Lost Haven - The Prelude

The full moon hung heavy in the August night’s sky, pregnant with unfulfilled promises. The night held its breath as tension crackled through the streets of Haven like bottled lightning.

High above the city, bathed in the silvery-blue moon fire, a lone figure peered out of the boiling cityscape. Search lights stabbed through the night, swimming over the empty eyed windows of Haven’s skyscrapers. Acidic smoke, thick and cloy, filled the air as flames licked the night skyline with hungry, red tongues. The roar of police cruisers and bellowing fire alarms echoed through the streets in broken, pitiful wails. The cries of a desperate city.

The figure’s aquatic blue eyes moved swiftly over the withered cityscape while she drew in a shaky breath. Her heart beat a tattoo against her ribcage, threatening to jump out her chest and hurtle itself down thirty stories to the heat backed concrete below. With trembling fingers she touched the blue domino mask over her eyes, checking its sturdiness once more. The mask held with the same sturdiness it had shown the half dozen other times she’d worried over it.

Somewhere below her perch on the building’s ledge a police cruiser exploded, throwing shrapnel skyward with a blossoming mushroom cloud. An inhuman roar rose up from below her position, sending a shiver of dread coursing down her spine.

The young woman rose up from her crouch, her nerves thrumming with anticipation as she uncoiled the rope wound about her narrow waist. Spreading her stance and balancing her weight on the balls of her feet, she drew a final shaky breath in through her teeth,

“Alright Jae, just like he taught you,” she murmured to herself reassuringly as she swung the grappling line around in a wind spinning arch. She let the grappling swing out as it reached its zenith and flew out into the dark. She felt the grapple’s hooks catch and felt the line go taut with a burst of satisfaction. Gripping the line firmly between her gauntleted hands, she let go of the silent prayer she’d been holding in her breast and leapt into the air.