Chapter 1: A Little Introduction
Do you know what it's like to eat fish for a year? No, I don't mean eating them for one meal a day, I mean for the entirety of the year, three square meals, uncooked. Picture living in a sushi restaurant without the diversity of the food. It's not fun.
Now picture eating said fish while being underwater surrounded by other fish. I swear it feels like they give me the dead eye every single time they swim past me…Anyway, enough of me being paranoid, it's time for a little introduction.
My name is Edward Turner, Ed to the person that knows that I'm still alive. Before all of this started I was an accountant for Temper Industries, set up right here in Indigo City. It wasn't the most glamorous or exciting job in the world but I liked it, not that it matters anymore mind you.
One year ago my daily routine of jogging around the city backfired all around me when the city practically went up in flames. Point of the matter is that thanks to my being so caught up in the chaos around me that I didn't notice the blue smoke until it was too late. Suddenly my body realized that water was better than oxygen so it figured I shouldn't breathe it anymore…one year later and I haven't step onto dry land since.
I'm thankful, though, for the invention of waterproof watches. I was wearing one when I was jogging and now it's one of my best friends down here in. Watching the sun through the murky waters of the Broad River isn't exactly the best indicator of time for me, especially when it comes to today.
I made it pretty clear to the rest of the world that Ed Turner was supposed to be dead following the whole Great Impact thing. I heard about what happened to the rest of the Carriers (as I learned we're called) after they helped with the Blight outbreak. The government repaid them by putting them in camps where they were basically tortured and experimented on…after I heard that I wasn't very keen on exposing myself to the world. There is however, one person who does know about me, the person I'm going to see right now.
Jane, after the Great Impact, has become my whole world. It's terrible of me to say that she wasn't before it happened but now she's all I have left of who I was before. I was able to get in touch with her before the outbreak really started, telling her to stay inside and be safe and to meet me at her parent's house by the river. We've been meeting there every week ever since.
The regular landmarks pass be by as I swim through the murky waters: the halfway buried pickup truck, the bits of metal that came from some of the alien ships, and finally the stone bench, right in front of the dock. The bench was Jane's idea, actually, somewhere for me to sit while I wait for her signal up top.
Speaking of the signal…
A flashlight shines down into the water.
I check my watch…right on time. I swim up gently to the top; the first time that I got to see her I misjudged my speed and flew straight out of the water so I've decided to control myself during these visits.
My head comes up from the water and I'm carefully to make sure that my gills are still submerged. I rub the water out of my eyes, smiling, and say, "Hi honey, I'm home."
A gun cocks and suddenly I realize I'm not about to see the face of the woman I love. My eyes clear and I find myself surrounded by four armed men, all guns pointed at me.
The lead man smiles, "Hello dear."
Crap.
Before any of them can move I've bolted into the water. I swim upstream as fast as I possibly can with the sound of bullets piercing the water following me. My thoughts race as I try to figure out what in the world is going on.
Where's Jane is the one that's practically screaming at me.
Go back and get answers, coward! A voice says, for all you know Jane and her family's lying dead in her house! Save her!
"I can't!" I scream into the water, stopping myself about a half mile from the house. "The last time I went out of the water I almost died!"
I notice I'm talking to myself and realize that now isn't the right time to go crazy. No matter the cost I need to go back to the house and figure out what's going on. No matter what happened last time...
I turn back around downstream and suddenly an electric shock runs straight through me. It keeps going and going and I feel like I'm going to die and then everything goes dark...
I guess sometimes you can't escape the world, huh?
To be continued
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