Crimson
Chapter 0
The first thing I remember was the cross. I don't know how I knew it was a cross. I mean this was my actual first memory. No, not my first solid, complete memory. My actual first memory. There was nothing in my mind before this. But let me get back to the tale. It was a cross, a big gold cross. My vision was a little hazy. Everything was pitch-black, except for the cross and a few candles spread around the room. I could hear some whispering. Just a few hushed voices speaking a few feet behind me. I couldn't understand what they were saying, so I tried to turn around and face them. But I couldn't, I was stuck. I squirmed around a little. But there was something holding me. And it burned. I started to cry because it really hurt. I mean it really burned. I was sure that I was trapped in a fire. The voices became silent. I heard bird wings flapping nearby. And once again I had no idea how I knew they were bird wings, or how I knew what a bird was. But they were definitely bird wings. I could hear the bird wings fading into the distance, and the fire died out, and I stopped crying. I felt hands reach out and grab me. I started to cry again. I heard a voice, echoing, yet calming.
"Child of Omega," It said, "Burn through the darkness of the enemy."
The hands dropped me and I fell into a liquid. I sunk down into this liquid and stayed there for a while. Somehow I could breathe. I was still in the darkness. But I was less scared than I was while I was near the cross. Much time passed. Or at least that's what it felt like. It could have been years, or it could've been minutes. I had no idea. But overtime, short or long, I started to get the feeling that walls were closing in on me. Eventually the liquid drained out through somewhere. And a ray of light broke into the surface, and I heard noise again. Then, I screamed.
Chapter 1
I screamed because I was terrified. I screamed because I was lost. I screamed because I just woke up from a nightmare. You know how when you wake up from a nightmare you're still scared, because of the nightmare, but a little less because you know you're in your bed? Well I was still just as terrified, and just as lost. I had no idea where I was. I looked around and, to my horror, saw another cross. I was immediately even more scared than before. I had the feeling it would happen again. But then I saw the rest of the room. It wasn't dark, in fact it was light. There was a window made of colorful glass. It showed a man walking through a river. The man had a ring around his head, a staff in his hand and a baby on his shoulders.
Then a sudden impulse hit me. And I screamed, again. But this time a word came out of my mouth. I knew the word and I actually understood it. The word was mom. I knew that a mom was a woman who you loved. A mom protected you. She was bigger than you. I knew that everyone had one. I looked around the room, looking for my mom, but all I saw was more colorful glass, and a bunch of beds with little children like me in them. I decided to get out of my bed and go look for my mom I walked through a doorway into another room. This room was even brighter and had even more colorful glass. There were a lot of benches all up and over the place facing a platform with a stone table on it.
"That's the altar, Christopher." a friendly voice said.
I turned around, startled, and saw a tall man wearing all black except for a tiny white square on his neck. This man was different from me. I didn't know what it was though.
"You're different." I said.
The man laughed and nodded.
"In more ways than you know." he said.
I was very confused. What did this man find so humorous? Who was he? Where was I? What is an altar? Why were there so many benches? What was different about this man?
"Wash your hands, Christopher. It's time for breakfast." he said.
I just continued to stare at him, not knowing what he wanted me to do, how to do it, or what breakfast was. Before I go on I want to remind you that I was little. Six years old, I later learned. But most six-year olds at least know what breakfast was. But I wasn't most six-year olds. I had no memory before the dream I had. I wasn't completely sure it was a dream. Maybe the crack of light opened up into this strange place. Maybe it was a memory. I didn't know, but that was all that I could remember.
The man put his hand to my back and walked me into a new room. Apparently this room was called the bathroom. And I was supposed to wash my hands in something called a sink. Breakfast was where you put this stuff called food in your mouth at the time of day known as morning. Me explaining all this stuff is probably boring you so I'm going to skip the tutorial to how the world works. Fast forward a week. I'm sitting in a pew-the building is a church if you hadn't guessed, and the man is a priest who takes in orphans. His name is father Tom-and I realized I had no idea how I got here.
"Father Tom," I said, "Did you know my parents?"
Father Tom crouched down next to me.
"I did." he said, "They were wonderful people."
"Where are they? Why am I here?" I asked.
"Christopher, I'm very sorry that you don't remember, and even more sorry about the truth. The fact of the matter is, your parents died. They were murdered. And I found you crying outside your family's apartment the next morning. I walked inside and saw…I saw what had happened the night before. I informed the police and took you in."
"Oh." I said.
A tear rolled down my cheek and I ran into the bathroom and started bawling. Father Tom had taught me about the God that people worship. He had taught me that he was all-knowing and all-good. He had told me that he was the most perfect being in the world. I wondered why he would let something like this happen, but was too scared to ask. I held my hands to my face as I cried and then slowly pulled them away. I looked at my hands. I knew what was different about Father Tom. He was black.
