I can’t dawdle forever. The sun will always be there, I hope.

My preoccupation with the sun is quickly lost. As other patients can be heard screaming and shrieking. As they pour out of the massive building, they look frantically up at the top. Upon following their gaze, I can see dozens of people up there with strange looking guns, and strange looking eyes that are lit up so bright I can see it from here, and strange looking outfits -- well, they’re strange looking in general.

I follow the herd, but as I am, patients are being knocked off at a consistent pace. They don’t look dead though, they’re paralyzed. Their eyes still dart about at the feet passing by. Some unfortunate ones are trampled. But I am in no hurry to help others, I can’t do much except infect them anyways.

Some of us are getting far enough, far enough to find cover in alleys or in the old buildings surrounding the -- I turn to get a better look at the place I worked so hard to break free from -- LOE? An electronics company apparently. I don’t bother asking myself, I just keep running.

The man with the metal head catches my eye again, and the other one that crushed the door. Metal-headed-man is having trouble dodging obstacles (I don’t think he can see very well, if at all through those strange eyes), when he gets stuck with one of the strange bullets from one of the strange guns held by one of the strange people atop the LOE, right in the neck. And his limbs almost immediately turn to noodles, and his heavy head makes him flop over. He manages to pull the thing out like a bee stinger, and the other man comes to aid him; but Metal-headed-man doesn’t do much after that, his arm falls in his own face and his fingers and feet twitch.

I shake my head vigorously, I’m getting distracted again. Either way, I think I got the farthest of all the patients. I stop to catch my breath, and I am on a busy, quiet, and colorless street. With glassy, silent and fast trains in the center of the road; like the old trolleys in the picture books Clara would read to me, but sleeker and less colorful. The people have peculiar headsets and hats and wires sticking out of their necks. And they all look so. . . Bored. Except one little girl also in a headset, who looks like she’s on a leash made from one thin luminous string. She runs in circles around her distant and oblivious mother, chasing invisible butterflies.

She chases the invisible beings out into the street, near an oncoming train.

I don’t even contemplate the fact I could infect her. I reach out to yank her back on the sidewalk by her leash before she’s hit by the train, and my fingers pass right through the neon string.

I never have the chance to look away. That train whisks her away in a unpleasantly graphic fashion. Worse, the woman is pulled towards the train as her child is ran over as well. No one is stopping though, no one had noticed the accident. They all the just keep walking and minding their own business. It’s mortifying.

These people scare me more than the ones on the rooftops. I have no idea what I should be doing, where I should be going. I just push through the crowd, careful to only push people aside with the sleeves of my hospital garments.

There is a disfigured man in the alleyway as I stumble through the crowd. The whites of his eyes are a sickly grey, his skin is yellow and looks like it had melted -- then someone tried to use clothespins to keep it from falling off his skeleton, and he wore similar clothing to mine. Though he wheezed and coughed, like he was about to keel over. He yells at me, and I jump and run faster.

Faster. Faster. Faster.

But before I could pass another building, the door to one swings open, and a hand reaches out to drag me in by the back of my shirt.

My first instinct is to bite, a crude as it seems. But before I can even writhe within biting range, I’m flung to the ground of a darkened room, four pairs of feet surrounding me.

“You don’t have to be so rough, Llyod.”

“He was squirmin’ like a worm though, he was gon’ run off.”

“What’s so special about him? He looks like he broke out of a normal hospital. We must be mistaken.”

“He looks like a cancer patient. He’s pretty strong for a cancer patient, Marylen. I’m sure he’s it.”

“Or maybe he’s just naturally bald?”

“Guys, this is no time to argue.”

The smooth metal floor of the room makes sliding towards the wall from my spot on the floor easy. They don’t seem like they’d hurt me, but for the past five years people like that haven’t really been what I thought they were.

“Hey, hey. It’s okay,” one of the voices -- a female voice -- croons, “Ezriel, I don’t think the kid can see.”

And on cue, a light on the ceiling flickers to life. The people in the room, they’re. . . Like me.

“That’s better,” the woman who had been talking to me bends forward to get a closer look at me. But when she kneels, her legs bend backwards, like a chicken’s or a pigeon’s. And when she narrows her eyes, I see they are a solid brown, with pupils flattened and horizontal, that went across her whole eye. “You okay? Llyod didn’t mean to drop you.”

A tall and dark-skinned man in the bunch scoffs.

The lady whips her head back to look at the man, but turns back to me with a reassuring smile. She has an underbite, and piranha teeth.

I want to cry, everything today has scared me witless. But I’m eleven, and eleven-year-olds don’t cry; babies do. So when I try to respond it sounds like I’m laughing and coughing at the same time.

“I don’t think you should’ve been the first to greet him , Elaine, he looks like he’s gonna pass out.” A young man with fiery-red hair says with a knitted brow, but his steely eyes don’t seem very compassionate. When he looks at me, the portions of my skin that touch the floor fill with pins and needles.

