First Entry

I liked coffee once. I preferred it with biscotti. I liked all those little crumbs that sank to the bottom; that was my treat at the end of the coffee. That was when the coffee houses on every corner came with lights and happy faces tip-tapping while sipping overpriced lattes.

Now, we're lucky if the lights work.

I stepped through the broken doorway. My boots crunched on the rubble and I quietly examined the scorched and broken room. My my suit's extra-dermis weave regulated the temperature (the Scanner recorded 102...and that was in October) and shielded out the radiation, but something felt especially sad here. Was it the memories of the biscotti?

My teammates didn't stray far. The Messiah told us that the six of us were, perhaps, the most powerful Gifted left on the planet, and that isolation kept us closer despite our disconnected backgrounds. Others had been killed in the First Strike, kidnapped, or cannibalized into weapons. We thought we were the next step, yet we neglected to remember that Human ingenuity birthed us.

We were always looking for Kindred, and that's what brought us here. The Seeker had found one.

I paused, stretching my Sense throughout the city block. Destruction always amazed me, and North America was hit the hardest. Who did they use to sanitize this area? What Sister? What Brother?

I opened my Eye: black pervaded. I felt pain residue here. Apparently, death was not kind here--there was a sickness here and it created all of this pain. I panned out wider: Variations on blue outlined the Kindred, It was red (It was always angry), but no white yet. The white would come. They always came for us. Hopefully, we'd find our Kindred first. Where, though?

"N?" V crackled into my earpiece. I closed my Sense, and the world resumed its charred, brown and gray hues.

I tapped the earpiece. "Yes?"

"Anything?"

"Not yet."

"Yeah? No shit. This place is creepier than the Garden on Avalon." That was H. It's handler. She was a Sympathizer--a human, but the only one who It trusted. She liked guns and sarcastic observations of others' faults.