Infamous 4: Aftermath
PROLOGUE
They called it the empire event. History's largest terrorist attack hit Empire City and no one was ready for it, well in reality only one person was ready. Half of the city was reduced to ash and rubble, with a racked death count in the tens of thousands and even more injured. But for the broken city, the worst was still to come. Survivors of the blast started exhibiting strange abilities, like things you could only read about in a superhero comic book. The nation was in disbelief , but only briefly as the crime rate of the city sky rocketed and America was forced to quickly gather its senses. The radiation spread and more and more people started developing the same afflictions. These individuals were labelled "bioterrorists" and were slowly rounded up by the newly commissioned D.U.P, the Department of Unified Protection and imprisoned in a most secure facility on the planet, Curdun Cay.
Living in sunny San Francisco, none of this affected me so I lived blissfully ignorant to the whole crisis. At the time, the most pressing matter was figuring out a way of minimising social damage when I ask out the boy I had a crush on. And the weirdest thing about me was that I still had imaginary friends when I was 14 but young girls are quirky like that. This was true until we found out my cousin Abigail was one of them, a bioterrorist! I wasn't even in when they came for us. A friend had persuaded me to cut class in light of one of her breakups, and we didn't get back until six o'clock. As we walked up to the house, we could hear shouting, smashing and general mayhem inside. I saw a man with a big gun stood outside our house , he was dressed in yellow and grey riot gear. I recognised the get up from the D.U.P. officers on the news and a cold fear gripped every muscle. He turned to me, his eyes barely visible through the blackened helmet:
"Makaila Walker?"
I stood frozen at the mention of my name, but I was the only one.
The friend I was with, Martha, seemed to flinch away from me as if I had a sniper's laser marker on my chest. The look of disgust on her face burned into my memory. This was then shattered by a gun shot sounding from inside the house. The door burst open with my bruised older sister, Mimi, stumbling from the doorway and on to the paving, her shirt bloody.
"Run Makaila! RUN!"
I heard her cry, but I just couldn't move. I felt like the side walk had grown hands and arms and had grabbed my ankles. Time just stopped. I looked to Martha for help but she had already taken advantage of the confusion and fled. I turned back only to see the butt of the soldier's gun.
My sister and I were shipped off to the root of the world's fear, Curdun Cay. We were cuffed with special manacles which we were told would suppress our abilities, but we didn't have abilities, not like the ones we were found guilty of. Of course I protested this many times loudly, but each time the guards discredited my claims and beat me for it. And it was even more hopeless to take my sister's protests of human rights. The guards only laughed at her efforts before her punishment. Mimi and I were kept in the same cell , we were miserable, but at we were miserable together. She and our captors were the only contact we were allowed, with each other and the 'caretakers" who were charged with looking after us since we were not allowed to do anything for ourselves with the suppressant manacles.
Despite the crippling reality that we were all destined never to see sunlight again, the community spirit was surprisingly strong. The cell to the left of us help a Philly kid named Wyatt who liked to joke about how he was to be kept away from aluminium at all costs. I got to know quite a few of the inmates in our cell block and learned that not all bioterrorists were bad people, and that before being labelled as "terrorists",they were originally called "conduits". However there was one cell which never produced any conversation. According to Wyatt, it was home to a "conduit" named Oak. That was all anyone knew about him. That and he was good friends with the cell next to him, a girl named Hope. I guess the name invited strangers' warmth.
The whole time I was there, no one told me what happened to my parents.
