[Center][IMG]http://rs1278.pbsrc.com/albums/y517/TheDrakeKnight/Mobile%20Uploads/image_zpsfdcbc7a8.jpg~320x480?t=1401230320[/IMG]
[B]Lightning in a Bottle[/B]
[I]"Sometimes things have to go wrong in order to go right." -Sherrilyn Kenyon[/I][/Center]
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[B]The Historical District, Empire City
3:30 PM[/B]

Huffing: The sound of a man pressing his legs down on a bike's pedals like a frenzied mother stomping out a cockroach. With sweat glueing his T-Shirt to his back, a muscular bike courier wipes his left hand over his shortly cut hair and then scrubs the moisture onto the front of his shirt. Placing his hand back onto the handlebar, he tightened his grip before arching his back and crouching forward and pumping his legs even faster.

[I]Almost there,[/I] he'd thought to himself as he rode his back down the sidewalks of Empire City.
[Center][B]*******[/B][/Center]
[B]Empire City
12:45 PM[/B]

"Is it possible to request a specific courier?" asked a man over the phone, a raspy voice delivering the question. "Well, I understand the need for privacy, but there is only one that I trust. Is Cole Macgrath available?"
[Center][B]*******[/B][/Center]
[B]The Historical District, Empire City
3:35 PM[/B]

He'd been biking since One o'clock.

Cole Macgrath felt his calves stiffen as he swept his left leg across the pavement that made up Empire City's sidewalks. Sweat was saturating his shirt and his pants, to the point where everything in his pockets felt like an anvil tugging on his thighs. With a small box in his grasp, Cole lumbered towards a short set of stairs.

Three steps and a wooden door were all that stood between him and a finished job. It was almost fateful that he paused and looked up at the door because that was the moment that fundamentally changed his life.

Without any warning, Cole felt his clothes rip apart and a wall of kinetic force rammed right through his body, traveling as a wall of sudden deafness and destruction. As soon as it hit, Cole was thrown thirty feet through the air, arcing far away from the doorstep he'd been in front of, instead placed across a street that had been busy seconds before.

Though no one in the vicinity could possibly hear them, car alarms were ringing out like dogs barking at their neighbor. Bikers were instantly flipped on their sides and cars ceased to function momentarily as their motors were assaulted by what may as well have been the wrath of god.

Farther away from the blast zone, countless accidents and instant tragedies spawned. The area closest to the blast zone was instantly without power and gas lines were ruptured. Mighty towers were toppled by forces that they never could have been prepared for.

Where there wasn't the sound of alarms or mechanical alerts, the chaos caused by the tragedy was made just as loud by the sound of gunshots and cries of terror.

Away from the blast zone, pangs of distress were still felt. The city's tallest building, Abstergo Tower quickly evacuated it's publicly designated sections while locking down its private sectors. Criminals took advantage of the carnage by raiding establishments that were usually well-protected like banks with many policemen were in hiding, injured, or otherwise occupied. At the center of it all lay Cole Macgrath's body, still and cold.