Prologue, Chapter 1

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The title of this work is actually TBD, suggestions are welcome!

Prologue

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“Carter’s paradise” - two words etched on the rather ornate mahogany door glowed feebly in the faint light cast on it by a reticent moon. The townhome merged seamlessly with its obviously well heeled neighbors in what appeared to be an upscale enclave in New York city. They all had fashionable windows and fancy doors, which bore promise of tasteful and extravagant interior decorations. They seemed to reach out to one another in solidarity of the wealth that lay within their painted walls.

And yet, there was something in that night which made the Carter home starkly different, and much more dangerous, than its neighbors. It was a secret which had remained dormant in the hearts of Dan and Gloria Carter, buried by family responsibilities, and never discussed openly in  public or private.  Sometimes, Dan would slip up, and point Gloria to something that reminded him of "the message", at which she would freeze him with the "stop or else I will hurt you" look, and Dan would hastily start grumbling about the untimely rains. Years flew...

till this perfectly normal Friday night in February, when the streetlights revealed three men, striding purposefully towards the Carter residence. The pale moonlight revealed their suits, and their surly demeanor, under which lay hidden a coldness of purpose this neighborhood has never seen in many years - not since the Carters first moved there.  

The man at the lead stopped suddenly a few feet from the Carters' door, and the other two almost bumped into him.

"Alpha! Give us a warning - will you?" - one of them said in a muffled tone, while the third grunted his approval of the sentiment.  "Sorry, just realized we are there, Beta, Gamma," the man who seemed to be the leader, replied.

He was a squat, heavyset man with a square jaw and a mirthless grin was etched on his face, as if relishing the moment. His companions were both tall, the one named Beta was broad shouldered and muscular, while Gamma had a lean wiry appearance. All of them had markedly pallid complexions, as if they had never been exposed to natural sunlight for years. They all wore the same black suit, with white shirt and yellow tie like an ominous uniform.  But perhaps the most conspicuous of them all was the manic glint in their eyes, which seemed to give a rare passageway to their cold, calculating souls.

As they approached the Carter residence,  they each withdrew from their pockets a long silver pipe, with tiny keys etched on them. Alpha was the first to reach the door. He laid the cylindrical object next to the door knob, and a laser like beam emanated from it, penetrating the knob. There was an almost imperceptible click, as the door slowly swung open before them.

The cylinders were all casting clear traces of light, tearing into the darkness with almost surgical precision. In their wake were revealed a low lying table and a poof, next to which began a rather ornate staircase. The black metal railing of the staircase gleamed in an eerie glow as the trio tip toed their way along the stairs, pausing every now and then for any tell tale signs of activity.   At last, they paused on the second floor landing, on each end of which was what appeared to be a bedroom door.

Alpha trained the cylinder in his hand on each of the doors, and a screen,as though formed of sheer light, seemed to emanate from the end of it, on which the trio could see fuzzy outlines of two adults for the door to their right, while the one on their left showed two smaller figures.

"Must be the kids," Beta grunted.

"What if any of them wakes up, eh? We were clearly told the operational parameters - they were not to be touched!" Gamma sounded a touch panicky and his hands shook a little.

"Relax and calm down everyone - shall we?" Alpha implored, but he seemed to have lost his trademark nonchalance.  He battled on though "In a few minutes, our job here will be done and nobody will be any wiser. Come on now!"

They edged closer to the parents' bedroom, Beta and Gamma looking distinctly off color, with Alpha trying to maintain his composure. A couple of feet away from the door, he hesitated, then motioned the others to stop.

"Security protocol 22 dictates we check inside the room at all times - and that includes all channels. Beta? Gamma?"

His compatriots grunted as they began tuning their handheld devices. Within minutes, Beta was transmitting sound from inside the room while Gamma produced another screen of light, this time with much improved resolution.  

A light music was playing in the bedroom, and Dan was humming to it while his wife Gloria was fast asleep. A bedside lamp was the sole source of light in the room, which was immaculately set up to reflect some of the urban luxuries that the Carters had grown accustomed to over the years. It seemed a perfect model of peace and tranquility, a very different picture indeed from what was transpiring just outside the door at that very moment.

Beta was doing some exhaustive search of the sound signals, pausing now and then to tweak a little antenna sticking out of the breast pocket of his shirt. A slow buzzing sound ensued, then Beta's face broke into a wide smile.  "You know what? They came back with a positive match on the sound - some Medius cultural match on something called a rock band. Dan apparently hasn't changed much - what do you think?"

