Before his 3rd birthday, Dash lived in a quiet suburban neighborhood off the coast of Temple, the last colony to be taken under the district’s control before facing extinction.
   He knew how extinctions went. If you were fortunate enough to have relation to a district member, you became safe, immediately escorted out of the colony before facing the fiery wrath that consumed it. Others, however, were not treated the same.
   With the restart of a new colony came sacrifices that forced each and every family to endure.
   Every extinction is distinct, the rules oftentimes changing with every order from the district. Extinctions were never repeated in the same manner. Only once was the entire race of a colony destroyed: thirty-two years ago in Flagg when an unknown epidemic washed across nearly all of their population, inflicting a deathly sickness that plagued all remaining life. For Temple, this was a bittersweet luxury. In each house, one from every family was chosen to be transported.
   It was a simple process that, if you were fortunate enough, did not have to face. Temple knew its fate like every other fallen colony. Their mistakes would not go unnoticed. District rules have been in place for centuries and Temple was no exception.
   The district couldn’t have another colony that disobeyed their protocol.
   He recalls it as if it just happened; still fresh in his memory, the vision of his mother curled on the bathroom floor, holding him tightly against her chest in silence. Her face turning grim as a shadow stood within the doorframe, her green eyes wet with tears as it barked an order and lurched forward, retrieving Dash from her fragile grasp. Screams echo through the hall as she lay sprawled across the ground, her body gripping the old linoleum that lies beneath.
   The cries of all the doomed families that reverberated through the streets, the warning sirens that could be heard over miles of landscape, it all haunted him. In the distance beyond, a feint glow of orange hung over the air, encircling the clouds above with fumes of black and grey. A low hum of screams nestled within his ears, following him as he readied for transport out of Temple.
   A small white tag hung from his tiny neck, flailing wildly as he continued toward the district train.

Dashiell B. Ebony 03928 - Sector 2, Temple

   He read it carefully, examining the five numbers that listed after his name. 03928. His identification to the district, the only piece of information that lets them know he is clear for passage, that he’s no enemy to Eden.
   Digging through his pocket, he could still find his transport tag, the only piece he had to remember his past. He struggles to recall any childhood before Eden. Any world before was distant in his memory, existing only through partial visions that haunted him.
   The only life he knew was one with Moira, living within the streets of Eden, consumed in its world of dying luxuries. Dash had to protect her. With his hope long forgotten, he remembered the only reason he still lingered around the Sector. She had become the only friend he’d ever had in their new life. Submerged in isolation, the poverty in the slums, the filth that blanketed the city, he found her.
   In a pool of red, she laid flailing against the pavement deeply entwined in bits of rope and silver duct tape; her white hair moist and freshly dyed with the blood that encircled her body. Dash knew she wouldn’t survive much longer with the amount of blood lost; he didn’t need to ask to know what happened to her.
   Attacked by savages eager to extract her DNA for their own sick, vain benefit.
   She couldn’t have been much older than the age of eleven. He was young, too. About thirteen years of age and naïve as any half-breed could be. She was beautiful unlike any infinite he’s ever seen in Eden; helpless and fragile against the dampened ground, she shone under the moonlight, her translucent white skin highlighting every shade of light against it, glistening beneath the pooling blood at her chest.
   He carried her to the Sector, a thin trail of red dragging behind with her motionless body in his arms. It would attract more savages within minutes.
   Within its corridors, Sector 14 was vast. Empty white chairs lined each hall, painted with white walls and matching white floors. Colorless, like the face of the infinite that he held within his trembling hands, the space flooded with various men and women in white lab coats, their eyes fixed on the vibrant gash nested within her chest.
   Dash didn’t need to stay a word, for they all knew. Another attack.
   He carefully handed her over to a man with vibrant blue eyes, his skin and hair resembling the color of the girl’s. An infinite. He nodded to Dash as he laid her delicately across a white table and proceeded down the hall, disappearing through the nearest white door with the following group of infinites trailing behind.
   Silence fell over the hall and he was alone. To wait or to leave, he wondered.
   Dash surveyed the room before seating himself in the nearest white chair, staring ahead at the wall before him, uncertain of why he decided to stay. He didn’t know that girl, the infinite left to die within the alley. Deaths of infinites occurred every day, going oftentimes unnoticed, with no one to blame but the savages that have long fled the scene before any hint of suspicion arose.
   So why was he here?
   He waited, head pressed against the wall behind, slumped in his chair for hours until the blue-eyed infinite returned to greet him. His expression was softer than before, the wrinkles about his brow now rejuvenated and nonexistent.
   “She’ll be alright,” he reassured, noticing the hint of worry that struck Dash’s face; he looked at the infinite and nodded, hesitant to do anything other than thank him.
   “It’s my duty to protect our kind. I should be thanking you for saving her life, you know.” he spoke honorably, seating himself parallel to Dash. “It’ll take a few days to recover. You’re more than welcome to visit in the morning, if you wish.”
   Dash nodded, looking around the building once again. He shouldn’t be here.
   They all knew he shouldn’t have opened the door. A half-breed entering the Sector, contaminating their world with disease and filth, he could be nothing more than a savage ready to attack and they wouldn’t have known. But the infinite before him stood genuine and in his debt.
   “I found her on the street,” Dash’s voice was hollow, his throat dry. Only then had he realized that he hadn’t eaten all day and grew starving whilst waiting. “I don’t know her.”
   “Hm,” he proclaimed, striding down the hall at an even pace before opening a different white door. Dash remained still in his chair, eyes fixed on the infinite as he proceeded. “She seems to know you, Dash. And she has requested to see you.”

