The Second Archives

On Hold Feature: L.E.A.P ~ Prologue

---/Prologue/---

---January 8, 2110---

I was ten years old. Only ten years old when my final family member was killed, leaving behind one last descendant of the Robertson family, throwing my life into shambles and casting me into an adventure that I could never have imagined.

The memory of that horrible day is vivid, etched into my brain so deeply that little could erase it, so little could take away the pain of that day. And nothing could ever take away the mysteriousness of it. The mysteriousness of the jump - the occurrence that somehow, through some impossibility, saved my life even when I may not have wanted that.

“Mom!” a child screams, his voice echoing in the deserted alleyway. At least, it was normally deserted, being in a darker corner of the city, while not so dark it would be the typical dark alleyway, with thieves and bandits sitting around. It was your average deserted alleyway.

“Run, Theodore! Run!” The woman, likely the mother, screams at her child, giving up the kind, motherly voice that she had used for the last ten years, whenever the boy was around. This was more important than her image. Her only child’s life was more important than keeping up her motherly image that likely would soon be shattered.

It still feels like it happened yesterday, in fact, it could have. To some other child, at least. In this corrupt world, people were constantly disappearing. Xero blamed the thieves, we blamed Xero. And maybe, just maybe, that was the right thing to do.

“Don’t bother. He’s going to the same place as you! Heh!” The man, dressed in old clothing with rips and tears, as well as smudges and dirt covering it, takes a step forward, holding the gun in front of him. He’s out of a nightmare - no, he is the nightmare. But he’s just a drop in the bucket. So many people like him are corrupt, driven that way by Xero. It shouldn’t be this way. This should not be happening in Xero’s quote-on-quote ‘perfect’ world. People should all have homes. People shouldn’t be murdered. But yet, there he was, wearing rags and pointing a gun at the child and his mother.

He cocks the gun.

He smiles, an evil smile full of malice and cruelty.

Then he fires.

I dream it every night, the pain of it repeating, over and over, like a track stuck on ‘horrible’. I can’t survive constantly remembering it, but it cannot be forgotten. It is stuck forever, there is no delete or erase button. And there is no going back.

“Theodore- RUN!” comes his mother’s final plea, along with her last breath. It barely registers in her son's mind.

“NO!” The ten year old can barely feel the torrents of tears streaming down his face, as the thug turns toward him, a sneer on his face. The man, Theodore knew, likely wouldn't leave any witnesses alive, and Theodore was clearly a witness. In fact, this child was more than that. He was the reason the man was there.

And the short memory haunts me in the daytime, taunting me from the dark parts of my mind, like an itch you can’t scratch.

The boy was in an alleyway - there was no way out, he knew that. One way, solid brick wall, the old-fashioned building material looking out of place in the steel and metal world the boy lived in. The other side of the darkened alleyway? A homicidal man, likely a complete lunatic, who wanted him dead. He was only ten, but he understood this. He turned towards the brick wall, only a few metres away.

The man cocked his gun again, the clicking sound telling of death coming soon.

The man pointed his gun at me, it must have been the most terrifying moment of the ten years of my life. I was going to die, and I should have had no hope.