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Chapter 4

Sunlight. Glorious sunlight. It streams across my face, warming my skin. My animal instinct should have rendered me nocturnal, like a cat, but in fact, I enjoyed the light.
It's hard for me to run, the bullet wound in my left calf streaming blood, but I limp away from the stairs. I wave my cat tail for balance. Gun shots are fired for a while, but eventually they subside, when nobody has shot me down.
Trying to get my bearings, I take in my surroundings. Behind me is the First City. It rises above the entire landscape, a towering mass of glass and pearly white, gold and silver mushroom shaped buildings. The reason for this was to keep the Pure off the ground, in the case that the great Glass Wall, which stood mere yards from me, was destroyed. Between the buildings, stretched walkways, and personal aircraft flew between them, miniature specks high above my head. It was a city in the clouds. No Beast, however large and powerful, could ravage that.
Around the City grew tall grass, very tall. About five hundred yards away, was the small building where they registered you for Exams. It was heavily guarded, so I snuck away as quietly as possible.
The Underworld was directly beneath the City, to my back, behind the Wall. To the east, I caught a glimpse of the distant Shelter. A rickety wooden stake wall was posted around it, and the low thatched rooftops of the main town were just barely visible over it. It seemed so out of place, next to the towering glory of the First City.
I'm not far from the Wold now. Maybe thirty more feet. I pray they won't send out aircraft after me. The sky is stormy, however, heavy with foreboding rain and electricity, so I doubt it.
Unable to put much weight on my left leg, I hobble through the grass, which is higher than my head. That grass is the same grass that first grew after the apocalypse. The radiation might not have helped, I think, as a large midnight purple beetle falls on my head. I brush it off, hoping it didn't bite me. It's impossible to tell if it would be poison.
Finally I reach the Wold. I hear another outbreak of gunshots, somewhere in the grass, and I throw myself into the shelter of the trees. The shots are closer, and I must not stop. I need to lose them, just like I lost dozens of Beasts in the forest before.
I wade through the thick brush around the edges of the Wold, and run again once in the open forest. Thick tree trunks flash past me, towering above my head, giant birds of prey that could swallow me in one mouthful nesting, waiting for the night to come.
Where to go? I face the same dilemma I had this morning, when the Beasts finally found my hiding place, my home. More gun shots. I want to get out of sight, but I know I'm safe, for now, until they find a professional assassin. All the people chasing me lived in the City, all of them Pure. I knew they would never dare dirty their perfect little feet in the forest.
Bang. Bang. Bang. The gunshots fire three more rounds, as if hoping they'll get lucky and hit me, and then stop. I'm out of range.
I continue to run. I need to get to a familiar part of the Wold, which is enormous. It stretches all across what's left of America. At least that's what my mother told me. Before-
My foot catches on something, and suddenly the earth is flying towards me. My head slams into a large rock, and the lights go out.