1. Chapter One

Chapter One

K rull

“Hey, you just have one more delivery on the schedule. Mind swinging by the office to drop us off first so you can handle it solo? It is Friday night after all…” Johnny’s grating voice interrupts my brooding as I navigate the delivery truck through the sweltering city streets.

I breathe a slow, calming breath through my nose for the twentieth time today, the cab’s stale air doing little to calm my fraying nerves.

“Dropping us off at work is barely out of the way. It’s not that big a deal. The next delivery is only one box.”

The urge to snap at Sam and Johnny surges through me, but I tamp it down. My co-workers quit pretending to work about halfway through my first day on this delivery job. They’re no help at all, leaving all the heavy lifting to me.

My kind, humans call us Others, fell to Earth a little over a quarter of a century ago. Nagas, minotaurs, orcs, wolven, and other species just dropped onto the sands of the Mojave Desert with nothing but the clothes on our backs. The scientists still have no idea where we came from or how it happened.

I was two years old at the time, but remember nothing of our homeworld, An’Wa, except what the elders tell me.

We’ve been confined to the fenced Integration Zone near Los Angeles since then. Until recently, we’ve only been allowed out of the ten square block area to work. The government even passed a special bill that makes it legal for employers to pay Others a third of human minimum wage.

It irritates the shit out of me that Sam and Johnny make three times my $4.90 per hour wage yet make me do one hundred percent of the work. Now they want me to do the last delivery without them so they can skate out early.

“Sure. No problem.” I say tightly but don’t complain. I need the job.

Ignoring the GPS directions, I drive them back to their cars. At least I’ll have some peace without them squeezed in next to me, blasting their music too loud. And maybe the ancient A/C will actually have a chance of cooling the interior below boiling once their sweaty asses are gone.

With barely a “goodbye” and definitely no “thank you” for doing their work for them, the two men scatter to their cars before I motor off toward my last delivery of the week.

The Integration Zone is a shithole. It was a ghetto when the original inhabitants were moved to better housing and the government surrounded the ten-block area with barbed wire fencing and threw us inside. It hasn’t gotten any nicer over the last quarter century .

The neighborhood I’m driving through isn’t much better. Although it’s near the pricey oceanfront stores and high-rises, this part of town is like the land that time forgot.

It’s an up-and-coming neighborhood known as The Rows. Lining the streets are aging two- and three-story brick buildings—some neatly kept with recent restorations, while others bear cracked facades signaling their neglect.

It looks as though some of these places have been here for decades, like Bertha’s Bakery. The faded painting on its windows boasts “melt-in-your-mouth donuts.” There are trendy boutiques, gastropubs, and yoga studios sitting next to places like dusty used bookstores and greasy spoon diners.

As instructed, I call the number noted on the manifest so The Art Box Gallery owner can let me into the garage. Unlike Sam and Johnny, I’m not in a hurry to finish the day’s work. I don’t have anyone waiting for me back in the Zone. Just another long, lonely evening stretching out ahead of me, filled with dreams I don’t know if I’ll ever achieve.