Identity

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Jacob Chandler was no longer the infant child of Catherine Chandler and Vincent, he had no real last name. He was now a young man of fourteen. Jacob had been born from an extraordinary love story that tragically ended his mother's life right after his birth. He always felt it was because of him. Vincent disagreed with that. He took the blame on himself, something that still weighed heavily on him.

They had met at a critical time for his mother, when she was mistaken for someone else and was attacked and left for dead. Vincent had found her discarded and limp and took her home, his home. The closest thing to a grandfather Jacob had, Father as he was called by all, saved her life. His real name was Jacob Wells. That's who Jacob was named after.

Catherine Chandler was beautiful, smart. She was a lawyer. She worked in the D. A's office putting bad guys in jail. Vincent, well Vincent, was different. Father, Jacob Wells, had found him as an infant abandoned near St. Vincent's Hospital. No one likes to put a description into verbal words where Vincent is considered. Vincent doesn't look like a normal person. He doesn't look deformed really, that isn't it. Vincent looks like a mixture of a man and animal, lion-like. He isn't ugly, in fact in an odd way he was somewhat beautiful. He just didn't look like a real person. Jacob Wells found him, brought him home and saved him as an infant.

Home, well home is a massive maze of tunnels below the city of New York. Father was a founder to a different place to call home. People seemed to end up here who had perhaps a past and no future, no where to go above. This had been Jacob's home his whole life, he too had been brought here as an infant. Everyone below was family and worked together for good and held tight to secrecy.

Jacob heard stories, stories of the love Catherine had for Vincent and his love for her. There were many stories of how their unselfish love saved the other. There was the story of his birth and his mother's death. All could be construed as fiction stories, but they were reality to Jacob. No, Jacob wasn't an infant anymore. He was fourteen.

Growing up as a child below, well it had its disadvantages. Those first years he didn't know there was anything but the tunnels. He was taught by different teacher depending on the subject. Sometimes he felt content with home, other times perhaps not so much. He had secrets of his own, secrets he had shared with no one. Secrets that haunted him.

When he was younger the other tunnel children would tell him how much they envied him, how lucky he was that Vincent was his father. Then they didn't know that he was listening he'd hear them say how hard it was to believe he was his son. There was no physical sign of it. Trust the fact he had looked for it time and time again. The only thing he'd ever found in common with Vincent was a weird sort of physic connection that they'd always had. When he got old enough, however, he stopped taking that as value worth considering. Vincent had had that kind of connection with his mother. That could be the soul connection only because he was connecting to his likeness, genes, whatever he had of his mother. It was that, the part of her in me that he connected to. It didn't make him my father.

He knew he was supposed to be his father. He had been told that his whole life. He just never felt he could believe it. There were days he wasn't ever sure one hundred percent that he was the son of Catherine Chandler.

Jacob figured all boys have moments of rebellion and he had his. It was like a right of passage, a badge of honor the first time a kid sneaked away and slipped up to the city above. He had heard stories about where Catherine had lived above, seen a clipping on Father's desk with an address. On his first trip he found himself in front of the building where Catherine Chandler had once lived.

Eventually he found a library, a new source of information when his trips became easier, more routine. He would find soda bottles and turn them in for change to use to make copies of old newspaper clippings with photos, stories of Catherine Chandler. That's how he found out about Joe Maxwell and Elliott Burch. They were a part of her life, a part he felt he also needed to know.