennifer, that was quite a throw,” said Coach Marks with an impressed whistle “Especially for an underhand.” He looked at Lou’s hand and added as an afterthought “Sorry, ‘bout the hand, Lou. But hey: No pain no gain eh?” he nudged her side and her scowl deepened.

Jen felt her face burn red with a mixture of guilt, self-hatred, and flattery from Marks’s compliment. The feeling was a heavy storm swirling in the pit of her stomach.

“I’m so sorry.” She said again.

Practice was called off for the day and the girls were allowed to leave. A few went to the hospital with Louisia and her mother, some called up their parents and got rides home, others stayed and continued to practice as they kept reliving the incident over and over again. Jen did not feel like participating and decided to walk home, seeing as she lived so close to the school. First, though, she dropped her sports bag in her locker, she wouldn’t be needing to wash anything that night.

East Summit High was huge when the hallways were crowded, but it was massive when empty; Jen’s footsteps echoed throughout the vacant building. She was frustrated with herself; her eyes burned, threatening to spill over. ‘Why am I so stupid?’ she thought ‘Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!’

Though Mrs. Brantley said everything was fine, that it was just an accident, Jen still felt so bad. She had lost control, gotten mad, and hurt someone. She thought herself a hazard, a freak.

Though, she should’ve expected it from Louisia anyway, she was known to say the harshest most inappropriate things without reason or remorse.

The two girls were practicing throwing the softball so they stood about thirty feet apart. “You know, Jenny?” Lou had said in a falsely sweet voice knowing full well that Jen hated being called ‘Jenny.’

“Yes, Lou-Lou?” Jen matched her tone knowing that Louisia hated being called ‘Lou-Lou.’

Lou’s fake smile fell slightly. “Well…I was just thinking that maybe if you worked on your form a tiny bit more, you would be a much better pitcher.”

“Oh really? You think me a bad pitcher, Lou?” Jen asked throwing the ball a little harder than she usually did.

“Oh, Jenny. I never said that.” She winced as she caught the ball. There was a moment of silence between them. “I mean I’m not asking for spectacular,” she grunted the last few words, catching the ball again. “No one’s expects you to be perfect.”

Jen flashed a strained smile “Well that’s good.”

“But mediocre would at least be a good goal to shoot for instead of the sub-par pitching you’ve been doing so far this season.” She threw the ball with a light laugh. “But that’s just a small suggestion, Jennifer.”

A red-hot fury built up inside of Jen; she was almost blinded by its intensity as she caught the ball in a firm grip. “Shut your mouth, Lou.” She said bluntly and then tossed the ball as if it carried all her anger in it. She hadn’t realized how hard she’d actually thrown it until it cam in contact with Lou’s mitt and there was the loud snap and cracking noise of Louisia’s hand and arm breaking. Lou was even knocked from her feet, airborne for a half-second before falling back to the ground; she let out a “humph!” as the air rushed from her lungs and her eyes were wide in surprise.

At first Jen was glad; a twisted sense of justice made her satisfied for about a second. She felt as if Louisia deserved it. But then she felt so guilty for losing control, she almost cried from it; she couldn’t stop apologizing.

‘Stupid! Stupid!’ she mentally scolded herself as she walked through the empty high school. ‘Not again, I won’t let this happen again.’ She thought.

Her self-abuse was interrupted by a strange noise coming from her right, where the lockers were. It sounded like a mixture of warbling and shifting, like something was moving in or behind the zero space between the brick wall and the locker metal.

Jen quit walking and the warbling stopped too, but then the navy locker doors rippled like pond water layered thickly with blue algae. It was sort of hypnotic, yet made her uneasy. She leaned closer to the lockers, but jumped back as two hands leapt through the fluid locker doors as fish might through a lake’s surface.

A black mass launched out from the wavering solid, tackling Jen. Though she recoiled in surprise, she didn’t lose her footing. Jen stood with the attacker basically giving her an unwanted bear-hug; quickly she brought up her arms, breaking his grip and then, with the flat of her hands slammed into her chest, she forced him back, sending him flying into the locker, but this time not passing through them.

