Vanished (Chapter One)

Prologue

Over half a century ago, the bulk of humanity simply seemed to vanish. Today, stupid as it may sound, no one knows what caused the disappearances. At one point, people probably knew, but there isn't any written record of it in existence - at least, not that anyone knows of. There have been a lot of speculations and theories, but no one ever pinpointed a cause. Theories range anywhere from alien invasions to planetary shifting to more probable causes like disease; countries all have their own beliefs for what happened all those decades ago. Of course, countries hardly exist in the sense that they used to – for decades, humanity has stayed within the confines of the large walled cities that sprang up after the disappearances, only venturing out on rare occasions when trade was needed between the cities, and only on carefully marked routes, so countries now consist of just a few large walled cities spread out in their territory.

No one knows what lays beyond these routes or the cities, but with the human population growing, people are beginning to worry about how far they can spread before it will become dangerous - after all, there isn't any known cause for the previous disappearances, and people are weary of risking anything like that happening again. The current government of my country – at one time the two countries of China and Japan, now united – decided that it's time we try to pinpoint a cause and the officials in charge chose ten scientists to go out into the unknown territory and try to figure out what happened. Because of the dangers posed by this operation, each scientist is assigned a team of 4 bodyguards, but since the government doesn't want to give up any part of its small military, the bodyguards are only trained civilians.

I signed up for training along with my older brother, figuring I could use the adventure. When my brother and I were chosen as bodyguards, we soon found ourselves neck-deep in the strangest, most confusing situation we'd ever been in, and it didn't look like we'd be getting out of it any time soon.

Chapter One

A short distance ahead of us, Tetsuji stops near the corner of a tall, decrepit building, letting out a low whistle as he pushes the multiple data detector viewer thing (so sue me, I still can't remember the technical name for it) up, allowing him full use of both of his brown eyes - the eye-piece of the detector allows the user to view the basic statistics of the surrounding area – temperature, moisture, and things of that nature – as well as serving as something of a weak night-vision lens, but at the cost of reducing the vision of whichever eye it covers. Touya, the leader of our little group, stops just past my older brother and looks around silently. As I come to a stop beside my brother, I hear him murmur, "This place is downright creepy..."

I briefly remove my sunglasses, squinting in the harsh light, to try to get a better idea of my surroundings. I see what my brother means. It is creepy. The light seems as though it can't touch the shadows in some of the buildings, or perhaps is being absorbed by the shadows, even though such a thing isn’t possible. Just as Kazue, the fourth member of our team – in possession of our other detector viewer thing – and our resident medic, stops on Tetsuji's other side, Touya glances back at us over his shoulder. Wordlessly, we split up at his nod. I watch him for a moment as he heads for the back of the building we stopped by. His dark hair hardly moves as he walks - due in part to the lack of wind, but mostly because of his natural grace - and he almost seems to be more an apparition than a real person. I shiver; this place is certainly creepy enough to make one believe that there really is such a thing as ghosts. Though I can't see Touya’s eyes, which are hidden behind his sunglasses like usual, I can tell by his mannerisms that the place disturbs him. It makes me nervous to know that our leader is just as disturbed as the rest of us by this place; especially considering how little seems to faze him.

Our current job is to investigate the ruined city and make sure its safe, but I honestly don’t know what could possibly be dangerous around here. I mean, after all, the city has been abandoned and decaying for decades so the only real danger I can think of is whatever chance the rubble has of collapsing and there’s no way to prevent that from happening if its going to happen – we all know that. Aside from falling rubble, there are probably snakes and scorpions, but they’ve always left us alone before as long as we don’t bother them. That doesn’t stop me from being nervous of course, but I think its just nerves and my overactive imagination convincing me that there’s something out there, hiding in one of the old buildings or beneath piles of rubble, watching us. That’s not possible, of course, but no matter how much I tell myself that, I just can’t seem to shake the feeling. I sigh and mentally curse whatever had seen fit to give me such an overactive imagination. It’s great to keep myself occupied during the long trips between work sites, but it isn’t so great when it gets out of hand during an investigation and I end up spooking myself. Jumpy bodyguards aren’t very useful bodyguards, so keeping a tight reign on my imagination is necessary, though not always easy.

I head straight from where we had stopped, cautiously watching the abandoned buildings around me. There's something in the air, something I can't describe or even quite place that's making me feel like we really shouldn't be here right now. I nervously run my fingers through my short, black hair, trying to ignore the bad feeling I have. The city is rundown and it’s really giving me the creeps, more-so than any other investigation site before this. In a way, it almost appears as though a battle had been fought here, what with the condition the place is in, but it’s hard to say if it wasn’t something else, like a natural disaster. We’ve been to more rundown places before this, so I really don’t know what’s making me so nervous – the whole atmosphere just seems wrong here for some reason.

