Chapter One: The Back Story
Warning: Rape and child harm mentioned in non-explicit details.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything and hope that you enjoy reading this tale :D
All my life I had two perspectives.
The first one that I knew was Danny Brooks of St Louis who lived with his mother and had his aunt Ellen nearby.
When I turned eighteen I learned the second. I was Neal Bennett, the son of James Bennett.
Eventually, I learned the truth.
My mother had been a rape victim who testified against the man who had victimized her. He came from a powerful background that he felt empowered him to threaten her into renouncing her testimony. In response, she was put into wit-sec and hidden away from his reach.
A few months after entering the system she delivered my twin brother and I. Being a young, single mother who had just experienced her entire life being turned upside down, she decided not to keep both of us. By chance, I was the one she kept. Jack was put up for adoption and we were moved to a new location in the wit-sec system.
Soon after, mom met and married a man named James Bennett. He seemed to be good for us as he loved her and accepted me as though I were his own son. When I was three years old things changed. After he was arrested for murdering a fellow officer by his partner, James went to prison and turned State's evidence.
Mom and I were supposedly put into wit-sec for the first time with Katie going along with us. Since Katie was James' partner, arresting officer, and was close to the family she was allowed to remain close to us throughout my growing up years.
Our first life was in Wyoming, in a small town near the Wyoming Rockies. My name was Kyle Summers and we lived well for a few years. The area was remote with a small population and not many tourists, most of the time.
Then one year there was a tourist who was supposedly traveling up to Yellowstone when he stopped over at the hotel my mother worked at. As he checked in at the front desk he was eyeing my mom funny and gave her the creeps. She called the local cops because something didn't feel right about him. Sure enough, he turned out to be a private investigator hired by my biological father to seek her out, and he had been successful.
There followed a few years with a lot of name changes and moves in order to get the enemies following us off of our trail. Unfortunately, we didn't lose them until after tragedy nearly struck.
I was ten years old when one of the Marshal's protecting us betrayed me. He had been paid off to turn me over to a group of criminals who were after me for my parentage by my biological father. (It turned out that my biological father had connections to the DC police corruption. That meant that my step-father Bennett was a paid minion for my biological father. Needless to say, that didn't bode well for me (even though the men didn't know the connection)). Bennett was one of the men in the group and their job was to torture me to death as a message for my mother. By clinical and legal definitions, I died that night… for the first time.
Chaos reigned when the Marshals raided the place. I was transported to a hospital, after being resuscitated, and they arrested the Marshal that had been paid off with the criminals who had been hurting me. They missed catching Bennett though. He managed to sneak away using his police training and was free to be a problem another day.
Waking up in the hospital, I was confused. My memory was blank, I had no idea who I was or what had transpired. After I woke up, mom and Katie worked with the Marshals to keep me entertained, calm, and to help me fill in the blanks of what had happened in my life up to my stay in the hospital. There was some editing in order for me to be able to be comfortable with the Marshals guarding me, but in general I knew the basics… or so I thought. (I never remembered for myself what had happened.)
Next, we got the identities of the Brooks in St Louis and Katie became the Ellen that I always think of her as being. Here, my mother married again. This time she made a good choice in marrying a military veteran who could handle protecting us, while also being a man of morals and principals that were needed in our lives after the previous men my mother had been involved with. They were married a few years when my baby sister was born, and for the first time in my remembered life I knew what it meant to be a family. Then there was too much attention being drawn to us and our enemies caught up to us again.
Eventually, when I was a teenager we settled down in Connecticut and I had my final wit-sec identity of Bryce Larkin.
When I turned eighteen, Ellen was being moved away from us. She felt that it was time for me to know the truth about my life, as far as she was aware of, and this was likely to be her last chance to tell me. After the private party, she sat me down and explained what she knew about Bennett and that I had been moved into wit-sec due to my father's crimes. That night I said goodbye to Ellen, went home to talk to my parents, and the next morning I changed my plans.
In the fall I went to Stanford College to be a computer engineer. I had decided that I was going to leave my unpleasant past behind me and forge on to create a future of my choosing. My goal was to become my own man based on what I could be, instead of what my father figures had been.
Over the years that followed I met Chuck who was my first best friend, I joined the CIA which changed both of our lives, and I ended up undercover as Neal Caffrey with my partner Kate Moreau.
An undercover assignment brought me into contact with Ellen again. We talked and decided that she would refer to me as Neal and we would use my cover story of being the son of James Bennett with the one wit-sec identity of Danny Brooks. I was pleased to have her a part of my life again, but she couldn't stay. So, we set up the beepers and parted ways for the time being.
Eventually, I went through the deal with the Intersect, died a few more times, became Peter's CI, and worked for the FBI as a criminal consultant. That is what brought me to the point where I was abducted after Rebecca and the diamond case.
Rebecca had been working for a larger organization than she had realized, and when they didn't get the diamond… they decided to take me instead. Their plan was for me to be a criminal that could pull of whatever heist they assigned me and in return, they would grant me life for a little longer. Some would say that it wasn't a bad deal, because I was a criminal anyway… wasn't I?
Being a CIA agent, I felt it more beneficial to allow them to pull my strings for a short in order for me to get an understanding of their inner workings. Then, when I felt that I had enough information I started the process of getting out.
The problem was that I had been tortured while inside so my injuries hindered my ability to escape and dismantle their organization in the process. I did manage to do some damage (which caused problems later), but I barely managed to escape.
My luck, the NSA agent who happened to come acrossed me was Colonel Casey of my old team. He was gruff and a little rough, but he did help to get me back to a base. There I was fixed up and the NSA arranged to cover for my rescue from the enemy which made it possible for me to reenter my deal with the FBI, despite being missing for a while.
Thank you so much for all of the favorites, follows, bookmarks, kudos, reviews, and suggestion towards the next post. It was great seeing them pile up over the last few weeks as I traveled :D
