CHAPTER 1: DIRTY AIR

My nightmares had been right on the money. They came in pairs, dressed in plain corporate suits. Two by two, they walked with stoic vigilance and guns that shot sedation.

I felt like my life now existed outside of reality - off in some surreal fantasy where women and men weren't always human, and those that weren't were hunted like vermin. My normal, innocent life had collapsed, leaving a hollow comic-book cliché behind to torment me.

I was still human though, right?

I couldn't explain it to my fiancé. Forget my family.

The cold sky was gray and overcast. Soon, it would dare to snow. I wasn't dressed warmly enough to fly in such wind-chill.

In my wake, a red fire truck was nursing a freshly burning building. He'd found me before they did. He wanted to be the only one. And then they came... and he set fire to the institution. I escaped the only way I could. Out the window. In broad daylight, too.

The air around me pulsed with an unnatural claim against gravity. My scarf blew ceaselessly against my face, drawn tight as it was. The ground, so far below, whizzed past like water beneath a boat. My feet followed, tailing me gracefully above the earth. All of it gave me such a rush.

I rose and fell, dodging smokestacks and high hanging wires. Curls of brown hair rippling in the rush of the wind.

I thought I had escaped. Yet another flight, away from them.

I passed silence and smog. The air offered the lurid scent of toxic  nastiness. Industries below me, churning out things I know not.

Crap, a window.

Damn the man who pointed at me in the sky, and took out his cellphone to make a video of it. I didn't want to be a YouTube sensation.

I was not nearly enough of a blur for that.

I need to move away from the big city. Away from the cameras and intersections. Off to the forests and tiny towns where nobody gives a damn.

I pushed for speed. Air pressed against my face, trying to sting at my skin beneath my warm, black headband, orange ski goggles and long white scarf.

I could barely breathe, but I was almost there.

Almost.

I began my descent.

As I neared the empty warehouse, a needle hit my neck and I fell towards the ground, towards death, only to be caught in the unwanted mercy of a net.

It closed around me as my senses faded.

They'd caught me. People I knew not.

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