Prologue

[Alex Black's Point of View]

"Oh! Come on! How is that even possible?" John, Alex's friend complained. They were playing an old fighting game on a retro console. As Alex skilfully pressed the buttons of the relatively small controller in his hands, the character on the huge flatscreen jumped over the assaulting panda bear and smacked him to the ground with an impressive thud.

Alex chuckled.

"Don't be a sore loser, John," he said.

"You know, ..." John mumbled in thought, his mind only half on the game. "Normally I'd complain about how you never let me win. But you can have it today."

"Why would you say that?" Alex asked as he frowned and shortly glanced towards his friend.

"This might very well be our last game together," John said in a sad and lonely kind of way. "Damn, I still can't believe you're moving. And why did it have to be so far away? We'll never get to randomly hang out like this anymore."

"Yeah," Alex said, suddenly feeling a little downcast himself.

His dad was the lead-researcher at a company called Bright inc. One of their main sources of income was creating more efficient types of solar panels, windmills and the like, but they were always on the lookout for new types of energy sources.

His dad had been researching this one new source of energy for years, but it was unstable and far from usable. The research had reached a standstill and so new measures had to be taken.

The new plan was to expose the energy source to another one, to see if they could influence each other. But for that, they'd have to move to one of the other research facilities. A two-hours-drive-away research facility, to be exact. That was not a distance sixteen-year-olds randomly crossed.

"Aren't you afraid?" John asked after a moment of silence, ignoring his character that was being slaughtered on the screen. Alex looked up in surprise.

"Not really," he said after thinking about it for a moment.

"Dear, God. I feel terrified in your stead!" John said dramatically as he hugged his own shoulders. "A new town, a new house, a new everything! What if you get lost on your first day of school? What if no one wants to be your friend! What if they suddenly start chasing you because they want to eat your brains?!"

John held out his hands in front of him and said the word "brains" in a zombie-like way.

"Idiot!" Alex laughed as he punched zombie John playfully in the shoulder.

"Well, at least you'll be free of this boring hellhole, right?" John laughed sourly as he rubbed his shoulder where Alex had punched it.

"You always say that. It's not that bad here, is it? I like living here. If my dad didn't need to relocate for his job, I would have stayed here until the end of my days."

"Psh, tell me one good thing about this place!"

"It's home."

John stared at him for a moment, unsure of what to say.

"Well, if you say it like that," he muttered unhappily.

"Don't worry so much. It'll all turn out fine. Now come here and concentrate on the game. Beating you is no fun like this."

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[Alex's POV]

Two months later, Alex had moved.

It had been right at the end of the school year, and so simultaneously at the start of the summer vacation. It had given Alex lots of time to get used to his new home and explore the environment, but he had been lonely more than anything else.

Making new friends had been more difficult than he'd anticipated. It certainly wasn't because nobody was around. On the contrary, this town was so full of people that it was enough to make him shy of crowds.

He'd just hoped he'd naturally bump into people around his age, but it hadn't happened. Sometimes he made up his mind to go and introduce himself to a random group of friends, but then he would notice they were getting up to leave, or something completely random would happen to crush his mojo and he'd slink away.

It wasn't until he needed to be at school during the summer holiday, two weeks before the lessons would start, that he finally got the opportunity to talk to somebody who wasn't his dad or some sort of shopkeeper.

Two girls, which he guessed were his own age, were talking leisurely on a bench in the courtyard, enjoying the warm summer sun shining in the blue-blue sky.

The two girls were both good looking. The word Barbie dolls came to mind, even though they looked a lot more down to earth than the role-model those dolls were associated with.

It was a scene Alex would expect at a picnic in the park. They seemed so out of place in this empty courtyard, yet they didn't seem to feel that way themselves.

"Uhm, sorry," he asked warily. Two pairs of eyes looked up at him curiously, as if they thought he looked out of place in the empty courtyard too. "I'm looking for the secretary's office?"

One of the girls seemed to panic, but her friend answered in a calm and composed way: "Sure. You pass through those doors over there and at the end of the corridor, you'll find the secretary's office. But I don't think anybody will be there today, so you'd better head upstairs to the principal's office. You can't miss it."

When Alex looked in the direction she had pointed, he saw a glass double door.

"Ok," he said as he looked back from the door to the girls. His gaze was automatically drawn to the girl who had panicked earlier. Her golden-blond hair was shining brightly in the summer sun as she watched her friend with admiration.

He must have been staring because the confident girl suddenly nudged her friend and said: "Right, Otto?"

To her question, the shy girl looked up towards him and he was met with deep blue eyes which seemed to sparkle as the sun caught in them. But the second she noticed that he had been watching her, she seemed to panic again and started nodding her head frantically.

"Cute," he thought and the strangest sense of familiarity overwhelmed him. For a second, he was certain that he knew this girl. Yet he couldn't put his finger on where he'd seen her before.

It wasn't until the shy girl stopped nodding her head, that he snapped out of it and remembered to stop staring.

"Okay, thanks! Bye," he said hurriedly, gave a small wave and took off.

If he couldn't remember where he'd seen her before, it probably wasn't important. Not to mention that she hadn't given any notion of recognition either. And if it was important, the memory would undoubtedly come to him in time.

Still, he felt like he'd hurried away too fast. He would have liked to talk with them a little longer. With a bit of luck, they would still be there once his business at the principal's office was done.

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Alex found the principal's office easily (thanks to the confident girl's directions) and had been about to knock on the door when a shout sounded from inside: "Woohoo! Finally free!"

The door swung open and a boy, a little taller than himself, came rushing out. He noticed Alex barely in time but managed to stop before knocking into him. They stood there for a moment, staring at each other.

"Sir? I think someone's here to see you," the boy said to the principal, who was sitting at his desk.

"Aha! You must be Alex! Your father called ahead," the principal said as he stood up from his desk and came to the door while pushing his glasses back up on his nose. Then he turned to the boy next to him and said: "Alex will be in your class this coming school year, Jasper."

"Really?! That's great news!" the boy the principal had called Jasper said excitedly. "If you ever need somebody to show you around, just give me a shout."

"Ok, I'll remember that," Alex said, caught a little off guard by the boy's hospitality after more than a month of being alone.

"Ok, Jasper. You can hurry off now. Go and enjoy your newly regained freedom," the principal said with a note of amused mockery to his voice and turned back to Alex when Jasper had taken off. "Please come in!"

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That night, Alex was plagued by a turbulent dream. He woke up with a scream, jolting upright. The remnants of the nightmare had him breathing heavily and he was covered in sweat.

He vaguely remember eyes looking at him. Sometimes they glared angrily, sometimes they looked apologetic, sometimes they looked with contempt, and once with pity, but never with a kind smile.

As his nightmare tortured brain calmed down, the only eyes that remained were the panicky, deep blue eyes of the shy girl he'd met earlier that day.

It took him a moment to realise that all the eyes he'd seen in his nightmare had been hers. Did that mean that he had met her before? He couldn't remember enough of the nightmare to be sure. It was maddening!

"Enough!" Alex grumbled as he threw the covers off of him and got out of bed to shower until he felt calm enough to continue sleeping peacefully.