Prologue
We called it the Pulse. Not because it acted like something alive but because it shut down anything with an electrical heartbeat. The lights, our phones, cars, all gone. Even hospital equipment failed. It stayed like that for five days as the Pulse lingered in our town.
During those days, children got sick. Very sick. It wasn’t the normal flu with a sneeze and cough, no, kids were going into comas, epileptic fits, bleeding from their eyes, ears and noses and no one knew what to do besides the hidden rule of not panicking.
As teenagers, we got the lucky end of the dynamite stick. We only experienced seizures and bloody noses with the occasional stiffness of muscle and ringing in our ears. Hell, the only severe cases that were in our age pool were three and they all came back walking.
Then it happened. On the fourth day, children, teenagers and young adults in their first year of being twenty manifested powers. The government, by then, had cornered off our town, placing it on the map. Men and women walked around in hazmat suits checking on families. The lucky ones got to stay with their parents.
The rest of us were forced into airlocked tents, in grimy clothing, waiting for our parents to pick us up. They never did. We unlucky bastards who decided to escape our only safe haven regretted the first step we took. There were people waiting for us, mercenaries paid to capture us, sell us to the highest bidder. Powered toys they called us, gifts to the rich for breathing while we suffered.