Seemingly unhurt, he landed in a crouch, an indentation of his back crumpled into the locker’s dark metal. He was dressed like a modern ninja, an all black outfit and a featureless mask. All he missed was a sword and some throwing stars, though there was a strange gun in a holster around his thick thigh.

Jen stood all tough-like, hands up, ready to fight, legs slightly apart yet strong. “Seriously,” she said, adrenaline rushing red into her faces “I’m in no mood and I can kick your a*s.”

He stayed silent, still crouched and ready to pounce. Jen was quiet too, nostrils flared, ready to defend. Almost simultaneously the two launched at each other. The attacker had a hand up like a claw, Jen tried to block, crossing her arms in front of her face. Right through her defense his hand passed and caught hold of her forehead, his palm blinding her. Jen flailed and struck out, but it was like fighting empty air.

A strange sensation took hold of her and it felt as if she were being pushed or pulled down into quicksand. A thick suction took her feet, rose up her legs, past her knees, her thighs, her stomach, her breasts. Her arms delved below the rising thickness as it reached the nape of her neck. It filled her ears as water would in a pool; finally just her face stuck out from the bespeckled tile floor as the attacker removed his hand, the thickness surrounding her seemed to solidify. The very tip of her right index finger wiggled helplessly from the floor, she was just about paralyzed.

“Let me out!” she struggled to say, but it hurt to speak, the reverberations loud and jumbled in her ears.

The attacker crouched above her, reaching behind him and then pulling out a mask, the kind the elderly use for breathing from an oxygen tank, except this had a mini black canister connected to it. The man placed it over Jen’s nose and mouth; it smelled strange, light but definitely not air. The gas pumped into Jen’s nostrils; she tried not to breathe in, but couldn’t help to. Even though the floor and the concrete beneath it encased and squeezed upon her body, she felt her muscles relax. Her breathing slowed, and she tried to form words, but couldn’t bring anything to mind. Dreamily everything blurred, her eyes rolled back into her skull and she passed out.

* * *

Danielle danced and sang along with her iPod as much as she could, not caring how obnoxious she was or who was watching. She was walking home from school psyched for her dance performance that night, hopeful that her brother would be able to come instead of working his nursing job at Summit City General Hospital.

As she bopped on down the street she had to keep offering ‘Excuse me’s and ‘Sorry’s because she kept getting too into the music and closing her eyes, bumping into whoever happened to be walking passed at the time. Finally, getting sick of all the people and annoyed at the lack of space, Dani took a detour, a shortcut through an alleyway between two apartment complexes, a clear-cut path to her street.

“Don’t go through alleyways,” she recalled her brother lecturing her a while back “Alleys are filled with drugs, prostitutes, rapists, or worse. Always stay on the main roads, where people can see you.”

‘D****t, Darrius,’ she thought as she turned down her music and surveyed everything around her ‘Now you’ve got me all scared over nothing.’ She had to admit though, her shortcut was much longer than she had anticipated, she wasn’t even half-way through it and she’d been walking for almost a minute. ‘Stop, worrying, you know how to handle trouble.’ She flexed her hand and the volume on her iPod went up slightly.

A wintry grayness dimmed the bright blue strip of spring sky between the two apartment buildings. In the unexpected overcast, the alley grew gloomy and a sudden mist began to fill the space, soon becoming a rolling fog encircling her from both ends of the alley.

Danielle felt anxious, almost scared; a jittery nervousness sped up her heart. ‘Thunderstorm?’ she thought, but weather didn’t behave in such a way. The fog became so thick that she couldn’t even see four feet in any direction. Even the apartment buildings had vanished from her sight.

The hairs on her arms stood on end, her skin crackled. The sound on her iPod skyrocketed to maximum; she couldn’t turn it down or off. Fear thrashed in her stomach, her heart pumped like crazy. She took out her cell phone, but that, too, was acting up, just like her iPod. The phone’s screen flickered on and off. ‘Calm.’ she told herself, taking in a deep breath. The dew from the surrounding air clung to her body and dampened her hair. Moisture also formed on the cell phone, the little device looked as if were sweating.

“Tsk, tsk.” came a voice from the fog. The tiny dew drops on the cell flattened and turned frost blue, the phone went completely dead but not before giving Danielle a cold burn. She dropped it but couldn’t see it land.

