Prologue

My clock is quietly ticking off in the far corner of my room. My ceiling fan is blowing constant chills down to my body, but my blanket held up to my chin protects me. The house is quiet, and as my restless eyes glare through the window near my beside, they grasp the suburban scene of the dark, still neighborhood. The neighbor’s dog next door has been barking consistently for what has felt like hours, and no amount of covering my ears with the sides of my pillow can guard my ears from the bothersome noise. Normally, that dog keeps quiet during the nighttime. I’m not too sure why it picked tonight of all nights to make a racket. Just as I am about to check the time for perhaps the tenth time tonight, the dog whines. Curious, I open up the window and lend my ear closer to the windowsill, listening to the poor animal whine excessively. Suddenly, it squeals in pain, and silences.

To keep my imagination from leading me to any horrid thoughts pertaining to what may have happened to the dog, I lay my head back against the soft surface of my pillow. Attempting to force myself to drift off to sleep, I hear a sharp crack of a twig which seemed dangerously close the window, instilling fear in my already trembling heart. I can no longer resist. Compelled to peek over the windowsill, I cautiously inch my way to the edge of my bed. Before I can gain a complete view of the outside, a hand grabs my shoulder. I turn over in panic to see who it could belong to, and another hand covers my mouth. Frantically, I try to remove the hand from my mouth whilst attempting to shout for help. “Shh!” Says a shadowed figure. “Stay calm, I’m not here to hurt you!” A bright, blue light beams from the figure’s wrist, and now focusing my attention on the sudden light, I notice it’s emanating from a little screen strapped around the figure’s forearm.

I follow the arm to the figure’s alighted torso protected by sleek silver body armor and shoulder guards. In the center of the chest area of the armor is a familiar looking emblem of a pink sparkle surrounded by several smaller sparkles with just the mere difference of being colored white. Finally, my eyes are brought to the mysterious figure’s face. Her radiant, violet eyes are shielded by glasses; and her long violet hair is coupled with a couple highlights of pink and purple. “You are in serious danger, so I need you to relax and comply. Now I need you to keep your voice low, and confirm your last name.” The mysterious girl lifts her hand off my mouth, and I oddly don’t feel compelled to shout for help.

“W-Walker.” Upon me sputtering out my last name, the girl lifts up her other arm and begins tapping the screen as I watch numbers and words scroll across the reflection of the screen off the girl’s glasses.

“Perfect, it matches up.”

“Who-who are you?”

“I don’t have time to explain, right now we have to. . .” The girl’s face is overtaken by an orange glow as her attention is drawn to my open window. “Get away from the window! Move!” She shouts as she yanks me out of my bed. Crashing to the floor, I watch the orange glow intensify as a glass bottle lit by a flaming piece of torn cloth that’s been stuffed into the top, flies through the window and smashes onto the floor. The gasoline that was inside splashes across the floor, spreading the flames. They quickly consume the mattress and sheets atop it, drawing closer to me. “Come on, get up!” The girl urges me to stand as she lifts me up by my arms. I hear glass shattering outside my bedroom, and a new orange glow intensifies from beyond the doorway.

“What’s happening?!” I scream.

“I’ll tell you later, right now I need you to trust me. Just follow my lead, and we’ll make it out of here in one piece.” She grabs me by the arm and guides me into the living room where every window has been smashed open, and the flames climb the walls. A sharp whizzing sound flies by my ears, followed by the impact against the wall, leaving behind a small crater. “Get down!” The girl forces me down to the floor flat on my stomach as I was too traumatized to react on my own. Down on the floor as well, she lifts her forearm close to her face where the little screen lights up and she speaks into it. It’s almost impossible to make out the words she’s saying due to the crackling of the flames and endless bullets flying through the living room. “This is Sparkle to Base, we are under heavy fire! Requesting permission to engage!”

“Negative, do not engage. Stick to the plan, and escort the subject with no confrontations with the enemy. We can’t risk our presence being known.” Says a voice through the device.

“Copy.” She says, filling with frustration.

“Sparkle?” I mutter to myself as I can feel a connection sparking in my mind with that name.

“Looks like we’ll have to do this the hard way. Just stay low, and follow me.” The girl army crawls her way towards the back door leading to the backyard, as the bullets pour in from the windows I follow behind trying to be careful of the broken glass scattered over the floor. Sweat is streaming down the sides of my head from the harsh heat growing inside the house. The girl and I reach the door as she carefully reaches up to turn the knob and push it open. The both of us escape as she slams the door shut whilst gasping for air. “Let’s go, this way, and don’t let them see you.”

“Where are we going?”

“I have a vehicle parked nearby, once we get to it we should be safe. Then you can ask all the questions you want as I’m sure you must have plenty, but for now, stay low.” Following closely behind her, we hug the wooden boards of the fence that surrounds my little house. I watch the flames pour out the windows as they continue to consume my home. Through the spacing between the boards of the fence we’re hiding behind, I get a glance of who is attacking my house. Around five or six men dressed in black attire, whose faces are concealed by bandanas, and shadowed by the wide brims of very cowboy-looking hats, are stuffing their weapons with new magazines as they gaze at the destruction they’ve caused. As we stealthily inch our way along the fence, I overhear them talking.

