The Anomalies

Prologue

The sky was completely covered with thick, dark-grey clouds laden with rain that had recently begun to fall.

The foliage of the treetops and the greyness of winter obscured the little light that stubbornly tried to filter through, making the forest near Mistyfell gloomy and dreary.

The wind blew frostily, turning the light but thick drops into annoying and painful pins that stuck on the bare skin of hands and face.

When there was a gust of air, those pins could even hurt the eyes.

It was the middle of winter, and the cold was such that the extremities were only sensitive to the pain caused by advanced numbness.

Kieran, however, no longer felt the cold bites too upset by what was about to happen. He was only ten years old, but his father had demanded that he be present at the execution.

His soul and heart were frozen at the horrendous injustice that was about to take place.

He was standing with his father and some operational agents in his service, in front of the house of Zoe, his playmate.

His parent was an officer working for 'the Agency'; one of the best to hear what was said about him.

This organisation was government type but acted completely independently.

The Agency was made up of well-trained and hand-picked officials whose only purpose was to find 'the Anomalies'; that was how they defined those people who possessed power but were considered dangerous.

Individuals who, according to the Agency, were no longer able to control their power and were lethal to society.

'The Anomalies' had to be found and then stopped.

Until then, for Kieran, the term 'stopped' had meant something quite different from what, to his horror, he realised, too late, it meant for that organisation.

For those in the Agency like his father, it meant 'eliminated', 'killed'.

That winter day, as the first snow of the year fell, Zoe's parents and sister were captured, accused of being 'Anomalies' and without even a trial, executed on the spot.

That day irrevocably marked his and Zoe's future.