CHAPTER ONE

Teddy/All is Past

“Run! They’re coming for us all!”

Teddy knew Corliss had screamed that some time ago. How long ago, he couldn’t be sure. Was it five or ten minutes?

Standing in Silas’ farmhouse kitchen, Teddy felt exposed. Yet, his mind kept drifting to when he first met Silas and the old-looking man had offered him a good, country dinner. The bright yellow wooden walls, suggesting the comfort of home, held artifacts of another age. Hung on the wall were a rake, a cook’s apron, and a spices rack. A plaque read, “Home is where your heart is.”

Teddy knew he should be running, but his Nike 2082s couldn’t do all the work, no matter how advanced the sneaker technology.

Isaac, his once-upon-a-time new best friend who was now something of a rival for Corliss’ attention, kept making hugely dramatic faces. He gestured with waving arms punctuating his flapping eyebrows that went up and down in animated panic.

Despite the severity of the situation, Teddy almost laughed. Isaac was, without a doubt, the funniest dude he’d ever known. They met about a week ago at Saint Benedict’s Home for Boys, when Teddy fled the horror scene at his home. That was, in relative terms, a lifetime ago. So much had happened since he took off in his Nike 2082s.

It was quite sad, in fact, how Isaac cried out and made all kinds of signals, yet despite his terrified exertion he might have been under water.

Turning his head, which took an eternity, Teddy saw Corliss waving at him to follow her. The kids from the Bountiful Harvest group were more or less encircling Silas, the old farmer who turned out to be a geneticist taking in those more fortunate than him. That is, they, unlike him, had someone to guide them after their genes had been modified. The other difference was that it was their dissatisfied parents who had mixed and matched their DNA. Silas, on the other hand, had been the foolish volunteer of an experiment by none other than Dieter, the resident mad scientist at Fabled Circus. The experiment prematurely aged Silas, working at a progressive pace that left him appearing like an elderly shell when in fact he was but a young man in his twenties.

Running had been Teddy’s only thought after what he witnessed and became a part of in his home that used to be. Now, though, he felt an eerie calm overwhelm his senses. He felt like a deranged man who