Kaden

Prologue

I sit in the alleyway behind a dumpster. It's the middle of the night. Light shines at my unprotected eyes from the moon. The stars aren't visible through the greyish-tan smoke expelling from the factories to my east.

Two dozen soldiers should be passing through this area in five minutes, meaning I have five minutes to do something before I have to hide. I'm wanted for setting off a bomb in the BS Sagittarius, a famous battleship, last year. The engines blew. Nobody dies, it just costed The Nation a whole lot of money.

I stretch out my short legs, slinging my bag over my shoulder. It's an old burlap sack tied closed with a piece of twine, with a rope tied around the top and bottom to use as a shoulder strap. When I put it on, the rope scratches my bare and sunburnt shoulder. I can't sleep at night unless I strip down to a tank top and shorts. It gets up to 100 fahrenheit at night around here in the summer. In the winter, it's more like 20 fahrenheit. Don't get me started about the heat during the day in the summer, though.

Shivering, I get up. If I'm careful, I could be able to steal a gun from one of the soldiers. Guns are worth a lot on the black market. I can't imagine how much food an Nation soldier's gun could get me. Probably enough to last me a month or two. I wouldn't even have to move, I could just sit there, eating food all day. "Just like the government officials," I mutter under my breath. I sneer a bit at my own joke.

I hear steps smacking against the dirt up ahead of me. I hide against the wall of a nearby building, preparing myself to pickpocket a high-ranking soldier. As soon as I turn to check where they are, however, one of them knocks me to the ground. It knocks the breath out of me, and I struggle to breathe.

"Dirty street kid," one of them mutters. He kicks me in the stomach, and I cough up blood.

"Leave the kid alone, Johnson. We don't have time for this," the other says impatiently. The first one takes out a knife. The blade glistens in the moonlight. "Well, alright then. If you wanna kill the kid, kill the kid. But make it quick."

"Maybe I should just arrest her and torture her until she pleads for mercy," he replies. He slashes my face with his knife, and I scream in pain. He picks me up and throws me against the side of the building. He then wipes off the blade against the leg of my pants, letting the blade make one last cut down my thigh. I'm in too much pain to focus. My vision starts to go fuzzy. I feel the blood trailing down off of my face and streaming onto my one and only shirt. The second soldier grabs my bag and they start to walk off. My entire body is screaming with pain. I think that at least one of my arms and one of my legs are broken.

I count off the minutes in my head. Three minutes pass when a girl who looks about ten (two years older than me) comes over and picks me up. She carries me about two blocks over to a tall, abandoned building. She climbs up to the fifth floor and drops me on the ground. There's no light anywhere. The floor is covered in dirt, dust, gravel, and old cans. She takes out a small first aid kit and starts to rub hydrogen peroxide on my leg and face. I want to scream, but I'm barely conscious, and it takes all of my energy to even breathe.

She bandages up my leg, and then it all goes black.