Prologue

When I was fourteen years old, the world came crumbling down. Everything I knew was destroyed. The things I’d known were no longer there. I was alone. My life was nothing. Fourteen years old and I had to start over new. I had to make my world what it had once been, I had to become the person I was before my life was uprooted and the family I’d loved was killed. I had to change the world. I had too. That was the one thing I knew. I had to change the world.

 

I woke up and it was still dark. Thank goodness. I had to get moving before it was daylight. Who knew how much time I had. I grabbed my book bag from beside me and stood up. My hair fell in its place on my shoulder and I hurried out of the alley and onto the streets. The town was silent and cold, but I kept moving, keeping an eye out for people who might be after me. I wasn’t very big, but if I had to, I could fight them off. I was strong. I had to be.

I knew where I was going, but I wasn’t sure how to get there. I’d tried my best to remember the directions before they’d burned, but I never had time to read the second half. I’d traveled so far, but now I knew I was probably going to have to give up. I didn’t want too, but I couldn’t keep walking in circles forever. I had to find a place to end it. I had to find a place to live out the rest of my pathetic, failure of a life. I’d tried so hard to do this for them, but I’d failed. Now I just had to find a place where I could live in hatred of myself without being found. They couldn’t find me. I couldn’t face any more destruction.

Most times I tried not to remember my past, but I did now. Now that I knew it was finally over, that I’d never make it, I remembered. I saw my family smiling around the dinner table as we talked about school and life in general. Then we heard the knock on the door. The crisp clear knock that made us fall silent. My father stood up to get the door and they took him. Two men in dark suits with silky black hair and gray skin pulled him out the door and pushed him onto the lawn. They shot him seven times before he stopped moving. Seven times. I was so scared. I hid. I heard my mother crying and my sisters trying to comfort her. Then I watched from the crack in the closet door as the men killed my mother and sisters. I watched as one of the men lit our house on fire too. I got out though, barely, but I’d gotten out, and I cried in the shed listening to screaming and gunshots as the men murdered my whole town and burned everything. When the world fell silent I opened the door on the charred shed and looked at the burning ash of my old home, the place I’d always been so safe in. I saw the bodies of people I’d loved and people I’d talked to. I walked through the rubble and saw the bodies of my friends and finally I went to where my family had been killed. I fell to my knees and cried, and made the decision to do whatever I’d had to do to get revenge for them. That was before I had known why this had happened. That was before I found out it was impossible.

I felt defeated. After three years of locking that memory away I’d remembered every detail. I’d remember the soft pink dresses my sisters were wearing, and even the dinner we’d been eating when it all happened. How had I failed them? I hadn’t tried to save them when I had the chance, why couldn’t I do this for them? I’d never been one to finish what I’d started, but I knew in my heart I had to finish this. I couldn’t give up. My family wasn’t the only one that needed this. Millions of families were killed that day. I had to do this for them.

I pushed myself forward. No, I didn’t know where to go, but I would find out. I’d been on this journey for three years, and I couldn’t give up. This was my life now. Revenge for those fallen families was my life, and I would succeed. Even if it was me against the world.