“Who -- what?” I stutter and stare at the one they call Elaine, “are you going to eat me?”

Now the dark man laughs, and I glare at him.

“How come you aren’t dead? You touched me. You should’ve blown up like a balloon and died.”

“Told you so.” The red-headed man smirks at a woman with murky-blonde hair and glasses.

“Then I’m a lucky duck. Mano-antibodies.” The dark man smiles, but he does look nervous. I guess I can scare other mutants as well as the healthy folks.

“How could you tell I was coming? I would’ve ran past before you could’ve caught me.”

“We’re the surveillance team for this part of Streak City. We saw you before you were even on this block.” The woman with glasses replies softly, she has to pause every few words as if she has forgotten what she is saying. She gestures to an open door at one end of the room, where an electronic glow pours out.

“I’m not sure we’ve properly introduced ourselves.” The red-head butts in again, “I am Ezriel. This is Marylen,” Ezriel points to the lady with glasses, “this is Llyod,” he gestures to the dark man that grabbed me and survived. “And she. . .” He gives the piranha-toothed woman an almost embarrassed look, “is Elaine.”

Marylen walks off into the glowing room absently. So far, she doesn’t seem as different or mutated as the rest of the bunch.

“We’re the Duplicits.” Elaine grins again, and I flinch. Her chompers really give me the willies. “You seem of importance, and you’ve proved you still have some human consciousness and morals. So we thought you might want to stay with us. We’ll provide you food and shelter and clothing.” Her cheery attitude fades, as if she has a duty to lure me in.

“Yeah, hospital clothes ain’t gonna help you brave the Canada chill, we’re your only chance at survival and safety.” Llyod nods.

“We have some Sweepers.” Marylen calls from the other room. And Elaine bolts up, doing a sort of pigeon-walk into their surveillance room, the rest of the group follows, so I get up to join them.

Inside the room is about a dozen TV screens, and a few computers, I nearly trip over a knot of wires in the middle of the floor. Marylen points to one screen, where a strange tank-like automobile roams the streets, absent of any of the merciless trains. The same people from the rooftops stick out of the openings of the tanks. They are shooting anyone that wears bright blue clothing, such as mine, they’re also shooting other people who do not wear the electronic headsets, people who are holding signs in the air that say things like ‘how LOE will you go?’ or ‘our gifts mutate kids’ and other weird sayings I don’t really understand.

“There’s more from where he came from,” Marylen mumbles.
Ezriel leans over her chair gripping the back of it, frowning at the screen. “And where there are Sweepers, there are protesters.” He sighs.

“Alright, some action.” Lloyd claps and grins.

“No, for once, there are more important things.” Elaine glances at Llyod, and it’s then I notice she has to look down. She is taller than him, and I have no doubt he’s at least six feet tall.

“They’re all going to get stung.” Ezriel looks at Elaine with a challenging tone.

“No,” she simply responds, and Ezriel says no rebuttal.

They’re all really confusing me, but I can’t help but notice, “I’ve seen those people before. The ones in the machines, they’re from the hospital -- factory -- whatever -- I broke out of. So are all of those people in blue.” My voice still feels a bit shaky. Then they all turn to look at me and my stomach turns.

The Duplicits all look at me like I am a prized antique or fragile and expensive item.

“You are not a Rogue, from the LOE. You’re not just one of the homeless freaks.” Elaine reveals those vicious teeth again. “You’re a patient. So are all of those people.”

“How did you get out?” Marylen asks with less of an intrusive voice.

I look at my feet and wriggle my toes, even if she is the most polite of them at the moment, I feel no less uncomfortable.

“Well, they were feeding me my lunch, then the lights went out, then all the other patients left their rooms and we all ran away.”

“Wow,” Ezriel shakes his head his sigh a mixture of relief and pity, “I haven’t seen a meltdown like this one since the American branch meltdown of 2012.”

It didn’t melt, maybe I didn’t explain it well enough.

“Well, that just gave your invitation a gold seal.” Elaine smiles, this time with less teeth. Marylen twisted in the chair to stand, and the whole group stood behind Elaine, as if she were the leader of this gang. I take a few steps back, she removes a red armband from her person and tosses it to me; which I fumble with, but manage to catch.

“Why not stay with us, kid? You’ll get all the food you can eat, all the safety you’ll need, and all the self-defense training you can handle.”

I don’t say anything.

“What’s your name, kid?” Llyod asks, that appears to be as formal as he can get.

“Oliver Holgast.”

“Well, Oliver Holgast,” Elaine crosses her arms over her chest, “this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Joining a family of people just like you, who will care for you and love you just like a family. Because we are just -- like -- you.”

I make eye contact with each person in the bunch once, even the electric-eyed Ezriel.

Elaine presses on, “will you be a Duplicit?”