CHAPTER 1

28 March 2029 " 17:25 GMT " Daniel Prescott

It was a difficult thing to justify. My breakfast burned on the edge of my throat, and a cold sweat trickled down my forehead. The blade-handle trembled in my grip like it would grow wings and fly. I was nervous. I was nervous because, though I knew the necessity of it, I couldn’t bring myself to kill this man.

                “C … Can’t we just let him go?” I said. “I’ll do it next time. I promise.”

“You’re wasting our time, Daniel, just kill him already!” said the boy who was holding the man down. He was agitated because he had been in that position for quite a while now.

“But �"”

I had difficulty looking into the man’s eyes. Because Kiel offered to “soften him up for me”, some of his bones were now broken and his hair was soggy with blood. He was pressed under Vin like an insect.

We were on the second floor of what they used to call a “mall”. Around us was a pandemonium of death and ruin. Rodents that normally would have hidden in recesses far away from sight grew bold, pattering their little feet in puddles of blood, chipping off entrails from the others we exterminated in this mall. If we weren’t forced to wear respirators, I might have already vomited from the musty redolence of death and decay.

“That’s what you said last time,” said Carmen. She wrapped my hands in hers, helping me hold up the combat knife. It relaxed my nerves.

“Don’t just f*****g stand there!” said the boy again. “If you’re going to kill him, kill him! And don’t baby him Carmen! If we stay here any longer, we’ll run the risk of getting infected too.”

“Come on, Vin, ease up,” said a young man who sat on a counter behind us, fiddling with rusty till. His name was Kiel: our instructor. He turned to me. “Daniel, we can’t wait here forever. Don’t be afraid, just go ahead.”

I know but… I looked at the man being held down and his eyes were empty. No, wait, not exactly. There was a dangerous sparkle in their depths. The longer I looked at them, the more I caught on. Those eyes still had wanting in them. If I could put it into words, it was almost as if…

“He wants to die,” said Kiel, slipping a coin he found into his chest pocket. “That should make things easier, right?”

“But it’s hard,” I said. “I mean he’s not even resisting.”

“That’s because it’s dormant now. The infection,” said Kiel. “But look.” He signaled to Vin.

Responding to the instruction, Vin took out a gun while still holding the man down. He aimed for his head and pulled the trigger, letting bits of meat, bone and blood splatter onto his respirator. I swallowed. Vin quickly put away his gun. The man lay still but Vin didn’t let him go. After a short while, a black liquid oozed out and coated the bullet hole, the inhaled deeply, then he started moving again.

“Remember that what you’re looking at now is not human,” Kiel said. “If you don’t kill him, there’s a chance he’ll just die slowly, feeding the infection. Maybe he’ll even kill himself. In fact, he died the day he got infected. On the other hand, if you don’t kill him as he is now, you’ll fail this test. You have to do this. You’re the only one here who hasn’t.”

“I know!” I said but … why is this so hard? I was somewhat timid, sure, but even I … I … mean even I can �"

“Do it already!” shouted Vin.

His voice rippled through my skin, frightening enough to make the rodents scurry away. At that moment, bitter memories surged in my mind. My knees melted, I let out a repressed little yelp, the knife clanked onto the ground and then … warm. I felt warm in my nether regions. Tears welled up in my eyes, and I didn’t need to look down to know what had happened.

Carmen sighed, picked up the knife and walked on, letting me fall to my knees and cup my face in shame. Her eyes held none of the gentleness with which she calmed me earlier. She held up the man by his hair, exposing his neck cleanly. As her blade drew closer, the pupils in his eyes swelled, his teeth sharpened, his nails grew into menacing talons, and his eyes were dyed black. He started struggling profusely but Carmen didn’t let go of his head. Vin held him down more firmly.

“His infection,” said Carmen. The man’s eyes were pulsating between full and partial black as he wriggled under Vin like a desperate worm. “It’s like he’s trying to fight it.”

“Doesn’t change anything does it?” Vin answered.

“No.”

Carmen bore down the knife and sawed through his neck. His grumbles and groans soon gave way to the bubbling of blood, the grinding of bone, and then his head snapped off and rolled in my direction. He was dead.

I couldn’t stand wearing the respirator anymore. I scurried to a corner of the room, took it off and vomited out into the street below. The wall had long collapsed, exposing me to the fresh air of the open evening. Even so, I was gasping violently.

“You idiot!” shouted Vin. He marched across the room and held me up by the collar. “What do you think you’re doing, taking off your mask? You want to get infected too?”

“… safe!”

We both looked at Carmen. She was holding a small device, and it was beeping a low monotonous tone.

“The air’s safe,” she repeated under her breath, then she took off her respirator to make her point.

