Dying Breed

Chapter One

The view from the rooftops was a sight to behold. Being able to look over the entire concrete jungle of white and grey while the clueless inhabitants wandered like ants, aimlessly, gave a truly powerful sensation. The wind was very gentle, the sun a great golden orb that hung low in the pale orange sky, its warm light giving the city a divine glow.

A woman stood alone at the pinnacle of an enormous high rise building, her shoulder length, silky, midnight black hair being swept softly by the southern wind. Her snowy white skin resembled the city in that it appeared to glow, an appearance that would make one expect gigantic wings to burst from the woman's back and her head to develop a blinding halo. She wore a set of practical clothing, suitable for her athletic build; a black, skin tight t-shirt covered by a brilliant white hooded top that was left unzipped. Her slender legs were covered by a pair of black jeans, designed especially for her line of work, being neither too tight nor too loose. On her feet, the woman wore a pair of two toed trainers of black, dark grey and crimson material. She also had a scarlet, one diagonal strapped backpack on her back and a pair of canvas gloves, one black, one blood red. Lastly, around her neck, she wore a dark red and silver USB stick on a black lanyard.

The woman's name was Assent, a woman well known by the city, infamous for her actions against the government, along with many others of her dying breed. She was one of the last people in the accessable world that had any humanity left for themselves, managing to slip out of the tight grasp of the totalitarian society, earning her the label 'Escapee'. Ever since these Escapees started causing trouble, tension built between the militant police forces of the city and the anarchists, until one day, the police were given the order to shoot to kill on sight. Five years later, Assent still found herself standing atop great constructions of glass and concrete that stood as monuments to the control, and she still found herself hunted ruthlessly with the constant threat of death hanging just out of reach. There were things that the controlling oppressors wanted to know about the Escapees, Assent being among the top ten most wanted. Assent knew of the brutal methods of interrogation that were used, the justification being that they were necessary to keep the city perfect, and she also knew that the interrogators, borderline torturers, were ordered to not stop until they received the information they wanted. She couldn't allow herself to be caught only because she didn't know some things about her own self, the only clues to lead her to the answers she wanted lying deep inside government buildings and electronic documents. 

Assent's senses heightened as the piercing sound of a distant siren filled her head, her instincts being kick started. She focused her eyes of deepest black onto the roads that were lying, interwoven, below her, scanning for any sign of the vehicle that was emitting the frightful noise. With the sound only getting closer, Assent felt her head begin to cloud with panic, but with an expert calming breath, she came back down into focused search, eyes falling upon an armoured vehicle speeding down the road with its red lights painting the streets. Then another emerged from a side alley. And a third. With each one carrying around twenty five officers, the armoured units skidded to a halt outside the enormous building atop which Assent stood.

With a cold sigh, Assent turned and walked to the door to the stairwell leading down into the complex below her, breaking into a quicker pace as she decended. Leaping down ten floors of seperate flights of stairs was the easy part for Assent, but after she shouldered her way through a door, her plan got a lot more complicated. Police could be heard flooding in and up the stairs, kicking down doors and searching each floor as they reached it. Before her, a large open plan office was spread, with computers and desks arranged in circles and squares around the large room and supporting pillars standing in uniform lines. She half jogged to the other side of the office, glimpsing out of the floor to ceiling windows of crystal clear glass at the police, more and more patrol cars joining the armed units with every second that ticked past. Slowly, calmly, and making as little noise as possible, Assent moved to a door, sliding the handle down and pushing it open, revealing a small corridor with a door leading to the outdoor fire escape. A bang and a masculine shout alerted her that the police had reached the floor below her and were moving up to her floor. Still as quiet as ever, she slipped through the fire escape and swung over each banister, dropping a floor with every move. She seemed to be on the route to success when she was forced to stop by two police officers coming out onto the metal grated stairs. For a moment, the three people just looked at each other in silence, waiting for someone to make the first move. Assent decided she was the one to start, doing so by swinging around and pushing the officers back with her feet and using them as a makeshift springboard to launch herself down another floor, narrowly escaping a bullet that whizzed past her right ear. A look of concentrated determination froze to Assent's snow white face as she vaulted the barriers and dropped lower down the side of the building, the heavy footsteps of the police banging close behind her. Six floors up, she ducked into the door, and stopped, waiting. When the pursuers reached her, she greeted the first with a swift high kick to the back of the neck and a nose breaking punch when they turned, sending them stumbling into the banister. Swinging her red gloved fist, Assent smacked the second officer into the wall painfully, turning back the first and sending him over the edge with a powerful kick to the face. The second drew their pistol, only to have it yanked from their hand and turned on them in seconds, two shots embedding themselves into his chest. Without a moment to think about the fight, Assent threw the gun over to the ground and ran into the building, planning to leave through a window.

The floor she chose was another office, smaller because of the glass rooms that stood around one side. Three police officers, two normal, one wearing ballistic gear, had heard the fight and stood waiting in the office. As soon as the Escapee kicked open the door, the window set into it was shattered by bullets, Assent dodging with a daring roll behind a desk. With the sound of bullets ripping into wood, carpet and plaster following her, Assent crouched and ran to the other side, a stray round conveniently shattering her exit for her. At the last possible moment, the woman stood up and sprinted for the opening fearlessly leaping from the jagged hole and preparing herself for a two storey drop to the roof of the next building. Effortlessly, she landed with a well practiced roll, experiencing only very minor pain, on the hard concrete roof. She was much safer here, the police would take at least five minutes to get to her, so with that thought in mind, she continued her sprint, her eyes picking her route off the building and towards safety. Another day survived. On the ground at street level, Assent's hood went up and she jogged through the alleys, an icy smirk playing on her thin pale lips.