Prologue

The overall mood of the growing city had been frightfully gloomy for the past few months almost as if a subtle hostility had floated into the streets and alleyways of their growing city of Sparks, Nevada. Jonas had realized that for some time now, although others were blissfully unaware of it, he had noticed the change in the patterns of crime recently. Having worked with the police force for these past several years now had given him the keen ability to predict what some of "unlawful capabilities" might be up to. However, he had never seen such things in this city as he had seen for the past week.

1

"HUH?!?!?...", Anna heard the shatter of glass in the hallway outside her room. Whatever noise that was it had awaken her from her sleep, she glanced quickily over at her digital face clock next to her bed it blinked 11:53. She stared across her room to her closed door; she couldn't see a thing except for the sliver of light creeping under the door frame. She told herself that the source of the noise must be a loose picture frame falling off the wall, her father had put some up earlier that evening and even then it was hastily done with little attention to detail.

It has to be, she thought, one of the pictures must have fallen from the wall cause of a breeze from the open windows or, with great hesitance, something else, as images of goblins and monsters flashed through her mind, for a brief, but fearful second. She half-heartedly laughed, she thought herself very juvenile for having thought of something like that at her age.

That's when she heard it, the crunch of glass shards as someone stepped on the broken picture on the floor. She waited a couple seconds, which felt like minutes and called out, "Dad?" But the only response was the repeated action of stepping on glass. It was at this point that she realized that she was breathing very fast in short gasps of air and she felt as if she swallowed her tongue, she tried to calm herself down like her mother had constantly told her but with this came more vivid images of monsters, aliens, and ravage animals.

In a sudden swift movement the small sliver of light across the room grew, spreading to side of the doorknob, the sudden burst of light caught her off guard and she found that the hallway light was too bright for her darkness-adjusted eyes. She squinted toward the light unwilling to look away, as her eyes adjusted she noticed, with horror she saw the dark figure blot out the light from the hallway leaving darkness, she muffled a scream.

2

"GOD DAMNIT!," murmured Jonas. He had been working all night last night and all he had hoped for was just a few hours of rest before being called back to his job. He picked up his ringing cell phone, "Yes, hello?" he said into the receiver.

"Hey Jonas," He was able to tell it was Sarah down at Dispatch. "I know you just got off, but we got… a problem. And we need you in right now," she said in an apologetic tone. "Alright, I'll be down to the department in a few minutes" he said. God forbid I get something I want, like sleep, he thought to himself.