Bond

Prologue

The stars fled upwards through the descent. 

"Are we in possession of her location?" a young boy requested. 

By looking at him, one could see his nerves had been laced with anxiety, longingly reaching down to the soles of his cold feet. The hair on his knuckles stood on end, his pupils mere pinpricks of a black hole lying in thin sheets of ice.

There was absolutely no need for the question. It was a pointless one, and a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth for he already knew the answer:

She was going to arrive at any moment now.

"The human is locked in at 37.6467° North, 115.7453° West, Rachel, Nevada," the computer reported.

The boy inhaled shakily, his chin quivering. He was a rare phenomenon. He still remembered the moment he learned he would finally be able to rid himself of his long-sitting desperation.

All the cheers, the cries- reduced to a painful silence.

He was simply handed a second chance he was never meant to receive; and he knew it should not have been this simple.

He drew in a shaky breath, his fingernails digging into the flesh of his palm. Yes, it was painful, but much more momentous things were climbing over the horizon.

These things loomed incomparably above a mere cut.

Those things, he hoped for with an unmatched fervor. He did not care to see the bad; he could not. Only the good.

The boy's blood oozed, dripping silver and blending into the metal floor of the ship, past the long coat he wore.

"Gada ngaas recut yassan. We will retrieve her, now. My Bond."