CHAPTER ONE • • •
When I was little, and I was asked: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I always I thought I should be a doctor, or a vet. Maybe even a mailman. Then again, I guess I am a mailman of sorts. Except change the little car to your legs, and change your road to the rooftops. I am a mailman times ten. I am, amazingly, a Runner. When I was little I had no idea Runners existed. I was too innocent, and then again they were just rumors anyway. After the riots broke out, my life changed, and I discovered Runners were true. I was separated, and I woke up in a dirty alley at the edge of the city. I was only fourteen at the time, with nothing but my hunger, loss, and the torn clothing on my back. I wandered the network of dirty alleyways, hearing nothing but the occasional scuffle of rats and my stomach grumbling. I wandered it for three weeks. I was in a corner, waiting for myself to die already, when Melleber (I didn't know him yet at the time) strolled by and gave me a new life. Except, he wasn't strolling, more like plummeting from a rooftop twenty feet up. And add a helicopter, complete with a cannon-sized gun firing at him. You must be thinking, "Wait, how did he survive the fall?" Well, he simply fell and somersaulted. And he looked ready to go. And, instead of ignoring me, he turned and grabbed my arm – which hurt a lot, if you're wondering – and just said: "No time for explanation. Just keep running." I don't know why, but I did. I guess it's because he didn't really give me a choice, as he was literally giving my forearm a death-grip. Also I thought maybe being shot down was cooler way to die than of hunger. Anyways, I was running on pure adrenaline. But I knew it wouldn't last long, because I hadn't eaten properly the whole time after I came to. He had raced through the alleys, and then we came to the "Calligar Drain Systems". It was literally a huge gaping hole (Maybe sixty meters diameter, who-knows-how-long deep) with random platforms here and there. At the moment, it was empty except for the few dozen policemen that were opening fire. It was legitimately the most confusing day of my life. He let go of my arm, which I believe still itches from his crazy death-grip, and nimbly hopped across the gaping chasm onto a piece of metal posts being suspended in air for a crane above, stepped across from that to a platform with a door, and jumped across a gap to a pipe on the wall. I, however, was not so cat-like. I tripped and face-planted on the suspended metal bars, scrambled and tumbled down to the platform, and made a leap of faith to the pipe – and I miscalculated horribly. I dropped like a stone to another concrete platform ten feet down, and groaned on the floor. Bullets still zipped by. (Policemen suck at aiming.) I could hear Mel curse creatively and dropped so neatly down to me I felt even worse. He picked me up and righted me and dashed off, no words of explanation. He jumped a gap, no sweat, and slid down a similar pipe. I groaned and awkwardly stumbled to the pipe, cringing from the bullets whizzing by my face. I jumped, and my face bashed right into the pipe. (I still look back on these days and just slowly shake my head.) I slide down slowly, making a skrrreeeet noise to an identical platform below. I drop, and a bullet nearly misses my head. If I were any faster, my brain would have been impaled. I guess some banes come with blessings. Mel looked impatiently at me and dragged me to a ladder – which, at the time, I preferred over pipes - and climbed down after him. Mel just slid down, his feet and hands causing friction so he doesn't just free-fall. Now we were on a metal catwalk, and Mel mashed a button reading: "LOCK DOOR OVERRIDE. PRESS BUTTON FOR 15 SECOND DRAIN." But the water in this huge hole was already drained out, the workers evacuated. The lock groaned and creaked, opening slowly. It was across the chasm. It was also a huge metal door that most likely drained water (Duh). But, we only had 15 seconds, and it was on the other side. Of course, this absolutely crazy man ran a wall, jumped off and landed on another catwalk, sprinted to two boxes (A big one next to a smaller one) down the walk, and used the smaller for leverage and bigger one for power, and flew up through the air and onto the concrete platform the door was on. Without a single scraped shin, should I add? Okay, just a header: I can't run along walls. But this guy did it like it was easy as collecting the paper by the door. So, I backed up, leaned backward, and shot forward. Honestly, it was a good start and I probably would have made it until a bullet ran into my leg. I fell right off the platform. As I was in free-fall, I instantly blacked out.