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Prologue
A thunderous crack shakes the old, decrepit building, as an old wooden door flies open. Silhouetted mysteriously in the light stands a man. He pauses only for a moment before stepping into the dusty room. He hits the light switch. The lights flash for a few second, before fully illuminating the room, and the man. The man has short blond hair, light blue eyes, and a green coat with black military fatigues. His face sported the scars of many battles, disfiguring him greatly. The room is littered with papers and folders. Some neatly stacked and organized on tables and on the floor. Others are in disarray, thrown wildly around the room, as if a gust of wind shot through. On the table sits a radio, quietly playing Moby’s “Anthem”. Recording equipment is set up near the radio, and the cords lead to a tape player without a tape.
There are multiple TVs on in the room. Most of them are off, but three sported different channels. The first one is on Fox, showing a rerun of ’The Simpsons’. The second is on a local news channel, detailing the recent violence in the poverty stricken part of the city. The last is a national news channel. It’s covering the recent assaults and attempted assassinations on political figures of the United States of America, including the President: Roger Callahan. The President managed to survive the attack, but others were not so fortunate. The victims include the Vice President, Donald Ferguson, and three senators.
Three more people enter the room, one woman and two men. The three wear identical outfits, dark red and black exoskeletons with ‘O.H.‘ on their arms. The first man is middle aged Caucasian. He has a buzzed haircut, gray eyes and no visible scars. He held himself highly, and walked like a man with a purpose. The second man is a younger Asian, with longer black hair, and a patch of hair on his chin. His eyes are a dark hazel, and one scar stretches from the left side of his left eye down his cheek. The woman’s most striking feature is her partial heterochromia. Her eyes are a dark green with a purple patch in both eyes, mirroring each other. Her other features are played up to be as interesting as her eyes. Her hair is purple with pink stripes through it, and is wild and uncombed. Her face is covered in different types of makeup, making her look like a prism of colors.
“He must have left in a hurry,” The Asian man says, cautiously peaking around the room. He starts to sift through some of the paper on the desks, but the man in the jacket lifts his hand at him.
“Don’t touch it, Kyo. You know the procedure.” Kyo nods, and quickly drops the papers as they were. The Caucasain man leans against the wall, entertaining himself by creating electricity between his fingers, and shooting them around his fingers.
The woman walks up to him, her arms crossed across her chest. “Quit sitting around, Derek, and help us find the tape,” she says, pouting slightly like a little girl.
Derek waves his hand sheepishly. “What’s the point? He probably took it with him. He’s not an idiot.”
“Are you sure he’s not here, Trance?” The man with the green jacket says to the woman. Trance’s eyes glow for a second, and then she shuts them while shaking her head. “No, Iron. He’s not here.”
“Damn.” Iron says, swinging his fist at the air. “How did we-?”
“Wait!” Kyo says, dropping to the floor, “I think I see it.” He sifts through the papers, and, sure enough, a small tape becomes exposed on the floor. Kyo raises his hand and suspends the tape in air. He looks towards the tape player, and then back at Iron.
“Go ahead.” Iron says. Without and hesitation, Kyo flicks his hand, and in one clean motion, the tape flies right into the tape player, the lid shuts, and the play button is pushed by an invisible finger. The radio also clicks off, but no one seems to notice.
“Show off.” Derek mutters, pulling himself off the wall. The tape starts, and then stops. Frowning, Kyo starts it again, but it stops immediately.
“What the…” Kyo says, dumbfounded. Derek walks up, and hits a button on the tape deck.
“You need to rewind it, screw head.”
Kyo rolls his eyes, and shifts in his place as the tape rewinds. The second it shuts off again, he starts it again. This time, it doesn’t stop. A voice fills the room.
“Hello. For those of you who haven’t heard me before, I can’t tell you my real name. I go by many assume names, but I’ll go by Lloyd Campbell. I’m hoping for this message to reach someone, hopefully a group of people, who haven’t been effected by the events of the past ten years, but still have radio communication.”
“It’s a radio bulletin,” Kyo says with a hint of disappointment in his voice, relaxing a bit.
“No kiddin’? I had no idea,” Trance says, giggling while punching him playfully on the arm.
“Quiet.” Iron growls.
