Prologue

Testing? Testing to see if Error 001 lets me upload long chapters from my book (without the book?

Looking back at my life, I see a boy.  He’s a ten year old dreamer.  His straight blond hair barely hangs past his ears as he waits upon a hill for his hero, a melancholic look in his eyes.  I know what he’s thinking " he’s thinking about his extraordinary memory, and how the only good things to remember are the stories his hero tells him.  Everything else, lame.   Just more insignificant fluff for his isolated little life " routine weaponry classes, history-reading, and free time for games.

      He’s thinking about how there’s a world outside the trees, a world that his parents don’t want him to see.  Sure, they want him to read about it, but text is text, black and white, and it’s meaningless if one doesn’t get to experience it himself.  Sometimes, he’s not even sure if everything he reads is real.  But the way his hero tells about the world outside?  That leaves him without a doubt that there’s something worth wondering about outside the forest.  After all, how else could he speak with such passion?

      Redwoods.  Mountains.  Valleys.  Rivers.  Aurora Borealis.  This boy, Number 444 (or 4444444, the long way), wants to witness all of it.  He wants to gaze up at a tree so tall he can barely see the top of it, stand at the tallest peak of the tallest rock in the world, throw his voice down into a valley, and hear it echo, echo.  He wants to hold his breath and plunge his head into a river, only to draw it back out, gasping, his hair freezing and wet.  He wants to watch the colors wax and wane across the sky as he lays upon a field of snow, smiling as a snowdrop falls upon his chilled cheeks.

      He wants to do everything his hero did.  But no, his parents keep him on a piece of property in a large forest clearing in the middle of nowhere.  They tell him that, if he knows what’s good for him, he would stay on the property, hidden.  And because the boy loves his parents, he obeys them.  For the most part.  Sometimes, his adventureous nature gets the best of him. In the middle of the night, he’ll find himself climbing out of his bedroom window and running into the trees, seeing if he can find an end to the mysterious forest beyond.  But there never is an end that he can find, and he gets scared before he travels too far, anyways.

      At the moment, he’s waiting for his brother.  That’s his hero, his brother.  And his brother’s name?  Ionracas.  Eight years ago, when Ion was only thirteen years old and his family lived in the forbidden world, he had chosen that name at their local Naming Ceremony.  The name’s meaning was Scottish Gaelic, and it stood for integrity, honesty, justice, and righteousness.  Practically everything 444 thought of when he imagined him.  Ionracas was a shining example, and without a doubt, 444 wanted to be just like him.

 

      Now, a boy can’t wait upon a hill forever, and just as boredom begins to set in, he feels a hard object smack the back of his head.  He’s startled, and not quite sure what the heck that was, but when he looks down, he sees a tennis ball.  It begins rolling down the hill, picking up speed, getting faster and faster until…! 

      A foot stops the tennis ball, and the boy’s eyes grow wide.  He knows this foot, and he knows it well.

      “Ionracas!” the boy hollers at the top of his lungs.  He runs to his long-awaited hero, leaping with joy.  They celebrate, their reunion joyous, and the boy begins to beg for what he’s wanted all this time " stories.  These stories, he needs them; they’re his lifeblood and water.  But Ion, although thrilled to see his little brother for the first time in weeks, doesn’t have time for stories at the moment.  He needs to get back to get back to the house and unpack his bags, and then he needs to find his pet husky (who, unusually, hasn’t arrived to greet him yet).  But what Ion does have time for is to give the boy a promise he made the week before he left, and he draws it from his bag.

      The boy is in paradise; what he sees is absolutely stunning.

      It’s a katana, straight from Japan.

      The sleek weapon of choice is the best he has ever seen, nothing like the dull blades he uses for practice with his weaponry trainer, Sofos.  Its handle is wrapped with a greenish-tinted cloth, and the blade shines silver in the sunlight.

      It’s the best souvenir Ionracas could have possibly brought him, aside from the stories, at least.

 

      After much appreciation, they head back to the house together.  Since Ion’s busy, the boy goes to play a game in his room on his lightscreen.  The machine’s projectors project a 360 degree screen around his whole body, concealing him in its light.  He battles a hoard of chibi ninjas and the Samurai King, all to win the coveted Creatorian Patch.  And apparently, the Creatorian Patch isn’t only important in the game world " it’s important in the real world, too.  When his father brought him this game, the boy was told that the patch was incorporated to make kids want to become real-life Creatorians, elites.  Good guys.  And it worked.  That’s what the boy wanted to be when he grew up, a Creatorian.  More specifically, a Creatorian that was just like his hero-brother, but better.  Then, he’d be epic!

      If only he was allowed off of this property.

 

***

      The hours tick away as the boy plays his game.  He could play it all night if he wishes; after all, it’s a break day for him.  That means absolutely no homework, weaponry, or anything.  Just time to relax and wait a bit longer for his brother " where is that guy, anyways?  But a noise causes him to power down his game.  It starts out as a simple tap-tap noise.  Then, it grows to something heavier, louder.  And it’s above his head… 

      If he didn’t know better, he’d think people were walking on his roof.  Strangers, because everyone else knows better.

      A thought occurs to him.  Maybe it’s Ionracas; maybe that’s where he went!  Maybe Ion’s not searching for his husky at all, but helping Sofos surprise attack him for practice.  Of course, they wouldn’t really hurt him - surprise attacks were merely gentle simulations " but he doesn’t feel in the mood for playing with weapons anyways.  Maybe if he calls out to his attackers, they’d know he wasn’t fooled and come out.  So he does " “Ionracas?  Sofos?  Come out!  You can come out now!”

