Prologue
In a bare room made of stiff silence and brown boxes in a town named for a place that no one really believed existed, waited a man made of secrets, lies and a time hardened ramrod. His thin arms cradled a manila folder and his yellow eyes spun in his head as he stared at the picture inside.
He was close, they were close. His creatures, his creations. They'd told him you couldn't better what God had made but they'd been wrong. He had been there, mixed the drugs they'd been given, it had been his lab and no Anonymity Clause, to rule or regulation was going to keep him from his work. He'd though it had all been gone, that the petri dish had been all that had survived, all that he would ever have and he had been grateful for that. Then he had heard. He might be forced to work for other people with little dreams and little capacity for innovation, his reputation gone because of one little mistake but he still had his ways and he'd heard. And now he was here and he would take them, they were his, he'd known first and he'd get to them first.
He was close.
The silence retreated through the door as it opened and a young man entered. His black hair hung into his eyes and added wait to his stare in a way that angered the man. But he refused to stoop so low as to order the boy to cut his hair. He refused to care.
The door closed and the silence waited outside for a long pause. The boy would not ask why he had been summoned via text to speak to the man. He refused to care too.
"You're going to school," the man said handing the olive skinned youth with the absurd hair the folder he had been contemplating.
"And you are going to walk there with her," the young man took the folder gingerly, tossing the hair he knew the man hated out of his way as he looked down. He didn't look very long at the school photo, he looked at the names underneath.
"You are to befriend her and nothing more. You do not go to the house,"
The boy looked up and the silence battered at the door. The man stared at him and loathed the hair that hung between them.
"He is insane. His wife died when the girl was one and if even a third of what I've been told is true his soul died with her," the boy's gaze didn't falter, "he doesn't have a clue about you and if he did he wouldn't care. Even the boy he used to be wouldn't have cared."
With nothing left to say the two said nothing. The silence waited, ushering in the tick of a tiny black clock that sat on the counter.
"Go," the man said. The boy tossed the picture next to the clock and went. He knew when he wasn't wanted.
He knew that he wasn't wanted. Not really.