by Adam Thielen
The drone that followed Gressen and hovered over him as Tamra battled him had cloud-captured every moment of the fight, ending with the explosion. Mage enforcement leaked the video to popular news streams with pride. Tamra Redstone became a worldwide hero with posters, action figures, and newly minted politicians throwing her name out for applause. Among them was an ambitious former councilman named Charles Wu. Her funeral was packed with thousands of attendees standing too far from the empty casket to hear anything being said by her colleagues. MESS was partially absorbed into the new government, complicating their job but providing them several times the previous funding in the belief that only they were prepared for supernatural threats.
For the mages of the various universities, life stayed mostly the same. That is to say, they were still imprisoned and monitored for most of their lives. As part of political changes, oversight boards were tasked with ensuring fair treatment of mages with limited rights. Almost immediately, all universities were determined to be non-compliant in the new standards. Funding was siphoned from patron corporations to make sweeping changes to the dormitories. Campuses became less like prisons and more like small villages regularly visited by outsiders for the purpose of recreation and general socializing.
For vampires, the short period of time where humans did not actively fear them was over. Blamed for the ghoul outbreak by much of the public, the major corporations decided that while creating yet another university system would be much too costly, something had to be done to appease the masses. It was decided that nightstalkers must register with their local security office and be assigned tracking devices for their main vehicle. They would also be expected to carry a com programmed to report their movements. To avoid backlash from more rebellious vampires, possibly violent in nature, Noxcorp negotiated and subsequently pledged their compliance to the new regulations. However, at least one bloodsucker did not want his movements tracked…
A man of medium build stepped onto the porch at 17885 West Birch Avenue. He looked about thirty. His hair was a reddish brown, and he stood at five feet and eleven inches, give or take. He was white, very white.
The neighborhood was a comfortable looking suburb. The type whose existence had all but been snuffed out since the collapse. The city was Hazelwood, Minnesota, only a few minutes tube from the Reclamation Processes plant in Minneapolis. The sun had recently descended below the horizon.
For once, conspiracy theorists got it right. Matthias was not dead, technically speaking, but he was ready to start a new life, one that would begin as soon as he could force himself to ring the doorbell.
An aged man of about sixty years answered the door.
“I’m not buying anything,” he said.
“Shawn Trent?” asked Matthias.
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“My name is Matthias Trent, and a long time ago… I was your father and you my son.”
End
From The Author
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