PROLOGUE

The night sky had never been so beautiful, so ghastly and frightening. Turrets of dark clouds parted to reveal a yellow full moon which shone its pale light upon the barren land. Mist invaded the broken-down fort and an eerie silence now replaced the chaos that had insued mere minutes before. A heavy sense of foreboding hung stiffly in the air.

The lone scout traveled the winding corridors, nervously holding a gas mask to his face. The mist around him was slightly tinged with green and it swirled around his legs as he shuffled his way around the maze. He was almost finished registering every demolished room, committing even the last detail to memory to later report to his leader. The end of the corridor loomed up at him and he turned around to head back. There was no one now. All the inhabitants of the place had either been caught or had escaped into the woods to the south. It was just as his captain had predicted.

The scout was about to stride off when something caught his eye. It was not the adjacent room's inconspicuous entrance that riled him; it was what lay past it, sprawled across the floor. He had to go inside to make sure he wasn't seeing things. He shifted the long weapon slung on his hip and kneeled warily beside the prone figure.

It looked as though the boy had been hastily tossed there. He was incredibly thin and his pale skin and plain clothes were ripped here and there. Whole circles around his wrists and ankles and the palms of his hands and feet were raw. More shocking still was the boy's face: it was streaked with blood, some fresh, some crusting around his closed eyes. His dark, matted hair was wildly strewn every which way, also caked with the dry substance.

The scout shook him, the boy did not stir. The man ungloved one hand and placed it on the child's burning forehead. He then pressed two fingers to his slender neck. He was shocked to find a pulse.

----------------------------------------------------

"Quill!" the scout cried, moments later, emerging from the wreckage with the boy in his arms. "Quill, we got a live one!"

It did not look like it. The boy's head was thrown back, mouth slightly open. His limbs dangled awkwardly from the scout's firm grasp.

"I don't think he has much left him in, though," he bellowed over the whirring engine of the military helicopter in front of him. The man they called "Quill" stepped down from the chopper. He was well into his fifties, his hands were strong, his hair peppered with gray and his laugh-lined face, authentically benevolent. At the moment, however, he wore an appropriately concerned scowl. Although the leader of the investigation team need not even be present at the site of the capture, Quill had come along and now descended from the safety of his helicopter cabin. He marched right up to the younger scout and took the boy in his own arms. The child's elongated frame was surprisingly light, even for its thinness.

The scout began to chatter away excitedly, describing the circumstances under which he had found the boy, the oddity of the fact that he was not bound nor chained and still had those marks, and voicing his curiosity as to what this boy had to do with the mafia's intentions. Quill barely listened. "Were there any others?" was all he voiced, not looking up from the child's red-stained face. The scout fell silent for a moment.

"Not in that quadrant of the fort, sir." He replied pensively, "What about the other scouts? What have they—" He stopped himself, all too late of course. He had no right to ask his superior and he knew it. The young scout felt he must have angered his commanding officer—commander of his commander, actually. Quill, however, showed no sign of it.

"The others found nothing as well. Most bizarre…" he said, more to himself than to the scout. He turned and strode briskly back to the chopper, hoisting both himself and the boy inside the cabin. He gave the bony bundle up to the paramedics and placed a radio call. They were to go back to the base to deliver the twelve captured criminals and the innocent survivor.

'Innocent until proven guilty,' Quill mused. The whole thing was very puzzling. True, the boy was a prisoner, but why him? This changed the picture for Quill, drastically, and as much as it pained him, he knew he must interrogate the boy as soon as he woke up, even if he hadn't fully recovered. It was his duty as leader of this investigation and of that small, private force. Quill heaved a heavy sigh.

"It's a good thing I'm retiring after this," he mumbled. "What?" came his partner.

"Oh, nothing, Roger. Nothing at all…"