The gunshot reverberated in the space of the medical lab, accompanied by the nearby tinkle of glass beakers disturbed by the sudden shock. The woman’s eyes were wide, permanently locked open in surprise at the hole in her chest. Two other people were in the room, a scientist and a soldier. The scientist was dead before the woman’s body hit the floor. Rapid footfalls from combat boots echoed down the hall in pursuit of the soldier.

 

As the man burst through the doors into daylight, he could hear the sound of three more people behind him. They wouldn’t be fast enough, but more were coming. The three in his wake followed as he led them through the back alleys and into a dead end street. As the three rounded the corner expecting to trap their quarry, he smiled and leaped for the fire escape, vaulting off of it and landing easily on the rooftop two stories up. A curse escaped one of the soldier’s before he keyed his mike.

 

“The target has gone roof-side. I repeat, the target has gone roof-side. Flank and contain.”

 

Several dozen soldiers were in the streets now, cutting off every avenue of escape in an attempt to funnel the subject back toward the center of the base. More soldiers went through alley and streets trying to keep pace with the mysterious figure as he bounded easily from rooftop to rooftop.

 

“The target is heading for the rim. Do not let the target escape.”

 

Several soldiers encircled an open courtyard near the edge of the base. The rooftops stopped 15 yards further in. The figure didn’t slow. He reached the edge of the last roof and leaped, clearing the distance with room to spare as he landed in the courtyard behind the soldiers and rolled back to his feat. The soldiers turned to go after him, but there was nowhere left to go. Beyond the figure was the rim. Below that was nothing but open air. Soldiers came flooding into the courtyard from all sides forming a semi-circle perimeter around the man as he looked down toward the world below. They were flying over a city at the moment. Which one he couldn’t say.

 

“We have the target surrounded. What are your orders General?”

 

The figure turned back toward the soldiers. He looked young, most would guess early twenties, very handsome.Though he was dressed similarly, he didn’t match the soldiers around him. He had shoulder length black hair rimming his tanned face, with a few strands falling in front of his striking emerald eyes. Something was wrong with those eyes. They were burning like they were windows being lit from behind. The skin around those eye, usually tan, was black. Lines spread from the side of each eye toward his temples, down the side of his nose, and encircling his cheekbones. The nearest soldier drew in an involuntary breath at the strange sight, and the anger behind those eyes.

 

“Seth?” Though several of the soldiers had worked with the man in the past, the face staring back at them was not one they knew.

 

“This is General Prometheus, contain the target and return him to the center. Contain the target and return.” The words crackled through dozens of radios in stereo, reaching the Seth’s ears even across the courtyard. The corner of his mouth curled into a snarl. As the two sides sat for a tense moment, Seth glanced back down at the city far below. His snarl turned into a confident smirk and he casually placed one hand on the rail.

 

“Target is preparing to jump” The soldiers watched a foot follow the hand.

 

“Do not let the target escape. I repeat do not let the target escape. Dose him! Dose him!”

 

The soldiers opened fire. The distinct sound of gas under high pressure trilled from dozens of rifles. The release sent a storm of darts racing across the courtyard, but Seth was already moving. He cleared the railing before the darts connected, and dropped. By the time the soldiers reached the railing he was already plummeting far below.

 

“Sir the target has escaped.”

 

* * * * *

 

Book shelves lined one wall of the room. They were filled with many volumes that ranged from crisp and new to manuscripts that looked ancient as time itself. A large desk in the center of the room held a computer and piles of paper. One such pile had a cover page with the words “Project Siege” printed in bold across the front. Medical instruments littered a table along the back wall taking up space alongside beakers and test tubes. Pictures of Egyptian and Aztec ruins shared the walls alongside medical posters depicting the workings of the human body. Two men were in the room. The larger man standing before the desk would still tower over the smaller man even if he were not sitting in a chair behind the desk. The smaller man was Dr. Morgan Canstrep, nicknamed Imhotep. He was the head researcher and medic at the facility.The larger man was apparently annoyed.

 

“How did he escape your facility? You were supposed to be keeping an eye on him.” The man’s military uniform was a contrast to the more earth toned outfit of his smaller companion.

 

“I was only supposed to be keeping tabs on his progress. You cannot have expected me to prevent him from getting out of the compound.”

 

“I expected you to be aware of any complication that may have led to this little incident.”

 

“I have kept…”

 

“I don’t want excuses. I want to know what happened. And I want to know where he is. Now!”

 

* * * * *

 

Serina had red hair with purple highlights. Her shorts and collared top left her stomach bare, revealing tribal tattoos running from just under her chest down to her waist on each side of her abdomen. Her jacket currently occupied the passenger seat of her car, and her heavy boots were seeing how much they could push the accelerator. Serina had one eye on the road and the other on her rearview as she headed down the area known as the border, the dividing line that split New Denver’s prosperous inner city from the broken down streets on the outskirts. Serina was from the outskirts, born and raised. Now she was in her late teens, and she did whatever she had to to survive. The car she was driving was nice, too new to be this far out. It drove too smooth to have ever seen a day on the outskirts. That smooth glide down the road was immediately interrupted as the car lurched to a stop, the entire front end caved in by a sudden impact. Once her head stopped spinning, she crawled out the driver’s door to see what had happened.

 

“Great, I just boosted this thing. What the heck?” The last thing she expected to find was a body on the hood of the car. The man was dressed in black fatigue pants, combat boots, and a form fitting sleeveless black shirt. His hair was cropped short.

 

“Where did you?” The road was mostly clear. There were no buildings close enough for anyone to have jumped. She turned her eyes curiously toward the sky, but saw nothing except clouds and sun.