Her fingertips stinging numb Danielle sent a shock up her arm, electrical sparks dancing between her fingers. “Who’s there?” she called into the fog, bringing her other hand up; slim strands of lightning biting the moisture in the air. “Who’s there?” she repeated.

A cool female voice answered “Not a friend.” She sounded older, at least thirty. A silhouette of the woman came from the swirling grayness, a shadow on a screen of gloom.

Fierce lightning shocked around Dani. “Stand back.” she warned.

“Oh, please,” dismissed the Silhouette-Woman. Tufts of fog began to swirl into miniature hurricane clouds, spinning tighter and tighter until they formed marble sized spheres of water. The liquid balls hovered and jostled in the air, the Silhouette-Woman held up her shaded hand and they stopped, freezing solid and white as they levitated.

She turned her outstretched hand and the spheres shot out at Danielle, little icy bullets pelting her skin and crackling hands. Something rushed within her, s high charge pulsating up from her very core. A jagged line of blue-white lightning lanced out from Dani’s palm and fingertips. It caught the Silhouette-Woman and illuminated the fog around them in bright strobing flashes. The silhouette screamed and jerked, Dani stopped. The woman fell backwards with the loud smack of water hitting pavement.

Danielle turned and ran in the opposite direction, blindly darting through the thick blanket of fog. Her breaths were strained and still little electrical arcs cracked from her body into the mist.

BAM!

She crashed right into one of the apartment buildings. She fell back, into a deep puddle, water soaked straight through her already damp clothes, her short black hair hung drenched in her face. Drops of crimson streamed from her nose and into the puddle. She pushed herself into a sitting position but couldn’t bring her hands out of the water as if the water was holding them there.

“Oh you really shouldn’t have done that.” Hissed the silhouette woman, a curtain of fog withdrawing as she reappeared.

Danielle choked on the air as it grew wetter. She made to pull her hands up and out from the water but a strange suction remained. The Silhouette-Woman raised her arms and long thin cylinders of water became sharp spears of ice; five of them floating, prepared to strike.

Panic in Danielle caused a massive and unexpected surge from her center down her arms, through her hands and into the puddle. She convulsed and screamed as she shocked herself, more brilliant flashes illumining the fog. Her eyes rolled back, her voice grew tired and rough, her face fell slack, and she dropped face-first into the water.

A few more sparks fluttered and bit the air, but she was otherwise unconscious.

“Oh?” the Silhouette-Woman lowered her arms, the spears of ice sloshed back into water. “Well that was easy.”

* * *

A deep purr rolled up his throat as he finished his salmon meal and lapped up some water from the river. The streaming rush of water mingled with the noisy haste of city-life in the distance and Luc knew that he was still too close. He loved his new home and took in all the smells, sights, and sounds of the forest. He finished cleaning himself and then bounded in the opposite way of Summit, further into the woods.

With his heavy stomach he grew tired quickly, running little more than ten or twenty minutes. At the base of a massive pine he appraised the branches high above. Luc pounced forty feet into the air, his claws catching on the bark. He climbed a hundred and fifty feet up the tree, nearing its top. He rested on a limb just thick enough to support him, cleaning his fur a bit more. His tail swished back and forth, contented.

The tree was just high enough that he could see the yellow sun setting behind a skyscraper in the distance. Perhaps he was still too close, but he enjoyed his new home. No longer would he be different. In the forest he was king and no one could judge how he looked.

He nestled down to sleep, kneading the branch a bit before stretching and lying down, his mouth hinged open for a giant yawn. He’d close his eyes and was very near to sleep but a sound in the forest perked up his ears. It was a scratching or clawing noise rising up from the forest floor towards the sky. Something was climbing.

Rats and rabbits and beavers, the smell of vermin filled the air. It wasn’t unusual for squirrels to be perusing the treetops at night, but the creature Luc sensed was much bigger than any squirrel could ever be. Over the nighttime chorus of bugs and birds he could hear the distinct ‘ba-lump’ of a human heart and the labored rising and falling ‘huff’ of human lungs hard at work.

