I couldn’t believe what I saw, but I ran over to the crash, where fire was breaking out. Before I could get to the bus though, the girl I was walking with before ran out of a store yelling to me “He’s trying to kill me!” She grabbed me and we were running towards the huge out of place building. I looked back and saw the guy we were walking with running after us. He had a really crazy look about him, which reminded me of a cartoon version of The Joker from the Batman cartoons.

We ran through a door that led us into the massive building, and for some reason the girl was taking me up the stairs. We ran up and up so many flights that I lost count. After a while she opened another door and we were on a balcony that wasn’t quite at the top of the building. The top of the building had three huge golden statues on them that looked like they were watching over the city. There wasn’t really any way out though, which made me wonder why the girl took this path. We were looking over the balcony when an elevator door opened to reveal the crazy guy, who now had a pretty big knife.

He pretty much ignored me and ran right for the girl. She tried to run but he took a swipe and slightly cut her back. I ran over to him, threw him down, and grabbed the knife. He was yelling a whole bunch of blabber that I couldn’t understand. He tried to claw at me with his hands, but then I grabbed him and stabbed him right through the chest. Foam started rushing out of his mouth and he was shaking. I grabbed his back and ran him over to one of the ledges and threw him over the edge. I then watched him fall down into a hidden courtyard that was kept out of sight by the exterior of the building.

It was like the core of the building, slightly elevated, but lower than where we were. There were a bunch of really tall trees that were on the edge of the courtyard. I wanted to make sure he was dead so I jumped down into the trees so that they would cradle me to safety. I jumped from one tree to another, until I was low enough to get to the concrete surface. There were some fountains, and statues of angels between them. I walked over to the crazy guy, and he wasn’t moving or breathing. Good enough for me. I looked up to the girl to give her a sign, but above her something caught my eye.

The golden statues on the roof started to move and come to life. The one I could make out was a female figure with really big goggles on and some kind of staff in her hand. The other two were male figures that had a Greek look to them. They separated themselves from their base and jumped down to the girl. One of them picked the girl up and threw her off the ledge so far that I didn’t even see where she landed. They then jumped down to the courtyard towards me. I started to run, but I only got between one of the fountains before one of them threw me to the ground. They stood in front of me and the female one raised her staff to the air above me. As she started to bring the staff down to strike me, one of the angel statues moved right off of its pedestal and jumped between me and the staff. It absorbed the impact, with stone exploding everywhere to reveal the angel in the flesh. The other statues of angels followed and started to fight the golden statues. While they were busy, the revealed angel grabbed my hand and I kind of blacked out.

When I returned, I was in the middle of the park that I was in before. The angel told me that she was my guardian. She then told me that I was to be a guardian of someone, and that I had to go because time was running out. She disappeared, and I was left to walk the same path that I had done before.

The bus that had crashed was nowhere to be seen. I was looking around at the stores, and I saw my friend Jake was walking across the street. I yelled his name and he looked over to me and waved. I started to cross the street over to him, and then time started to slow down. I looked over and saw the bus going towards him, losing control. I ran over, and extended my arms to him, shooting out a web from my wrists. The webs hit him, and I pulled back as hard as I could, while the bus was swerving towards him. I could see his body flying through the air, just barely avoiding the crashing bus. Time started to move normally again, and he crashed into me, sending us both rolling back. I got up, and then things came to a close.

They followed my signal and went about their normal business in a casual manner. I went back into my spot and relaxed for a moment, but then the loud banging on the door ended that moment pretty quickly. I peeked out of a window and saw that there was a large group of enemy soldiers at the door. In front of about 20 soldiers was a man of higher rank in what looked to be some kind of officer’s uniform. I hid under the couch as the man who owned the house walked up to the door. Just as he was going to turn the knob, they smashed the door down and put guns in the man’s face. The guy didn’t say a word, yet immediately pointed in my direction.

I then took a deep breath and tried to lie as still as I could as they walked towards me. I felt an arm grab my leg and drag me from under the couch, but I still didn’t breathe and played dead. I opened my eye very slightly just to get a blurred visual. The officer walked over to me and bent down to look at me. Just as he took a knee, I grabbed my pistol, shot the officer in the head, and then emptied my gun at the soldiers so that they would scramble for cover while I ran.

