Chapter 1


We were standing in the middle of a lush green field. I was armed with nothing but a small hand gun and Alex had his knife. We stood with our backs against each other. We couldn’t see them yet but we wouldn’t put invisibility passed them. I saw it first, a ripple in the air. It could’ve been a heat wave if it hadn’t of been 50 degrees outside. Then, out of nowhere, an arrow came flying at Alex’s head.

“DUCK” I screamed at the top of my lungs “over there to the right!” pointing in the direction the arrow came from and Alex threw his knife almost a split second later. The thud of a body and a bow and arrow being dropped could be heard. We heat scanned the area but no other life showed up. The knife looked like it was sticking into thin air but as soon as Alex went and retrieved it a river of blood began pouring out of the body that was now visible. Alex didn’t get a direct hit, just below the rib cage. Our victim was still alive but barely, it’s breaths were shallow and staggered. Alex removed the covering on our attackers face and we saw that it was a boy probably no older than 16 or 17.

“We need to get back to base now, telecom Liz” Alex demanded. I immediately pressed Liz’s number on my holio watch, let the GPS find our coordinates, repeated them to her and asked her to send a hovercar with a medi staff. Alex applied pressure to the boys wounds and our hovercar arrived moments later. The medi staff immediately began to take care of the boys wounds. They said he was lucky and should survive. All that ment for us was paperwork. At this point I should probably explain who we are and what we do and how we got here.

50 years ago World War 3 broke out, except this time it was every country for itself against everyone else. Nuclear bombs were going off every other day. The United States stayed out of conflict for as long as they could. We finally entered combat after New York and Miami were attacked. Both were reduced to smoldering piles leaving millions dead and dying. After that all hell broke lose. Washington DC was bombed soon after killing every single high ranking government member we had, soon leading to bombings of state government buildings leaving us without a government. Without a president to guide us through this disaster the military took things into their hands, and when that happens 95% of the time it ends badly. Well unsurprisingly we were quickly defeated with only the few million of us that lived in remote areas surviving. The other continents didn’t fair so well either. Europe had a few hundred thousand people still alive living in a remote area of Greenland, they wanted nothing to do with the rest of the world and ever since they’ve been left alone. Asia had about 5 or 6 million survivors who also secluded themselves. South American had a few hundred survivors that soon joined the North American population due to the fact that South America was now a radioactive wasteland. Australia had only minimal damages and stayed out of conflict. A good portion of the United States had been destroyed in warfare leaving only about 10 of the middle states able to be lived in. A new government was formed and it started to look like order would be restored. Unfortunately nothing can ever be as it seems and a civil war soon ensued. The new government killed anyone who rebelled mercilessly. The fight didn’t even last 2 months. The government then clamped down on everyone. Everything from your food rations to how many breathes a day you could take were controlled by the government. The country was then refigured into “rings”. The government was in the center ring. Anyone important or famous lived there. The rings then became progressively poorer. The least important and most impoverished people lived on the outer ring on the edge of the wilderness. They were referred to as unwanted’s. The unwanted’s tried to rebel over and over again in an attempt for more food and better living conditions but the government just revoked privileges each time they acted up so they eventually gave up. People closer to the center ring had more resources readily available giving them more opportunities. A scientist by the name of Dr. Roper began experimenting with human embryo’s without government knowledge, a type of advanced in vitro fertilization. He experimented with gene sequencing and found a way to alter human DNA before implanting the impregnated altered egg into a carrier mother, most of whom were unwanted‘s wanting rations. The babies that were being born had super human abilities. Most were able to read minds and communicate through telepathy between their own “species”. As his experimentation became more advanced they became able to move things without touching them, become invisible, have heightened senses, and become invisible. The government eventually caught onto his experiments and instead of ambushing Dr. Roper, they created a special team of teenagers from the inner circles. And well that’s well I come in. When I was 10 I was recruited. I then went into 4 years of training and at the age of 14 I was sent out to capture what we call “mentals”. I was paired up with Alex right away and we’ve been a strong team for 2 years now. Unfortunately in the 2 years that we’ve been fighting the Mentals their numbers and abilities have grown. Ours on the other hand are small. We suffer more losses than we can recover from. Alex and I are the last 2 from our training group of 300. Only 10 pairs of us remain and as far as we know over 3000 Mentals are running around Cartwall. From the few that we’ve captured we know that an attack is coming and soon. Very soon.