Prologue


In a small town on any morning you can sit down on a bench while reading a newspaper and listen to the wind make the chimes ring, harmless conversations between friends, the soft hum of a car on its way to work, the bell above the church ringing the hour, the rain drizzling down into kid infested puddles and little shrills of laughter.


That is how it used to be anyway. Now when you live in a small town and sit on a bench, there are no chimes, no bells ringing, no kids laughing, no innocent conversations, no rain, just wind, dark water-less clouds and the faces of paranoid people briskly walking to where they need to be.


Hello, my name is Kovin and I am Ice.

Chapter 1


That was one of the things I missed. The smell of the rain had always put a smile on my face but now that our bodies were controlled by the programming of a microchip placed in our foreheads, there couldn't be rain or lightning. They had taken over our bodies and our planet with their experiments, dividing us into two groups. I, however, had a defect I didn't want to reveal to anyone so I had to put on my paranoid face every time I walked outside my home just like the rest of us did.


My memory of how life used to be was still there; that was my defect.


Even though I am the only one, that I know of anyway, who can still remember what life used to be like, all the people around still knew who made their lives this way. The Fire. They had taken all the people they felt were good enough, smart enough, and good enough looking and turned them into robotic do-goods. The rest, the majority, of us were Ice because nothing was good enough about us. We have two different leaders and it is against the rules to play with Fire if you are an Ice; you will be burnt.


You could tell the difference between a Fire and an Ice by the eyes. Fire had pure white eyes, the only color being the red that was caused by lack of sleep because the inside of their eyes were white and Ice could be seen with any color of eyes and they had black pupils like any normal human.


So on that cloudy Saturday morning I finally decided to stop thinking and go home. As I lifted my grown figure off the bench I was pushed to the side. An accident. She had come out of the store not paying attention to the objects ahead of her and had run into me.


When she looked up to apologize her beauty drew me in. She thought better of the apology though because it wasn't a normal thing to do. That's when I noticed it. The drench of white across her eyes. My eyes shot open wide and I turned around to run home, glancing back at her face just once more.


I ran and ran until I was safe inside my home. If Cylis ever found out I had thought a Fire was pretty after everything they had done to us, the picture wouldn't be pretty.


Cylis was the leader of the Ice. We had intentionally chosen an Ice that didn't look like a leader because if the Fire ever found out who our leader was, just like if we ever found out who theirs was, they would exterminate us.


How could I not tell him though? Fire and Ice weren't supposed to have the ability of touching. They had charged our bodies differently. Fire had a negative charge and Ice had a positive charge. That's when a billion ideas came rushing into my head. There were a million possibilities but none of them realistic. She could have a wrong charge, I could have a wrong charge, either of us could have be uncharged, she could be faking being an ice...the list was limitless. I had to know. Cylis had to know.





The cold water dripped at a constant rate from the hole in the wall of my cell. If the rain kept up like this, the constant drip would lead me to a mental death – I would lose myself.

I had pushed him too far and I knew it would happen. I also knew it was my fault. Even Arean had warned me and tried to end things.