I was four years old when it all started, the running.
I remember my mother coming into my room. It was late, her face flushed from running up the many flights of stairs. She was early, her night shift the the local convenience store didn't finish for another hour. She reached up to the top shelf of my cupboard. We had done this many times before, it was like it was programmed onto me.
This was before found out the anything was programmed into me.
I immediately started stacking my clothes in piles so she could fit them into the tiny suitcase we got at the last airport we landed in. We worked in silence, silence that told a thousand words. We had to leave, we had to run.
I rolled my little suitcase out into the living room and waited for my mother to finish packing her things. We only packed clothes, clothes were expensive and toiletries we could buy later. We don't have anything precious because 'when you have something good, someone always wants to take it from you.' That's what mom always said anyway.
She came out with her suit case and in her hands clutching an object wrapped in cloth, her knife. I understood that not all mothers carried around knife, like 'oh I'm just going to the store, I'll just take a freaking 7" blade with me!'.
Her knife wasn't anything special, just a kitchen knife, but she never let it go, never slept without it, never left it within reach of me. It wasn't as a self defence thing as much as symbol, why we were running, who we were running from, and how fast everything changes.
Like a slash across the face from a steel blade.
We took the old, musty elevator the basement car park under the apartment building we called home for the last six months. It's at least the fourth home we've had since my third birthday, I stopped counting when I realised that weren't moving for work like mom told me when I was starting to comprehend full sentences, which was at two. By three and a half I was able to have proper conversations. One day she pulled me aside into and lifted me onto the kitchen bench of our rented shed in Minnesota. I remember crying, because she was crying.
"Who are the bad people? Why do they want to take me away?" I asked, sobbing between each word.
"Because you have a very special mind, very very special..." I knew she didn't mean it like how all moms meant it, like 'oh, honey they don't know how special you are', none of that bullshit.
Mom didn't con me like that, she told me the truth straight, even if she didn't want to.
I was something someone wanted to take, someone very bad.
Because I'm a weapon of mass destruction.
I try to place my suitcase in the trunk but it's too heavy for me at the moment, being only four. I knew the SUV was a bad idea, but mom insisted. Mom walked up behind me and took my suitcase for me, I hopped up into the front seat of the Nissan. It was comfortable, big seats. Beats the hell out of the old Citroën we bought for 'one thousand American dollars' as the Mexican dealer said. We pulled out onto a busy highway, being a Friday night in Chicago didn't help.
"We are going to the airport," Mom said on the drive, out of the blue.
"Why are we going to the airport Mom?" I asked, honestly confused.
"We're going to meet a friend of mine, someone to take us to our new home," she said.
'A new home? Like, out of America?' I thought.
"And we are going on a big plane, an Airbus A330!" She put on that almost condescending enthusiasm, I wasn't stupid, I read books on planes in the library across the road that we visited sometimes. I read full on encyclopaedias in only a couple of hours. The librarian turned out to be a tutor, and when she saw me she came over and asked.
"Can you tell me a little bit about what you just read please, that was a very big book."
A very big book about very big planes, it turns out.
She must've thought I was just looking at the pictures, and when I summarised the book to her she just about dropped another thousand books in my lap.
Every weekend I would go down to the library, being a three year-old the librarian thought I was some sort of child prodigy, or even a genius. She taught me about algebra, ancient civilisations, and I even had a crack at some medical journals.
But Mom wasn't saying this for my benefit, it was for hers.
Something was wrong.
I felt it down in the pit of my stomach, I climbed into the backseat and stared out the back window. In the stretch of highway in front of me I saw commotion by the last exit we passed. I heard it before I saw it. A black sedan screeched around the exit on the wrong side of the road before smashing through the barricades onto our side, it swerved and grinded through other car to get closer, closer to us I wasn't entirely sure of.
Not until mom hit the gas.
"Shit, shit, shit, shit..." She muttered under her breath.
"No swearing, Mom," I said, not entirely sure of the situation.
We managed to stay ahead of the sedan, beeping our way through clusters of traffic. But the sedan, being a sedan, was right on our asses within a minute.
Screw you Nissan.
We swerved through the traffic, I could see the airport in the distance. Mom was driving like a maniac, I was being thrown around in the backseat, desperately searching for the seatbelt to cling onto. Mom was a very careful woman; she would act so desperate if we weren't...
If I wasn't... Safe.
He's here.
It was almost like the Nissan was hit by a train.
I smacked my head against the back of Mom's seat and let out a little scream. I felt a warm sheet of blood drip down into my eye, stinging.
I whip my head around and see the vehicle a lot closer now.
I realised it wasn't black, but a very dark shade of blue, the man driving it was about in his twenties. His face red with the strain of keeping up with Mom, it kind of helps that she was a three time WRC champion. The driver reached into the back seat and pulled out a sleek, cylindrical item, metallic grey. I didn't have any idea what it was at the time, four year-olds don't tend to have much experience with firearms. He just turned out to be holding a silenced SMG.
Aimed at me.
He emptied the mag, the spray of bullets pierced the metal plating of the Nissan's hatch and grazed my arm.
"Shit!" I squeaked.
Mom took a sharp left into the next lane.
"Oh my god, are you okay honey?" She yelled from the cab.
"And no swearing!" She probably meant it to lighten the mood, not that you really could in our position.
'You can fucking talk,' I thought. I was crying, my arm sang with pain and only having one eye to see through put my depth-perception completely out of whack. The Navy Sedan pulled up behind us again, only this time there was someone else driving. Blood was sprayed across the driver's side of the windshield and the driver's window. I saw a hand trying to wipe the blood off, but only succeeding in smearing it further.
And then I saw his face.
The first thing you notice about the man is the scar; the knotted, purple scar running the length of his jawline and behind his ear. Then you notice the eyes. Bright blue and calming, Drawing your attention entirely away from the scar and the blood spray on his face. They were familiar eyes; eyes I had seen before.
My eyes.
It was then, speeding down the highway, on the way to the airport on the way to meet some stranger to take us away, that it was activated.
Project Orbis-Vivida.
Aka Globe Skimmer.
