• CHAPTER ONE
    RUNNING AND HIDING
    January 27th, 2060

    “Hurry, we have to get out. Quick!” I shouted, fighting to make myself heard over the din coming from the other room.
    “Speed, not haste, Matt.” Philip quoted annoyingly. There was a louder bang, and the wall shook more violently.
    “Hurry!”
    “Okay, I’m done.” he said, pulling on his left boot. This time they had arrived while we were still asleep, early in the morning. As cracks appeared on the bare, concrete wall, Philip wrenched the door open and we ran out into the alley.
    “I think,” I said, breaking the monotone of the loud, slapping footsteps that rang through the alley, “that we’ve lost them.”
    “Me too.” he managed. He slowed and stopped, bent double and gasping for breath. I also slowed, but only to a walk.
    “Where should we go to now?” he asked.
    “We should go back underground for a while, maybe they’ll forget about us.” I knew that this was an impossibility, but saying it seemed to make it more believable. Sometimes thoughts surfaced, usually when I was already worried, that we could never truly escape, only delay capture, but I always quickly dispelled such thoughts, it did not do to dwell on the negative.
    By the time we had arrived outside the stretch of blank wall hiding the entrance to headquarters, the sun had just surfaced above the perimeter wall. I walked up to the guard on duty and showed him the medallion I was wearing on a string around my neck. His eyes widened and he stepped to the left, revealing a short rope coming out of a hole in the wall. As he pulled the rope and a grate at the bottom of the wall opened, I covertly checked to see if anybody was watching. In the warehouse district, more than five people were rarely seen at one time before nine o’clock, but not one person could be seen as I looked, so I beckoned Philip over and crouched to crawl through the grate into the room a beyond.

    * * *


    “Explain to me,” The man barely masked the anger in his voice, “how you managed to miss the back door, when you scouted the hide-out for three hours before entering.”
    “Well, the thing is sir, we were, um, told that somebody else lived in that, um, side of the building. You see, we thought that the targets lived in the north side of the building, because, um, that’s where they entered the building, but it turns out that, um, that there was nobody living in that part of the building, just some empty rooms.” he faltered under his boss’ furious gaze.
    “Are you completely incompetent? I give you seven men to capture two enemies, while they are asleep, and you fail?”
    “But we still don’t know how they got from one side of the building to the other…” he began.
    “I don’t care about how they got there, just find them!”