Prologue: Parallel Paths

A family all but torn a part. I fought with courage to preserve, not my way of life but yours. Carry on, don't mind me, all I gave was everything. Yet, you ask me for more. Fought your fight, bought your lie, in return, I lost my life. What purpose does this serve?

2014

She couldn't stop smiling as she looked out over the city; the view was breathtaking. Her view was breathtaking.

"Careful, your face can get stuck like that," came her husband's voice behind her, the sound of boxes being torn open following. In the background, she could hear her sons thumping around the expansive new surroundings; her toddler child darted between her legs, shrieking with joy, brown curls bouncing.

She looked from her small daughter to her husband and back, finally turning from the floor to ceiling glass to help in the unpacking. Their new 3,600 square foot top floor penthouse, echoing with the rips and tears of paper and packing tape, was their first home. The home was a rectangle, the front door opening to an open concept plan of dark polished floors and stainless accents. The living room was sunken in, with plans for a wrap around sectional to fill the space. Their kitchen was to the East; the corner framed with glass walls and a cozy patio off the dining room. To the west were the bedrooms and an office; Jack & Jill bedroom/bathroom combos for the boys, an en suite for the young couple with another cozy patio, and a guest bath at the end of the hall. It was more than Sam could have ever dreamed, and she wasn't sure if she should be angry, shocked, or happy about her husband cashing in his pension to make the down payment on the luxury space. She was still a mixture of all three. He had done it for her, he did everything for her.

They'd been through everything in the short four years of their marriage; both recovering from staggering divorces, scraping by to make ends meet, they found one another by chance. Sam knew she couldn't live her life without him the moment she met him, and they eloped six weeks after.

Their sounds of unpacking was disturbed again by her husband's panicked voice, "Sam? Sam! SAM!" Suddenly her children's shrieks of joy were of terror, she smelled smoke, and blood and everything was chaos.

2024

Sam opened her eyes with a start. That wasn't her life anymore, and each time she was ripped from it in her dreams, it ached a little less. The dreams weren't as frequent as they used to be, as the years went by. She rolled to her side, sighing and laying her hand on the vacant space next to her. For a moment, she could almost smell him in the sheets. She buried her face into his pillows, silently loathing the sunlight prying through her dark curtains.

Wallowing enough, she supposed, Sam rose and shuffled into the kitchen, grey early morning light filtering in from beneath the dark shutters on the floor to ceiling windows. Pouring her coffee, she sat at the kitchen table and managed to make her hands stop shaking, to put the sadness in her eyes away so that she could face the day.

Two young men sleepily walked into her kitchen. One tall and thin, with brown eyes, olive skin, and chocolate-brown hair. The other one and a half heads shorter, slightly younger, fair-skinned with blue-green eyes and sandy blonde hair. They were complete opposites, always had been. The trio greeted one another in their usual way of head nods; her drinking her coffee, them rummaging through the cabinets. She ruffled her sons' hair and moved to open the heavy shutters, one by one illuminating the penthouse.

After refilling her cup, she walked to the sliding glass door of the dining room, and opened it, pausing as she remembered, "Mike? Lee? Don't forget to make lists, I'm going out in a few days, okay?" Not giving them a moment to protest, she slid the door shut behind her, settling her arms on the wide ledge of the patio, her cup steaming next to her. She peered down at the city streets twenty stories below. All was quiet, and deceptively serene. There was even a nice breeze from the distant coast, and she wrapped her fluffy robe tighter around her neck. She breathed in the muggy morning air, and her hair already threatened to frizz at the looming humidity of the soon to be oppressively hot summer day.

From her vantage point, so high up, she couldn't make out the scene below in the streets, but she knew what was there. Wrecked vehicles, bodies, and the Infected filled the streets. It would almost seem a normal day in the bustling city, until you looked closer at the blood spattered here and there; the pedestrians filling the streets and sidewalks weren't rushing around in their morning commutes, no. This was the shuffling of the Infected. If she closed her eyes, she could hear their piercing cries in her mind, see the carnage of the living being torn apart.

This was her life, now. Survival in a post apocalyptic world that was reminiscent of a movie script.

This was her life now, and it was a living nightmare.


Loki was miserable.

Loki had been miserable for over a human decade.

After his last deception and attempts to rule Asgard, the Alfather wanted him executed. The only thing saving Loki's skin his oaf of a brother Thor still believing in his "redemption." It was laughable, and his lips still curled in a sneer at the thought. Their clever punishment was open-ended; Loki was to be cast out, with a limited amount of magic, and to fend for himself and live among the beings he meant to rule.

It was beneath him, this existence. He would rather have died, and had tried on many occasions. This was where the small amount of magic was allowed to remain, he was kept alive against all odds, forbidden to return to his true power and home until a sufficient lesson was learned.

It was easy enough at first, this exile. Deceiving humans was child's play, and the fallen demigod quickly had money and residences, blended within their society undetected. The Alfather had the smallest decency to exile him in a fairly remote location, where none would recognize him. He kept to himself, bided his time, and planned to wait out his exile for as long as needed.

And then those infernal humans, with their want to destroy themselves, had to go and make everything slightly more difficult. Always tinkering with their mortality, their magicians (scientists, he learned they were called) had created a sickness, a disease by mistake. The virus spread rapidly, inciting rage in its victims and wake, murder and chaos the likes of which they had never seen and were ill-equipped to handle. Their number dwindled quickly, and had he been at full strength this realm would have been his for the taking. Much to his own dismay, Loki could only watch, a spectator to the carnage that they rained down upon themselves.

True to their pest-like nature, the humans failed to die out as he had predicted they would. Forever surprising him in their tenacity, they began to find themselves survivors, and banded together to combat the plague. Their "scientists," or what was left of them, had yet to find a cure for the disease. They fought, erecting massive walls around their towns, expanding as more survivors wandered through. Electricity and politics, and a primitive form of what they once had slowly emerged. Loki refused to be impressed, ants rebuild colonies, after all.

Unable to capitalize, and unwilling to help, Loki travelled. He saw the world, what was left of it, saving what was formerly the United States as his last stop. The major cities still being shut down, and in the process of mild discord and repair, he was forced to port at another unknown (not that he cared) part of the southeastern shores of the country. It was hot, the air damp and heavy, and Loki couldn't wait to leave.

He began to wander through the abandoned streets, as he always did. Roaming was what he did, these days...what else was there to do? He occasionally entered the recovering cities, observing the scuttling of the humans, as they tried to rebuild their societies. He avoided them at all costs, walking until he was tired, then taking whatever vehicles he could find and using them, driving until he was tired. Sometimes he slept in the vehicles, sometimes he slept in lodging if he found any that wasn't decrepit. The infected never bothered him much, if they did they were easily disposed of.

This was his life now. And it was a boring, living nightmare.