Running, almost too fast. The ice is cold, the snow melting under transgenic feet. The footprints are getting deeper, the pressure increasing as speed does the same. They have to escape. Escape to what? There is nothing else. Nothing that they know. But it has to be done. And so they run. Over the snow ridden patches of grass. Through fields and between trees they've never played beneath. To the fenceline.
Wire atop it stings at their hands, catches on gray fabric and coaxes red from beneath the surface. Some are luckier, and yet so unfortunate. One falls through the ice, left behind by her comrades and left for dead. Two are shot, perishing almost immediately in the harsh conditions in which they bleed out. Three others are fallen but survive, their injuries brought on by the barbs of wire, the shocks of the tazers and wayward bullets. They are still the lucky ones.
For what they fun from is inescapable. They run from themselves. It is a lie they lead, saying that the authorities are those to blame. No, it is them. The feared, the alone. Children, but so close to murderers they truly are the same thing. The soldiers are fighting against themselves, now. The instincts instilled in them from the test tube stage making everything else seem unimportant. The hunt, the kill. Blood on their hands. One of them would later understand, would perish for it. Most of them are hoping they'll never have to deal with it ever again.
An escape is superfluous, everything they run from never truly giving up the chase. The hunters will become the hunted, those who ran in trouble down the line. But is has to be done.
And so they run.