Chapter 2
Fast forward four years. I was going to school now at Crispus Attucks Elementary School in Southern Chicago. A lot had happened in those four years, but the most important thing was that I could write in cursive now. And that actually wasn't even that important. It was my tenth birthday. Well not really. Father Tom didn't know my actual birthday so he counted my birthday as the day he took me in, a few weeks before my first memory. I had celebrated birthdays with a few kids in my school. I had seen their parents, and seen how happy they were together. I usually wasn't in much of a celebrating mood after that part.
When I got back to the Church I went into the children's bedroom and there were signs and banners hung up. In the middle of the room Father Tom and all the other kids stood around a table with a cake that had ten candles on it. I was surprised that they were making a big deal out of it, because usually they just celebrated all the "birthdays" of the month on one day. But not with my tenth for some reason. We sang happy birthday, ate cake, and I got a few cards. Same old same old.
That night I was in the kitchen with Father Tom eating a piece of cake when he asked if I had liked this birthday celebration more than the others, more than the monthly celebrations. He asked if I liked it as much as I liked the parties of my few friends.
"Well," I said, "I usually enjoy their parties until I see them with their parents."
"I'm sorry." He said.
I felt bad because I knew I had put him in an uncomfortable situation, but I also wanted to keep going because I knew I had put this conversation off long enough.
"I mean they don't even realize how lucky they are. They just act like it's a completely normal thing. To have parents. Living parents. Parents that can comfort them that they can go to when they're sad. They completely take advantage of the fact that their parents weren't murdered! They take advantage of the fact that they actually have a mother and father!" I said with rising anger.
"Christopher, we all have a father that will never die."
"That isn't what I meant! I mean an actual father! Not just some man in the sky who lets a thug murder your parents!"
Father Tom was silent. I grabbed my hoodie and started walking towards the door. He put his hand on my shoulder and tried to stop me from leaving but I shook him off. I ran. I ran until I was in an unfamiliar neighborhood, panting and crying in an alleyway. Father Tom had followed me and once again he put his hand on my shoulder. It must've looked a little suspicious to anyone walking by; a crying little boy and a priest standing over him with his hand on his shoulder in a dark alleyway. But I was thinking about that right now, all I was thinking about was my mom. I wondered what she had looked like, what she had done to make whoever killed her do it.
"I think it's time I tell you something." Father Tom said.
"What?!" I said with tears in my eyes, "Are you gonna tell me about the Omega, the voice, the bird? Are you gonna tell me who I am. I know that wasn't a dream. I know it was a memory!"
Once again Father Tom was silent. Instead he just walked out of the alleyway and motioned for me to follow him. We walked four blocks up, two left, and one more up. We were standing outside an apartment complex. A nice one, with a doorman and all. It must've been about six in the morning by now.
"Hi, Paul." Father Tom said as we approached the doorman.
"Hello, Father," Paul said, "What are you-"
Paul stopped short when he looked down at me. He must've been the doorman when my family lived here because he seemed to understand what was going on. Father Tom and I walked inside and into an elevator. He pressed the button for the fifth floor and the elevator began to ascend. The doors opened with a quiet ding. We walked down the hall to room 533. He opened the door with a key he had. I walked in and felt a sense of familiarity, but didn't actually remember anything. I guess I did have a life before this, I thought silently. He stood in a corner and watched me as I slowly made my way around the room. I sat down on the couch, closed my eyes, and tried to remember something, anything. I thought back to the first memory. Thought me sitting here with my eyes closed reminded me of being there in the darkness. I opened my eyes again and on the wall across the room directly in front of me sat a white cross. My heart skipped a beat and I became very scared. I jumped off the couch. Father Tom started to back up even deeper into the corner. He had a terrified look on his face. I knew why I was scared, but why was he?
Chapter 3
Suddenly I realized why he was scared. The couch that I had just been sitting on was on fire. For some reason I was no longer scared. Father Tom frantically pulled me away from the fire. I pressed my hands against the wall behind me and the wall paper started to burn. We ran for the door but it was jammed. This room was beginning to engulf itself in flames. So we ran into the next room of the apartment. There was a cabinet in this room with pictures on it. I looked for myself in them, but couldn't find any. We saw the flames burn higher in the other room. They were still bloodstains on the walls in this room, and in the kitchen next to us. I started to doubt he reported this to the police. I started to doubt that this was my family. I started to believe that he had killed this family…and I was next.
"Father," I said, "this isn't my room!"
"What?" He said, "Of course it is. I knew your family and you. I had visited you here before. Don't you remember?"
"No. You know I don't remember. What did you do to me? What did you do to this family!?"