I made my way through the house and jumped through a window to get out. I could hear everyone yelling and running after me, so I just kept on running through the woods. Gun fire echoed behind me, hitting the dirt and nearby trees that surrounded me. Looking ahead, I could see that I was running out of places to run. I was fast approaching the end of an extremely high cliff. With many soldiers behind me trying to kill me, I did the only thing I could do. I kept on running, and jumped off the cliff. It seemed like the ground below was miles away, and all I could hear was the air hitting my face. It was then that I fortunately noticed that I had a parachute on my back, so I pulled the cable and deployed it. I slowly soared down and forward, and as I got closer to ground, I could see that I was entering my allies’ camp. I touched down and did a roll, only to see my two friends in their humvee looking at me weird saying that they couldn’t find me. I separated myself from the parachute and then the journey was complete.

The Priest ran up to me and tried to take the container out of my hand. He was yelling at me saying “You can’t do that!” and started hitting me. I pushed him back and looked back at the box. I ran to it and started ripping the wrapping paper off of it. Under the wrapping was a clear plastic box with my mom inside of it. There was blood all over, and her body was pretty mangled, with bullet holes all over the place. She was screaming in pain. I ripped open the container and held out my hand. I started pulling with my hand and bullets started emerging from my mom’s body and came to me. Once I pulled them all out, my mother’s body started to heal itself. I looked down at her leg and the dry, dead skin was being revitalized and was turning back to normal.

My mother stood up and the Priest started yelling again, saying that I couldn’t do what I was doing. He pulled out a gun and proceeded to shoot me at least 15 times, all in the chest. At first I didn’t really feel anything but soon I could feel all the bullets bunching up in my chest making for a scorching pain. I went down for a moment and the priest smiled. I gathered my wits and stood up, and held my breath. I started pushing all of my muscles and in one great effort, I pushed out all of the bullets that were in my body. The priest couldn’t believe what he saw. He reloaded his gun and I prepared for another wave of gun shots towards me. Instead he aimed the gun at my mother. Right at the moment he fired his first shot I froze time. I could see the bullet stopped in mid air and knocked it out of the way. I then grabbed the gun and time started moving normally again. I pushed the Priest away, then ran up to him, pistol whipped him in the jaw and then sent him over the ledge with an extended hand to the chest. He flew off the ledge and landed on the surface below in a pool of blood. I looked back at the other women that were in the room the whole time. The only thing I had to say to them was “Why?” They said nothing, and just ran away to the door and disappeared. I went back to my mom who was now okay and then it was over.

Everyone got up and we followed through the small door. There was a curving tunnel with light at the end. Even though we seemed to be far underground, when we got to the end of the tunnel, we were outside once again. There was a huge field of sand with a heavy duty metal structure surrounding it. There were many people populating the area. They were running, throwing medicine balls, and performing other activities. I started walking across to the other side of the field. I was close to the center of the field when the ground started to rumble. Seismic waves created a huge circle that took up almost the whole field, and the ground started to dip. I started running towards the safe area outside the circle, and the ground started to spin. I pushed hard and ran as fast as I could. Everyone was running to the outside, some faster than others, but no one was running as fast as I was. The sand started to liquefy which then made people sink into it. I just kept on running to the outside, and even though the sand was slowing me down, I still made it to safety. I looked back and the ground sunk into the depths taking out many people. A huge hole was there with only darkness seen where the ground once was.

I took a breather and everyone was in panic mode. I was moving around trying to find out what was going on, but no one knew. Everyone thought the threat was over, but they were wrong. Another rumbling began to shake the fortress, but the source could not be seen. I looked around to locate the source, but then one of the huge walls was pummeled by a wave of sand. The force made little work out of the giant metal wall, and continued forward toward the group of people that remained. One person yelled “Run!” and another person yelled “Jump!” I did both. I got a running start and took a giant leap. Just as my friend did before, I soared through the air. Many others did the same thing and we moved through the air higher and higher. I looked to my left and right and saw hundreds of people jumping and flying through the air. I took a deep breath in an as the air entered my lungs I ascended at a greater rate. As we went up more, we were now above a city that looked like it had been destroyed. I reached the peak of my jump and started making my way down. I landed on a rooftop and things flashed forward a bit.

