Chapter 1 -

The Question

20/4/2016 – Central Park – Balto's Statue

Jaden looked up at the famous statue in awe. He had just come home from school and his mother had decided to take him to the park to spend the afternoon enjoying what remained of the spring day. But he had never expected to be going to Central Park for his birthday. And his mother could have sworn that he had swallowed jumping beans at school during his class party (She didn't have the heart to blame it on the snake-shaped banana cake with green icing and yellow M&M's for eyes and down its back for scales).

" That was the dog that helped save your great-grandfather's life." Amanda Atkins said, looking up at the statue with a gleam in her eyes.

" He did?" The seven year old exclaimed excitedly.

" Yes, he did."

" What did he do?"

" Well, when your Great-Grandpa George was ten, he got really sick. The town he lived in, Nome, Alaska, didn't have any medicine and there was no way of getting the medicine to the town through the storms that followed. So they sent out teams of dogs to bring the medicine to Nome. And Balto, here, was the lead dog of the last dog-sled team. He got the medicine through the last part of the run and safely to Nome so that the sick could get well again."

" Is that why there is a bunch of words on the rock?"

" They're not just a bunch of words, Jaden. It's a memorial."

" What's a memorial?"

" Something to help us remember what's happened in the past."

The sandy haired boy looked from the dog statue's smiling face down to the large plaque embedded into the very stone the dog stood on. the engraved words seemed to move around the stone, causing him to close his eyes and shake his head before trying to focus on them again. But he seemed to take more interest in the dog-sled team that was coursing through the stone snow. For a second, as he looked at the dogs, he thought he could actually see the team running through a snow covered landscape to save people's lives. But the image was gone as quickly as it had come.

" Balto." He whispered to himself, running his fingers over the lead dog. " What does it say, Mummy?"

" It says 'Dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the sled dogs that relayed antitoxin six hundred miles over rough ice, across treacherous waters, through arctic blizzards from Nenana to the relief of stricken Nome in the winter of 1925. Endurance. Fidelity. Intelligence.'" His mother answered.

" What does it mean?"

" Well, It means that the dogs had unbeatable spirits and worked hard to make sure that the medicine got to Nome in time. and they proved they could do it by running through dangerous storms that no man should have been able to go through without getting lost."

" They must have been very brave."

" They were. They were very brave."

With a silent prayer of thanks to the iconic hero, Amanda began to lead her son away and towards the reservoir. Her parents were waiting for them over by Harlem Meer with the rest of their family so that they could have a birthday picnic with the seven year old. The only problem was getting him there in his hyperactive and over-excited state. And the fact that he had ADHD wasn't helping things at all.

If a squirrel raced across the path in front of him, the boy would get excited. If he saw a red-tailed hawk, he got excited. It was beginning to drive his mother insane, if she wasn't already. But she was able to deal with him. In no time flat, the two had made it to the other side of the reservoir and was making their way to where the family was when Jaden stopped suddenly in front of a particularly large tree on the edge of the reservoir.

Jaden traced his hand over the rough bark of the maple tree, almost like he was trying to smooth out the faint wrinkles in it. But what his mother couldn't see was that etched underneath his fingers was a pattern that looked oddly like Greek lettering. 'Εδώ βρίσκεται ο Τιτάνας Υπερίων'. As he watched, the words on the tree blurred and rearranged themselves into something that he was surprised to find he could understand. He didn't know how, but Jaden Luke Castellan was able to interpret the Greek words to mean 'Here lies the Titan Hyperion'. And he shuddered to think what it could mean. But just as he looked up into the tree's branches, his eyes began to glow gold.

Around him, a battle was raging. In front of him, there was a mini hurricane blowing dangerously around some kid with black hair and heading towards a really tall man with golden armour on. And his golden, fiery eyes made Jaden wonder if there was some sort of connection between him and the big man. Then another boy appeared to Jaden, only he wasn't completely a boy. His legs were furry and he had hooves. Jaden didn't know what this boy was, but he also felt a connection to it. He just hoped that no one would notice him.

" Percy! Bring him over here!" the weird boy called to the hurricane.

Jaden thought that the animal boy was weird. He also thought that the responding hurricane named Percy was weird, too. But nothing could have beaten seeing the big golden man getting turned into a tree. That would have to have been one of the weirdest things he had ever seen. One of the scariest, too. It taught him to fear the animal men… especially when they held reed pipes in their hands.

He was thankful when his mother called him from his vision. But the sight of that particular animal sparked something inside of him, a different kind of memory than what he had just experienced. One from his very early days when he was still sitting in front of the Television because his mother could think of no other baby sitter better than Mickey Mouse. One of blue eyes and a massive scar on someone's face.

