DANGER: HUMANITY UNDETERMINED

CHAPTER 1

If there's anything I learned from the Factory, there were somethings worse than death. Right now would be the perfect example.

I ran, swallowing massive amounts of air into my lungs. My body was tired, aching, but my mind was in control. I had to keep moving. Running. Fighting. Nothing mattered more, than getting away or getting caught.

My legs flinging themselves in front of the other, threatening to collapse at any moment. I could handle.

The poison umping through my veins, dulling my senses: blurring my vision, impairing my hearing, numbing my taste and smell. Not a problem.

My muscles ripping themselves apart with every step. I could live with that.

I could deal with it all, as long as I could put as much distance between me and the Agents.

Yeah, Agents. Not the spy kind you would read in books or see in movies. I'm talking highly trained assassins with, and this sounds redundant I'm sure, but killer accuracy. They didn't belong to any government, they only had one assignment: to keep the Scholars (those, not quite as good, as yours truly) on Factory grounds. They were bloodthirsty, cruel, and the word restraint was nowhere in their vocabulary.

Move. Your faster now. You can keep running.

I had never gotten this far before. Normally, the Agents would have shot me, but I wasn't seven years old anymore, I grew up. I wasn't going down without a fight. I forced my feet to keep moving, despite their cries. My arms sliced against the sharp tree branches that tore my arms to ribbons. I could keep going, I could get away. I could be free. I didn't care what was on the edge of the forest that surrounded us, I just needed to get away.

No. Goddamn it, no. The cries of the sirens echoed through the forest, anyone without heightened senses wouldn't hear it, but I did. The ear shattering, high pitched, paralyzing scream lingered through the trees, finding its way to me, forcing me to make a screeching halt. My body stopped, but wouldn't collapse.

They were gaining. Apparently, they had learned from my last escape attempt. Even with the obnoxious ringing pulsing though my ears, shaking my body, I still managed to force one foot in front of the other and run.

I stormed through the end of the forest, my lungs practically collapsing, and the icy wind burned against my skin. C'mon, just a little further.

Safe!

No-crap. Holy crap!

I swore several times under my breath, lacking the energy to scream them out loud. No wonder no one who made it this far ever came back. I skidded to a halt, but those before who had tried were met with a deadly fall off the cliff in front of me.

The drop so was far, you couldn't see the end. Times like these were when I wish I could fly.

I could've flung myself into the bottomless pit from hell and hope for the best or travel back into the woods behind me where Agents, prepared to kill, and sirens disrupting my insides, then take the brutal punishment awaiting me back at the Factory.

It was a lose-lose situation.

The sirens were getting closer, louder, I felt blood drip from my ears. They were practically on top of me. I weighed my options, which weren't really the best, and made my choice.

For the record, you'd do the same if you were in my position.

I took a few steps back, ready to make a running start. I took in, what I thought, was going to be my last good breath, then ran. I jumped high into the air, prepared to collapse into the jagged rocks I knew would be at the bottom, but the fall was much quicker than I thought, primarily because something wrapped itself around my ankles, pulling me back over the edge of the cliff. It dragged me away from the shadows I once thought would give me refuge, freeing me from my own personal hellhole, but no.

I was pulled up from the jaws of death, more like jagged rocks of death. I turned to see three Agents smiling proudly at themselves for catching me, the sirens had stopped and my body had stopped shaking. However, one of them stepped towards me, his smile was the widest of them all. He hated me, with good reason. I was the one that gave him his unsightly mug with the scars of nail markings, and a blind eye.

HE opened his mouth and said something that, even now, struck fear and terror into whatever was left of my soul. "The headmaster wants to see you."