Caulder
Legacy Name: Caulder

Curse the man. Curse his money. Curse his lackeys. Curse his organization. Curse that damn dog that destroyed his favorite pair of shoes. Caulder was just a needle-width away from cursing the earth and all that was in it, from the richest man to the tiniest grain of sand. It frustrated him even more that the cause of his appalling and immature anger was due to his own damn carelessness to begin with. He'd have to have been as blind as a bat to screw up this badly.

Caulder, you idiot! He thought to himself as he rounded the corner and continued running down the sidewalk. It was late, nearly midnight, but the normally quiet district of the city was rampant with the sounds of footsteps, yelling, and what appeared to be a bullet or four, fired through a silencer and missing him by tiny distances each time. A few other times, he had tripped on small stones and cracks on the ground, and nearly fallen down. The sidewalk would have been his deathbed, but he wasn't going to die today, no sir! The undead would have to crawl up through the surface of the earth and drag him down to hell themselves before he'd wind up there.

Though even with such a mindset, he couldn't deny that a thought did occur to him a few times in the past half-hour: what if he did end up in the afterlife today? Or specifically, this night? He was growing awfully tired, and soon he would run out of places to run to and wind up in a dead end of an alley, à la cliché movie chase scenes. And all because he got a little greedy and curious.

He was coming up Rosemary Street, and he knew there was a certain alleyway - not dead ended - that lead into the backyard of several small nearby establishments. There was nothing there at the back, but there was a scaffolding that seemed to have a permanent place by a building, and the roof seemed like the best place to be right now. He could only hope the three gun-wielding brutes tailing him would be high on their adrenaline enough to ignore the scaffolding and continue running and searching for him. Odd they had stopped shooting, he noticed. Perhaps only one was armed.

The alleyway came up, and he ran through. In a heartbeat he was out at the back, and a sharp turn to his right brought him to a dark corner and scaffolding, conveniently shadowed by the building it was attached to, and also less obvious than the other alleyway that led out to another street. Caulder had used it to get onto the roof several times by now, but this was the first time it was to escape.

His panic made it a little difficult to get his feet on the spaces and bars of the structure, but he was fortunate the men chasing him were fairly slow. He had gotten to the top of the scaffolding and on the roof when he heard his pursuers angrily yelling at each other as they entered the backyard.

"Where's the kid?" Demanded one.

"The hell I know!" Answered another.

"Would you guys shut up?" Snapped the last, and they ran - no, jogged, out onto the next street.

From the roof, behind a small fixture that looked like a vent, Caulder watched them. He was breathing heavily, he could feel his legs screaming for rest, but he was a little surprised, frankly. How stupid could those guys really be?

He sighed, sunk down, and leaned against the smoothest portion of the vent. Suddenly, he felt sleepy. He was tempted to shut his eyes right there and then, get a few hours of rest, and just before the sun rose be up and gone. But was that really a good idea? What if the three stooges realized he was up there? He doubted they'd continue the pursuit at this point, but still, it was a possibility. Caulder ran a hand over his hair, then clenched his fist and threw it down against the surface of the roof. Good thing it was cement. "This better have been worth it," he grumbled, and dug through the inner pockets of his leather jacket. He could feel his spoils of the day: a watch, some money, a ring, and most importantly, a flash drive. He took the storage device out and examined it, though he could barely make out an details with barely any light at all.

The moment that started all this replayed in his head as he held the object: several men, quite obviously a gang or group or organization, had been inside a bar the same time he had been. He was there for a drink, that was all, until he foresaw the moment that flash drive would be put on a table and a moment, just a very brief moment, no eyes would be on it. He thought he could pull it off. He usually did. But just a millisecond too slow, and one of the men realized that someone had taken it, and he deduced that it had been the jacket-wearing fellow making his way out of the bar. That's when the chase began. Thinking about it now, though, not everyone had come out to chase him. One or two had stayed.

No matter. It didn't seem important, anyway, because he had the flash drive with him and the first chance he had he would check to see what was on it. If it was something interesting and valuable, then he could sell it. The thought excited him, and he could just imagine the money he could get from it. But if it was nothing, then he'd just throw it away. How likely was that, though, when he had bullets fired at him because of his snaky hands?

Stuffing the little item back into his pocket, he shifted his position so he was reclined, and closed his eyes. He wanted to sleep, and he was determined to get it, when he sensed something. He tried to ignore it at first, and turned his face away from the source, but it was calling out to him like a silent voice. Sometimes, he didn't know whether to think of it as a blessing or a curse, but one thing was certain: in the end, he always give in.

Caulder opened his eyes and straightened up. Looking to his right, he could practically see it happen, even though it would clearly be impossible. Somewhere nearby, back on the ground, a man would drop his cellphone. Caulder didn't know why, but the man wouldn't realize, and move on. No eyes would be seeing the cellphone, not their peripheral vision, not even unconsciously as they looked at something else. No one would be aware of it, except for him. But it hadn't happened yet. It was like a vision, and he saw it, though to onlookers he would simply be staring into space. He didn't remember when it had first began, but he knew it took him awhile to realize what was happening, and just what conditions needed to be met for it to happen. Put simply, if no one at that moment would see it, then he could see it, so long as it was nearby. And of course, his blessing-slash-curse gave him the privilege of knowing a few minutes beforehand. How many, he often wasn't sure. He could just tell when it would happen.

The vision had ended, and he was now staring into the dark space before him. Caulder sighed. "That's a nice phone," he whispered, and pulled himself up on his feet. Slowly and quietly, he got down from the roof, and made his way to the west of the town. Sleep could wait.

Ego