Before long, I come to a large concrete embankment, which I climb down, careful not to step wrong on any rubble and fall. The last thing I want to do is end up injuring myself and knowing my luck, that’s exactly what would happen. To my right is what looks to be the remains of a bridge. The embankment looks like it was probably a drainage channel or something similar – we have these in the lower parts of the walled city I grew up in, but if I remember right, ours serve a slightly different purpose than the ones from the past did. Like the rest of the rundown city, the drainage channel is dry and is overgrown with weeds, looking every bit as long-abandoned as it is.

When I look to the southwest, I see storm clouds gathering in the distance, past the ruined buildings and just coming over the far hills. They’re dark and ominous looking and despite my love of storms, I find a sense of immense foreboding fill me. Pushing the dismal thoughts to the back of my mind, I turn back to continue my investigation.

Part of the bridge is still standing and against my better judgment I walk underneath it, placing a hand against the cool concrete pillar. A chill travels the length of my spine, though not from the coolness of the concrete. The air is still and warm, but despite that and the knee-length black jacket I'm wearing, I feel cold.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see something move, but when I turn to look, there isn’t anything there that hadn’t already been there a moment ago. Wearily, I turn back around. I take a step forward, my boots crunching on loose gravel, and discover what I must have seen only seconds before - everything around me flickers briefly between the dead city and another city, identical, but simply vacant, empty, not in the least dilapidated. I gasp and stumble back and the flickering stops. Another shiver goes down my spine as I stand frozen in fear.

What on Earth is going on?

I reach into my jacket pocket for my cell phone and I nearly drop it as I extract it from my pocket; I realize I'm trembling. I try desperately to calm myself as I flip open the small black device and just as I'm about to press 3 - the speed-dial number I assigned to Touya's phone - I see something I don't want to see. No reception.

I should have reception... these things were designed so that we'd always have SOME kind of reception, no matter what, just in case of emergency... Terror fills me anew as I slip the useless phone back into my pocket. I realize right then that, unlike every other place we’d investigated, there was nothing but silence – complete, perfect silence. Usually I at least hear cicadas or locusts, or the scurrying of scorpions, or something, but there’s nothing, and I still have that unnerving feeling that something is watching me, stalking me, waiting for just the right moment to pounce.

I hesitate only briefly before turning and darting back up the embankment I had come down just minutes before. I nearly loose my footing when I slip on some loose concrete, and I catch myself only at the expense of abraded palms, but that’s the last thing on my mind at the moment. My surroundings flicker briefly again when I reach the top and I dash down the street in the direction I'd come from, nearly tripping over my own two feet in my haste.

I know I should slow down and pay more attention to my surroundings, like I was trained to do, but my instinct is telling me to get moving, find the others, and get our butts out of that city. I’m not the kind of person to ignore feelings like that – mine are usually right and its better safe than sorry, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve never given much thought to my future but I sure don’t plan on dying young. There’s something here; I’m certain of that even though I haven’t actually seen anything, and I run as fast I can, not stopping even though my legs are burning, certain that if I stop before I reach one of the others whatever is stalking me will jump out of wherever it’s hiding and tear me to shreds.

I finally come to the area where we’d split up and I see Touya coming from around the building we had stopped by earlier. I’m beyond relieved to see him and I don’t hesitate to run over and throw my arms around him. I’m nearly in tears, partly from fear of what I had just seen and was unable to explain and partly from a previously indiscernible fear that something might have happened to him. I bury my face in his shoulder, biting back the tears and clinging to him fiercely. I honestly can’t remember ever being as scared before as I am now.

"Kaya, you're trembling," He pushes me back by my shoulders and holds me at arms length, a concerned look on his face. Blinking back tears, I nod and open my mouth to tell him what I'd seen, but I don't get a chance.

"You're okay!" Tetsuji exclaims, yanking me into a bone-crushing hug from behind, which I gladly return as soon as I manage to turn around. Touya isn’t the only one I worry about, after all; Tetsuji is the only family I have left, and I don’t want to lose him. "Touya, we have to find Kazue and get out of here. Something freaky is happening and I don't wanna stick around and find out what it is."

"I second that," Our red-haired companion states as she joins us. Our surroundings change again and this time they don't change back. "But somehow, I don't think we have a choice in the matter..."

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Author’s note: Well, there’s the revised version of Chapter One. Please review and let me know what you think. And a big thanks to love.Smoothie on FictionPress (my sole reviewer there at the time) for the idea that cracked my writer’s block after Chapter Two.