Prey

Prologue

Prologue

RUN, RUN, RUN, RUN!

I panted under my laboured breath, willing myself to focus on that one single thought, that and it seemed to be the only thing that could filter through my adrenalin-jacked brain. The sounds of sirens and shouts were tearing through the air behind me, bouncing off the narrow corridors I found myself in.

The shouts were indistinct, but I felt like each was a personal attack, ripping away a small chunk of flesh with each of their barbs. However, that was the least of my worries.

Combat boots, you gotta love them. They make your feet hot and sweaty, but at least the broken glass shards were no hindrance.

I kept running, feeling every pang of pain after each flex, as one leg would lift and the other fall.  I ducked and weaved as best I could through the old streets and alleyways trying desperately to get some sort of lead on my pursuers.

Now the glass was getting underfoot and throwing my legs out from under me ever so slightly, enough to stop me to regain my footing.

Ahead were a few crates concealing an entrance to one of the city’s many dilapidated ruins that once constituted a fine civilised metropolis. I can’t help but think as I squeeze my slender frame through the debris blocking the door, that the enforcers chasing me were not as dumb as they looked, and would search the limited hiding places available to me. It’s what they did.

I tried my hardest to suppress the thoughts of impending capture, but having been a runner for most of my days had taught me that you could be good—you could be lucky, but sooner or later you would belong to them. However, running was all I knew, and would keep knowing it until I could run no more.

I crouched as low as I could get behind some old, rusty creates. Each footfall of what felt like an army of enforcers made my blood run cold, the clinking of steel as their weapons were drawn left ripples in the still air then… Silence…

Then in a cacophony of light and sound I was down, raking at my eyes to dig out the pain, desperately beating my head into the rotting floor to drown out the shrill screaming of the tortured dead. Then nothing, my body just gave up and began its automotive shutdown.

As I lay there, blinded by torch light, paralytic and broken, I finally hear one speak clearly enough to make out the droll words linger on his tongue, “On the pile, with the rest”.

The last thought I could muster was simple and memorable, “Were those last words I'd hear”?