The blood in his nose felt like it came from his lungs. The air around him was pulsating with the echo of the beasts behind him. Not daring to look back, Jack Harrison clutched the small vial in his jacket pocket. The boot encrusted feet at the ends of his legs felt like weighted stumps as he pushed through the snow while pumping his arms like pistons. 

Those in pursuit were human once. They had dreams and aspirations. Perhaps it was the aspirations part that had led them there. Charging through the silently falling snow in the Montana landscape. Running after a man they barely knew and didn’t know was even alive and on planet Earth only moments before. He ran with his other hand out in front of him in an attempt to keep the little twiggy branches from slashing his face to bits. 

The beasts behind had flem and what looked like goopy snot oozing out of various cuts and punctures up and down their sweaty, hairy, heaving forms. Daring to risk a glance over his shoulder, Jack Harrison stared for half a second into the deep red eyes of one of his would be captors. The creature looked back and for another split second Jack could almost imagine that the thing really had been human at one point. 

Whatever it was by then, Jack knew the odds of the creature meaning to do him anything but harm were incredibly low. His outstretched hand suddenly had nothing hitting it or in front of it. Jack turned his head too slow, and his bearded face was kissed by the clear open Montana winter air. He had failed to see the cliff in the snow.

Over the edge and away from his pursuers, Jack experienced a moment of weightlessness unparalleled by anything his battered old body had ever felt. He had to admit, he felt a moment of pure unadulterated bliss at the pinnacle of what soon became a plunge to what he feared would be his death.

Harrison had fallen before. He’d parachuted out of a plane as part of a skydiving team in order to write “Will You Marry Me SoAndSo” more times than he could remember. He’d enjoyed that work. He’d also jumped out of planes in other places in order to open the throats of humans he’d only just become aware of existing on Earth moments before. He hadn’t enjoyed that work.

That was all over now. The murder missions. The skywriting messages of hope in pink across clear blue skies. The BBQ’s. The nine to fives. The Macy’s Day Annual Parade on that holiday everyone had suddenly started arguing about for no reason. All of it was done. 

Clutching the vial to his chest and trying to figure out when the ground was coming, how long he had been falling, and exactly what his plan was if he did survive the fall all in the same instant; Jack Harrison was trying not to think about how he might be humanity’s last hope for survival. 

His body struck what must have been shale at first. Then pine branches clawed at him for a spell. His arms flailed between trying to protect the vial and trying to protect his head. He was painfully aware that he probably would not be able to accomplish both by the time his descent ended.

Finally, with a sickening thud, he landed. His face was bloody. The vial was intact. The wind was the only other sound in his ringing ears. Looking up through the fog and falling snow, he saw the first thing to make him smile in over three years. Towering above, he recognized the black and gold insignia of The ARC. He had made it. Next, he just needed to figure out a way inside.