Cheers to out of order posting!  Vote if you like and Enjoy.  Sorry for the confusion.

***The Time that Follows***

There were screams in the distance, probably someone getting mugged again, but there was no time for that.  She had just been formally introduced to the world by her spokesmen, Thomas. Yes, he was back—the man that had been gone for the past eight months, the man presumed dead by the hands of the Redeme government.  He was very much alive and here, who else could hack an encrypted feed, broadcast for a full three minutes fifty five seconds, and completely block any method of shutting it down?  It was a wonder the damn soldiers didn’t just shoot the camera, much good that would have done, being it was most likely the feed that was hijacked, not the camera.

The boy, a dirty sixteen year old messenger of sorts, was running through the busy streets of Mega City Five: New York.  The boy was heavily clothed, despite how warm it was mid-day.  He appeared to wear several layers against the warmth, and everything he wore was covered in a healthy layer of dirt and dust—a product of the construction that anyone living under the new buildings suffered with.  He had long hair under a beanie and heavy jacket over what looked like a sweater.  He gray wore sweatpants which had pockets large enough to carry weapons and were covered with dried plaster and paint.  The boy looked like the perfect top-floor builder, one of the few brave souls that would go to the top floor of a building in the works and face the dangers to make the monstrosity shoot further into the sky.

The boy was running through a city that had grown from its magnificent twenty-six million pre-war to a bustling 185 million encompassing nearly three times the land of the previous city with walls surrounding nearly half the state of New York.  The walls were not yet completed, but a good portion of them were up and standing, dwarfing skyscrapers lower than fifty stories. 

Around the old city of New York thousands of buildings had been built, exact replicas of each other towering up to a hundred floors each.  While these buildings continued to reach for the sky the lower levels were inhabited by the workers and their families, as a floor finishes people moved in and the next one was started.

The sixteen year old looked up from his sprint, this was a newer portion of the city, built and still being built as of a mere six months ago.  Around him around were half built buildings which he can’t see the tops off due to massive sheets of metal and scaffolding branching across the gaps between the structures.  Above was about twenty stories of glass and concrete followed by a metal sky, further above the metal sky were buildings still shooting up at an average of one floor every four to five days.

The protective scaffolding was said to be taken down when the constructions are all finished, but it’s been there stretching fully across all streets as an artificial ceiling for the past four months, creating a dark and gloomy effect over hundreds of blocks of street below.  Some people have literally lived under the metal not seeing the sky for months, only getting the glittering glimpses of sunlight that poke through the holes in the metal.

But the boy had more important things to deal with.  Though they weren’t able disconnect the feed during the three minutes and fifty five seconds it aired, they were able to track where the hack was coming from.  He knew his boss wasn’t going to like it—the hack was coming from the Director’s own personal office.  It was the Director himself who set up the feed, being that no one else could have possibly gotten into that room.  Hell no one even knew where it was.  But the trace was nearly 100%. Though it was still impossible to find the Director’s office it was certainly that same office that hacked the feed.

Everything was going south for them.  The boy was running down to their main office to warn the others.  If the Director was joined up with the Ghost there could be problems for everyone who crossed Redeme.  The boy came up on a more complete building, something that was taller than most of the ones around it. 

Vehicle traffic was non-existent this deep into the new sector and streets were quite.  In front of him was a staircase up to a glass door.  Parts of the marble railings to the staircase were still covered in plastic and leftover buckets of half-used plaster seemed to lay at random on both sides of the door way.  The scaffolding was really far up here, maybe at the forty or fifty story mark, but still successfully blocked most sunlight from hitting the street.

The building should have been habited by now and this place should have been bustling with people—but the building was deemed unsafe due to several accidents and closed down—all construction on it coming to a halt as the builders evacuated it some time ago and move on to other constructions.  See, builders right now get paid with room and board for their families, so a broken building left no reason for the workers to stay.  Sure the building will be taken down and repaired eventually but now there were so many other options for the builders it was easier for them to just move onto another project.

The boy knew the truth; there were no problems with this building.  It was sabotaged by his friends.  They killed workers and made it look like the fault was poor construction—causing people to eventually evacuate the entire thing. This left a massive perfect skyscraper for them to work out of away from prying eyes. 

He walked up to the glass doors with massive red X’s struck across them, they used to be automatic but the power to them was cut off a while back, now they had to be forced open.  It wasn’t difficult.  He stuck his fingers into the small crease between the two doors and pulled them open.  Once he stepped inside the abandoned building and used the palms of his hands to force the doors closed again, “Samuel!” the boy yelled into the building, “We’ve got to go now, we’ve been compromised!”  There was no response.  He walked deeper into what would have been the lobby, a large open room with unfinished floors and half-built desk. 

The boy figured Samuel was probably in the auditorium, the main place his group used to have meetings.  It was also easily defendable, had multiple secret exists, and kept them together so his comrades couldn’t be picked off one by one like if they actually occupied the apartments upstairs.

He walked past the desk and a couple plastic-covered statues which lined the wall opposite of it.  In front of him were the elevators—non-operational, a staircase to the top floors which was cemented off by the workers when they left to prevent freeloaders, and the door to the auditorium on the left wall, same side as the desk but much deeper into the building.

“Samuel?”  The boy asked in a lower voice, it was not like Sam to not respond to a heckle. It was protocol to always respond, this kept the place safe.  Silent intruders were shot on sight.  The boy slowly opened the door to the auditorium, he sighed in relief when he saw Samuel standing there with his back turned to the door.  The man was a seven foot giant with a polished scalp, a leather sleeveless jacket, and black jeans.  On the side of body on his arm was an American flag tattoo, and on the other side he had half of an American flag sewn into the right shoulder of his jacket. 

“Sam, we’ve been compromised; the Ghost is working with the Director.”   Samuel slowly turned around; there was a sickening rotten smell which wafted off him when he turned.  The boy gasped. 

Samuel’s front side was covered in blood and what looked like chunks of flesh.  There was a large hole in the side of his stomach which black clotted blood filled.  His eyes seemed to be glazed and he managed to flop two words out of his mouth, “I know.”

He shifted his body weight to one side, behind him was a sea of bodies, everyone the boy knew; everyone who worked for Samuel.  On the far wall behind him was an American flag mounted to the wall, covered in blood and partially burned.  Samuel pulled long bloody machete up from his side and took two steps towards the boy.  The boy turned to run right when someone poked her head out from behind Samuel. 

The girl—the Ghost.  She was wearing a white dress which seemed to be untouched by the carnage, but her arms were covered in dried blood.  The boy hesitated when seeing her and she mocked, “Bye, bye!” as Samuel, now right in front of the boy, swung his machete down at the boy’s neck.