“Do you think we got ‘em?” One of them asks.

“Think? I know we got ‘em. There’s no way that fruity bastard survived that. Hey! You getting all this?”

“You bet, every last second.” Says another as he holds up a video camera. “The Host is going to love watching this.”

“You know, I still don’t see why we have to video tape all this.”

“Just shut up and go with it, if he wants us to film it, then by God we’ll film it. Besides, he said it was to make sure that this execution was successful.”

“Oh my God! What are you all doing?!” A distressed neighbor screams from across the street.

“Get back inside you ol’ timer if you know what’s good for ya!” One of the masked men demands as he points his sub-machine gun towards the elderly man.

“Okay, they’re distracted, now’s our chance. It’s right over there. Quietly, this way.” The girl and I leave the fence while the men are distracted, quietly but quickly sneaking to the road. She leads me to a rather ordinary-looking vehicle patched with rust and a few dents, but that’s what makes it blend in with all the other vehicles parked along the side of the street. However, the windows and windshield are all tinted black so that I can’t see anything inside. She hurries over to the driver side of the vehicle and climbs inside. “Get in.” I open up the passenger door, ready to climb inside as well, until I see just how different everything is on the inside when compared to the outside. It looks nothing like the interior to any vehicle I’m familiar with. There’s so many buttons, screens, and lights that my eyes become lost.

“Hey! There he is!” One of the masked men shouts.

“They saw you! Come on, get in! Get in!” Frantically, I climb inside and slam the door shut as bullets attack the outside of the vehicle. “Buckle up! We’re getting out of here!” I reach behind me for the seat belt, and I fidget to click it into the lock at the side of the seat. The girl presses a couple buttons, pulls a lever which I can only assume is the gear shift, and slams on the pedal sending us shooting down the road. The windows may have been pitch black on the outside, but inside they allow me to see perfectly what’s around us, and in the rearview mirror are the headlights of several motorbikes being ridden by the masked men. After only about five seconds of watching them from the mirror, a bullet shatters the mirror to pieces. I reel back in my seat, and look over at the girl whose eyes are intensely fixated on the road. “Hold on!” She turns the steering wheel violently to the right, guiding us onto a dirt path into the forest.

The wheels kick up clouds of loose soil and bump the vehicle uncontrollably as they roll over the uneven ground. I watch the trees fly by as we speed down the trail, and curious to see if we’re still being followed, I glance back at the rear window to see the motorbikes not too far behind. The nozzles of their weapons flash as the bullets pound against the metal, and I quickly hide back behind my seat. “So, uh, just what are you? CIA? FBI?” I ask.

“Well, something like that. What we are is a secret task force here to protect people like you from men like them.”

“What do you mean by people like me?”

“I think you know exactly what I mean.” She chuckles.

“Well, who are ‘they’?”

“From the intel we’ve gathered, they are only a small part of a much larger organization, larger than we had expected. Led by one man, they are on only one mission, and that is to exterminate every last one of your kind.”

“Then, who’s leading them?”

“Unfortunately, we aren’t able to dig up any information regarding his identification. All we know is that they refer to him as . . . brace yourself!” In the middle of the trail comes a black Cadillac from around the corner to block the path. Since we’re travelling too fast to stop, she swerves off the trail and into the woods, blazing through all the bushes. However, visibility is reduced to zero with all the foliage blocking our view.

The vehicle suddenly bounces violently, and as we escape all the plant life to finally see where we’re going, I find that we are teetering off onto a steep hill. The girl tries to switch gears and drive backwards, but due to our momentum we plummet as the vehicle tumbles down the hill. Trapped, the both of us endure the painful ride down as the car flips multiple times before landing upside down at the bottom of the hill. Every part of my body aches, and the girl is just barely moving. She turns to me as her face has been bruised. “A-Are you alright?” She asks, however, I’m in too much pain to even utter a word. “Just hold on, I’ll get you out of here.” She tries to unbuckle herself, but she seems to be struggling. I hear my passenger side door open, and something yanks me by the arm out of the vehicle. My lifeless body is tossed into the grass by one of the masked men, and more of them gather around me. “Leave him alone!”

“Shut up you stupid skank.” He says.

“You are going to wish you hadn’t said that!”

“Hand me the camera.” A new voice demands. A man in a white cowboy hat and bandana, and a black and white plaid shirt walks over to the flipped car with the video camera pointed inside the interior. My bones feel like they’ve been smashed to pieces as I can barely move. All I can do is lay in the grass, watching this man whose face is completely hidden by the bandana and shadows. Something I begin to notice, is the sound of water lapping. “Well, would you look at that? It looks like some broad is trying to save this fruit bowl.”

“You leave him alone, or I swear you’ll regret it.” She threatens.

“Ooh I’m scared. Tell you what, how about we send you on your way, and we’ll take it from here alright? Alright. Get her outta here for Christ’s sake. I’m done talking to this heifer.”

“Why you—!” One of the men slams the door shut, trapping her inside. Both he and another man get to the car and start to push it forward. The vehicle tips over and falls off the cliff we happen to be near. With a loud splash down below, the man with the video camera passes it over to another masked man, and he then approaches me. He uses his white boot to step on my chest, making it difficult to breathe.

“And as for you, you milky licker, you are going to help me send a message.”