* Ok, so this is an idea I've had rattling around my mind for ages now! I finally sat down and wrote whatever came to mind and here is a first chapter as a result :) Please comment at the end! <3 P.S. I'm really bad at editing my own work so I apologise now for any mistakes! *
Chapter One
The city was cloaked in an icy downpour. For five days straight now it had rained, the sewers were overflowing and water ran like rivers down the roads. It was as if all colours had been washed away, nothing but bleak grey remained. The streets were almost deserted, the normally busy restaurants and clubs stood idle, unneeded taxis lined the curb and doormen huddled in alcoves, the collars of their coats turned up against the cruel wind. At the bottom of the road a single car sped by, sending a tidal wave of dirty water onto the pavement. The traffic light overhead was broken, blinking amber onto the drenched tarmac. No one in their right mind would be out on such a night, or rather, no one with a choice.
Matthew Crane had no choice. This city was not his home, nor did he know anyone who would take him in. No, he had no options, no money. All that he had were the clothes on his back and the possessions in the duffle bag slung over his shoulder.
It had been that way since he had returned from active duty, or rather, he had been forced to leave. Turned out being shot in the chest had been the least of his worries. No one could explain why he hadn’t died; the bullet had pierced his heart after all. Crane remembered lying in the hospital bed, pretending to be unconscious, as the doctors around him babbled that it was a miracle. He had lain there, wishing he could somehow sink into his mattress and disappear. The doctors had run every test maginable, though within thirty hours the hole through his heart had healed as if he had never been shot at all. It was that point that the doctors had really started to freak out and Crane decided it was time to leave.
For a man with his unique skill set slipping out had been as easy for him as, well, coming back from the dead. Which wasn’t entirely true, he had never died; his heart (even with the hole through it) hadn’t stopped beating. That was the thing, he couldn’t die.
Now, on the run from the army and therefore the government, he had found himself in the pouring rain, in a city he did not even recall the name of.
Stopping on the street corner underneath the broken traffic light, Crane looked around. He needed shelter, a shop doorway, anywhere that was dry. Pulling his long black coat tighter around his tall frame, he decided to go right. Crossing the road at a jog, his duffle bag bouncing between his shoulder blades, he shook his drenched fringe out of his eyes.
A car came up behind him, its headlights momentarily lighting up the street. There was an alleyway up ahead. Reaching the dark corridor between the block of flats, those on the bottom floor used as foreign take-aways, Crane pushed down his hunger at the smell of hot food. How long had it been since he had eaten? Two, maybe four days, food wasn’t a necessity to him like it was everyone else. He didn’t need to eat, but that didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy too.
Turning away from the warm, brightly lit take-away shop, he instead slipped down the alleyway. Halfway down a metal fire escape loomed out of the gloom above his head. The rain peppered the metal framework in an eerily calming pitter-patter.
