Cada

Bare bones of a story I had planned, very incomplete

My parents spent a lot of my childhood reassuring me I wasn't a monster.

I don't know if I fully believed them. It was in how these people looked at me. How the newest ones gasped and stared at me with panic in their eyes.

And, after all, how else could you explain all the bodies I left lying in my wake as I made my escape?

I had hurt and killed and escaped. I had done everything my parents had told me would ruin me. They were wrong, because until now, I had had nothing. I was an animal in a cage. I hadn't been Cada. I had been specimen 0054.

.

I was a well-known thief. I was the youngest to have his own gambling house. I was also feared among the people who had heard stories about me.

I hardly took notice anymore as people shuffled away to avoid being in my path. It was true that the fear had lessened within the past two years, but it was there.

I had to make the occasional trip around town to remind people that the streets they walk through every day are more unsafe than they remember, because Haoun Kierue still walked through them.