I never asked to be special. I always knew that I was different from everyone around me - with their wrinkled skin and liver spots, their grey hair, and their limited mobility - and my mother did always try to explain to me that I was something of a miracle, but of course, it meant nothing to me. I had no idea what it meant to be one of the last thousand or so babies to be born by women who had the fortune not to be killed in the war - which wiped out billions- and the even greater fortune (for me) of becoming pregnant in a very specific time window, that meant the pregnancy would succeed despite the radiation exposure.

I never met another kid. There were no other boys or girls. My playmates were imaginary, or found in the pages of old books.

I knew what it meant though, when I awoke one morning to find that my penis was hard, and my bedding soiled by by white sticky emission. It meant that I was a fertile, and that made my elderly mother's face go pale.

That night, the Church came knocking. No, I don't know how they knew either.

Now I’m running through the ruins of Old Chicago, lungs burning, the cold steel of a stolen Reaver gun in my hand. Behind me, drones buzz like wasps. Ahead, the broken skyline glows under a sickly orange moon

I duck into a collapsed subway tunnel. My pulse hammers. I’m not safe. No fertile is.

There is the sound of footsteps approaching from the other end of the tunnel.