WILDFIRE

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I

LUIK

ROBBING A BANK WASN'T ORIGINALLY on Luik Dillon's to-do list, but now here they were, trapped in a bank vault with the alarms blaring and zero hint of escape.

It had originally been Chloe's idea. They were running low on supplies in their abandoned apartment room, and Chloe figured that if they just made a quick transaction (ha-ha), they would have enough resources to last another week before they searched for a different place to crash. Ellie had gotten tired of dissuading her friends from the usual shoplifting, but when she first heard the plan, she had vehemently opposed the idea. Robbing a bank was on a level higher than pickpocketing or nabbing items from a convenience store, and Ellie had started off refusing to be part of it—but even she couldn't deny that if they didn't do something, their food supply was going to run out, and that would mean three starving sixteen-year-olds. She eventually gave in, but with the condition that they only took what they needed. Nothing more.

It was the middle of the night. Surveillance cameras installed around the technological metropolis that was Central Bredon searched the streets for people behaving suspiciously; not that they needed to determine if citizens were acting strange or not. After ten in the night, it was curfew. Anyone caught outside would be brought to the NREF and interrogated to see if they were a radiate.

Luik Dillon's world was a strange one. Most people were normal human beings. Eighty percent, give or take. But the other twenty percent were abnormal. Dubbed 'radiates', they had acquired queer, unusual gifts—deviances.

Disasters happened. No radiate knew how to control their powers—at least not then, when the First Radiate War happened. Millions of people all over the world died to radiates. By now one would think society would have pulled itself together and began to study and learn more about how to stop these genocides—you'd think children would be learning about this in history classes and honouring the many deaths. But that was just wishful thinking. This world was not a hopeful one.

Luik hadn't been born when the war had happened, but he had heard stories of it circling the streets. Apparently, the radiates had lost control, forming an army to attack the human forces. They had killed people and tried to abuse their deviances for power. There were occasional whispers about it still, laced with distaste and fear. All Luik knew was that the radiates had done so much damage that an entire continent had been levelled and destroyed.

His Earth was split into five different continents: Aria, Barcomb, Bredon, Candest, and Myrefall. The Radiate War had gravely affected Myrefall; the battle ended in many towns in the continent being completely destroyed and uninhabitable.

Radiates had then been shunned, cast out of society, and hunted like animals. No one accepted them anymore. In fact, they were not only feared worldwide, but they were also captured and killed on sight.

Luik could only thank his rubbish luck that he and Ellie were radiates.

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