Gamma  smiled and nodded,  as he transmitted the pictures of the couple inside the room. Moments later, a green flash emanated from the device, and Gamma, turning to the rest, said with obvious excitement, "It's him! They okayed the maneuver."

For the three suited men, it meant only one thing - the mission for which they had spent countless days training, was about to draw to a close. Alpha responded first, pointing his handheld towards the door, and pressing a button named "Sequence X", which caused the following, almost simultaneous, actions. The door opened with a soft thud, a strong beam of light erupted from each of thr trio's handheld devices and bathed the bedroom in a white glow, and a long beep pierced the night air,punctuated only by the softest of taps, as an aircraft made of sheer light began to materialize in front of their eyes.

Unbeknownst to any of them, the five year old Andy Carter listened outside the room, his ear planted on the door, his heart beating with unfathomable terror. He could distinctly hear his dad talking inside, a cold bitter voice he had never heard from the kind and warm hearted man he knew.

"I think you were tracking me all along - weren't you? Why me, though? Couldn't find bigger fish to fry? Sad day indeed when you have to undertake such a major mission just for me, right?"

But there were no responses to these questions, not even a rejoinder from Andy's mom. It was silent except for a strange whirring sound which grew increasingly louder then suddenly ending in a staccato beep. Unable to control himself, Andy started knocking hysterically on the door. It seemed like hours - or was it merely a few minutes? - that Gloria opened the door with a completely befuddled expression writ large on her face. For some inexplicable reason, it was this expression that burnt itself in little Andy's developing memory, even though the aftermath remained blurry. As the room dissolved in a sea of tears, he could recollect experiencing the most helpless moment in his life - a gently swaying bedside table which cast bizarre moving shadows on the ceiling illuminating a half empty bed. Dan Carter had disappeared.

Chapter One: A Violent Afternoon
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It was a dull dreary day in the month of February. A damp chilly arctic wind stabbed mercilessly at the passers-by as rain pelted on a small, shabby single family home in Queens, New York. The faint street light, cutting its way through the gathering gloom, barely illuminated the sign in front of the house "The Carters - Dina, Andy, Gloria and Dan".

Ever since Dan disappeared on that very eventful February night, Andy and Dina missed their dad a lot, but Andy felt it much more acutely, for one since it was he and not Dina who had witnessed the incident first hand, and second, because it happened on his fifth birthday. Gloria had made it a point to not elaborate the topic when Andy or Dina had brought it up on multiple occasions, and the sharpness in her voice had put a damper on further speculation along those lines. To their friends in school, they were being brought up by Gloria, a single mom, and given that a third of their class came from such households, no further questions were ever asked.

Of course, their neighbors had wondered and asked rather discreet questions, but neighbors in that part of the city were usually very busy, and tended not to indulge in interference with each other's personal lives. So, after getting the usual stock response from Gloria, they withdrew into the cocoons of their daily lives. And within months, owing doubtless to the strained funds in the Carter household following Dan’s disappearance, they moved to a much downsized home in a small neighborhood in Queens, where nobody knew them, and few cared.

On the morning our story begins, Andy and Dina were being helped by Gloria in getting ready for school, and looking very grumpy indeed. It was rare for Andy, the self professed nerd and tech geek in his class, to feel disgruntled about going to school. However, he was upset that his mom had forgotten his rather special tenth birthday, so he was not particularly predisposed to accommodate her. "Well at least Di did not forget," he thought, as he remembered how Dina had slipped him a card she made herself right when he woke up. Feeling slightly more cheerful, he patted her sister on the back - "Let's go Di!" - and ran outside with her just in time as the yellow bus came to a halt in front of their apartment gate.

As Andy and Dina made their way to their usual seats, they were startled to see another boy, much larger and looking very sullen indeed, sitting there. Next to him were Bob and Luis, who the Carter siblings both regarded as the meanest kids in school. Luis had a full 8 inches over Andy,  and was big and beefy to the point that he had no neck. His eyes were narrow slots and he had a perpetually bored expression etched on his puffy face. “You know, Luis’s sister Erika - you know, the new cheerleader - is widely considered to be the meanest girl in school, so the gene probably runs in the whole family,” Dina told Andy once in her more reflective moments. “Their dad is a police officer, so they think they can get away with anything.” Bob on the other hand, while being as tall as Luis, was wiry and muscular, and looked at everyone with the utmost disdain. His classmates knew very little about his parents - only that they rarely came to school, and when they did, they spent a lot of effort in making sure everyone saw their new SUV, and their very flashy designer clothes. “If Bob ended up in killing a poor kid, his parents would probably say he did an important social service,” Andy observed one day when Gloria, in the most tactful manner possible, broached the topic of bullying in his school.