“Who’s there?” Luc growled in a much stronger voice than he knew he had. In an unexpected reflex his vision grew sharper; it was night but he could see everything as if it were midday. His claws lengthened, his ears laid flat against the top of his head, his fangs were bared, and saliva polished them, making them shimmer and shine. His tail swished ferociously and a roar waited to explode from his mouth.

“Hello kitty,” sneered a voice from the trees. “How’s this for a reversal of roles?” Out from a curtain of branches thirty feet away jumped a slender man landing half the distance on a branch diagonally above Luc.

Luc’s throat rumbled. “Who are you?”

The man snickered, crouched, one hand braced against the branch. His hair was a mousy grayish brown; he was very bony, but not skeletal, his skin, a pale gray, his nose, slightly turned up. A long tail of a fleshy pink color slowly waved from behind him.

“Who am I? Call me whatever you like: Remy, Mickey, Jerry. It doesn’t really make a difference.” He quirked a twisted yellow-toothed smile; his eyes were white-less, completely black, round and looking dementedly anxious.

“What do you want?” Luc asked with another rumble although he already knew the answer instinctively. The Rat-man’s heart beat had started pounding harder and harder against his ribs; Luc could practically taste the hormones wafting from his foe and slowly back and forth, as a cobra might do, the Rat-man’s tail swished, taunting and prepared. Luc didn’t give the man time to answer. “I won’t fight you.” He stated simply, though his body was disagreeing.

The Rat-man looked amused. “While that would make my job much easier, Simba, I’ve been waiting for this all week.”

“I won’t fight you.” Luc repeated his voice a gritty growl.

“C’mon,” Rat-man’s expression grew hard and fierce “Don’t be such a p***y.” He launched himself, a crazed laugh in his throat, off of the branch and towards Luc. Luc tried to brace himself, but the collision tore him from the tree limb.

The Rat-man’s rough claws pierced into Luc’s chest. Both of them fell to the forest floor, hitting every single tree branch along the way. Before they smashed to the ground, Luc kicked his foe away with both legs. Then he did a completely back-flip, still in mid-air, and landed on both feet. Rat-man crashed with a thud on the dead foliage of fallen leaves twenty feet away. Seemingly unhurt, he scrambled to his feet.

“Very good.” He smirked, brushing dirt from his black jacket. Luc’s response was an unexpected hiss, all his hairs stood on end and his tail was held straight down. He rushed forward, claws thrashing.

The first two strikes, Rat-man dodged, but the third and fourth raked across his chest. He let out a squeal, jumping back and away from Luc, whose cerulean eyes were wide with rage.

Rat-man mocked rather coolly. “Ouch! Kitty got claws, now doesn’t he?” he slashed back with his own hardened nails, but Luc was too quick and avoided each swipe.

“Why?” he roared “What do you want?” his knife-like nails carved four long streaks into Rat-man’s cheeks and jaw. His foe fell back, gasping and touching the cuts.

Luc stepped away too, hunched over and breathing heavily through exposed fangs; his claws ready to attack again. He could hear blood dripping onto the leaves and the coppery scent made his throat rumble even more. Rat-man faced away from him, still gasping, but a wild snicker huffed out with each breath.

Swiftly, and still amused, Rat-man turned around, brandishing an odd-looking gun. Before Luc could react, he squeezed the trigger. Three or four black needle rods shot out embedding themselves into Luc’s chest, neck, right arm, and left thigh.

Almost immediately nausea stirred in his stomach. He felt extremely dizzy and weak. He collapsed, his hands unable to catch himself as he fell.

Everything grew dim and then…black.

* * *

As he ran across the water surface in Grey’s plaza, Michael felt absolutely divine. He dashed straight through the unmoving squirt streaming through a cherub’s chubby cheeks yet didn’t get wet, he was moving too fast. He jumped clear over the head of a girl sacrificing a coin into the pool and landed ten feet away, continuing to weave in and out of the frozen people enjoying the bright spring day.

He chuckled to himself, in the immobile silence, slow moving air visibly rippling and warping around him as the sea might to a boat cutting into it. The turbulent air would wreak havoc on anyone to encounter it. It could knock people off their feet or disassemble people’s belongings sending their stuff fluttering all over the place. Once he ran so close and fast to a car that its windows blew out.

