Part One – A goodbye and a bad hello

He stared at the blood. He'd never realised there would be so much. Seven, eight pints? Of course, he should have known that. His father would sneer at him for not knowing that. Except, it was his father who was doing all the bleeding.

Bradley stared down at the hunting rifle in his hand, pushing his glasses back up his nose and nervous sweat made it slippery. 'What did you do today, Braddy?' 'I shot daddy.' Fifteen years ago. Fifteen years ago he told his nurse he was going to kill the man from whose loins he came. And now he had. It was intoxicating.

His nurse wasn't here now. She'd been fired when Bradley hit ten. He missed her terribly sometimes. But he didn't have time for that now. He had a body here. A body sitting on a toilet in the middle of a forest on a mountain in Japan.

He began to laugh.

He was still laughing when he locked the door and began to wash his fingerprints from everything he could find. It was simple. The police would come and find the door locked from the inside. They would assume Crawford Senior had gone into the bathroom and locked the door, and his unknown assailant had climbed in through the window, which Bradley intended to climb out of. He picked up his father's hand and smeared it over the door handle, careful not to get any blood on it.

Climbing out the window and re-entering the cottage by the front door, he made certain to clear his tracks. He contemplated on what to do with the gun. Leave it, or take it? He smiled. Leave it where he found it, over the fireplace. They'd assume the attacker took his gun with him. Of course, Bradley's fingerprints would be everywhere as well, but he was staying there. Perhaps… perhaps they'd assume he heard the shot and chased the killer, to be killed in the woods? He made certain to smear fingerprints all over the outside of the bathroom door, making it look like he'd been trying to force his way in.

He collected another pair of boots and walked out of the lodge. He left the front door hanging open and ran across the earth, leaving heavy boot prints. When he was well into the forest and leaving no tracks, he changed boots and ran back to the bathroom window and away again.

There. Done.

Bradley Crawford Junior, eighteen today, sat done and cried like a child half his age.

* * *

He was a practical young man by nature, and pragmatic. He'd committed patricide. While anyone who'd known his father would have considered it a perfectly reasonable action, he doubted the law would be so considerate. He'd covered it up pretty well, he felt, but that still left him penniless and alone in a country where he couldn't even speak the language.

He considered his options. Make his way into a city and find a police station, and report his father's death, blaming a man who'd fled, or flee himself. He didn't want to bring the police into this. He'd been thorough, but no doubt there were still some clues to his crime. Like the gun. Damnit, why hadn't he cleaned the gun? It would show evidence of recently being used.

No, best not to tell anyone. Perhaps, by the time anyone figured it out, it'd be too late. Perhaps not. His head began to hurt. A vision. His father had beaten him for the visions, once upon a time; beaten him for his lies and imagination. Then he'd found out they were real, that Bradley could see the future. And the already rich Bradley Crawford Senior had used him to make money on the stock market, in Las Vegas, anywhere he could.

And Bradley had found his own uses for it. It didn't help him in shooting, though he seemed to have a talent for that already, and it wouldn't help him win races, but he hadn't lost a fight yet. Boxing. The thrill of controlling a match, controlling another man, the thrill of being ultimately in control.

Images flickered behind closed eyelids. Men and women from around the world, inviting him to join them inviting him to learn to control this gift. Not judging him for what he had just done. Giving him control over people.

Control. He liked control. His father had never let him control anything. He wasn't good enough. He had to be controlled. But it had been the other way around, in those final few moments. He'd had control, he'd had power. Suddenly, control wasn't such a big thing. Power was what he wanted. It was what his father had wanted, and Bradley finally understood why. He'd been a god, in those fateful moments, taking life from those who deserved to die. The power, the control, it made him dizzy. He had a power. He would learn to control it. He would have power and control over other people.

He felt sick, just a little. He'd enjoyed his father's death. There were no regrets, other than the potential jail sentence were he caught. But he knew he shouldn't have done it, that he was legally free of the man as it was. Guilt shimmered like a heat haze at the back of his mind. He'd ended a life, and he'd enjoyed it. Hell, he'd gotten off on it, now he came to think of it. He had a hard on to be proud of. He had had power, he had had control, and he had been God.