However, all the fear that Luis and Bob inspired in the minds of their prey, that seemed to pale in comparison to the rather stern visage of the boy who sat in front of their eyes. He had a couple of inches over Bob and Luis in height, and was more massive than either of the two. There was a distinct aura of vitriol around him which felt rather nauseating. As Andy and Dina looked at him with obvious discomfort, Bob said in his trademark drawl, “You know who he is? He is Rick, my cousin who just transferred from his school in Arizona. And he can beat all you puny heads to a mean pulp. Can’t you, Rick?” he looked at the new boy, half admiring, half scared.

Andy gulped, then said in the steeliest voice that he could muster, “Okay then. We will sit somewhere else. And nice meeting you Rick, welcome to the school.” He motioned to Dina to follow him, and they seated themselves at the rear end of the bus. Dina smiled to Andy and said, “You handled it well, A1.” Andy gave her a weak smile back, and settled down in his seat. “Maybe this boy is all bark and no bite, Di - Bob may just be bluffing,” he commented wryly. Andy’s predictions were usually right - but on this occasion, he definitely could not have been more wrong.

The first indication that something was afoot came in their math lesson, taught by a rather terse Mr. Johnson.

As was his custom, he spent the first five minutes of his class on a miniature rant, which included gems like “Math, as you have probably already realized, at least the more attentive ones in my class, is crucial for a future in sciences”, “STEM, which consists of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, is the knowledge base that can guarantee you good jobs when you leave this school, which for some students, is probably never”, “If you are math ignorant, you can say bye-bye to all your hopes of a challenging and satisfying career”

He then spent the first half of his class explaining the concepts of a new problem,  which on that day happened to be multiplying multi-digit numbers.

While he droned on, Andy suddenly felt his skull explode in a shower of pain. Gritting his teeth as he moved his neck, he caught a broad grin on Rick ' s face as he said in a low hiss "Geeks must pay, bozo. "

Even with the blow ringing in his ears,  Ricky got his comeuppance pretty quickly when Mr. Johnson put together a mini quiz on the lesson of the day - and Andy aced it with aplomb that did not get unnoticed even by the usually critical math teacher.

His victory was short lived though, because in the next lesson, which happened to be biology,  Rick surreptitiously banged his book on Andy's head, with Bob and Luis looking at him approvingly.  Andy swore quietly under his breath, but decided not to react. “Rick is just trying to establish his street cred as the biggest bully in town, do not overreact, do not resort to meaningless bravado,” he gently reminded himself as the stars in front of his eyes gradually receded into the background.

As Andy walked into the cafeteria, he was somewhat apprehensive. While he knew that it would be too risky for Ricky to engage in outright confrontation with him on the very first day of school in front of a large audience, he could not quite put such inane acts beyond Ricky. He got hold of Dina and the two took their designated spots with their lunch trays, as Andy filled in his sister with the happenings of the day.

“He is trying to prove he is the meanest, you know,” said Dina thoughtfully.

“Yep that’s what I thought too. He is a tad too enthusiastic though,” Andy observed wryly, “he is almost borderline psychotic.”

“Yeah?” said a voice behind them, which caused them to jump. Ricky was standing right behind them, sporting a broad smile that exposed his naked gums (“like a badly knocked up boxer,” thought Andy, his mind racing) - and the Bob-Luis duo started chanting “Beat him up! Beat him up!”

Getting a sense of what was coming, Andy quickly moved into a defensive crouch. Ricky snarled and grabbed his lunch tray, throwing it with its contents in the air. Juice and spaghetti flew through the air in multi colored torrents, as Ricky lunged after Andy, punching him savagely in the gut. Dina screamed, and a decent sized crowd started forming around them. Some looked concerned, but most seemed to be spoiling for a fight. Andy, his head spinning, could hear some shouts of encouragement from the crowd, but “they must be kidding themselves,” he thought helplessly, “this is worse than David and Goliath.” Suddenly, he sensed the commotion around him die down as he heard confident footsteps approaching them, and lifting his head with great effort, he saw to his utter bafflement, Luis’s sister Erika looking down at him.

