Prologue: The Boy who was Alive

It was midnight of 9 September, when suddenly blue outlined portals began opening in a forest near a small town named Sedona. Beings started to come out of those portals. Some small like rats while others giant, uprooting trees as they pass by. Some agile some slow. Some looked scary, other harmless. The thing that was common among all was the fact that they were human eating carnivores and they are very hungry. They started walking towards the town with their pace driven by the desire to eat to their fullest now that they are free.

The sound of giant footsteps woke some people but they were surrounded, they could not go anywhere. The beasts started breaking into and breaking houses, picking up walking pieces of flesh for them and enjoying the late night dinner. There was a house at almost the corner of the village. The family woke up hearing the screams. As they were trying to get away a beast broke into the house through the front door. If they all ran together, it was sure to catch and eat the whole family. The father and mother blocked its path and ordered the two boys to go. The younger one was five years old; he was little but could still understand what was going on. The older one was sixteen and was not ready to leave them alone to die.

They forced them out the back door. Both ran and ran into the forest, their eyes paining due to crying. Finally, they hid in a small cave hoping that no one will find them there.

The Corporation soon arrived and cleared those beasts killing them one by one. But, they were late. It was a remote area so coming here took time and this was a special kind of Outbreak called 'Concentrated Outbreak' which causes a high rank Outbreak to spawn in a concentrated region. There was no survivor. Hundreds of thousands of casualties. This was the biggest failure of the Corporation.

It took them three days to clear the beasts called 'Anomalies', special creatures that live in other worlds but due to our world linking with their world for some reason that no one knows, they can come to our world. When a large number of Anomalies spawn in a single place, it is called an Outbreak. The association dealing with Anomalies is called Corporation.

A soldier was searching for survivors in the forest when he got lost and detached from his team. He saw something running in a distance, he thought it was an Anomaly was went to kill it when he saw what was happening.

There was an Anomaly lying on the ground, its head detached from the rest of the body. There is a little kid crying beside it, with some other kid in his arms who was dead. When the solider closed the distance the kid noticed him and jumped to a defensive position taking the knife from the dead body in his hand.

Solider slowly approached him, he was trembling but the solider guessed that taking him home was the best choice because the kid was very small and he knew that if he submitted the kid to the Cooperation, they will conduct a lot of painful tests on this little kid and there was no guarantee that this cute little kid will survive there tests. This kid was still alive and the chances of it being an Anomaly were very low, so he could take a chance.

He closes the distance and gave the kid a piece of bread he was carrying in case he lost and needed to be rescued. The kid carefully took the bread but was very hungry, so it dug into the bread quickly and finished it. It looked relived. The solider told him that he should hide for the time being. Soon, he will come and save him. The kid trusted him, his eyes still as colorless as dead.

The solider ran away leaving the kid alone.

A few hours later, it was about or after midnight, the same forest with the smell of rotting bodies of human and Anomalies. A kid was sleeping under a tree behind a bush hidden from the eye's view. He woke up due to the sounds of footsteps nearby. He was cautious, knife in his hand ready to attack. He was about to get out and attack that thing when he saw its feet from under the bush but he came to a halt when he heard a strangely familiar voice, "Hey, kid? Where are you?" It was just a whisper.

The boy came out of his hiding spot to see the man who gave him a piece of bread this morning. He picked him up and whispered in his ear, "I will take you to a good place." The kid was scared but did nothing and held onto the solider. Soon he were at a log cabin pretty far away from the town but it didn't took much time with the soldier's special bike.

* * *

Days passed and then months passed and years passed by. The kid that the solider found that day was now seven years and has forgotten what happened on that horrible day. The soldier treated him like his own son. It was not only this kid there was four more like him whom the soldier saved. They all lived like family. The kid was enjoying to his fullest in these two years.