Estranged

2015 | Science Fiction/Fantasy

Kalei hates touching, especially if it is a hug. After all, it was a hug that killed her mother.

Kalei was born and raised in Celan, the first city to have an Estranged problem. It was seventeen years ago when they appeared, and the citizens learned the hard truth: that it only takes a bit of skin-on-skin contact to turn their loved ones into corpses, or Estranged. No one really knows why some people turn and some people die, they just know that anyone touched is gone.

And Kalei wants them to stay gone. But, being a police officer in the city, she witnesses every day the damage done by Estranged. Seeking the high they get from every piece of skin they touch, the Estranged crush the lives of Celan's citizens with alarming ease.

They had killed her mother for a high, and now Kalei wants to wipe them out of existence before they can seek another. But she can't. Only the Wardens are allowed to fight the Estranged, they are the only ones equipped to do so. And Kalei had made a promise to stay out of the fight until she is inducted into their ranks.

But will they accept her now that she has turned Estranged?

Alex Fedyr (Author)