This story contains some foul language (not real bad words, just made up ones the equivalent to present ones, since this story takes place on a different "Earth"). There is some bloodshed, like my other books. I hope y'all enjoy, and please comment below! I NEED FEEDBACK! Bless ya all.
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Chapter 1: Hunted in the Streets
I ran as fast as I could down the dank alley. I could hear them at my heels, like ravaging dogs chasing a frightened rabbit, and I felt fear. I clutched the little wicker basket in my hands like my life depended solely on it, and it did, in a strange, alien way.
My choices ran through my head: flee or fight, hit or run.
But I also had an advantage.
I knew these alleys of Inspire. I had lived here since I was born, and all my life I have been hunted, have been sought out to be turned into a Curfew, one of the evil beings associated with the Enemies of the Empire. To serve and to fight, to die and to kill.
But it hadn't happened yet.
So why should it happen now?
I made a sharp detour into the next alley to my right, throwing myself into the darkness, and I bundled myself up in my ragged clothes. A mark of the poor, of the weak, of the unimportant.
"Where did the flaming brat go?" growled a tough male voice.
"I don't know, boss." a feeble voice answered back.
"Let's go back," the boss said, and I heard them lumber away.
That was... err... easy? I thought, ducking out and running back down the alley. The filmilar dark brick walls let relief wash over me as I entered a run-down house and it's overgrown yard.
Home. The place I have been raised and protected from the evil of the Empire.
I entered slowly and called my mother happily from the chipped and dusty wooden table. "I got some bread!" I set the wicker basket on it, and the dust rose as I disturbed it.
My mother plucked it up as she emerged from the tattered second build-on room, where my brothers were challenging each other, bringing out the Emerald Warrior in themselves.
"Enemy of the Empire, subject to my rule!" Raven shouted at Rye, jabbing his gnarled branch at him.
Rye fell over, his ragged clothes giving him the look of a defeated Crystal Soilder, his Nisston act pleasing Raven.
"Molly, where did you get this?" my mother asked nervously.
I glanced at her slowly. "The Starlines," I said, referring to the gang that assisted the Nisstons, Enemies of the Empire, with city and gang stuff.
Then my sister and father burst into the room, their eyes glassy. "The Nisstons are coming."
I gasped as my mother shoved me and my brothers into the grain cellar. It had happened all so quickly. Was it chance that as soon as I stole, the Nisstons attacked my family?
Thud. Thud, and scream. Blood dripped into the cellar. Rye shoved out and Raven and I followed and we saw that our family was dead. Sobs erupted from our throats, but suddenly, Rye and Raven's were cut off. As were their heads.
The Nisstons had swung a sword at them.
Then they were gone.
All in thirty seconds... so quickly... and then she was there. The Foster Authority woman who popped up as soon as kids didn't have parents.
So, I'm an orphan. No. No. No. My life of protection is over.
You never miss what you got until it's gone.
And now it was.
