Let's run through this again, he thought. He reached the edge of the rooftop and leapt, and hit the next roof running. There were three menacing-looking people (or maybe robots) carrying menacing-looking guns wearing menacing-looking uniforms with menacing-looking jet-packs (he didn't even know that jet-packs had been invented yet!) with which they were pursuing him. Menacingly.

The jet-packs were fast--fast enough to keep up with him--but they weren't fast enough to catch him. Moreover, as far as he could tell they didn't have any sort of fuel source, as the menacing-looking people had so far seen no reason to conserve it.

He leapt to the next rooftop.

Then again, they hadn't used their weapons yet, so maybe they were ordered to take him in unharmed? It would have been easy to kill him from the start. And he had no doubt they were ordered to take him in. There were rumors. Rumors of Bad Things. For the first time, he was beginning to wish he hadn't been born a Super. It would not be the last!

He landed on the next rooftop and came to a halt. The next building was several stories higher than the one he was on, and he wasn't fast or physics-breaky enough to run up it. And he couldn't backtrack... So there was only one other exit. He didn't think about it; there was no time. He leapt again, and hit the street running. The force of impact almost threw him off balance, but after a few unsteady steps he was back in form again. For a moment he didn't hear the jetpacks behind him. Had they been as surprised by his escape as he was? But no, he could hear them again, returning to pursuit. He risked a glance back. Why were there only two of them now?

A thin flash of red light in front of him. He skidded to a halt, leaving the soles of his shoes behind. A laser? Was that an effing laser?! Heat and pain tore through his right knee, and he fell to the ground screaming. He clutched his knee close to him, as if holding it would dull the pain somehow, and the three men(?) with jet-packs landed around him, and he would have swore if he could think of the words.