Part III

I met up with a few others who escaped, and we developed our own little sector in the remnants of the town. According to a chart I saw on a chalkboard, I was the leader of the clan. I walked outside of the building and saw that I was in a post-apocalyptic city. I turned the corner and saw a car speeding after me. A guy stuck his body out of the passenger side and started shooting at me. I ran behind a burned car and hid from the bullets. The car stopped and two guys came out. Each guy took one side of the car I was hiding behind and came at me from both sides. I stood up quickly and made eye contact with one of the guys and realized it was one of the people that escaped the fortress along with me. He told the other guy not to shoot and said that there was a lot of work to do.

Apparently he was a leader of another clan, and said that there were 4 big clans that fought against each other for no reason. I told him that we needed to call a meeting and figure something out. He took me underground through a series of tunnels where we met up with the other three clan leaders. I told them that we need to unite and form a brotherhood in order to progress at all. We agreed that there was no reason for us to go at each other, and that we needed to band against whatever force attacked the human population. At that moment I started to hear another voice. It was a voice with a foreign accent attached to it, yet it belonged to no one in the room. I asked where the voice was coming from, and one of the guys held out a video tape. He said that the voice belongs to a guy that died and was planted inside, but had a “reclaimer” card that would bring him back to life. The only problem was that the card was lost. The man inside the tape told us where to encounter the enemy, and we were on our way.

We had a good amount of people with us marching through the city. It was daytime now, and we reached a large intersection. A large group of creatures wearing samurai-like armor emerged from buildings and formed a line in front of us. Their leader stepped forward and tossed a sword to me and then pulled another one out. He started yelling and everyone began to charge at each other. Out of nowhere a portal opens up behind me and these Viking-looking warriors riding on horses emerge from it and one of them picks me up. The horses start flying, and we are heading towards a broken electronic billboard screen, like the ones you would see at Times Square. I tell the guy to look out but as we get closer the screen lights up and the Vikings start flying through it as if it were liquid. We got through the screen but the Viking said “I don’t have clearance to bring you through, but I’m going to put you here and I’ll send for them to get you. He opened up a shelf and put me inside of it. Somehow I was now inside of a compact disc.

I was now seeing things from a third person perspective, as I was looking at the CD I was inside of. I was in some kind of archive, and there wasn’t really anyone around. It was very quiet, but I tried to call out for help. Nothing. Then my view switched to a hand grabbing mine and pulling me out.

Part IV

I was now in a floating transport, accompanied by the man who was stuck in the video tape box before. He was a Russian guy and wore a Russian military uniform with all kinds of pins and such on his chest. I asked how he got me out and he said that he was tired of waiting for a reclaimer card and figured out a way to get out without it. He said that my reclaimer card could come in handy though.

He was directing me around a top deck where huge sails were full of wind and pulled the ship in some direction. We were up so high that it looked like we were flying through space. It was very dark and stars filled the sky. There were people wearing regular clothing walking around. A little peace and quiet was nice, but it wouldn’t last for long.

Sirens began to sound off and people ran off in different directions. There was a slight blast and the huge sail that was propelling the vessel came down with a hard crash. I ran over to the top portion of the sail that had fallen. I grabbed the top piece that had a huge hook in it and I took a few steps back. I ran forward and jumped, flying up to the top of the ship. I zeroed in on the anchor for the sail and put the hook into the anchor hole. I then jumped back down to the ship.

There were no more blasts, but only an amplified voice that echoed from every direction. “We have you surrounded. Prepare to be boarded.”

