Prologue

The intruder was shocked by the boy's begging. He'd been sent to collect what was within this room, but he hadn't expected that the "package" was a living human. Shaking his head, the intruder opens the locks on the cell. What did the government want with a mere boy?

The boy watches the old man in front of him, eyes glazed from pain from months of torture. The old man seemed nothing special, yet had managed to get passed the security systems with apparent ease. Either he was a really good thief who expected trouble or. . . the boy didn't like the second possibility, that this old man was related to one of the controlling governments. He didn't have long to think before exhaustion took him into sleep.

The old man freed the unconscious boy and picked him up to carry him out to the waiting car. He turned and was about to leave when the doorway was blocked by three tall human sized robot creatures.

"Unauthorized entry detected" the middle robot said in a choppy metallic voice. "Commencing removal." The robotic creature reached out to grab for the old man.

The old man stepped back away from the robot and back toward the cell behind him. He lifted a hand to his ear and said "You didn't say that there would be old War Machines here."

A slightly metallic male voice responded to him with "There isn't supposed to be. Hacking now." The voice continued, "They were all supposed to be scrapped after the last Great War. Either these are salvages or the owner has been disobeying more than just one law. Done."

The war machines froze in place as they deactivated. The old man walked right past them as if they were no more than inconveniently placed statues and not creatures that would have killed him mere moments before. Leaving the house, the old man carried the boy to the waiting car and set him in the back seats. Before sitting down in the front passenger seat, the man took the opportunity to stretch his stiff back. "I'm getting too old for this kind of work. Maybe I should consider retiring after this job." He looked to the android body in the driver seat. "Take us to the outer base Kaber. We'll be staying there for a while it seems."

Kaber nodded and drove the car through winding streets and out of the city. Not once did they look back, even when they heard the distant sound of the department of surveillance teams. There weren't many with free range of the city, even the underground, but this old man did. There wouldn't be any adults who would question him.

"What are you going to tell your daughter this time?" Kaber asked.

"Business trip I guess. It is kind of true."

"Yes. . . do you actually get paid for this kind of thing?"

"Well, not exactly. We do get some credits [1] from this though."

"Right. . ." Kaber pulled up in front of a lone house within the edges of an old growth forest. He parked the car and got out, before lifting the teenage boy out of the car and walking to the house. The old man unlocked the front door and let the three into the house.

It was a slightly rustic looking house on the outside, covered in cedar wood planks, stained to withstand the elements. The wood was old, and several sides of the house were showing years of wear. The inside of the two story house was cozy, well furnished, and fairly simply decorated.

The old man went about preparing for dinner, while Kaber lay the unconscious teen on a couch and covered him with a blanket. The boy had been oddly warm the entire time. He didn't feel feverish, but seemed to radiate a different sort of heat.

[1] The currency of this world, comparable to the US dollar.