“The chance is slim, probably none, but it’s worth a shot. For those of you who do know what’s happened, and have been effected by it, stick around. This might be worth something to you. As early as the turn of the century, scientists were predicting a meteorite to collide with our planet, Earth. We didn’t know what it could do, how badly it would damage the planet, or us. What we did know is that the probability of it hitting was slim, to none.” ‘Lloyd’ gives a half hearted laugh, and then continues.
“Probability seems to like to screw with us. The meteor collided with earth on July 27th, 2012. It hit in the central United States, destroying half of St. Louis, Missouri. Over 50,000 people were killed instantly from the meteor. It launched dust and particles into the atmosphere, and people panicked. They feared a new Ice Age. We were going to die like the dinosaurs.
“The dust blanketed the sky, all but blocking the sun from the earth for two weeks. Then, after the two weeks, it disappeared. Then people worried about the potential of toxic material from the meteor and the dust and crap. Over the next two months, however, very few cases were reported to hospitals about the dust and a reaction with people. All of them were asthma related.
“Two years pasted without incident. Then, on August 24th, 2014, cases of people developing abilities and powers, ‘super powers‘, if you will, were reported. At first, it was contained to St. Louis and surrounding towns and suburbs. Then, on September 1st, a case was reported in Moscow, Russia. The dust itself contained the key to giving humans powers that no one could have imagined.
“Over the next three years, more and more cases shot up. It seemed that nearly everyone could get a super power, and people were trying to find protected and untainted samples of the dust to give themselves powers. For three years, it was chaos. Laws were dissolved, anarchy broke out throughout the world. In 2017, new governments were established very similar to the ones previous. But now, they were run by those with true powers. By 2020, it was estimated that 95 percent of the world…” He pauses for effect, then continues, ”had super powers. The 5 remaining percent of ‘Normals’ were predicted to have built up an immunity to whatever gave the majority of the population their abilities, and would never get them. I am one of these people.
“For the next two years, and even now, today, us Normals are being prosecuted against. Not by race, religion or sex, but because we’re not as good as everyone else. Those of us who can have gone into hiding. But we can’t hide forever. As estimated by the FBI on February 2nd, 2022, only 1.5 percent of normal humans beings remain on this planet. And thanks to the genocide that our world’s governments have started, this number is dropping every single day.
“If you are a Normal, and you are in hiding, and you happen on this message, I have safe houses located in the following locations:”
Suddenly, the tape drops. It doesn’t utter a sound for about two minutes. Everyone fidgets, wondering if or when the tape will come back.
“Stupid piece of garbage,” Derek mutters, impatiently hitting the tape player a couple of times.
”… Hopefully I’ll see you there,” Lloyd finishes.
“He must have cut it out of the tape,” Iron says, his hands twisting into fists.
”And, if any of the police, or ‘Our Heroes’ get their hands on this tape, and plays it, the tape didn’t drop. You ‘Heroes’ may have a lot of advantages, but I found one common flaw with all of you. You people have a slightly smaller range of frequencies you can hear and decipher.” Lloyd’s gruff voice swells with pride, and he continues, “I enhanced that part of the tape to play in a frequency we can here just fine, but you cannot. And one last thing. If you’re listening to that tape in my former safe house on my tape player, thank you for broadcasting my message for me.”
Iron’s head snaps up. “What?!” He snaps, beginning to shake with anger.
”Check the back of the radio.” The tape player shuts off
Iron storms up to the desk, and nearly rips the radio out of the wall. On the back of the radio, there’s a little lit up red light that has a small Post-It note next to it. The scribbled writing on the note reads, “ON AIR”. The light switches off as Iron finishes reading the note. He roars as he throws the radio into the cement wall, shattering the radio into pieces and cracking the wall. He slides his hand across the desk, knocking everything off the desk and then slams his fists into it, breaking it clean in two. Wood chips rain like hailstones on his boots as he turns to the other three. They’re faces are equally dumbstruck and awestruck.
“He’s smart,” Trance says, and then flinches as Iron punches the wall. He leaves a fist sized imprint in the wall, and multiple cracks from the print.
“How does one man, one normal man, get away from us, and use us like toys?” Iron yells, punching the wall again, and again, completely enraged in the fact that some normal scum managed to outsmart him again.
“He’s just that good…” Kyo mutters.
__________________ 
I can deal with it! I roll with 8ad 8r8ks all the time. No 8iggie!
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