Chapter 1: Prelude

It was late, really late, and that was all Makoto could think as he ran through the streets of the deserted city that had once been his home.

It was beginning to get dark, he might not make it home before all light extinguished and that scared the hell out of him, so he ran faster, trying to move without making too much noise. The nocturne monsters weren't the only threat, and that was very clear in his head. He had to get back, he had to get back soon.

As he ran, rushing through the empty streets, his past came back in a hurry. He could remember that night too clearly; the night he learned that men were more dangerous than beasts.

.

The lights of the building had flickered and the sound of footsteps could be heard.

In those dangerous days, the only way of surviving was forming big groups, but the one he was in wasn't very strong, as it was mostly formed by women and children.

The group was hiding from the Vigilant, a governmental organization that hunted them, inside an old building. Women and kids were all together, while the men stood by the doors, ready to run and face the danger in order to protect the group.

Makoto sat at the middle, his baby brother held tightly. Ren was crying, Ren was always crying. How could he not cry? His mother was dead and he went hungry a lot, babies didn't have any other way to complain. But the small child's cries were attracting the Vigilant, and so Makoto could do nothing but place his little hand over his baby brother's mouth, trying to make him stop.

"This is not going to work, they'll find us all!" said a woman, and she grabbed Makoto by the upper arm, almost making the nine-year-old boy drop the baby he held.

"Hey, you take that and go hide somewhere else!" the woman said, nudging the boy towards the back exit door.

Makoto had looked around, his green eyes searching the group for someone that supported him, but all they did was avert their eyes. And so he was forced to leave, taking the baby with him.

He was a big boy, for his age, and quite strong too, so he could run fast, and that's what he did. He ran and ran... and then the yells started. Makoto's father had acted fast, going after his two sons, who were being chased already. The presence of the older male made the Vigilant chasing the children put their attention in him, and that helped Makoto hide. He could do nothing more, his legs hurt, his arms hurt, he was tired. At least, the baby in his arms had stopped crying.

He just sat there, under a huge pile of concrete, incapable of taking his eyes of the scene unfolding before him. His father fought, but there wasn't much he could do, and so the Vigilant killed him, right there, right in front of his son's eyes.

Makoto shook his head, trying to get rid of the image of his father lying dead on the floor. Why had they killed him? Why? He hadn't hurt anybody…

.

Makoto couldn't really understand it then. It took him months to finally get it and years to begin to truly process it. Now, at eighteen years old and after having lived a long, hard life, he finally understood.
The illness that had taken the lives of millions was the reason for all the craziness. It had all started with an isolated case in Tokyo; just one, but it had quickly spread and there was nothing anyone could do.

Soon, a lot of people had died and other had been affected differently by the disease, making them mutate in weird ways. Those second kind of people, the tainted ones as they called them, wouldn't die of the illness, but they should not have children since they'd too sport the mutation and they'd surely lead to the contamination of all humanity. And so they were hunted by the Vigilant. Makoto's father knew they would come to kill him soon, and he knew they wouldn't hesitate to kill his sons without checking them, that's why he'd been ready to give his life to save theirs.

Makoto and Ren were immunes, blessed ones. They were two of the few people who would just not get sick and, even though that put them out of risk of dying by the illness, it made them the target of The Vigilant too.

Because the Vigilant had two main objectives. The first one was to kill the tainted ones, every single one of them; the second one was to catch the blessed ones.

Humanity had suffered a great loss. With and very low percentage of blessed ones, mostly males, there weren't many humans left. They needed to breed new humans, and so they got every single immune person and assigned them a partner with whom to do so.

As Makoto turned right on the corner that took to the apartment he was hiding in, a group of four Vigilant came face to face with him.

"Shit" he said. The loaf of bread he had on his hands fell to the ground as they pinned him to the wall and injected him with a sleep drug.

They'd caught him.

EDIT: This is an edited/ corrected reupload of the chapter. If you'd read it before, you can just ignore it, unless you wish to read a not-so-full-of-mistakes chapter.