Everything in this apartment seemed to have been left just as it was before. I could see that there was still a kettle on the stove. I only noticed this because it started to whistle. There were some dead flowers in a vase that caught on fire, even though they were far from the burning room. Smoke was thinning out the oxygen in the room, and the flames from the next room caught the ceiling and the carpet in this room. Father Tom, or whoever he really was, ran into the kitchen to escape the flames. But I stayed where I was and let the flames climb onto my hands. They calmed me. I felt safe. Safe from this monster that killed this family. Safe from the man that wanted to kill me. The man grabbed the kettle and threw the water at me. He threw boiling water at me. All the faith I still held in this man disappeared with that. I climbed up on a chair to get to his height and punched as hard as my flaming ten year old hand could punch. He stumbled back towards the sink to extinguish his face.
While he was distracted by his burning face I climbed out the window to the fire escape. I climbed down the ladder and ran as fast as I could. The air pushing against me put out the flames that had destroyed the bottom of my sleeves. I noticed that my hands were not burned. But then I continued to run. I ran through the alleyways of Chicago, afraid to show my face on the main roads. After what seemed like an hour someone grabbed me. Not in a threatening way, as if they didn't want to hurt me, but just stop me.
"So, you've figured it out?" The stranger said.
"I have to go." I said and turned to run.
"No you don't." He said, "I know what happened back there. He was telling the truth you know. He really did know you're family. They really did live there. He was just a little startled by how powerful your gift was. I mean you just discovered it."
"Who are you? What are you talking about?"
"I'm like you. You must be a little confused. Lemme guess, you had a dream. There were people whispering, a big white cross, something about omega, and then you fell?"
"Yeah! And the bird wings and the burning!"
"Did you say bird wings?"
I nodded, confused. He grabbed my arm jumped to a rooftop. Yes we were down in an alleyway and he jumped all the way up to a rooftop. That shouldn't be that strange, considering what just happened in the apartment. We ran jumping from rooftop to rooftop until we finally jumped through an open window. Well I didn't run or jump, but he did, and he was carrying me on his back. He pulled a paper thin metal square out of his pocket and placed it in mid-air. It just stayed there floating.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Jason." He responded.
"Mine's-"
"I know your name, Christopher. I probably know more about you than you do."
Jason was taller than me, probably because he was older than me. He looked about thirteen years old. And appeared to be around 5'1. He had long black hair. Not as long as a girls hair, but definitely longer than mine. He wore jeans and an open zipper down hoodie with a Foo-Fighters t-shirt underneath. He had a satchel slung around his shoulder, which I thought was strange.
"Any more questions?" Jason asked.
I hesitated, and then replied, "What's that?" Pointing at the metal square.
Jason poked the center of it and it expanded to a rectangle the size of a door.
"Home." He said calmly.
He walked through the metal door as if it were liquid. I didn't know what to do. I assumed he wanted me to follow him but I wasn't sure that I should. I could just go to an orphanage, right now. There were tons of them in Chicago. But this Jason, he knew something about me. And I wanted to learn. I wanted to learn about this gift, the dream, the bird wings, and my family. I had made up my mind. I stepped through the rectangle.
Chapter 4
It's easy to picture a blonde-haired ten year old running through the streets of Chicago, or in a burning apartment, because you know those places exist. You've been there, or seen them online or on TV, or at least have heard of them. But this "home" might be hard for you to imagine. This "home" definitely wasn't a house. It wasn't X-mansion, the batcave, the fortress of solitude, or the Justice League Watchtower. It was like nothing I've ever seen before. Before I walked through I half expected it to be a bunch of kids like me and Jason to be waiting around some type of portal that we stepped through. I also half expected that my family that I thought was dead to be waiting to welcome Jason and I home. But the reality was neither of these things. When I stepped through the rectangle I was in a large white hallway that seemed to stretch on forever. When I said white I meant it was supposed to look white. But it looked like it had been abandoned and not tended to for years. It was still mostly white, but I imagined it used to be much brighter. There were lights lining the ceilings. Some were fully on, but most were dim or just plain dead. Jason walked over to the wall on the far side of the room and reached out to touch it. Just before his fingers reached the wall a door sized portion slid away and revealed an opening.
On the far side of the room we were now in there was a circular table with a circular whiteboard in the middle. I had expected much more technology to be in this place, but it all seemed so…primitive. There were two guys sitting at the table one looked to be about fifteen, the other my age. There were more white-ish walls which I assumed had hidden doors in them lining the walls. On the other side of the table was a large window looking out on the opening of a cave. Through the mouth of the cave I could see a cliff made of reddish rock like you hear about in Arizona.
We walked towards the table and the two guys looked up at us. The older one approached Jason.
"Good job, Jason. Is this the one from Chicago?" He asked.
"Yes," Jason said, "This is Christopher."
The older child looked over at me.
"Welcome. My name's Mike. And I am the closest thing we have to a leader around here. Did Jason explain your gift to you?" Said the person I now knew I Mike.