Everyone yelled to run inside and get into the inner cells. I followed people and made my way into a small room. There was a big window that looked outwards. I opened the window and saw a ship outside of us to the left, but we weren’t really surrounded. I started to climb out of the window and then I got a good foothold on the window frame and pushed off. I jumped with as much strength as I could, and I went into flight down towards the ground, which was miles away. The enemy vessel seemed to take note of my departure, as they started shooting some kind of laser beam at me. I had made too fast of an escape though. None of the beams reached me.

It was right about then that I started thinking how the hell I was going to be able to land on the ground without becoming a pile of mush. Luckily, there was a ship flying across in the distance. I controlled my flight a bit and went along in the same direction as the ship, getting closer in distance but not going straight down and crashing into it. My body was getting really hot and my skin felt like it was burning. I was matching speeds with the ship and was getting very close to it. Soon I made contact with the ship and held on for dear life. Things flashed forward and faded away.

Part V

I was now in a military uniform. I had segmented armor all over my body and had a backpack that had an assortment of items in it. I was in a large building that had both civilians and military inside of it. Parts of it looked like a hospital, and other parts looked like a food court. I was in a line of soldiers making our way through the complex.

I asked the person ahead of me what was going on, and he said “We were the lucky ones chosen for a tunnel mission.”

I had no idea what that was but I still followed. People were talking to me as I walked through, saying good luck and such. Every time someone talked to me, I assured them that I would be back. We got through the complex and went down a large amount of stairs. We finally reached the end where there was a large circular doorway with some kind of vehicles in front of it. We got closer to the vehicles and I noticed that they were actually living creatures that were kind of like elephants, except they were covered with thick metal armor. Each one of us, about 20, hopped on top our own creature and then the door open revealing a circular tunnel.

“Get ready, and when it starts, stay low!” said the guy at the front.

We started moving, and I took the advice, and stayed as close to the body of the animal I was on. They started to pick up speed through the tunnel, and then from the outer walls of the tunnel, huge spikes started sticking out very fast from many directions. The elephants dodged all the spikes while still moving through very fast. It was like the tunnel was a living thing; it expanded and contracted as we moved through. The elephants made for a safe passage, and soon the spikes disappeared after we traveled a great distance.

We were all told to get off the creatures and pull out our “pads”. We all reached to our bags and pulled out two large devices that were kind of like the electro-shock pads used to bring people to life. I clicked it on and they started to glow a bright blue. We now entered a different section of tunnel, which was like a jungle of spikes. Before we walked in, the guy at the head hit a button that was exposed on one of the outer panels of the tunnel. “We should be safe, but if anything comes at you, use the pads to block it.”

We made it through unscathed. Now there was a new section of tunnel that was pretty bare, save for a set of lights at the upper part of the tunnel. There were red markings on the walls and looked like meat was stuck to the sides. We started to make our way through it and the leader pushed another one of the buttons. This time was different though. Instead of the buttons making for a safe passage, the lights turned on. I jumped out of the way and looked behind me. Everyone that stood in the direct range of the light was vaporized. In an instant they were all gone. I went to get up, but it seemed like I didn’t jump in time. I had no legs, and my left hand was gone.

From that moment on, I went into panic mode. At first everyone ran back, leaving me behind. I yelled to one of the guys in back and convinced him to take me back. He carried me back and hopped back on the elephants for the return trip. Things flashed forward and I was back in the complex.

I was lying down now in a section with other wounded soldiers. People walked by and watched but someone stopped and ran to me. It was Vanessa, and she was wearing a military uniform and had her hair up. She grabbed my hand and looked very sad. At that point I felt weaker and weaker. I was starting to fade and I fully collapsed to the ground. I looked to my hand in front of me and saw a shiny black shoe take a step in front of me. A small business card sized piece of paper with a string attached to it fell next to my hand. I picked it up and looked at what it said. There was a picture of me on it with my name below the picture. At the top of the card said “Reclaimer”. As soon as I saw the word I felt my legs and hand start to grow back.

I was completely healed. I went to stand up, and things flashed forward again. The room was now empty. I walked out and was in a food court. People were walking around. I went to go grab a tray for food then it was over.

