Enemy of Iron

As a child with wealthy parents I had tons of hobbies that never truly satisfied me. Sure, I enjoyed playing in the mud of one of my mothers many gardens. I often snuck my way into my fathers laboratories and mixed chemicals in big beakers when he wasn't watching. I had more toys then any other children that I knew, but I always found myself struck with crippling boredom that followed me everywhere I went. My mother often called me ungrateful, but my father understood. While the world was riddled with disease and war that called my parents attention away from home, I spent the majority of my childhood in the arms of loneliness and worked diligently to impress my father and follow in his footsteps as a chemical engineer.

During my first year of college, I met my best friend. I never had a friend my own age before, I was so used to befriending the older people that my parents had around the house while I was growing up. I remember the feeling of wholeness that replaced my loneliness when I first used that title to describe her to my father. Watching Katherine Blaire adjust her glasses was by far my most favorite hobby to do during class, besides imagining what we'd be doing if we were alone and if she knew I was gay.

Most girls my age were always too slimy and boring for my taste, with their expensive makeup and fruity perfumes that reminded me of my mother and gave me a migraine. Kat was an interesting creature who sparked my interest from the second I met her. She was as beautiful as she was unique, with her thick black hair and blue eyes, and the way she could recite the periodic table without hesitation when asked. She was shameless and carried herself through life with a fierceness that I envied. She understood my lonely nights and on most weekends I found myself laying beside her on top of the roof of my parents house looking at the stars.

  I wonder if she was still alive, after all these years. The First Quarantine Act hit the world a few months before my imprisonment, as I had been reminded. The sick were always apprehended like criminals. Beaten and dragged from their lives by the men in black suits before they were even evaluated correctly.

This was a sickness of the mind, my father had once told me, a gene anomaly that gave normal people the ability to do things they shouldn't. The government had quickly created the FQA a month before of my capture, stating that anyone suspected of being infected was to be obtained immediately and held for evaluation. My father didn't believe in the pandemic, he never agreed with the militaries involvement in the labs or in the government's choice of actions. My mother was unapproachable about the subject.

   Our last moments together had been bitter and mournful. After years of dating through college and some convincing from my father, I decided to ask Kat to marry me. Had I anticipated her betrayal earlier on, I would have spared myself the heartache and misery. I can vividly remember the way her eyes had widened in horror when I walked in on her and my mother the day of our wedding, limbs wrapped around one another and lips locked in harmony. A startled gasp from me had drawn them apart, Kat's hands gripping the sink behind her to steady her feet on the marble floor.

There had been a lot of yelling that day, all those years ago. I wish I had listened to her rushed explanations instead of shoving her away. The only one yelling had been me, as I stood stoically and enraged outside of the bathroom, facing my fiance and my mother who tried to reason with me. My mother often reminded me of a snake, coiling herself around the things I enjoyed in life and destroying them.

I can still remember her crying my name, and the way my mother's eyes had filled with tears as I turned away and ran. My mind was in a red state by then, words being lost to the vicious storm that swirled inside me. I had tried to run through the back garden behind the church to avoid any more casualties that day when I found myself slamming into the chest of the priest who had been making his way towards the back doors of the building. As I struggled to my feet, I remember catching a quick glimpse of the men standing a few feet from us. Their black suits and red masks didn't match the white walls and white themed costumes Kat and I had picked for the wedding ceremony. Realization sprung at me too late, a few hours after I had been taken. I should have ran then.

The priest and I struggled for a moment as the man tried to bring me out of my vicious rage, but before I could break free of his painful hold on my arm he had pulled a taser from his pocket and struck me in the throat with it. The several men who had accompanied the priest surrounded me as I convulsed, sprawled out amongst the flowers with my face in the mud. My family poured out of the church in waves of hysteria, their eyes watching in horror as I was cuffed and dragged through the dirt and thrown into a black van. The world twisted into various shapes of black spots that danced around the edges of my vision until finally I let my eyes fall shut.

Yeah, they definitely wasn't thinking about me if they was still alive now. They thought I had been infected.

   They all thought I was dead now. I was dead to the world. To Katherine.

What they don't know is that I survived the infection, and that I was very, very much alive now. 

   The real monsters were on the other side of the glass.