surroundings.
Mountains of boxes were stacked against the walls, and she went to tear open the nearest cardboard lid and look inside. Plastic-wrapped food bars, nutritious but, in this case, tasteless. She gathered some, then looked in another box, finding tinned stuff, too heavy to carry. A third box yielded protein and vitamin pills, and she filled her pockets with these and more food bars of different flavours and nutritional values.
Once she had as much as she could carry, she returned to the door. It was dangerous to stay inside too long, since the guards sometimes checked for intruders. She peered out and jerked back. The guards faced the door, and she waited, then looked again just as they turned away.
With her heart lodged in her throat, she sprinted for the doorway she had hidden in earlier. Shouts rang out behind her, followed by the clatter of running feet, and she veered off. Clutching her stolen booty, she raced down the street, the guards pounding in pursuit. She lengthened her strides, her muscles stretching, her hair flying like a banner. For a while, she revelled in her speed, but all too soon the burning of fatigue invaded her legs. Sprinting required a great deal of effort, and was not something that she could sustain for too long, especially while carrying an armload of food.
Scarcely a block passed before the extra weight and her weakened condition took their toll. The guards kept up, their wild shots ricocheting off the walls on either side of her, alarmingly close. They did not seem to be aiming to kill, only to frighten her, for now. She dived into an alley, hoping to lose them in the shadows and garbage, but they were too close, and followed.
The men stopped firing and whooped with triumph as they closed with their quarry, certain of their success. Dropping the food, she sprinted again, intent only on escape. Her legs were lumps of burning lead and her lungs seemed to have shrunk. The guards gained, and she leapt over a pile of old cardboard and stumbled, sobbing with terror and exhaustion. The alley ended a few metres further on in a high wall. She slowed, her mind numb with horror, unwilling to look back at her triumphant pursuers.
A golden light appeared in the dingy alley ahead, forming a nimbus that brightened to blinding intensity, forcing her to squint and avert her eyes. She stumbled to a halt, panting. The light vanished, and a man, clad mostly in black, with a grey, knee-length coat, stood there. She gaped at him. Although he remained immobile, in this hostile place she could only assume he was an enemy. His appearance from the golden light made her wonder if he was another alien, or if the autocrats had discovered this odd mode of travel.
If he was an alien, Earth was becoming rife with them. His appearance did not change her situation, however. The guards would reach her momentarily. Letting her aching legs fold, she sank down gasping and waited for the guards' rough hands to drag her to her feet. Instead, the unmistakable hum of a laser bolt blazed over her, filling the alley with shimmering blue light. Shouts came from behind her, and she glanced back. Two guards lay still on the ground. Another brilliant beam crisped the air overhead, and a third man collapsed with a strangled cry. The last guard tried to aim his weapon as yet another vicious buzz and flash of blue light passed over her. He crumpled with a hoarse cough, and a tense silence fell.
Rayne stared at the sprawled bodies, hardly daring to breathe, then turned to face the man who had killed them. He stood there still, his grey coat flaring in the breeze that stirred scraps of paper and made them dance along the grimy tar. He holstered his laser, the soft click loud in the stillness.
Rayne stared at him with deep trepidation. If he came after her, she did not have the strength to run. He was too far away for her to make out any details, and the gloom made him little more than a shadow. His black clothes did not have the cheap shine of an autocrat's garments, nor did he act like a raider.
Considering the startling way in which he had arrived, she did not think he was either. His strange method of travel and odd inaction mystified her. She was usually good at sensing people's moods, but he appeared neither impatient nor hesitant; he seemed to merely study her. He glanced up, and she glimpsed the alien profile of what appeared to be a black mask, then golden light engulfed him, forcing her to avert her eyes. When she looked again, he had vanished.
Scrambling to her feet, she glanced around with deep suspicion, but only papers scuttled past in the breeze. She took a moment to recover from the shock while her heart slowed and her breathing became less painful, swallowing to ease her throat's dry rawness. Then she headed back up the alley and collected the guards' weapons before stepping over the bodies to pick up her food.
A few blocks away, she sat down to eat, glancing around with fearful, hunted eyes. These mysterious beings or people who appeared and vanished were becoming unnerving, and, even though they had helped her twice, she wished they would leave her alone. Perhaps they would when she found Rawn. When strength returned to her limbs, she set off once more in search of her brother, hoping she found him before hunger forced her to raid another food store.
Rawn woke shivering and crawled out of the musty blankets to sit in the sun's feeble warmth. He cursed the many abuses this cruel world heaped upon his head daily, adding one more to the list. Now he was not only hungry, dirty, cold and weary, but lonely as well. He watched a group of vagrants trying to catch a rat in the filth. The mutated rodents were the size of rabbits, but still slim pickings for four people. Three ragged, skinny men and a woman, brown with dirt, chased the rat with starved desperation. The woman gave a thin cackle of delight as she caught it, which turned into a squeal of pain when it bit her. She dropped it, and the men groaned in despair as it dived into a storm drain. One cuffed her, growling something unintelligible.
Rawn's lips twisted in disgust as he looked away. It turned his stomach to watch them. They were human, or at least they used to be; now they were worse than animals. Would he end up like them when the food stores emptied? The group shuffled off down the street, kicking the piles of rubbish heaped against the walls in search of another rat. A sudden urge to quit the city took hold of him, and he jumped up. He would go to the meeting place. Rayne was bound to go there eventually, if she was not already there, waiting for him. Either that or the autocrats had captured her, in which case he would never see her again. He set off at a run.
Rayne headed across the city, unsure of where she was going. As she walked through a building, a crash nearby made her jump and sprint out of the nearest door, where she collided with someone. She recoiled, preparing to flee, then recognised Rawn with a rush of relief and joy.
He shouted in delight and swept her into his arms, squeezing her until her ribs creaked. She gasped and pounded on his back until he held her away to study her.
'Thank God you're all right. I've been looking everywhere for you.'
'Me too! What happened to you?'
Rawn laughed. 'What happened to me? I went to the grove to meet you, but you never came! What happened to you?'
'I was attacked…' She broke off as Rawn glanced around. 'Let's get out off the street, huh? We'll find a spot where we can talk. Do you have any food? I'm starved.'
She gave him a food bar as they entered a building.
When the girl bumped into a man, it surprised Tallyn. The spy-cam, following her, did not spot the stranger until it exited the building behind her, by which time she was already enfolded in the man's arms. Tallyn opened his mouth to order his weapons' officer to protect her, then shut it when it became apparent that they knew each other, and she was pleased to meet him.
After the previous incident, when the officer assigned to watch her had been distracted and missed the store guards' chase, only returning to the screen in time to see her stepping over four corpses, Tallyn had taken to watching her himself. How she had killed the guards remained a mystery, for she did not have a weapon, as far as he knew. Yet she must have acquired one since her confrontation with the mutants. How else had she killed the men?
He studied the man and turned to his lieutenant. 'Our girl's guardian? What do you think?'
Marcon nodded. 'Looks like her brother, sir.'
'Yes, he does, doesn't he? I wonder if he is.'
Tallyn scrutinised the new man, who was another excellent specimen of humanity with no signs of disease, but most importantly, someone she knew. Now he knew that this was what he had been waiting for. All his instincts told him that now it was time to bring her aboard. He turned to Marcon.
'Deploy the transfer Net. Put them straight into the isolation cell in sick bay, full quarantine. Use a mild
