AI-13

Prologue

‘Welcome to Earth and yes it is still intact, despite the thoughts of many that it would perish along with the human race when the modern plague began. It happened five hundred years ago and a third of the world’s population died.

‘It all began when an asteroid collided with the Earth. Although the asteroid was small and nobody died from the impact in the centre of the Pacific Ocean, many died from the after-effects. Scientists soon discovered that on impact the meteor had released an alien gas into the air, which had devastating effects on humans. When breathed in, the gas penetrated into the nucleus of the cells and stayed there. When left, it copies the structure of an RNA strand that leaves the nucleus during cell division, duplicated itself into the new cell and eventually created a new chromosome in the process. Sudden changes within the human body do not normally go down well with the user and, if the order of bases created a gene specified to do the opposite of a gene you already have, leads to a struggle inside the human body and eventually death.

‘The worst part was that no scientist could possibly create a cure for a disease that lived inside your DNA. Panic and riots ensued and every single family was affected in some way. Chaos began and since the countries nearest the impact zone were almost completely wiped out, people thought that the apocalypse had come. However, one day a child was born with the disease detected but seemed immune to the effects. The people rejoiced and named the child Gabriel, as his arrival was said to be a message to humankind that it was not the end. Scientists constantly took blood samples from Gabriel in the hope of repeating the process. However, all adults who received the samples died. At the point of losing hope again scientists tried it on a child of five years. To their great relief the child survived and scientists deduced that the disease did not take effect unless it inhabited at least 50 trillion cells, which is roughly the amount of cell divisions taken place by the age of five. The procedure was incredibly expensive so only the richest could afford it for their children and the poorer had to hope that their children would naturally be immune, which did not happen often.

‘Now, five hundred years later, everyone has adapted to the change. However, a serious change in society occurred and there are now two different types of people: the gifted and the cursed. The alien chromosome causes every human being to be born with a unique talent. Some are useless like the ability to liquidise oneself and some are incredible such as flight, healing or elemental manipulation. But if the talent disobeys the laws of a gift then you are branded as a Curse, tracked down by the authorities and either killed or sent to the nearest confinement camp.

‘There are three laws of a gift: A talent must be under full control of the wielder; a talent must not harm oneself; others or the environment physically or mentally and a talent must not interfere with free will. So if your talent breaks any or all of these rules you’re screwed.

‘The average child realises their talent at about five years old so it really is no wonder why there are so few Primary school teachers. I had to wait until 10 before mine fully developed (I remember my mom joking about me having a slow cell division rate). My own mother, who was ashamed that I didn’t inherit my grandmother’s power over air, deported me to the nearest camp the next day. She had really wished for that so she named me after her.

‘I can’t even remember my dad. The Curse Removal Organisation and Public Policing (CROPP for short) took him away when I was still very small and I never saw him again. Mom never talked about him at all since then it was almost as if he had been wiped off the face of the Earth. He’s probably in the same kind of place that I’m in so maybe I’ll see him one day.

‘We who are Curses are despised by the Gifted, seen as a lower form of humanity and they are completely ignorant of our part in the world. Scientists often manipulate our talents to make new technology like dimension travelling, which was discovered by a Curse who could rip holes in space. There are now 24 universes to which people can go if they wish, which are listed from alpha to omega.

‘My name is Aero, I’m 17, I live in a camp in the Middle of Britain and my curse is that I can disintegrate any object by touch or will. Here we are split into squads of 5 Curses each and given jobs to do in other universes for money. Whether we survive or not is irrelevant in their eyes as long as the job is done. My code number is AI-13-3, which means assassination and infiltration group 13 and that I’m the third member.

‘Welcome to my world.’

-X-

Just a bit of background information, really. The story does pick up, honest! I’ve almost completely rewritten it so that it isn’t so vague.