A monk, in a flowing brown hooded robe, sprinted along the crowded street and lunged for an opening around a corner of a building. As he turned, his foot hit a pile of rotting rags and lost all traction. His foot kicked out in the opposite direction of the turn and he stumbled to all fours. Gaining his balance again, the monk jerked his head over his shoulder as he scrambled around the corner. The crowds moved like a river unaffected by a tumbling pebble. The monk, catching his breath, slowed to a brisk walk but continued to periodically peer over his shoulder as he made his way toward the docks. As his gaze was fixed on the street behind him, he ran chest first into a wall of a man. Startled, the monk stumbled back, but the large man lunged forward and seized the monk in an iron grip.

The man wrestled the monk under control and growled, "I don’t know what is more absurd, the fact that you thought you could hide from us or that you thought you could run." His face grinned and he gave a menacing howl that left anyone hearing it thinking of anything but amusement.

The crowd continued its relentless and ambivalent press onward around the two men. The monk's face was set in granite as he met the man's eyes. "Did Nefrum send you to get me?"

"Are you surprised he did? It's nothing personal, but you could be a problem and we don’t want that."

"I just wanted to be left alone, Zerick. That’s all! Alone!" The monk spat out.

The man slowly walked the monk away from the street towards a warehouse. As they got closer, a police officer walked along the street toward them. The monk shouted, "Officer!" The officer stopped, looked over at them, and gave a slight grin. "Caught another one, Zerick?"

"You know how it is. They think they can get away… it never works out." Zerick turned to shake the officers hand when the monk slammed his knee into the side of Zerick's thigh. The larger man cried out in surprise and pain as he jolted away from the strike. Surprisingly he still had a grip on the monk despite the painful attack. The monk seamlessly hammer-fisted Zerick's forearm right at the point below the elbow. Zerick's fingers gasped open as his eyes winced in pain. The monk spun away from the grasping officer and slipped into the crowd.

Zerick massaged his forearm by clenching and unclenching his hand. He spun to the officer and placed an arm around his shoulder. "There is a beer in it for you if you help me get this little shit."

"Deal." The officer responded while drawing his sidearm.

Both men dove into the crowd and began their pursuit.

…

The monk had made it a few blocks closer to the docks when he decided to duck into an alleyway. He slowed his pace and began looking at each sign above every door. The monk's gaze stopped on one sign about half way down the alley. It read, "Dockmaster's Office." The monk marched straight up to the door and promptly knelt before the security terminal. He reached into the front of his robe and withdrew an electromagnetic disruptor. Placing it on the panel, he activated the device with a tap on his wrist watch. The security panel fizzled and then went dark. The monk retrieved his device and then shouldered the door open. The office sported no decorations or clutter, and only had a single holo frame with family pictures shuffling through their preset rotation. The slight luminescence of the holo frame's photos revealed a computer station neatly tucked into the corner.

The monk approached the computer terminal and activated it. As the display shuttered into existence a password prompt jumped to life before the monk. The monk took a heartbeat to observe the password protected display before raising his watch to eye level. He typed a few commands onto the face of his watch then looked up at the display. Nothing had happened. Unperturbed, he typed a few more commands into the watch. This time, the display began to melt like wax over a flame to reveal a digital desktop cluttered with various files and applications. The monk reached out with his hand and selected the file marked, "Ships for departure".

…

Zerick and the officer turned a corner and looked down the street. The officer had his hand to his earlobe and was nodding to an unheard voice. "You are sure he turned down that alley?... Okay, thank you for the help."

Zerick glanced toward the officer. "Well did your boys at the station get anything on the security cameras?"

"Yeah, they say the street cam caught him heading down this alley. It is a dead end alley so he will have to come back this way."

Zerick nodded thoughtfully. "We can position ourselves on either side of the alley and wait for him to come out."

The officer shook his head in agreement and both men moved to the alleyway. Just as they took their first steps, the monk sprinted from the alley. His brown hooded figure slipping between people like wind through leaves. Surprised, the two men paused for only a second before racing after him.

Though the monk was fast and had surprised the two men, he was no match for their speed once they committed to the chase. Within two blocks they had closed the distance with the monk to an arm's length. Zerick lunged forward and tackled the monk to the ground. While laying on him, Zerick proceeded to punch the monk with his meaty fists until he stopped struggling. Wheezing with effort, the officer stumbled up to Zerick. "We got him."

The sight on the street was bizarre with two men laying on the ground and one of them being in a monks robes nonetheless. The picture was punctuated by the police officer gasping for breath with his hands on his knees. In the background a rusty grey ship was launching into space from the docking platform. The buildings surrounding the three men rattled as the ship inched up into the air.

Zeirck looked up at the officer and grinned. "At least he made it fun for us. I hate when it's too easy." Zerick looked over to the unconscious figure and pulled the monks hood from his head. "Shit!" Zerick exclaimed. "It's not him… damn it… he must have switched with someone."

The officer slapped his hand against his thigh. "Where could he be then? Were we observing the wrong guy go into the alley on security cameras or did he make the switch after he went into the alley?"

"It doesn’t matter now." Zerick growled. "He could be anywhere by now. Let's go look over the security video and see if we can find a clue to where he may have gone."

…

A medium sized grey ship lazily made its way out of orbit. To the untrained eye it looked as if it wasn’t moving even though the engines were obviously engaged. It looked as if Earth's pull would be too much for the modest ship to break its grasp. The only evidence of its movement was its slowly diminishing size. After a number of seconds, the subtle etchings of rust on its hull were indistinguishable as it continued its headway into space. There was not a sound as the ship's engines glowed bright blue and released a gigantic burst of propulsion. It was clear of Earth.

The monk, now in simple street clothes, sat before a blue digital display and typed with his fingers on a keyboard made of light. His name was Preston Coretel. He stopped for a second to stroke his beard and twirl his fingers through his wavy brown hair. He stood and took two paces to the metal wall of the compartment and then turned around and took four paces to the other wall. He repeated this over and over until he finally came to a stop at the farthest wall from his work station. Bending slightly at the waist he peered through the window in the airlock. The stars swirled outside as the ship cut through the expanse of space. Earth was just a speck.

The screen he had abandoned showed a number of lines of text that read,

"I have swept away your wrongdoing, as wind sweeps a cloud from the sky:

I have cleared you of your sins, as the sun clears the morning mist.

I have rescued you; come back to Me." -Isaiah 44:22 (Old Testament passage from the Bible and a foundational text to the Christian faith)."

Beneath the text and his note was a bolded question.

"Is there actually redemption, even for the worst of us?"

Preston stood up straight and continued to pace.