Link to Chapter One

I could always understand my mother, even when she wasn't talking.

I would start to ask something like “Why do...” but I would always be interrupted by her thinking “No! Don't ask me that!” So I was very surprised on the day when she knelt down to play with my eyetag and then said “OK it's safe, you can ask me!” I had so many question, but I had to ask the obvious “Why isn't grandma glowing anymore?”

I could tell that she was fighting back tears just for my sake as she said “Grandma is old and it is just her time to go. Do you understand?” I nodded while saying “Yes,” so she continued “Now promise me you will never mention the glow again.” “Why” I asked. “Because having the gift is a religious infraction, now promise me!” she pleaded.

That was the day that I learned about death

and what the aura represented, but I didn't truly understand until a few years later when I watched as moderators rounded up an entire family from their home. As they put each family member into the van, I noticed that none of them had an aura. When I walked into the house my mother already had her displacer on and she immediately attached one to my eyetag.

“Are the being taken because they don't glow?” I asked. She shook her head while saying “No, their aura's are fading because they are about to die.” “Why are they going to kill them?” I asked. She gave a long sigh and said “Some people say and do things that they are not suppose to, but it doesn't make them bad people.” At that moment I realized why she was so afraid of me asking certain questions, so I asked “Are they going to come and take us, if they find out that I have the gift?”

I could tell that she was thinking of lies

until she noticed the futility of it and then began to look right through me with an unnerving idea in her head. I started feeling very uncomfortable as she got up and slowly walked into the kitchen. When she came back out I noticed her right hand was hidden behind her back and she said “No one can ever hurt you if you do exactly what I say… I want you to hold up your right hand and stay very still.

Now watch the aura that flows around it and most importantly… don't listen to mommy's thoughts, because I don't mean it!” I began to stare at my hand and I became overwhelmed with her hatred for me, but then I noticed the knife that came out from behind her back and stopped high in the air.

The knife began to come back down toward my chest

and I saw that her eyes were fixated on my hands too, completely oblivious to the stabbing knife. Everything within her was screaming out “I want you dead!” and just before the knife broke my skin I saw the aura surrounding my hand fade away. I immediately screamed from the pain and she yanked the knife back and threw it off to her right.

As I began to cry she said “Ned, I love you, but this is important! If you ever see it disappear again, stop what you're doing and do something different and it should return, but if it doesn't… Run!”

As I got older I realized that I could apply this same technique on other people and I used it to save many lives. I met many other people that had the gift too, it was an unspoken thing, we would just nod at one another when we noticed it. We knew that we were the next step in human evolution, that was brought on by all the purges over the last three hundred years.

We were the unwanted byproduct of killing over a billion people

that could only communicate through words and our silent ancestors inadvertently found themselves at the top of the food chain. We were best suited for living under this oppression, but we were also deemed religious infractors at birth and we were hunted all of our lives.

But I didn't try to escape to the corporate world for easy money like many others with the gift. I joined the moderators to try to make a difference, but that was all over when I ripped my eyetag off, while fleeing Blockchain 96.

As we raced into the sidewalk I saw two moderators

running out from behind the corner and I aimed my gun in there direction while keeping an eye on my aura. Then I noticed the mod on the right's aura began to fade, so I took the shot leaving him dead in the street. At that moment I heard the slow morning traffic slamming into one another and that must have distracted the other mod because his aura began to fade too, so I immediately gunned him down.

We ran up to the fallen mods and I yelled “Grab his gun,” while I robbed the other mod of his ammunition. We could hear sirens in the distance that were coming from all around us and I noticed that the janitor's aura was beginning to fade. “Get over here!” I demanded and as he ran over I asked “What's your name?” “Elroy” he replied.

I grabbed him by both sides of his head

and explained “Elroy if you do exactly what I say you will live.” Then I held his head directly in front of me as if we were in an awkward dance and I turned toward the left, facing 25th street with the intention of sending him in that direction, but his aura was still fading. I quickly turned him back to the right toward Satoshi Blvd, but there was no change.

So I turned him to the right again and his aura returned. Then I swung him around so quick that I heard cracking sounds coming from his neck. I pointed over his shoulder at 25th street while saying “Run that way!... We'll meet up at 11th and Satoshi!” He immediately took off and I heard him yelling something that I couldn't understand.

I pulled my SCM from my pocket and threw it at one of the dead moderators so it couldn't be used to track me. As I turned to run toward the noisy, gridlocked intersection a big man came barreling at me from my right like an over sized vigilante.

He was more fat than muscle,

but he was still a threat. I immediately shot him in the chest and heard a grunting sound as I dodged his lumbering body that came past like a wrecking ball. The man's head slammed into a car door so hard that it caved in and I could hear screams coming from the woman inside.

I didn't like killing the fat man and I began to wonder how many more I would have to kill, so I began reassuring myself “Just one mile, all I have to do is run a mile,” but I knew it would be one of the hardest miles of my life.

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