"Damn" I sighed, cracking my neck to the side, "that one really sucked".

I had hit the ground with an explosive crack, my spine, legs, neck, and skull splitting and cracking like a piñata at a birthday party. My body arched and my eyes blackened over, almost as if I was possessed. Instantaneously, my body reconstructed itself and I healed, sore and a little crooked, but fine all the same. I had quickly grabbed my knife from the pool of my own blood and sheathed it, taking off running as Gerry left a spray of bullets on my heels. I knew the downtown area like the back of my hand, and I knew exactly where I had to go to hide.

Now, as I walk slowly through the underground tunnel work, heading toward one of my secret bases, I see skeletons litter the ground and a fetid rotten smell possesses the air around me. At one point, this may have bothered me, but in the world we live in now, it doesn't even faze my calm peace.

In the year 2642, I was 25 years old, living in the greatest country in world, during what was considered the height of society. I had just received my first pod and I was ready to conquer the world. We had reached Nirvana; flying cars, space communities, and solutions to natural gas issues. Life was perfect and nothing could bring us down from our high... Until it was decided that human beings shouldn't have to die.

Using our new age medicine, doctors had found a way to prevent people from dying permanently. Rather than trying to prevent death, scientists decided to simply continue an individual's life after they die. They created Regeneration Pods that grew individuals new, carbon copy clones for people who were rich enough to purchase them. Also installed, within the individual, was a chip that downloaded everything about a person; thoughts, feelings, achievements, everything. This information was sent back to pod, and the same person was recreated, right down to the exact clothes they were wearing when they died. If you wanted to change something, you just input it into the pod for the next regeneration. Everyone with pods was injected with a serum that stopped cells from aging, so the average age of individuals was thirty years old and no one was aging physically.

It was heaven for video game loving, respawn wishing nerds.

The only problem? There was a limit. One hundred lives per pay installment. Each installment after the original doubled in cost. And so the separation between classes of people grew larger.

The middle class was able to buy one or two Regeneration Pods when they first came out, and the upper class had their entire families Podded instantly. As people died of age, disease, murder, etc, their lives burned up and they approached installment two. Some could afford it, the rest died for the hundred and first time, never to be regenerated.

I was the daughter of the illustrious Gerard and Constance Buchanan . They had hands in half of the oil companies as well as Walmart. They had money for life, and they were not afraid to show it. I was their only child and I was easily the most spoiled creature on the planet. I had gone through thirty-two installments, and by the time I entered what would become my last installment, the world's population had gone from seven billion to two million.

People had become careless, life was unimportant. Flippant disregard for life had created monsters, people sky diving without parachutes and playing sports that involved actually killing each other, because everyone alive had enough money to buy lives for the rest of life.

It became a charity, buying Regeneration Pods for the under privileged. The lower class and middle class were gone now, people had either climbed up the ladder or died. Now, the upper class was divided into the Ridiculously Rich, the Atrociously Rich, and the Disgustingly Rich. The Ridiculously Rich were the most conservative, knowing that eventually they would run out of money if they weren't careful. On the other end, the Disgustingly Rich made so much money that they didn't even think about running out. It was constantly buy buy buy, die die die, and I was the best at spending money and killing myself. The new life was strange, but fun, and no one asked any questions.

Until the regenerated pod bodies developed a new disease, one that was killing people after a few months of regenerating and each regeneration had the disease, even if you tried to delete it from the pod system. An immunization retro-virus was created, injected into every citizen.

And more than half of the population died permanently, including my mother. No regeneration, no three thousandth chance at life. Nothing. The rest of the population lived, but no new installments could be purchased. Each time someone died now, a little piece was lost. Individuals were glitchy now, not quite human as they got closer to the end of their one hundred lives.

I had made my last hundred lives last around a thousand years. But don't give me too much credit, I cheat.

The medicine that killed most of the populace and did nothing to the other portion had an... adverse effect on me.

I had become a hybrid, a Mecca of new age medicine and odd genes. A sort of regeneration quality now infected my system. A gun shot to the head, knife to gut, broken spine? I healed from from all of those in under three seconds.

Since the time of Conscientious Dying period began, I had permanently died four times. The first time was when America had it's surface altering reconstruction. Nuclear bombs hidden on the North Eastern coast of America had become unstable and blew up, turning the Eastern Coast of the US into a wasteland. Everyone and everything who lived East of Colorado was obliterated, including myself.

Luckily, my father had the intelligence to move our pods underground. When I died I awoke in a sewer system similar to my current home, only much more rank and desolate.

Unluckily, my father had less than five lives, which he used up quickly, leaving me alone in a new waste land, scared for my life... Lives.

I went years after the nuclear explosion and my father's final death from illness without dying... until I got caught in a sticky situation and ran out of food and water. I wasted away slowly in the snow covered streets of Ohio. Apparently lack of nutrients means lack of healing abilities. Add that to my list of New Life Lessons.

My third death was something I deserved. I made bad connections with bad people who stabbed me in the back... quite literally. I was impaled by a massive blade through my back and into my heart. They failed to remove the stupid thing and my heart couldn't heal. I died and regenerated back to my pod, emotionally broken and scarred for life, never sure if I could trust people again.

My most recent death had occurred a month or two ago. I was hunting in the mountains and a ravenous mountain lion attacked me, decapitating me and killing me instantly. I watch my blind spots a little more closely now a days.

Now, I stand alone, keeping the location of my Pod hidden as I avoid the mini metropolis built by Brittock Calder and his renegade group of soldiers.

I was safe alone, on my own. My past deaths had proven this to me and I was not willing to challenge this.

I'm Katherine Buchanan and I survive by myself in this barbarian landscape, and I'm damn good at it.