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CHAPTER ONE
KAL
“Keep running!” The rain nearly drowned out my voice as I yelled at the others. However, I was the one lagging behind everyone else. Bullets whizzed past, just missing my skull and sending tiny strands of black hair into the chilly winds. The shots made a small dink sound as they hit the metal poles nearby. This was my first week in this dangerous city of titans known as Jötun, short for Jötunheimr, the land of the giants, according to Norse mythology. Though it was hardly mythology now, not when the giants ruled this very city.
However, we were not in the realm of the giants but on Earth. New York to be exact, or old New York as the human rebels called it. How the titans came to Earth was lost in history. Their arrival cracked the Earth, causing a great flood that drowned almost every country under the raging seas.
The planet could no longer support the lives of billions of humans. War soon followed for the meager resources the earth still held until the titans created the sanctuary cities. Places thatshared the planet's resources where the chosen could live out their lives in peace.
The cities proved to prolong humanity’s survival. This place, known as Jötun, was one of those cities. A massive metropolis rising above the raging seas.
As for the Titans? No one knew what they looked like; most had never even seen one before. No one alive that is. But they existed, powerful beings from some unknown dimension.
Did mankind fight them? Of course they did. It was a long bloody war that took many human lives. The few rebels who remained still fought on, doing their best to sabotage the sanctuary cities until they were hunted down and killed. Sadly, my mother was among them.
The titans themselves rarely bothered with the humans who lived within their cities' high walls. Like an unspoken arrangement, the humans knew never to approach the mighty castle metropolises perched at the cities' highest peak. However, the wealthiest humans lived at least near the castle cities, in a beautiful city carved from marble. I knew it as level one. There were five levels to the city, the closest to the castle being the most well-off areas and each level descending in location, beauty, and quality of human life.
Although the cities kept us safe, it didn’t stop people from whispering rumors, rumors that we humans were nothing but docile food.
Those rumors didn’t stop most of us from flocking there for survival. The outside world was hell, teeming with scavengers, hunters, and cannibals. The roving tribes protected their small lands fiercely and without mercy as the sick, the diseased, and discarded roamed until death welcomed them. This made traveling between the cities difficult, causing most to remain in one their entire lives.
But I braved the long and dangerous journey from the giant controlled city called Vanir because my old friend Jaxon needed me for a job. This job was supposed to set us up for a long time. Now all I wanted to do was punch the blond in the face after I got some place safe.
Now I understood why so many called this place the deadliest giant controlled city in the world. Although I was partly to blame for the mess I was in. I just couldn’t resist the credits we could make from this sell. But I never wanted nor expected to be running for my life right now!
“I see a place we can lie low,” Jaxon said while opening the unlocked shutters of a nearby shop.
Jaxon was the fellow with unruly blonde hair and angular features. He was handsome, even with that arrow-shaped scar above his brow. We had been friends for years when Jaxon used to live in Vanir.
“What do we do, what do we do?!” The pixie looking man with the bird face paced and panicked; his name was Jo. I had just met him that night, though Jo and Jaxon had been friends for a while. Jaxon assured me that the young fairy-looking guy was just right for the job. He described him as a jack of all trades, but he was a master at nothing to me. He could hack, dive, and fight, but he was above mediocre at all three.
One thing I knew was that Jo, at least, was one hell of a good runner. As Jo and Jaxon barreled ahead, not missing a single turn through the dark wet maze. But I was about to get my diver brains blasted right out of my black moppy-haired skull.
The men dressed in black suits and firing guns at us were… well, I had no idea who they were.
Jaxon closed the shop doors, but that wasn’t enough to stop the handful of men armed to the teeth from attempting to break it open. The only thing keeping it shut was Jaxon. His strength was above average because of the overclocked tech implantsembedded in his muscles, but even before he got them, he was still the strongest man I had ever met.
“Jaxon. What the hell was that?!” I yelled, full of anger; my heart was racing and I was hyperventilating. “You said we were diving for that thing, not stealing it from another dive team!”
“Not now, Kal!” He reached into his pocket and took out the tiny silver ball carved with intricate drawings and what looked like a band of runes carved around the base, this thing that was now the bane of my existence. “Take it and get out of here.”
“I’m not leaving you behind so thugs can kill you.”
“Take it and go!” He slammed the damn thing in my hand and yanked me down, crashing our rough lips together in a dry kiss. “I’ll see you later.”
That kiss was an unexpected surprise. “Jaxon….?”
“Don’t stand there slack-jawed. Go!”
CHAPTER TWO
KAL
Reluctantly, I followed Jo and helped him open the shutters on the other side of the small noodle shop, but we could only lift it a little off the ground just enough to squeeze through, and there was no way we skinny men could let go as the shutter fought against our attempts to keep it up.
“Shit!” I exclaimed. “We gotta crawl through!”
The only problem was it took both of our noodle armed strength to hold this thing up. We were both petite thin men just trying our best, and neither could match Jaxon’s power. Jaxon’s face twisted with indecision. Maybe he struggled with the decision to come over and help us. I didn’t want to ruin the sacrifice my friend had made to carry us more than he already did. Jaxon was passing the baton, and I was already fumbling. Useless!