Vin glared at her, then he reluctantly let me go.

“Good,” said Kiel as he leapt off the counter. “Carmen, you get extra credit. But I needn’t stress that you ought to have checked for miasma poisoning the moment we walked in here.”

We all lowered our heads. There was nothing any of us could say to that.

“Daniel?” said Carmen as she wiped the blood off the dagger, tucking it into her boots.

“Just leave him alone for the time being,” said Vin, picking up the head and tossing it onto the pile of bodies we stacked outside. “We’re not done yet.”

From the neck of the decapitated body, some jet black liquid oozed out. It collected like a drop of water, congealed into jelly and crawled on the floor before shriveling up and crumbling to ash, revealing a red crystal-like object. It was as small as an earring stud.

“It’s pretty small for a core,” Carmen said. She then picked up the stud of crystal, put it inside an encasing device and shut it. Light peeked out of it, then she tucked it away and pressed on her wrist like she was checking her pulse. A holographic interface projected out of it. She navigated through it and found what she was looking for.

“Only 2 points,” she said.

“2 points you didn’t really need,” said Kiel. They were all looking at me. I hadn’t killed anyone yet, so my pointer was still set to zero.

“Well, it’s getting dark,” said Vin, dragging the body to the pile we stacked in an open area outside the room. “Now all that’s left is to burn them. You can help with this much at least, can’t you?”

I didn’t answer him.

“Daniel?” said Carmen.

She came closer to me, rubbing my back. I didn’t answer her either. I couldn’t.

“Daniel?”

She kneeled to look at my face. My eyes were bloodshot, and I was holding onto my chest.

“Daniel!” she shouted. “He’s having another episode!”

Kiel and Vincent ran over. They carried me up, placed me on the counter, buckled off my vest, and parted my shirt. I lost consciousness.

* * * *

I felt so warm I would teeter in and out of consciousness. The winds outside were strong. Strong enough to blow an entire roof away, I’d imagine. I hear stories about that sort of thing. Tragic. In any case, to me, something about the rough winds and the drizzle that pattered on the windows made me feel cozy. I was sitting in front of the hearth, watching T.V.

“Disgusting!” said my little sister. We were wrapped up together in a blanket, only our heads sticking out like two little moles.

“If you don’t like it, leave,” I told her.

“No! I want to watch something else!”

“And I want to watch this.”

“Daniel!”

“Dianne!” My mother called out. She was in the kitchen, sizzling up an aroma that made my mouth water.

“Come help me in the kitchen.”

“But mom!”

“Just come.”

My sister pouted and glared holes into me. It was a look that made me feel like I was the source of all of her life’s problems. I pretended not to notice.

She slipped out of the blanket and started for the kitchen obediently �" is the substance of dreams, but in actuality, my mom had to call her a few more times, her voice getting scarier every time she had to repeat herself. When Dianne finally conceded, she made it a point to unravel the blanket like a stage curtain, exposing me to a nippy chill that made me shudder. She then ran out with a sinister laugh and stuck her tongue out at me before disappearing into the kitchen. My fist really wanted to meet her face.

I could hear them arguing a little after that, but it soon gave way to the chopping and sizzling sounds. They were obtrusive. I put up the volume. I was watching a horror movie. Something about man-eating ghouls in an urban city. It was almost over too.

“Ouch!” my sister said after a little while in the kitchen. The chopping sounds stopped, and I could hear the knife clanking onto the sink.

“Bring your hand. Let me see,” I could hear my mother saying.

Honestly, I didn’t care, but my movie was over and I was getting bored so at that moment I decided to go to the kitchen too. I cocooned myself in the blanket so that it puddled at my feet. When I entered, their backs were turned to me. They didn’t even seem to notice I was there.

“Mom?” I said.

She didn’t respond. She was hunched over my sister, looking at her finger. It was an unnatural stillness that made me feel uneasy. I moved a little closer and grabbed my sister by the shoulder.

“Is it bad?” I asked.

At that moment, a furious thunder crackled, a tree in our back yard snapped and fell, and the lights in the room flickered. My eyes darted to the window. I forgot all about my sister and moved to see what had happened outside. By the looks of it, nothing in our yard was damaged but… the rivulets on the window were black. At first I thought the window was dirty, but no … the rain that pattered on the window itself was black. That was strange. Mom was smart, so maybe she could explain it.

I turned back to my sister. I didn’t hear her move but somehow, she was facing me. I gulped down a chunk of air and staggered back, dropping items from the counter behind me.

“What’s wrong, Daniel?” she asked.

“Wha … wha…” I mumbled like a mad man. Her head was facing me, but the rest of her body faced the other way!

