Prologue: And So It Begins…
Five-year-old Caroline turned from the computer console in the island's center as the door slid open with a pneumatic hiss. "Daddy! You're home!"
Caroline's father stepped into the room with difficulty, holding something in his arms. "I am indeed, and look who I've brought!"
"Daddy, hold on," Caroline said. She walked over to an odd sort of chair and touched a panel lightly. The chair floated over to her father, who took his seat gratefully.
"Thank you, princess," her father said. He held out the bundle in his arms. "Caroline, meet your new brother!"
Caroline looked. Inside the bundle of blankets was a baby, a little boy with a funny tuft of reddish-brown hair. He was sleeping peacefully. Caroline looked up at her father. "Where'd you get him, Daddy?"
"He's the son of one of those bad people I told you about, Caroline."
"The bad so-called supers, Daddy?"
"Exactly. Actually, it's a whole family of them--the family that cost me my legs."
Caroline nodded. "And you took him so you can raise him properly, right?"
"Exactly right." He handed the baby to his daughter. "His name is--well, they called him Jack-Jack, but we'll call him Jacob. A much more fitting name."
"Jack is short for Jacob, Daddy."
"I know that, Caroline. That's why we're calling him Jacob."
Caroline smiled and took her new brother to the nursery down the hall. And Bud Pine, better known to those who thought him dead as Syndrome, watched his daughter go--and laughed…