She was tall, and very elegant, definitely the most recognizable cheerleader their school has had in a while - and at that point had a rather worried look on her face. “You okay?” she asked Andy, who nodded slowly, while trying to get up. She helped Andy to her feet, then turned to his brother, glared and then left the scene.

After her departure, Ricky left too, but not before commenting loudly on how Andy needed a girl to save his backside. “Ignore him, A1”, said Dina, as she walked with Andy back to the cafeteria line to get some more food for him. “It was awfully nice of Erika to come and break up the fight, but I mean, why did she do it? Nancy was telling all of us how mean she is to all her friends, remember I told you, A1?”

Andy nodded, “Can’t explain this, Di. Did you see the look she gave her brother before leaving? When has she ever stood up for one of her brother’s targets? Boggles my mind…”

The rest of the day went by relatively event-free, and as Andy and Dina got off the bus, he felt pretty positive about having stood up to Ricky’s onslaughts without stooping to his level. Then Luis yelled behind him, “And now who will come to your rescue, Andy? Your mom? Or your missing dad?” Andy whirled around to see Luis and Bob, both grinning ear to ear, with Ricky rolling up his sleeves in their midst. They had clearly gotten off at Andy’s stop to give him a chase.

Something about the last part of the taunt made Andy suddenly see red, and in a flash, all the rationality in him suddenly evaporated. He wanted to crush Luis, to make him feel hot and bitter pain. As he shook off Dina’s hand and lunged at Luis, Ricky joined the fray, and punched Andy in the gut again, this time with more lasting impact. Andy doubled down under the force of the blow, and yelled in frustration, while trying to pull himself up for another go at Luis.

Then he realized, the others were not looking at him, but instead at a point behind him. Hesitantly, he moved around, and saw a homeless man in very old tattered clothes walking towards them. He was somewhat short, wore faded jeans which must have been blue in some bygone era, and his badly torn shirt was covered in grime. His appearance made it hard to guess his age - his hair had greyed significantly and there were deep lines on his forehead. It was almost surreal to see him walk purposefully towards Ricky, brandishing a broken beer bottle, yelling “A coward and a bully! You pick on the little kid, eh?”

Ricky turned his gaze away from Andy and looked at the homeless man, then his face broke into an almost childish grin. “You want to save him? Be my guest!” he said, as he advanced menacingly towards him, his arm raised. Bob and Luis approached him too, and within seconds, blows were raining on him from all sides. The man yelled and screamed, and Dina seemed almost hysterical. Then, Andy did something he had never done before - never even contemplated doing in his wildest dreams. He picked up the broken bottle that the homeless man had dropped in the scuffle, and touched Luis’s neck with it “All of you just back away from him, okay? Unless you want Luis to lose his head. Ricky - you first.” Andy’s voice had changed, and there was a steely resolve in it that seemed to startle Ricky. He stopped hitting the man, and walked away a few feet. Bob looked rebellious, but followed suit.

“Di - get the man up on his feet, okay?” Andy bellowed.

As Dina helped the homeless man, Andy dropped the broken glass, wheeled around to hold the man’s other arm, and the three of them broke into a run. They did not know where they were going - the only thing they cared about was to increase the distance between them and the advancing trio. The man suddenly said “I know the perfect hiding place,” and steered them into a narrow lane, which ended in a gutter. He pulled the lid of the gutter and it came off easily, then he scrambled in. Andy looked for the fraction of a second at Dina, nodded, and then jumped right in. Behind them, they could hear Bob, Luis and Ricky give chase for some distance, but the sound of their feet soon petered away. They were safe, at last.

As Andy looked around, he realized they were inside a tunnel, with dim lights on the wall, and very dirty floors. There seemed to signs of habitation along the tunnel though, and the walls were filled with graffiti.

The homeless man was clutching his sides, and gasping - he seemed to be completely out of breath. But when he finally spoke, they were taken aback by the words that came out - “You know kids, I have never been that grateful to anybody for saving me from a sticky spot. And believe me, I have been in many sticky spots. I think I am right - you deserve a chance, Andy - you really do.”

“How did you know his name?” yelled Dina, clearly terrified.

The man smiled and said, “Oh I know a lot more about him. Come in, Andy and Dina,” he said as he motioned to a door next to him.