“Don’t be scared,” she said. Her body floated from the ground like an esper then twisted back into shape with the creaking and snapping of bone. She hovered towards me and held out the finger that she had cut. The lights flickered, and by the time they were on again, she was right in front of me. Her voice descended into a deep legion-like tone.

“It’s only blood.”

I screamed, picked up a pot and smacked her with it. When she landed, her body twisted in unnatural ways so that she looked like a spider. She crawled up behind my mother and peeked over her shoulder. My mother had also changed. There was a knife stuck on her head, her hair and clothes were messy, and her skin was a deathly pale. A black liquid oozed from the cut on my sister’s finger; from her eyes; from her ears; from her mouth �" I hesitate to say from every orifice on her body.

I screamed louder and ran out of the room, tripping on my blanket before I wriggled out of it and scurried on the floor like a mole. I opened the front door and standing there was my father, crying tears of blood, his skin covered in wretched burns and warts. I shoved him aside and ran into the streets.

Somehow, I ended up in the middle of a city street. My house was nowhere to be seen. It was still raining black, but there were fires everywhere, and they were growing hotter and brighter. People broke into buildings and people broke out of them. Most of them looked as horrendous as my father did, wailing in agony, or lifelessly plodding along in confusion. Helicopters buzzed overhead, zipping soldiers who wore respirators down. They shot down people without mercy, and the people themselves trampled over each other as they scattered to the four winds.

“Daniel!”

I heard someone calling to me. I couldn’t tell who it was so I ignored it. I ran amidst the chaos and swam through the crowds until someone knocked me on my back. They were soon sent flying with a bullet to the head. As I lay there, a soldier wearing a respirator marched to me, raising his weapon to shoot. It was my turn.

“Daniel!”

I gasped for air, waking up from my nightmare. I was in a bed and someone was sitting beside me.

“Carmen,” I said when my vision cleared. She stroked my hair and smiled. She was wearing a dirty show-muscle, but her trousers were still the ones we wore for our uniforms.

I looked around the room. Moonlight streamed through the small window on the wall.

What happened? I thought, combing through my mind. Today I was … I remembered the embarrassing scene that had led me here, then I moved to feel myself up inside the blanket.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “We changed your clothes.”

My cheeks flushed and looked away from her. We let a silence pass for a moment.

“You had that dream again, didn’t you?” she said.

I nodded.

“It must have really been horrible, what you saw. Vin doesn’t talk about it either, so I’ve only ever heard stories.”

She was giving me an expectant look, but I wasn’t about to tell her my life’s story. I sat up and activated the interface on my wrist. I navigated to the score menu. Projected before me, in a big bold font, was a looming, foreboding zero. I sighed.

“I thought I could do it,” I said, putting away the interface. “I thought I could do it, but I can’t even bring myself to kill someone.”

“The test ends tomorrow. You still have a chance.”

“You think so?”

“Of course,” she said. “And even if you don’t, there’s always the option of going rogue.”

“And survive out there on my own?” I scoffed. “I think I’ll just move to the safe side of the wall. Quietly man the farms or something. Maybe I wasn’t meant to be a Ranger after all.”

She didn’t say anything, but I could sense relief in her expression. Maybe she wanted me to quit all along? This woman.

“Why didn’t you take me to the medic wing?” I asked.

“I wanted to,” she answered. “But it was flooded with people who got worse injuries than you. Also, Kiel said your condition wasn’t too serious so, well…”

“I see…”

“You’re awake,” said Vin as he walked into the room. He was holding a tray with rye bread and water, and had completely changed out of his uniform.

“Is that for me?”

“It’s not for Carmen,” he answered, placing the tray on my bedside. “I had to wring a few necks for this.”

I appreciated the gesture but I could still feel the bile on my throat, so I didn’t feel like eating. I took a sip of water.

 “You know, Vin’s the one who took care of you all this time,” Carmen said, wrapping her arm around his waist. “I only took over while he got you something to eat. You missed dinner, after all.”

“Is that so?”

Vin didn’t say anything in response. He wasn’t even making eye contact, like his mind was already somewhere else. His cheeks were bashful, like he was uncomfortable having Carmen’s arm around his waist. [ED: That b*****d].

“You should thank him,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder.

Something lurched in my heart. I wanted to thank him but for some reason, I couldn’t. Actually, I wanted to ask the both of them to leave, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I simply stared at them until, as though the stars were aligned in my favor, the evening siren blared, calling us to assembly.

Author's Note

Let me know how well (or how unwell) I've introduced the subject matter of the story. If you have any opinions about pacing, dialogue, grammar, or even sentence structure, please don't be kind.