      He never expects to hear the woman’s scream, his mom’s scream.  Never expects to hear two gunshots in a row " real, live gunshots, not the fake kind that comes from movies.  Never expects himself to fill with so much anger as he grabs his brand new, flawless katana, and races downstairs, screaming a war cry.

      His parents are already dead when he gets down there.  They’re lying on the ground in a pool of redness, and rusty scent makes him feel nauseous.  Above his parents stands a group of eight soldiers, and one is putting away a pistol.

      That’s the one he needs to kill.

      He charges forward, his vision red.  He attacks the soldier, only to find that his sword is useless against the range of the pistol.  Soon, he finds that he’s surrounded in a ring by eight men with pistols, and he knows that it’s not wise to do anything more.  He doesn’t want to be shot.  Not when Ionracas can still save him, anyways.

      So he waits it out, hands in the air and katana on the ground.  Breathing ragged, shuddery breaths, tears drip from his naïve blue eyes as he stares at his little barefoot feet.  Sometimes he glances up to look into the eyes of the soldiers; never has he seen such mean eyes before.  Not even in his games.  And he doesn’t get why some of the soldiers are sort of smiling as they hold their pistols at his head " is something funny?  Is shooting a ten year old boy’s parents funny?

      Then, he notices the insignias on their coats.  It’s the Creatorian insignia.  Not the one that says they are Creatorians themselves, but the one that says they work for Creatorians.  This confuses the boy, because aren’t the Creatorians good guys?  Then why are there pistols pointed at his head?  Why are his parents dead?

      So, he just cries.  Waits for his brother, surrounded, feeling like a piece of bait on a fishing hook.  It must hurt, being a piece of bait on a fishing hook.  From the stories Ionracas told him, the worm is skewered straight through as it is dangled into the water, waiting for the fish to end its misery.  And that’s exactly how he feels, like his heart has been skewered through and through.

 

      His hero finally comes.  That is, a half an hour later.  By then, the sky outside the windows is dark, the boy’s legs ache from standing rigidly for so long, and he’s had enough of the foul breath and malicious smiles of the soldiers around him.  When Ionracas pops through the doorway, he’s holding in his arms his husky; the poor creature is on the verge of death.  The soldiers must’ve gotten to the dog first.

      Ionracas shouts for the boy to come, and without being told twice, he does.  Somehow, the soldiers let him go to his brother.  Together, they run for a while before they’re surrounded again. 

      Ionracas tries to reason.  He offers the soldiers all his money, his hovercar.  He tells them that he’d do anything to get him and the boy out safely, and that he’d even be okay if they memory wiped them both and dropped them off somewhere in a random city.  Anything but this.  And for a moment, it looks like it will happen.  At least, the soldiers say it will, but Ionracas must first get on his knees and beg.  But when he does so, the soldiers act like they’ll shoot the boy, so Ion leaps up, knocks one of the soldiers over, and is tasered.

      With his hero incapacitated, the boy can do nothing but surrender.  Sure, it feels like an act of cowardice, the exact opposite of what he’s trained for all these years.  But it also feels like another chance for he and his brother to escape and survive.

 

***

 

      Not too long after, the boy finds himself in a pair of handcuffs, locked to the wall of a helicopter.  His hero sits to the right of him, still trembling from the electric shock, but not writhing around anymore.  He looks weak, weaker than the boy could ever remember him.  But he mouths, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” anyways, even while they’re watching their house burn down through the small circular window to the left of the boy’s head.  He mouths it as the steeple collapses into the second story, the second story into the first story.  And he continues to mouth it as the bottom level of the house is burning up, turning the murdered bodies of their parents into dust and blowing their remains skyward.

      The boy’s own mouth is full of thick, salty spit that tastes like tears, and his throat is tight like someone is squeezing it.  He can’t talk.  But he can nestle his head onto his brother’s shoulder and listen as Ion continues to say, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” flames flickering in the darkness upon their faces.

      It’s the first lie that his hero ever told him, and he hopes it won’t be the last.

 

      Eight hours later, the boy emerges from a Creatorian interrogation facility.  He can remember the path back home; he kept careful track of the direction while in the helicopter, and it is impossible for him to forget.  If he really wants, he could run all the way there, back to the smoke and the ashes and the dead dog and his dead parents.  But he knows that he can’t go back now, and will never be able to go back.  Isolation is over.  Change is now.

      So, he runs to the only safe place he knows, alone.  He’s crying, sobbing.  Chanting, “Courage, courage, courage!” to himself whenever his legs feel like they’re about to give out.  “Courage” was Ionracas’s last word.  Bloody and mangled, his hero had finally managed to escape his chains.  He freed the boy on his last breath.  And leaning on the torture table for support, he had told the boy to run " Get to safety! " and to always, always remember “courage”.  Then, his legs collapsed from underneath him, and he was dead.

 

      That was the day “Courage” became the boy’s mantra and future value.  And, to this very day, it rings so vividly in his " my - mind.  See, that boy was me, three years ago.  Ionracas was my brother, and only twenty-two years old when he passed on. 

      Now, at thirteen years old, I live with my cousins in a world that’s foreign to me.  I will never forget what the Creatorians did to my family.  And I will certainly, most certainly, never forgive them.

Author's Note

Does Error 001 Allow?