𝐑𝐄𝐃𝐄𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐄 𝒃.𝒃𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒆𝒔

PROLOGUE

                            BRAZIL- DECLAN MCKENNA

'Because its all you've ever wanted and all you want still'

It's been 365 days science I escaped the red room, upstate New York has been the first place I've ever been able to feel purely at home. It's the first place that's ever given me a single ounce of comfort. Home is my medicine. And by home I mean my one bedroom loft on the outskirts of upper New York. When I first got here it was empty like I was. It had chipped walls, wallpaper that was clutching on and a hole in the wooden floor planks. That changed as I did. I got a job at a library down the road that payed just enough, I put all my savings into decorating, I painted the walls and hung the decorations, the 'souvenirs' from the few places I'd visited with my new freedom. For example a shark painting I'd brought from a local thrift shop. Everything in that loft was something I added and hand picked. I built it from scratch, the loft is my life's souvenir. The heart of the loft being a black kitten I'd found abandoned in a local alleyway. I found him in a box meowing in fear, pure black and fluffy I'd called him Salem. At first it took some getting used to as he was the first thing I'd ever had to look after that I had chosen to. My first pet,my first best friend. We understood each other as much as a cat and human could we'd both been abandoned and just wanted normality and love.