"Not exactly." I said.
"Well, you, in particular, have control over fire. You were given this gift by the one we call the voice. My gift is control over the shadows. We do not know why we were given these gifts, but throughout history people like us have taken it upon themselves to protect the world from evil. I don't mean we are superheroes who patrol cities looking for villains, or thugs in alleyways. The highest source of evil we know of is a being named Lucifer. He dwells in a mysterious domain that we have infiltrated before, but never pinpointed the actual location of. You may wonder how this is possible. But think, you came here but you don't know where here is. Lucifer has infiltrated this place before, in a similar way to how you came before. And we have chased him back through his portal. He also has infiltrated the world of mortals. We are not mortals, but half-mortals. Let me make something perfectly clear now. We. Are. Not. Demigods. Demigods are an ancient myth. We are a very real powerful gifted variant of human. You may notice that this place is a little run down. That is because in the recent past when Lucifer had attacked the battles have not gone very well. That is also the reason why there aren't very many of us here. We do have a few more people in our ranks; they're probably resting right now. Here you will be trained how to use your gift, taught how to fight with weapons, both mortal and of our design, and sent out to protect the world and fight Lucifer. Eventually you may even be sent out to recruit other half-mortals."
It was a lot to take in. So I just stared at him for a while and eventually nodded slowly. He said that I had had a long day and should probably get some rest. Then Jason brought me over to one of the walls-by the way I was right about the hidden doors-and walked me into a room with six bunks in it. Only two of the beds were filled. There was a girl who looked my age. And a boy who looked about a year older than me. I almost started to introduce myself, but then I realized that they were asleep. Jason was right. I had had a long day. So I lied down and drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 5
I woke up to a really hot girl standing over me staring at me. A few guys at school had told me about this thing called a wet dream. It's like a regular dream except…well…you know what a wet dream is….I hope. Anyway I thought I was having a wet dream, because, well, the girl standing over me was really hot and I thought and hoped she was about to…do certain sexual acts to me. Then I realized it was the sleeping girl I saw last night. This made me think it was an even better dream. I smiled, ready for fun, until she opened her mouth.
"Wipe that look off your face buddy; we don't have much fun around here." She said.
"Wait, this isn't a dream?" I said.
"What?"
"Nothing." I said quickly, blushing.
She looked to be about my age, which made me happy. I knew the guys back at school would make fun of me and say she has cooties. But I didn't care, plus I probably wouldn't even "make a move" until I was like twelve or thirteen. She had medium length brown hair, and green eyes. She was a little smaller than me, and looked very friendly. She was a little bit tan, but not too much. She looked perfect in my opinion.
"Get out of bed, we got work to do, and stop staring at me." She said.
"Feel like telling me your name before telling me what to do?" I said; I thought that was pretty clever.
"Fine, I guess we'll be seeing a lot of each other, considering we'll be living together. My name is Alex. You don't have to introduce yourself, Christopher; we all know who you are."
"Yeah, I'm pretty famous. I can control fire and stuff."
"Yeah, no, you're not famous. I can control ice. And that's not all we can do by the way, that's just your main gift."
"Seriously? Wow! I'm even cooler than I thought!"
"Chill, you'll get used to it. Now seriously, get out of bed. You're going to the armory to train."
"Armory? Wow that sounds awesome!"
Alex shot me a glance.
"Right, chill, got it." I said.
I got out of bed and reached for the door. It opened right before I touched it just like it did for Jason. I stepped through the door. Mike was sitting at the table. He looked up and chucked a knife at me. I caught it, surprising myself with my reflexes. I should probably add that that was just his way of giving it to me from across the room, since he knew I could catch it. Without a word he pointed at the wall that led to the hallway. I walked over, through the hidden door. I stood out in the long hallway and saw Jason leaning against the wall. He started walking with his hand against the wall.
"How far down is it?" I asked.
"However far down we want, once we get to the keypad." He responded.
"What do you mean?"
"We used to have millions of people here with us, so we had a lot more rooms. But most of them died, are missing, or corrupted."
"Corrupted?"
"Taken by Lucifer, and made to fight or work for him."
"Oh. Well how far down is the keypad?"
"Right here." He said, as he turned and looked at the wall.
I looked back, wondering how far we had walked, but realized that the hallway appeared to go on forever, so I had no idea. I guessed fifteen steps. I didn't realize, but apparently the wall had slid and the armory was now in front of us, through a hidden door. All the doors here were hidden, I had gotten used to them by now. I walked through and was amazed that I didn't see any weapons, just a keyboard on a stand with a wall in front of it.
"There are no weapons here." I said.
Jason pressed one key on the keyboard without even looking. The wall slid down and two racks of weapons that seemed to go back as far as the eye could see popped up.