In Idaho Falls, three children who people claimed to have seen living in the city’s sewer system over the years come to the surface. They are filthy and blind, feeling their way along the ground until they reach a seating area outside a coffee shop. Here they ransack bins and steal bags and rucksacks, ripping them apart and chewing on leather and suede. As they chew, two police officers approach, hands held out and their voices calm and soft. The children fall to the ground and scream as wings extrude from their backs. They take flight, then circle around as one and attack one of the police officers. He suffers severe lacerations to his face and hands from their curled, filthy claws. His body-cam captures the entire event.

Several other strange incidents and sightings take place across the north-east United States, resulting in a dozen deaths and more disappearances. Social media catches fire with footage and eyewitness accounts. Theories range from terrorist incidents to meteor strikes, animal attacks to mass hallucinations.

As the Kin slowly begin to reveal themselves to a world much smaller than the one they hid away from so long ago, a shimmer of quiet panic is seeded amongst the human population.

* * *

Thorn washes himself in the restroom of a Greyhound station. His blood is still high, but he’s already admonishing himself for his foolish display. He’s not sure how many people he killed—three? four?—but he knows for sure he’ll feature on the TV and internet news for his antics. And it’s not as if he isn’t easy to recognise.

Outside in the depot he practises the skills he’s become used to for many years. He wisps through the waiting area like a ghost, moving from shadow to shadow, slipping a child’s jacket from the back of a chair and pulling it on, picking up a baseball cap from atop a suitcase, and by the time he’s sat on the floor with his back against the wall, close to a family but not so close that they’ll question him, he is a child waiting for a bus. He is used to travelling, but usually does so only by night, and often trusting his own feet over human transport. Now, he is carried by an urgency that pulses at the back of his mind, sharpening his senses and preparing him for his journey. There isn’t far to go. He’s already looked up Longford on a map, and he reckons he can make it there within eight hours.