1 The first death

It was the beginning of the night, the last rays of light shone through the clouds in a violet red color on one side, and on the other the moon started to peek above the the hills dispersing the the last trace of warmth from the ground.

It was the start of autumn, the leaves from the trees already got yellow-orange, and many of them have fallen to the ground, ready to rot and nourish the roots of the vegetation in the spring of the next year.

'Crunch''Crunch''Crunch'

On a narrow sidewalk near the empty road, a lone figure walked on the sun-baked leafs, with a woolen hat, grey jeans and a old black jacket.

Every thing about him seemed ordinary, the black hair, the black eyes, ordinary face, nose. All of these were supposed to make him blend in the crowd, however the combination of all of them gave him a very magnetic felling, the more you look, the more you will search for an imperfection, or a quality to be remembered for later, after all there is no person alike another in this world, even twins will have different expressions from time to time.

Wren kept his poker face under the muffler, even tough it was just the evening chilly wind, it was enough to make him add another layer of clothes on him. He never liked any of the seasons, but he hated summer and winter, the middle of spring was the most acceptable part of the year for him.

He had to hurry up and get home, to download a very important file on his computer, his steps hurried but exact, each step was the same length as the one before, although he was excited to look at the new updates he didn't want to sweat in this weather and to get a cold, this was the time of the flu after all.

Step by step he was getting closer to a building at the edge of the city, the block were he lived was an old one build forty something years ago, you could see the cracks streaking through the lower walls, it was proof of the shoddy work done, luckily at least the one who made the steel frame had some conscience and welded all together well enough to stand to this day.

He walked in the hallways and climbed the stairs to the third floor where he lived, in fact even he didn't want to stay any more in this place, the landlord gave a part of the deposit back to tenants when a balcony split apart and fell on the garden, fortunately no one was hurt, but that made him to give out a two weeks eviction notice and sell the land an the building to a food processing firm. It was better to lose some of the profit rather than to pay for a death court case.

Even for Wren the only reason why he was in this broken down place was because he could rent two apartments for the price of on in downtown. The first one was used for living, sleeping and dining. And the second one was his small workshop for computer pieces.

From the time he was small he could take down various pieces of electronics with ease, many would wonder at this dexterity and memory, but for him it was like working with pieces of a jigsaw, taking everything apart, then see how it works, then put it all back.

... ... ...

After changing his clothes and taking on the new update release memory stick in the computer, he sat down and opened up the code file for the game, and checking it for bugs and software problems.

This was not the usual way of installing no information on a game, but he had no other choice, the game he was playing was closed down in the second season because of various glitches and bugs, the one in his computer was the fifth season, and the only way he got his hands on it was trough various behind curtains deals from one of the developers, who only had to give the copies one at a time.

After half an hour of work of looking trough data the game finally loaded.

At the same time when Wren was about to log in the menu, the room shook fiercely for a second then before he could even stand up, he lost all conscience.

With a big crash the whole building came down, moments later sounds of sirens in the distance together with the flashes of blue and red, the ambulance arrived followed by the firefighting squad and the police.

Each of them set up for searching for victims, closing down the gas, water and electricity of the building or speaking with the witnesses, and, it was not long after that the local television van arrived, from which a beautiful reporter with shoulder length hair and hazel eyes stepped out, she checked herself in a pocket mirror and when she got the signal from the cameraman she started talking despite the ruined background.

"We are here, in the east side of the the town looking at a collapsed apartment building, which came down only an hour ago, our sources have confirmed that all the tenants have received a two week eviction notice ten days ago, and there should be no one living inside, we have tried contacting the owner to talk about the incident, however he was not available, despite the the age of the construction many such buildings like these are around the edge of the town, which has become a worry for the people in or nearby them."

"We are also being informed that the medics will be stationed here for the next two days, and the clearing group will be working here for the next three days, looking for any survivor, or body that may appear. No mater the outcome this has raised several alarm flags for the town hall, and new safety regulation in buildings and constructions will be revised and changed."

The search and rescue group above kept on looking for any bodies that may be close to the surface, there was no eager faces on them, they knew that there was now way for anyone to make it out alive, and for them the most fortunate thing would be to not find any one, or the worse thing would be to find someone.