01. Night Secure

Location: Glyswing Metropolitan Area

Time: 5:36PM

Rain poured heavily against the concrete and a gray fog settled in the air. Breaths fogged as people quickly passed by each other, swerving at the edge to dodge each other's umbrellas and dirt piled above the sieve of the drain covers as the water flowed quickly down it. It was a concrete city in view, multiple flyovers passing above the roads, connecting and creating several intersections. It was inevitable, the year was 2200 and with the ever increasing surfeit amount of cars and public transport, the population has resorted to elevated roads and air travel more frequently than they had expected. Glyswing Metro City was a gray place, with most buildings resorting to either metal walls that blocked 90% of sunlight or simply concrete walls. The city was filled with energy even at the wake of the evening as the night population awoke from their obnoxious coffins and came out to celebrate the start of their day. Humans are no longer the primary intelligent population of Earth, they intermix freely with a large number of Vampires and Lycanthropes, and make up the third largest population.

It happened more than a hundred years ago, a rabid virus spread through the human species through a possible exchange with an infected wolf in the wild. This virus caused the sudden conversion of an utterly sane human into an unbridled mad hybrid of wolf and human— The Werewolf. The raving loss of sense and the spike in strength lent to the fact that the unhinged werewolves were taking over the human species, they would reign chaos in cities and infect a large number of humans. As much as the humans tried to contain the virus through isolation and several measures of precautions, shutting down all modes of travel and isolating an entire country, it was all too late and the virus spread through physical bites and blood contamination.

Vampires, who had always lived in the shadows, exposed themselves in a desperate attempt to salvage the species that mainly served as their sustenance as the Vampires lived mostly on human blood. They worked on quarantining the last remaining unaffected humans and worked on experiments after experiments in order to find a way to reverse the effects of the virus but to no avail. They were further disgruntled to discover the fact that Vampires could not ingest blood of the Werewolves as they carried an inherent smell to discourage predators from eating their flesh. Left with no other choice, they simply worked on rebuilding the human population as to how it is now— a whopping population of one million humans from the ten thousand who survived the virus. Now Vampires make up the largest population of beings on Earth and have contributed largely to the advancement of civilization and tech.

Now you must be wondering…

What about the werewolves that ran wild and almost forced the humans into extinction?

"Oh God…" He tried to stifle a yawn erupting forcibly and snapped his fingers over his open mouth, large prominent canine teeth baring open, "This must be what they call torture."

The man, Reya, was a small man with a stocky build and with a spiky burgundy mess of hair that sat on top of his head. He was fit, muscles bulging out from his arms that threatened a strain against the sleeves of his dress shirt. He was wearing a simple white dress shirt and a black tie paired with a pair of black pants. The room looked like a break room of a company but much larger and padded with soft malleable surfaces like bean bags and couches and much fewer hard surfaces for there was no table and only a counter in the corner housing a microwave and a coffee machine. They were security service workers who were readying for their shift which would begin soon. The smell of coffee wafted generously through the room and there was a general quiet drifting through. The office was situated somewhere on the edge of the city. As much as business would be good when the office is in the middle of the city, more activity around meant a sensory overload to the employees and would deter their mental welfare.

There were at least five people in the room, dressed similarly, all in a subtle business outfit. There was another door in the room aside from the obvious entrance and it had a sign on it that read, Manager.

"Are you even a Lycan?" Another man, Levi, snickered from across the room, a steaming mug in his hand as he sunk into one of the bean bags, "You are always sleepy on shift. Aren't we supposed to be nocturnal?"

Levi was an obvious silver blonde, with light thin hair that fell softly against the sides of his face. He had a fox like touch to his eyes and added a mischievous look to his features. He had the kind of a face which would often irritate people but on contrary to his features, he had a lean muscular build from years of martial art training.

"Who cares?" Reya muttered, flipping through a magazine as he laid flat on the soft couch, "I just want to take form and run through the woods when the sun is high."

"Reya simply likes to whine. We all should know it by now." A woman, Hera, interrupted, leaning against the counter with a steaming mug as well. Hera was a distinct brown breed, with a slim toned body and dark hair slicked back into a clean ponytail. Something about her strikes as the type you wouldn't want to mess with. In reality, she was quite the tease and liked to make the best of any situation.

They all had just clocked in and had to resort to coffee to slap their senses awake. If not, they were in deep trouble because their job was to use their senses. Reya was the only one in the room who had not taken coffee. The fact that they had caffeine meant that their senses would be much more aware and it would be such a pain if you were in an overwhelming environment.

"Hey," Hera walked over to the couch, kicking the couch to wake Reya up, "Get your shit together, shift starts in 20 minutes. Get yourself a coffee, anything. Just don't doze off."

"Fuck, i can't drink coffee, ma'am. They already drive me crazy with whatever they have going on. I don't need my senses stimulated with caffeine."

"What?" Levi perked up, setting his cup aside, "What exactly do they have going on?"

Levi was the latest entrant of the group, having joined four months ago.

Reya glanced at Levi, sleepily waving his hand, "What would you know? You just started. Trust me, when you stay here for long enough, you start getting clients that get gradually worse."

"That's true," Jamie piped up from the corner, grinning with her crooked teeth, "Yesterday night, I had a code red assignment. No names but movie star, tall, popular, remake of Les Miserables? Well, let me tell you, I was no Les than Miserable yesterday. I had to stand by at that high-end club, Ruby and they had an orgy party going on for four hours!"

"Woah!" Levi marveled. He was yet to take up such an assignment because he was still through his training period.

"Ugh," Both Hera and Reya groaned along with the rest in the room, turning away.

"What's wrong with that?"

"It's utter torture to our senses. They could have just gotten some humans to guard for them."

"It would be a blessing if they even treat us half of what they treat humans like."

"That's so cool though, my clients don—"

A knock sounded through the room and they all fell into silence, turning their heads to the door. A tan, dark-haired man stood at the door, taking a look around the room. With slight droopy eyes, and a physique that rivaled even the most buff member of the group, the newcomer peeked his head into the room. He was wearing the usual uniform— black tie with a white shirt and black pants. He looked down at the paper chit in his hands and then up at the occupants of the room.

"Is this Night Secure?"

The group looked at each other.

You asked what happened to the werewolves? Well, we are looking at them right now. Well, some of them at least. Years of experiments on the mad werewolves by the Vampires had given rise to mutation among the species and now the werewolves have morphed into a more advanced, intelligent version of their first ancestor, they make up the second largest population—The Lycans who had the normal appearance of a human but more advanced with heightened senses and strength and the ability to shapeshift into a wolf form.

But to this day, Lycans remain to be the more oppressed species among the main three.

Will they remain so?