" Jaden? Is everything okay?" his mother called to him gently.

" Mummy? What happened to Daddy?" the boy asked, turning away from the tree.

" He… he had to go somewhere."

" Where did he go?"

" Some place special."

" Can we go see him?"

" No, sweetie. We can't go see him."

" Why not?"

" Because we're not ready to see him."

" Why aren't we?"

" Because… Daddy had an accident that made him go to sleep and no one could wake him up again."

" Oh." Amanda was surprised her son had understood. " Was he brave? Like Balto?"

" You know what, Jaden? I think he was very brave. Now, come on. Nanny and Poppy are waiting to see their little birthday boy."

2/5/2016 – Harvard's School for Gifted Children – 9:30am

Jaden walked down the hall almost begging the day had finished. To his luck, it had only just begun. And he had already suffered that morning. The school bullies, Timothy McHales and his two friends Hayden Bennett and Brendon Stevenson, had decided that he would be the first person on their list to get bullied that morning. The result was that the pudgy boy pegged his soccer ball at Jaden's head. And, though the ball had got him square in the face and given him both a black eye and a broken nose, the lithe and agile boy just ignored it.

" Hey, Pussy!" Timothy had called when he noticed Jaden gave him no response. " What's the matter? Mummy too poor to wash you? Give me the ball!"

Now Jaden didn't mind being pushed over the way Timothy usually had planned. He'd just wait for the perfect opportunity to get back at him. Or he'd just steal something off the kid that he knew had never belonged to him in the first place. That usually won him favours with the other kids. He looked out for them; taking a beating from Timothy so that they didn't get hurt. And when they were in trouble with Timothy, he was usually the first to get in there and stop the fight.

But there was one thing Jaden didn't take a liking to and that was his mother being pulled into his fights or bullied. Especially by someone like Timothy McHales.

" You leave my mum out of this!" Jaden had angrily called back from where he still lay on the ground from the force of the ball on his face.

" Just give me the ball and no one gets hurt."

" Nice threat coming from you! We're seven!"

" What are you talking about?"

To be honest, Jaden didn't know himself. All he knew was that the look on his face must have been something to get Timothy back into his usually teasing self. Almost instantly the boy had stormed over to him and, with as much force as he could muster, thrust his foot into Jaden's stomach. Then he picked up the soccer ball and walked back over to his friends, leaving Jaden to glare at his back, still on the ground when the soccer ball had first hit him.

" Why don't you get your creepiness away from me, you freak?"

And that was when Timothy threw the ball at Jaden again. Jaden, though, was now beyond furious. He had had enough with the boy and bringing his mother into it was just taking things too far. As the ball flew towards him, Jaden's eyes began to glow gold. Instantly, the ball stopped in its tracks mere centimetres away from his face. To say Timothy and his friends were scared was an understatement. They were petrified. Brandon had actually wet himself, he was that scared. With a wiry smile that his mother said he got from his father, Jaden sent the ball back at its owner… right in front of the Vice Principal.

So that was how Jaden found himself walking down the hallway towards the Vice Principal's office even before school had started. He had begged to go to the nurse's office first (he wasn't one for tears, but if he knew he needed to go there, he went) but the Vice Principal had said that he could go after she had had a talk with him. And following close behind him were the exclamations of teachers and students alike. It seems that no one could understand why such a nice boy was bleeding so badly and being sent to the Vice Principal's office. The only thing they could think of was that he had gotten into a fight.

" Now I want to know exactly what happened, Jaden. Why did you throw that ball at Timothy McHales?" The Vice Principal asked in the kindest, yet sternest voice she had as she sat him down in her office.

" Timothy was being mean to my mum." Jaden replied.

" So you threw a ball at him?"

" He threw it at me and hit me in the face. Then he threw it at me again. I stopped it and threw it back at him because he was bullying my mum."

" Jaden. We do not through balls at anyone. Even if they threw the ball first."

" Then why isn't he here?"

" I will be saying something to him, too, Jaden."

With a growl, the boy turned his face to the window. The vice-principal was talking to him again, but he wasn't listening. He usually drowned out the more important facts when it came to things like this. He couldn't help it. Nanny always said that his mind was special because it saw things that other people's minds couldn't. Then again, Nanny was slowly getting very sick and that was making her memories go a little fuzzy. That's what his mother told him. He didn't know which of the two women to believe. But at that moment, as he watched the clouds rolling by ever so slowly, he chose to believe his grandmother.

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