Part One, Son of the City.

David hummed to himself as he strolled down the darkened street. There weren't very many people willing to go out after sunset, so the street was utterly deserted. He chuckled. Most of the city's inhabitants still regarded the darkness with a superstitious dread, especially the older ones, who remembered the days before the barrier. Yet even though the city had been safe for nearly two decades now, most of David's generation feared the dark. But David wasn't worried. There was nothing worse lurking in the shadows than the occasional hopeful mugger, and not many of those, since victims were rare after sunset.

David's musings on the safety of city life were interrupted by the soft sound of voices. Curious about who else would be out at this hour without fear, he peered down a dim alley, lit only by the faint back-glow from the barrier lights. Three indistinct figures stood there. One of them seemed to be wearing a light-colored cape of some kind, the paleness gleaming dimly in the gloom. The other two were familiar forms, dramatically dressed in black trench coats and attempting to look tougher than they were, the pair of would-be hoodlums were a sight David had seen often enough. They prided themselves on fearing nothing, not even the darkness. They were dangerous only to the ignorant, because they were cowards at heart. Too afraid for a fair fight, they would lure people to wherever their current lair was, and the third member of their little gang would attack the very outnumbered victim from behind.

David sighed and rolled his eyes, then turned down the alley to confront the pair. Whoever the cloaked stranger was, David couldn't just walk by and let him be assaulted. He cleared his throat as he approached, and the stranger turned around. He was short, fair-skinned and dark-haired, and looked to be in his late teens or early twenties, around the same age as David himself.

"Excuse me, I hate to interrupt, but did you know that these two are con artists?"

Alek, the "leader" of the "gang" made a strangled sound of protest at this, and Mike, his partner in crime, said "Hey!"

The stranger glanced from the pair to David and back again. "Ah. I see. Thank you." There was a look on his face that was almost like disappointment, but more, perhaps, like resignation. "I take it then that these gentleman do not actually know a young woman with unusually orange hair and green eyes?"

David shook his head. "Anybody they know I'd probably know too, and while I know a couple of redheads, none of them are what I'd call 'unusually' orange."

"I see. Then I shall be on my way." He gave a little half bow, then walked past David towards the street.

As the stranger passed, David suppressed a gasp of surprise. Up close it was plain that he was not wearing a cloak. Instead the paleness that fell from shoulders to heels was revealed as a pair of wings, folded close to his back. A genie! David thought in shock. I thought the major genies had all died years ago! It was common enough to see somebody with a minor gene-mod. Weird hair colors, funny eyes, minor cosmetics that somebody, a couple of generations back, had thought ought to become a family trait. And you got the invisible ones, those were common as dirt. Better hearing, higher strength, things like that. David himself had the very common low-light eyesight mod. He'd inherited it from his mother, whose own mother had been the one to get the mod, back when that kind of thing was still possible. But the flashy ones hadn't often proved survivable in the chaos following the collapse of the old civilization. And he'd never even heard of somebody with wings before.

He was snapped out of his shock by a pointed throat-clearing.

"What did you go and do that for?" Alek gave him a glare that was meant to be intimidating. David just rolled his eyes.

"I'm not going to just walk by and let you mug some stranger."

"Why do you care? You don't know anything about him."

"Nah, but I know plenty about you." David rested his hand on the mace-gun strapped to his belt. It was meant for other uses, but it would incapacitate a plain old human being just fine. "I don't feel like arguing about it."

Alek's eyes fell to his own belt gun, while Mike bristled ineffectually. But neither of them made any move to advance. David turned away and walked out of the alley. "You don't mess with us!" called Mike after him. "You'll regret it!"

David just rolled his eyes again. He'd be sure to watch his back for the next few days, but he wasn't afraid of that pair, nor of their even less courageous partner in crime, Andy. If they couldn't sneak up and bash him from behind without conflict, they weren't going to do anything.

He continued on his way, humming again. There was rumors of a darkrave going on somewhere nearby, and he rather hoped he could find the illicit dance party before it got shut down.