 

“Who are you?” She nudged the guy in the shoulder.

 

“Hey dude from the sky, you alive?” When the man didn’t answer, she felt around for a pulse. The fact that she actually found one was almost as surprising as the sudden appearance of a man from nowhere. She fished her phone out of her pocket and hit a few buttons before placing it to her ear.

 

“Hey Darius, your truck out of the garage yet? Good, I’m gonna need a ride.”

 

A black truck pulled up several minutes later. The man driving it looked like he had grown up working with his hands. He had the muscles and callouses that said he had been turning wrenches since he was old enough to crawl. Serina was sitting on the trunk of the ruined car as Darius approached. He looked over the wreckage with the eye of an experienced mechanic, and the concern of an older brother. He was about to ask what happened when he saw the man on the hood.

 

“What in the he. . .”

 

“Took you long enough to get here. I though the patrols were going to come past before you ever showed.”

 

Darius was still looking over at the man. “Well if you had told me there was a dead guy on the hood of your car I might have been here sooner.”

 

He took another look over the car, and then turned to Serina. “Where did you pick this one up anyway?

 

“Got it from a checkpoint just off the border. The driver went in to talk to the guards about something. I cut the tracking feed and boosted the car before anyone even noticed I was there.”

 

Darius smiled. “I knew there was something we kept you around for.”

 

“You keep me around cause you love me and you know it.”

 

“What can I say? You’re just like the little sister I never had. Now what are we going to do about this body?”

 

Serina hopped down off the trunk and gave him a light pat on the cheek before making her way to the man’s side.”Just remember not to be getting any ideas with this little sister. I bite. And he’s not dead, just unconscious. We should probably get him to the clinic.”

 

Now that the adrenaline and weirdness had worn off a bit, she finally noticed that there were little cylinders covering his body, and scattered around the area. She picked one up to examine it. They were covered in a strange script that she couldn’t read, and there was the tip of a needle sticking from one end.

 

“Darts? Darius, do you recognize these?

 

“Not any kind I’ve seen before. You sure you want to get him to the clinic? We all agreed to look after you when your brothers died, but this looks like some kind of military uniform. You sure you want to take the chance?”

 

“It not a uniform I recognize. Who says he’s an enemy? Besides, it’s not everyday a man falls from the sky.”

 

“Falls from the what?”

 

*****

 

While the inner city was controlled by the company, the outskirts was split between rival gangs each vying for power in the neighborhoods that were left outside of the company’s direct control. Violence was common. The company liked it that way. With all the gangs going after each other, they caused less trouble for the inner city. Most of the gangs were too busy killing one another off to think that far.

 

The Clinic was neutral ground. Everyone needed a doctor, and Angela was the best one around. She was the only one actually. Anyone else with her kind of skill was working behind the protective wall on the other side of the border. She chose to set up shop in the outskirts and help people. She had plenty of work. The constant fighting kept her busy with a revolving door of patients. She was taking a few moments of down time to clean the place up and put away unused medication. She wiped down the tables with disinfectant before moving to the computer to catch up on a few files. A knock at the door drew her attention, but it opened before she had a chance to stand. Serina came walking in. The younger girl was someone that Angela might actually consider a friend. She smiled before closing her work on the computer and standing to head toward her visitor.

 

“What is it? I got you some medication last week you should be fine for at least another week or so.”

 

“No, no, it’s not me. It’s. . . Well I’m not really sure what it is. Darius bring him in.”

 

Darius entered the room with the still unconscious man over his shoulder. “Can we hurry this along a bit? This guy is about six feet of dead weight but he feels more like twelve.”

 

After a moment of confusion, Angela snapped into work mode and motioned toward one of the freshly cleaned tables. “Set him here.”

 

She helped position him on the table and then began examining him, checking his eyes with a flashlight, checking for a pulse, opening his mouth, the usual preliminary checks to see what was wrong.

 

“What happened? Who is this?”

 

Darius shrugged. “Talk to her. I just helped drag the guy in here.”

 

Serina smiled guiltily. “I don’t exactly know, he kind of landed in my lap in a manner of speaking.”

 

“Manner of speaking?”

 

“Alright, he fell out of the sky and landed on the hood of my car. You happy now?”

 

“He landed on the hood of your car?” Not exactly the story she had been expecting, though Serina was notorious for her driving. “Where did he fall from?”

 

“I’m not quite sure on that point. I was driving along the border and he just landed on my car. I didn’t see any planes or anything above me and there wasn’t a parachute.”

 

“Was there anything that might let us know where he came from? Bodies don’t exactly fall out of open sky you know.”

 

Serina reached inside her jacket and pulled out a cloth bundle. “Actually there was.” As she carefully unwrapped the cloth, she revealed several of the strange darts that they had found.

“He was stuck full of these.”

 

“What are they?”

 

“Kind of hoping you could tell us Doc. They look like darts but I’ve never seen the kind.”

 

The guy wasn’t going anywhere. “Well he doesn’t seem to have any immediate life threatening problems that I can see at the moment. Let me look at those and see if we can’t figure something out.”

 

Darius nodded and headed for the door. “While you two figure I’m gonna go ghost our trail, make sure nothing from that wrecked car leads back to us.”

 

Angela took the darts from Serina and headed over to a table with a microscope. She placed one of the darts under the scope and a few lights flashed, tracing lines across the dart before bringing up a 3D image on the computer screen. The script covered the entire dart. Some of it was so small that it couldn’t be seen without magnification.

 

“Are those what I think they are?” Serina was leaning against the table watching Angela work.

 

“Runes.” They both turned toward Seth, confusion painting their features.

 

Serina walked back over to look at his face. “Who is this guy?”