Prologue

“My perceptions of everything around me are tested, my beliefs challenged, and my knowledge of historical events are negated as my dreams show me things, which never happened. At least not according to our teachings. In my dreams, I see a world that doesn’t match the one I live in. It is a world of insane possessions, wealth beyond imagination, and weapons that make my skin grow cold, but most of all, my dreams show me two young twins, who either unite all peoples, saving them from annihilation, or who lead them to their graves.”

Excerpt from the diary of Panpar

At first it was just a mall with people and their merchandise held in plastic bags, walking up and down the open corridor. Their minds were busy and their feet were even busier, filling their bags deeply with their desires, and it was more than just a mall, it was the Capital Mall. The words ‘Capital Mall’ plastered along the corridor, showing just how proud of it the owners must be.

A cute little girl, blonde hair, blue eyes, ponytails swinging back and forth across her back as she walked, holding the hand of her blond mother, headed down the concourse. The girl was happy and the mother was annoyed by the crowd. She wanted to walk faster than those ahead of her. It was loud in the mall, malls were often that way, but it was normal noise, accompanied by the smell of roasted peanuts, filling nostrils and softening the shrill of many conversations held in a tight place.

Then it wasn’t.

The little girl wore her smile as she and her mother stopped. They walked along until everyone in front of them halted, as if waiting for a train to cross railroad tracks. The mother kept craning her neck to see what was wrong, why they stopped, and whether or not the delay would be permanent,

Yes, it was permanent. More permanent than it was supposed to be. The delay was going to be forever, but at that moment, the mother didn’t know.

The next moment it was too late. The head of the man directly in front of her exploded, as if it were a balloon punctured by a pin, erased from existence by a hollow tipped bullet, the kind not satisfied by just passing through, but instead shreds on impact, dividing into pieces, causing massive damage.

The woman almost had enough time to react. She was on her way to falling to the ground, dragging her daughter down with her, her idea to play the game called ‘dead already’ but even as she began her descent another bullet was already directed at her chest. Falling had only served to make the target her own head instead, and her daughter wasn’t to be any luckier. There was a bullet with her name on it too.

There were many bullets with lots of names on them.

The shooter wore a scarf wrapped all the way around his neck, wrapping around again, covering his face, but his eyes were visible. He could see and his eyes could be seen and they were narrow, pointing toward the variety of targets, aiming, as his gun was aiming, at the many different shoppers walking up and down the open corridor connecting all of the stores within.

He chanted as his trigger finger did its work, a chant none of the shoppers would understand, but he understood. He was praying, and his prayers were prayers of vengeance--vengeance for the betrayal against his God, against the purity the soul was supposed to contain, but the infidels had long ago abandoned. His trigger finger was smart enough not to remain compressed, but to squeeze and release, squeeze and release. He sprayed the shots of automatic fire in groups, taking down targets as he went along, for he was on his own shopping spree, and his bullets were his currency, his purchases were the shoppers that fell, and he had enough currency to buy many shoppers that day. The infidels would sin no more.

Chapter 1 »