I had no idea what was going on, yet in the next moment, a police officer came in asking me to take a walk with him. As I walked out, I looked at my mother and she looked back at me with a look of indifference. With no cuffs or anything, I walked down the stairs with the police officer who had his gun drawn. He opened the back of a van and told me to get in. I took one last look at the building my parents were in, and then I punched the gun out of the cop’s hand and started to run. He picked up the gun and fired at me, but the bullet missed. I kept going, and a guy and a girl were walking in front of me. I pulled the pistol out and told them to walk with me. I grabbed the girl and put the gun to her head and turned around towards the cop, but he just kept on firing at me, with no care for the girl I had in front of me. The hostage situation wouldn’t work. I took them with me and ran into a train station. At this point they weren’t even my hostages. They were just running for their lives as well. We climbed over a barricade in the train station that said “Station Closed”, and we continued on. Two shots from the cop’s gun rang off, and they both hit me in my left shoulder. I tried to phase it out and just kept running.

We reached the area where the tracks should have been, yet there were no tracks. Instead, there was flowing water, with these man-like creatures swarming through the water, moving like salmon very quickly through the train tunnel. I called to them for help, and they stopped moving. One of the creatures stood up, and had a kingly look to him. Their skin was scaly and fish-like, yet they had the shape of a human. The one that stood kind of reminded me of a Greek god. I asked for his help and he said he could make me one of them, but that he did not want to get involved with the conflicts of others. I continued to ask for help, until a shot was fired. The cop shot at the creature, killing him. All of the other creatures made a huge groan and we started moving along with the flowing water. Very quickly we were down the tunnel and into safety. This is when I, along with the other two people, was turned into one of them. I looked over at my shoulder, which had two sets of wounds, two entering and two exiting, and they began to pulse and turn scaly. Soon the wounds were gone and I began to swim along with the others.

I then entered a flashback. I was in the same city setting as before, yet it was not completely destroyed. I was walking through the empty streets with two other people, when a crazed man emerged from an alley way and started to chase us. We ran through a small back street and jumped onto an exterior metal frame fire escape to the top of a building. When we reached the top we ran towards a large chimney stack and started to climb up it. The inside of the stack was full of bushes, but by pushing them out, we opened a hidden entrance. We Jumped down, and entered this big room. All of the windows were spray-painted white, so that diffused light was coming it, yet nothing of the outside could be seen.

There was a decent sized group of people congregated in the room. They did not say anything; they just remained in their positions and looked on. The silence was interrupted though, by the sound of a helicopter’s propellers slicing through the air. The sound sent everyone in the room into a panic. They began screaming and running around the room, yet not really going anywhere. The helicopter sounded as though it was right above the building now. The chopping noise became deafening, but that was the least of our worries. Cracks began to form in the ceiling, and through the cracks began to drip this very thick yet clear gooey liquid. A bit of liquid fell and landed on one of the people, and as soon as it made contact, the person began to quickly dissolve into a puddle. More and more of the substance was dripping around the room, and all I could do was try my best to avoid it. As more people were hit and turned into stains on the floor, I picked up chairs and started throwing them at the windows. With light fully coming in, I raised my voice as high as I could and yelled “I surrender!”

The flashback was over, and I was now standing above a sewer lid with the two people. We were now outside the city once again, but the area we were in was still populated and in good shape. We started walking around, and after a few blocks, we came to a dead end. We stopped and surveyed our surroundings, but a feeling of horror returned. In the distance of the city, another explosion erupted, sending a familiar glow outward. As soon as I saw it, I started to move, yelling to the others to follow me. I ran to the nearest sewer cap and ripped it open, ready to jump down. Instead, the opening revealed the hole to be blocked with garbage. I continued to run in the general opposite direction of the shock wave, and continued to look for an escape route. With no opening in sight, all we could do was run. As we went on, we began to run across a bridge, and I ran to the edge. I looked over the edge to see a river flowing outwards. I called for the others and said “Jump!”

We hopped over the rail and fell into the water. Once we hit, it was like I returned to my element. I started to swim and I moved at an absurd speed. I moved faster and faster and swam deeper and deeper until any light was visible and I was only moving towards complete darkness.