Thanks to everyone who reviewed! I did some editing yesterday, so you might want to go back just to check and made sure you read chapter 2. Read and review, next chapter soon!
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The place had been a granite quarry at one point; long since abandoned, it sprawled across a good expanse of forest, full of bolt holes and freshwater lakes. Since it seemed from the unbroken branches lying across the only road out here that hardly anybody ever came, it was the perfect place to hide a body.
Especially one that was still living. They'd never find her up here. One road, and a rough one at that, plus a surrounding forest that provided endless hiding places secured the area better than Fort Knox. She'd give it a day, maybe two, to rest up and get the smell of travel out of her pores, before she started running again. She certainly couldn't afford to settle down permanently, not with the Feds on her heels.
Cat sighed and sank to the ground, pulling a piece of paper out of one of her cavernous pockets. She unfolded it to see an artist's rendering of herself, scowling uncharacteristically back at her. 'WANTED,' the caption read. 'For suspected mutantcy and assault of a Federal Officer, one Catherine 'Cat' Davis.'
Wondering when suspected mutantcy had become a felony, she carefully folded the worn paper and stuck it back in her pocket, replacing it with a carton of cheap cigarettes and and an even cheaper Zippo lighter. She lit a cigarette and blew her smoke towards the rising sun as though in mockery of the wanted poster and the law enforcement behind it.
The charge of mutantcy was, in fact, completely accurate, although the assault had been purely self-defense, as if they'd ever believe that. Cat had been fourteen when she'd discovered her unusual talents, speed and strength that bordered on supernatural, and an instinct that sometimes was. She'd managed to keep it hidden until a car accident two years ago, an accident that had killed her father and paralyzed her stepmother. Spurred by her stepmother's cries, Cat had pulled the door of the car completely away from the chassis and pulled her away just before the car blew up. Such a feat probably would have gone unnoticed after the distraction of the explosion, had it not been for the guy with a camcorder that had caught the entire thing on film. That idiot had turned the tape into the authorities and the next thing Cat knew, she was on the run.
They'd caught up with her six months later, when she'd been stupid and desperate enough to check into a motel, but instead of trying to arrest her, they'd opened fire, and Cat had had to break one's nose to escape, which was where the assault came from. While talking her out into the open, one had revealed that her stepmother was still living outside Montgomery, in a wheelchair, which was how she knew. After the hearing that, she left Alabama for good, moving north in a swift and silent zigzag. Southerners were the worst in the country for tolerance of any kind. North, especially in big cities, differences went, if not unnoticed, at least unreported. Most simply didn't care. She'd spent an entire month in New York, actually eating in soup kitchens, before people had started to look at her suspiciously.
There were lots of people living in shelters in New York, mostly runaway kids, that displayed signs of mutant powers themselves, carefully hidden by baggy clothes and eccentric ways. One teenage boy with pointed teeth wore a baclava year-round, even in summer, while another hid the chromatic affects his mind created by wearing pieces of broken mirrors and colored glass glued to his clothes. Cat's powers, able to hide them as well as she was, were completely ignorable.
The sun cleared the horizon completely and Cat rose, crushing the cigarette deftly under her toe as she strolled to down into the bottom of the quarry, where she found a nice cave to hole up in while she slept soundly for the first time in many days.
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Review.
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The place had been a granite quarry at one point; long since abandoned, it sprawled across a good expanse of forest, full of bolt holes and freshwater lakes. Since it seemed from the unbroken branches lying across the only road out here that hardly anybody ever came, it was the perfect place to hide a body.
Especially one that was still living. They'd never find her up here. One road, and a rough one at that, plus a surrounding forest that provided endless hiding places secured the area better than Fort Knox. She'd give it a day, maybe two, to rest up and get the smell of travel out of her pores, before she started running again. She certainly couldn't afford to settle down permanently, not with the Feds on her heels.
Cat sighed and sank to the ground, pulling a piece of paper out of one of her cavernous pockets. She unfolded it to see an artist's rendering of herself, scowling uncharacteristically back at her. 'WANTED,' the caption read. 'For suspected mutantcy and assault of a Federal Officer, one Catherine 'Cat' Davis.'
Wondering when suspected mutantcy had become a felony, she carefully folded the worn paper and stuck it back in her pocket, replacing it with a carton of cheap cigarettes and and an even cheaper Zippo lighter. She lit a cigarette and blew her smoke towards the rising sun as though in mockery of the wanted poster and the law enforcement behind it.
The charge of mutantcy was, in fact, completely accurate, although the assault had been purely self-defense, as if they'd ever believe that. Cat had been fourteen when she'd discovered her unusual talents, speed and strength that bordered on supernatural, and an instinct that sometimes was. She'd managed to keep it hidden until a car accident two years ago, an accident that had killed her father and paralyzed her stepmother. Spurred by her stepmother's cries, Cat had pulled the door of the car completely away from the chassis and pulled her away just before the car blew up. Such a feat probably would have gone unnoticed after the distraction of the explosion, had it not been for the guy with a camcorder that had caught the entire thing on film. That idiot had turned the tape into the authorities and the next thing Cat knew, she was on the run.
They'd caught up with her six months later, when she'd been stupid and desperate enough to check into a motel, but instead of trying to arrest her, they'd opened fire, and Cat had had to break one's nose to escape, which was where the assault came from. While talking her out into the open, one had revealed that her stepmother was still living outside Montgomery, in a wheelchair, which was how she knew. After the hearing that, she left Alabama for good, moving north in a swift and silent zigzag. Southerners were the worst in the country for tolerance of any kind. North, especially in big cities, differences went, if not unnoticed, at least unreported. Most simply didn't care. She'd spent an entire month in New York, actually eating in soup kitchens, before people had started to look at her suspiciously.
There were lots of people living in shelters in New York, mostly runaway kids, that displayed signs of mutant powers themselves, carefully hidden by baggy clothes and eccentric ways. One teenage boy with pointed teeth wore a baclava year-round, even in summer, while another hid the chromatic affects his mind created by wearing pieces of broken mirrors and colored glass glued to his clothes. Cat's powers, able to hide them as well as she was, were completely ignorable.
The sun cleared the horizon completely and Cat rose, crushing the cigarette deftly under her toe as she strolled to down into the bottom of the quarry, where she found a nice cave to hole up in while she slept soundly for the first time in many days.
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Review.