It was nothing like Eden once was. A clean skyline showered with fresh, white buildings and newly planted trees; in a place so unfamiliar, she could hardly call it home, but it was safety and that’s what she desperately needed. Moira looked upon them like insects in a glass jar, circling the perimeter of the district like ants in an orderly fashion. The people of New Eden resembled each other almost perfectly; their features all emitting a distinct similarity: an absence of color. Their careful eyes analyzed each new subject simply as foreigners to their colony, prisoners under a new reign of terror. She was one of them now.
Dash was wrong, she thought to herself. Nothing in this district sparked any desire for a new hope.
Upon arriving, she was given a home: a small white apartment that overlooked the entire city. She couldn’t imagine a life without half-breeds. Without Dash. But here she was in a city of new beginnings. Infinites inhabiting every inch of pavement below—they had no choice but to run from the world that hunted them.
Outside, clean air enveloped her lungs, surrounding her senses as it circulated through the pure white streets. Plants of various shades and hues flowered the gardens, new rivers climbed the outlying forests, thousands of similar eyes walking the streets. An entirely different scene than the one she knew.
That night in the alley was the last she saw of Dash since her evacuation. She didn’t know where he went from there. Wandering through the night, he continued into the darkness long after she returned to the Sector. 14 was evacuated much earlier than expected, district officers coming only days after their meeting in the alley. Moira didn’t want to know where he was or what state Eden was in now.
Extinction was unfamiliar to her.
“What Sector are you from?” A small, dainty girl stood to her right, smiling at Moira as she beamed at the buildings overhead. It was so much to take in: the skyscrapers, the clean air, the fresh water. It was all so new.
“Oh, um, 14.” She spoke.
“Oh dear, I’m so sorry for asking. I didn’t mean anything by it.” the girl looked at her sympathetically, her bright grin wiped from her face, chin tilted downward at the pavement, now staring at the ground below.
“What do you mean?”
“You haven’t heard?” she whimpered, “Eden’s passed extinction.”

I didn’t see it coming. None of us did.
For whomever finds this, send my regards.
The attack has just begun.

Bodies, burned and putrefied under layers of ash, lay screaming beneath the fiery surface; some peaking above the rubble, skills and limbs decayed by earth. They plead innocence. Their final cries consumed by smoke, choking their lungs.
Filthy half-breeds, they were called. Every single one merely scum to the district, discarded as easily as they were created.
Pieces of their lives, showered and broken among the hallowed streets, blanketed the pavement in sheets of black. The sky now painted a deep shade of grey, concealing the sun in stacks of heated smog, their world turning to the soil beneath them.
Patches of fire still burned among the heaps of buildings, smoldering their insides with flames too hot to endure. Once beautiful Eden, a city of new life and prosperity, crushed within the hands of the district. Corrupt, it became: a flaw larger than any half-breed itself.
Shedding a thick layer of ash, he emerged from the surrounding forest. Immediately finding his lungs, the toxic air seeps into his chest.
Gripping the wounded bark of a nearby tree, Dash sulks to the ground, swallowed by the mass of debris that surrounds him.
The wasted city suffering in its own fiery death. Merely a black pit of waste, Eden deteriorates before his own eyes.
His only option was to escape. Only by chance had he been so lucky to survive again. By this point, Dash knew his luck would run out.
Scavenging the forest floor, he finds his notebook and backpack and slings both across his shoulder. Out of the few items he could manage to carry, he equipped a pack stuffed with goods from the Sector after its abandonment. Three loaves of day-old bread, a canteen of fresh water, a box of matches, and a single vial of pure blood DNA.
The thought of Moira discovering the vial plagued him; if anyone were to discover the DNA, he would be murdered for being a savage. But he had nothing to lose.
With the district feasting on the hunt for half-breeds, he couldn’t be certain whether he would make it out alive.