‘3:43pm’ read the giant clock tower overlooking the plaza, it meant that he had about two minutes to run home and convince his mother that he had indeed been at school all day rather than cruising up and down the East Coast sampling different foods and pulling pranks on unsuspecting strangers.

He sped up, the air disruption growing harsher. From out of the plaza he rocketed along the road, pass cars, frozen in city traffic and fellow pedestrians stuck in foot traffic. He made his way across town in less than a minute, bypassing the metro-bus that he usually took home. His street was clean of traffic and he slowed down as he neared his house. Before stepping onto the porch, Michael dashed behind the garage, picking up his book-bag where he had stashed it that morning. Then he dashed back up the driveway and up to the front door. He stopped abruptly and turned the door knob, it was unlocked, as expected.

“Home!” he announced, not even out of breath, the house was unusually quiet, normally his mother would’ve given him a chore to do the second he entered the house.

“Ma?!” his voice echoed back eerily. He made sounds for his cat to come out of hiding. She almost always greeted him at the door. “Diamond; here kitty.” He called out.

Nothing.

Something was definitely up, the house was uncharacteristically dark, the blinds were always open on bright days, but they were drawn shut. “Ma?!” Michael shouted again as he slung his bag to the dining room floor.

A hand from behind clasped down over his mouth. A sharp pain touched his neck. Reflexively he spun around, sending whoever his ambusher was flying into the dining room table. The table exploded into hundreds of wooden splinters. Michael slipped into his super-speed and the table chunks hung in mid-air, but not for long. He could only hold it for a second, but then everything sped up again, he felt nauseas and dizzy.

From his left and right he heard two sounds, two breathy flutters and two more stings pricked his leg and shoulder.

Men dressed as soldiers surrounded him. “Crap.” Michael thought as the room began to spin and he staggered about trying to keep his footing. The already dark room became darker as his knees crashed to the ground. Everything fell black and it felt as if his torso was floating towards the floor. His cheek hit the hardwood and more than ever Michael wanted to just run away.

* * *

Over the hilly forest terrain twenty miles outside of Summit City, a massive black, tank-like van drove into a cave opening. The false craggy back wall rose open with the approach of the van and down a slight incline it drove. The driver, a man dressed as a kind of special-ops soldier, limped down from his seat and ordered the other soldiers from the van to unload the back.

“Agent Smith!” barked the voice of Harris, Head of Security at the facility. He’d been on the other side of the hidden entrance conversing with another agent. “Your task was a simple retrieval, why are you so off schedule?”

Smith straightened up as much as he could. “I’m sorry, Sir, but we had an unforeseen complication with one of the targets.”

Harris grabbed Smith arm in a strong vise. “You better not have let them get away.”

“No, Sir. We’ve got him; it just was much more difficult than we had anticipated. He ended up injuring almost all of us, damn near killed Sanchez.”

“How? Did he have a weapon?”

“Didn’t need one, Sir.” The first of the M.S.C.U.s the Mobile Solitary Confinement Units, was pushed from out behind the van. “I believe him to be an Infected.”

Harris let out a humorless laugh. “That’s not possible, Smith.”

“He turned into steel, or iron, or whatever. Just some kind of living metal and he fought against us. It took fifteen B.I.D.E. charges and two canisters of gas to take him down.”

“No, Smith,” his voice was gravely serious “I mean it can’t be possible at all.”

“See for yourself, Sir.” Smith led him to the M.S.C.U. a box twice as tall as it was wide. A small one-way window peered into it. The face unconscious within the container looked unreal, like a detailed mask or a life like bust made of silvery metal. If it weren’t for the occasional moving eyeball behind the steel eyelid or the slight flex and flare of nostrils from breathing, one could dismiss the man’s face as nothing more than a good piece of art.

“This could be bad.” Harris said to no one in particular. He cleared his throat and straightened his composure. “Alright, Smith, this is what I want you to do. Take him down to where the other Infected are. Your men will take the other targets to where they need to go and I will notify the higher-ups. Got it?”

“Yes, Sir.” Smith saluted.

“Good.” The two men swiftly parted ways. Harris took out his cell phone and immediately called his boss. It rang two or three times and then someone picked up.

“It’s Harris. Patch me through; I got some very interesting and possibly some very bad news.”

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