Chapter One

An alarm went off. Metal doors slammed behind a young man who thought his name was Maksim. And he had five minutes to find something, anything worth for the taking.

The hallways were dark, but to him they weren't dark enough. His deep eyes were used to searching in lightless places. His ears where used to the repetitive, ear piercing alarms and his heart was as used to the pounding as his hands were to sweaty palms.

Life felt like nothing more than a game. It didn't have a meaning. Maksim didn't know who he was or where. He had nothing; He only knew what he had to do to survive.

Sirens sounded from streets away. Four minutes remained as clocks on the walls ticked.

Maksim grabbed whatever food lied on the shelves and shoved them into his bag. The siren grew louder. Heavy footsteps raced through the halls from where he had come from.

Two police scurried to the front of the doors. Any minute now and they'd burst in.

When they did, Maksim was nowhere in a wondering eyes sight.

"He's at it again," the head police mumbled.

Their flashlights wouldn't help them now.

Dawn approached when Maksim found himself farther away, sitting by a dumpster in an alley way. His shaky hands were picking at the things he had stolen. They wouldn't last him forever, but they'd be enough for now.

He sat alone with a familiar city stray he named Oscar. He considered this broad, yellow eyed tabby cat his friend because he never had anything bad to say to him. Oscar would meow for food once in a while, or keep him a little warmer on cold nights.

Maksim pet Oscar as his clear blue eyes darted around the brick walls surrounding him. He hated the thought he still had no idea where he was. He was homeless, he was alone, and he knew that. Yet he was free and in a way trapped all at the same time.

Maksim shamefully came to realize he wasn't anything like the people around him. The feverishly people who darted from place to place carrying money and things he could never have. Everyone he saw had a destination. They had somewhere to be in a certain time at a certain place. Whether it was school, work, kids to tend to, something.

Maksim once had a destination but right now he couldn't remember where. He certainly couldn't remember why.

His lanky legs strolled around the city that day, observing things, searching for answers. He wanted to know what it meant to be here of all places. He wanted to know exactly what this world was made of.

My past, where is it? Why is everything so unfamiliar to him? Something solid, almost unmovable stood in the way of blocking all his memories and everything he ever knew.

From time to time he'd see newspapers flying around. A couple of times he'd pick them up, trying to read whatever were printed on the front cover.

Mysterious disappearing thief on the loose said the words he could barely read.

Dark clouds started to form in the sky so rapidly. People would start to vanish as they got to their homes or into buildings to hide from the skies tears. Maksim had an alley way he usually kept sheltered in.

He started to feel heavy as he walked through the crowds to his usual spot. The clouds above him made such a dense pressure on his shoulders. His head started to pound and legs became wobbly. Colors and edges started to clash with one another as nothing anymore was making sense.

That's when he noticed someone was following him, but whenever he turned he could only see a shadow. As soon as he got to his alley way, this shadow that followed him, about as broad and as tall, caught up.

"I keep seein' you kid, what you up too?" the shadow sneered. He slammed Maksim into a wall in the dark alley way.

Maksim didn't fight back. He remained frozen, trying to see the man's face.

The man grabbed Maksim's bag away.

"I'll be taking this," he snarled.

Maksim moved not even an inch when the man threw a punch at him. With every blow to the head, Maksim started to see again. He started to remember, so he couldn't fight back. He didn't want too. He simply wanted to see.

"Damn kid!" the man shouted to him in slurs.

A high pitched ringing sounded, and suddenly Maksim once again was not on earth.

Maksim opened his eyes. Through them he saw nothing but grey. Ashes were falling to an everlasting cold, stale ground he stood on.

The sweetest voice whispered to him, paining him.

A cold hand with the weight of a feather gently touched his hard shoulder. With that he couldn't speak.

And then the graceful smoke that made the ashes appeared, and the fuzzy edges of a dark building in dense fog away from him.

Maksim's face grew hard and stiff as he stared into its never ending nothing.

"Remember your promise?" the tender voice asked, and with that everything turned black.

Next thing he knew, he could feel again. His back was lying on the cement ground in the alley way.

Damn it.

A woman shrieked as heavy rain fallen over Maksim's mangled body. Through her ingenuous eyes she must have thought he was dead.

Amongst the falling rain sirens sounded again, but not the ones he was used too. The rain and sirens muffled together until he couldn't hear a thing again.

He awoke on a bed with white sheets in a large room. His body was so sore he felt like he could barely move.

"You been asleep for a long time," a scratchy voice said.

Maksim turned his head to a dark older man, sitting on another bed a ways away from him.

"What is this place?" Maksim moaned.

"The shelter," the man huffed. He practically was wearing rags. "Unless you have a home."

"No," Maksim replied hazily as he looked out the window.

"You look too young to be here," the old man noticed. "Don't you have a family somewhere?"

Suddenly there came knocking at the door. Maksim looked up. It was the head police officer. The one he'd been running from since he appeared here.

The police came striding in his sharp uniform. "I see you've awoken," he said rather softly in spite of his sharp face.

"Yeah," Maksim nodded his head.

"Can you tell me a few things?" the police asked, now standing across from Maksim holding a pen and paper. His eyes narrowed suspiciously at him.

"I'll tell you what I know," Maksim replied solemnly.

"Can you give me your name?" the police asked.

"Maksim," he replied after hesitating.

"Last name?"

Maksim's eyes darted around, looking for something he could use as a last name.

"Salvation," Maksim said as his eyes rested on a Salvation Army poster on the grimy walls.

"Phone number, home adress," the police went on.

"I don't have one," Maksim sighed.

"Birthday?"

Maksim shrugged his shoulders.

"I'll look up your records Mr…Salvation?" the police sighed, looking suspiciously at the poster. "Looks like you're pretty out of it."

Maksim rested his head back on his pillow. He looked a little harder at the policeman before he walked out the room.

"You hungry?" the homeless man asked, stretching out his arms. "Plenty of beans here, and soups. Showers are sometimes an option. I bet you need one. Looks like you've been through hell and back."

Maksim closed his eyes. "I've been to hell," he said softly.

"Hell, I'm still there," the man chuckled.

Maksim opened his eyes again. He looked to the man, watching him intently as if gaping into his soul.

"You can judge me," the man mumbled. "I've made the wrong choices, suppose that's how I've ended up here. "As long as I ain't in prison."

Maksim looked away from him. He closed his eyes again.

"I'll let you sleep" the man said. "But I want to know how you got here when you wake up."