Flight 118

Prologue

It's the year 2025, and everyone knows the world will never be the same.

It has officially been one year since the decline in the birthrate of female children was confirmed across the world.

So much so that many are frantically speculating on the outcomes.

Of course, when scientists first began to realize what was happening, no one was listening.

The news channels were all about political debates, celebrity stories, and weather issues. Though, maybe the environmental changes could have had something to do with what happened.

No one really knows what brought about the pandemic which would change the world.

When awareness finally began to spread, it spread like wildfire. Of course, even then many people did not understand the gravity of the situation or just how quickly it was all happening.

There wasn't much time after that.

Scientists, biologists, and many of the world's smartest minds came together in a panic. They were trying to figure out why, how to stop it, or even what was happening. They should have just been figuring out what was going to happen once they failed at those things.

But they didn't.

Unbeknownst to the world, there were even more changes taking place. Well, at least, as far as they could tell. These other beings may have always been around, hidden from view.

Once the world began to fall apart, though, they became known. Shifters. Beings that could shift from man to creature, and back. Mainly wolves were known; at least in the United States.

Maybe this happened because they were being affected by the strange epidemic of females becoming few and far between. Maybe whatever unknown change in the world that created the epidemic also created them.

This is yet another thing most of the world never got an answer to.

What many did find out, way too quickly, was that the world fell apart fast. Faster than any of them prepared for.

Between widespread panic, the natural death rate, and how long it took people to either become aware or care- certain towns and cities began to crumble.

The first-world countries seemed to be hit first. Maybe it just seemed that way because they were the main places with media coverage.

Everyone took it a different way. Some people moved further away from society while many others moved together, congregating in cities. At least at first.

Then, the shifters were discovered.

Media outlets were constantly focusing on shifters. Some people blamed them, some people said they were a threat because they could take females from them. So, most shifters around the world left any semblance of civilization and chose to live in areas that they would claim as their territory.

It seemed as if humans chose to focus on the different circumstances they could see and forget about the one they could not.

***

Around the year 2044, the majority of the smaller cities were being abandoned.

Many people still seemed to live in the larger, more well-known cities; perhaps hoping that being around as many people as possible could help them increase their chances of finding a wife. Maybe they just wanted any semblance of normalcy they could still find.