The Eden Projects (Publishing edit)

Chapter 11. Where it began.

6 years ago...

It was a Sunday when Kasper finally died.

Regardless of the way in which it had happened.

He really had died.

So it was a Sunday on which he had been reborn.

A muggy, meaningless Sunday. In a room at the top of a house he'd never been in, with a boy he'd never seen before, and a needle "not meant for him." With Archer and Zak at the door, and his body unable to move. 

It was fire. 

Whatever that chemical was. 

Fire.

Now here he was. In a small apartment, with three doors, two rooms, and two tenants. Naked on the floor of Zak's clogged bath-shower combo. Above a grease-filled vat now stained with his own bloody vomit, hands balled in infantile fists, holding fast to the death he was promised as the pot swirled in mercurous ebbs. He had died and was brutally brought back, and the devils were out to feast in contempt for the brutal slight; Kasper's were champing at the bit to join them, and everyone wanted something, and he was nothing... and... and... and...

"I'm going home," Kasper muttered.

"No." Zak worked at stapling a tarp over the broken window of his upper room apartment. The day had turned from strange to horrid faster than the weather could adapt. "Ace is still out there, he could pull some stupid move."

Ace, who was Ace? 

The boy, the boy under that shelf?

Archer was set to sweeping up the shattered glass that remained of the floor-length window. A mess of feathers floated around, softly blown by the incoming breeze. Blood had done a number on the wall below the windowsill. It slicked down as if a soppy rag had been tossed directly at the surface.

Kasper lied through his teeth. "I'm worried about Zero. I- I'll get him and bring him back here. I can't leave him."

Zak looked to Archer, nodded, and pulled at his own hair. "What were you doing there- why the hell were you in Abe's house? You can't just-"

"I had to ask him something..." He swallowed.

"You should have left Ace stuck in there, why did you set him free, you don't know why he was in there..."

"He needed help, I didn't know he would- he looked like a normal kid... I didn't know..." Kasper felt at the jab on his neck. "Am I gonna die?"

"I don't know what it means. But you weren't breathing. We don't know what he stuck you with," Archer said gently. "Coulda been nothing, but we can't kill him till we know. He knows that."

"It wasn't nothing," Zak said. "The Birds don't do anything without good reason. The question is why they were on Adam's turf."

"Who's Zero?" Archer asked.

Zak responded. "His kid brother."

"Another kid? Seriously?"

Adam's bloodline, though short, was kept a local secret. Anyone that wasn't within a few miles of the Farrow House had no knowledge of exactly who, or what made its bed in Adam's den. Let alone children. TWO, to be exact.

"I promise I'll be back. I can't leave him there."

Zak shuffled in place before Archer spoke.

"Go, and be quick."

Closing the door to the upstairs studio, Kasper trotted down the steps and into the garage. The large plucked feathers still sat in puddled blood where a rusty chain now hung half-draped over a chair. So it really did happen. The horrors that occurred over the hours following his meeting with the strange boy at Abram's house were beyond words. The boy, who he was sure had in fact killed him with something, had gone and erased the day from his memory.