That was the last time he felt guilt for killing another person, as he jacked off under the tree. Power was what filled his mind, now revenge was dealt with.

* * *

They would meet him at the airport. It was a long walk, but he could hitchhike. Still, it would take a while. He rubbed his eyes and squinted through the trees, trying to work out which direction would take him to the road quickest. His head hurt. Not a vision headache now, just eyestrain. First thing, he was going to get glasses.

It took him a day and a half to reach the airport, a lonely teenager hitchhiking across a foreign country. He learnt contempt in the journey, especially for his fellow countrymen. But then, he'd never liked America much.

They stood in a row, identical charcoal suits, identical expressions. Two men and a woman. They each shook his hand, solemnly. It was like a funeral.

Bradley realised with some chagrin that he didn't have a passport with him, in fact, he had no ID at all. This worked out in his favour, however, when one of them handed him a German passport under a different name, but with his picture. He felt his chest swell; these people were like him, these people were superior to everyone else in the airport, these people had known.

They sat together in first class, Bradley unimpressed by such luxury, used as he was to it. He felt a buzz in the back of his mind, which eventually resolved itself into words.

*Good. * An English voice chuckled. Looking around his new 'friends', Bradley guessed correctly it belonged to the ginger haired man. *Most take much longer to accustom themselves to this. You are not… put out? *

*Not at all, * Bradley thought, trying to work out if he was doing this correctly.

*Perfectly correct, Mr Crawford. You have strong mental shields, but it's nice to see you can, so to speak, think outside the box. * The Briton smiled. It was cold. *My name is Gregory May. My companions are Ute Hertz and Jacqueline DuBois. Do you speak German? *

*To an extent, * Crawford replied guardedly. *If I might ask, why aren't we conducting this conversation out loud? *

*Too dangerous. If someone were to overhear us, we would have to kill them, and that could cause… problems. * The English was guttural, and Crawford identified the accent as German. So this was Herr Hertz. The name itself was ominous, and the short man had an air of sadism around him. He was balding on top and his suit was ill-fitting. From where he was sitting, Crawford could see the butt of a gun in a shoulder holster.

*You understand how this is done, oui? Telepathy. Monsieur May is a telepath. * Madame DuBois was about forty, with long bleached hair and huge hoop earrings. While there was nothing wrong with this look on the right person, she struck Crawford as mutton dressed as lamb, and, more particularly, a tart.

*If it is not rude to ask, * Crawford was still establishing ground rules, *what powers do you two have? *

*I am a healer, * Hertz told him. Crawford's spine crawled. * And Frau Dubois is a seer, like you. *

*I know very little about what is happening, * Crawford admitted.

*We are taking you to Rosenkruez, in Germany. It is an institution dedicated to helping psychically able jungendliche such as yourself become accustomed to work in amongst mere mortals. * The sheer arrogance in Herr Hertz's tone appealed to Crawford, confirming everything he had suspected about himself. * We will train you to deal with your gift, to direct it and filter it and stay sane. *

*That's a common problem, * Mr May explained. *We lose a lot of students to insanity. Especially telepaths and telempaths. The world is not a pleasant place, as you are no doubt aware. Also, many of our students have had tumultuous childhoods. Those with talents that manifest themselves obviously, telekinetics and pyrokinetics, for example, often find themselves the victims of abuse. *

*My father was not exactly understanding about my gift, * Bradley told them. *I have some measure of control over it already. It's been extremely useful in fights. *

*So you can fight? * The tone was slightly suggestive, but of what, Bradley wasn't sure. Herr Hertz gave him a grimace, which, almost an hour later, he realised was supposed to be a reassuring smile. He didn't like this as much as he had. But still, they weren't asking any questions about his father, and that was a good start.

"We are now landing at Berlin airport," a cheery voice announced.

It occurred to Bradley, that perhaps it was a very bad start.