Trevor's old "home" on Earth looked exactly as he remembered it from three years before, from the outside at least. The only difference was that, now, his dad's old car that he'd always meant to fix but never did was half rusted out and had a thick coat of grime all over it.  

​     Did he even dare to visit? 

     No. No, actually he didn't, but he still intended to. 

     "Bye," Trevor said. 

     He turned invisible. 

     He had to be extremely cautious.

     He was, after all, wanted for murder.  

     Trevor put his ear to the front door. He expected to hear the TV in the living room. 

     He heard nothing. 

     Dad must be in his bedroom lying down, Trevor thought. No way would he actually leave the apartment except to go buy cigarettes and beer, so...

     Trevor used his house key to unlock the front door.

     It was the middle of the day in the middle of the week, so Trevor assumed his younger brother, Cole, was at school. Trevor had never known him to miss a day.

     He opened the door only enough to allow his body to step inside. Then he closed the door again immediately. Still,  

     CREAK! CREAK! 

     The door made an awful racket opening and closing. If anybody was inside the apartment, they must certainly have heard it. 

     The first thing that hit Trevor was the stench of the place. He'd been in a training facility in another galaxy/timeline for three years, so the smells of Earth were kind of overwhelming at first, anyway. Gas smells. Oil smells. Metallic and dirt smells. The stink of that apartment, though, was much more intense. Rotted fruit smells. Stale body odor smells. Smoked cigarette smells. All of it blended together, heated by the room's temperature, Trevor's dad always kept the thermometer turned way up, made for kind of a thick, invisible cloud that almost made Trevor gag.

     It also brought back memories, and not particularly pleasant memories. It wasn't that he had a vicious childhood, his dad didn't beat on him or try to fuck him or anything, but he didn't do much of anything else, either. Never had a job that lasted longer than three or four months. They moved from place to place until, finally, they wound up at this place where they just managed to come up with the rent month after month. No mom. 

     Christ, Trevor thought. What am I even doing here? 

     Because the Azure had allowed him and Niki a morning and afternoon on Earth to do as they wished before the next mission, and this was the only place he could think of to go.  

     How pathetic was that? 

     To walk into the living room was like walking into his own private museum.

     To complete the scene, though, his father should be sitting in his favorite chair watching TV. He did that sixteen hours a day.

     So where in the hell was his father?

     "Dad?" he called out.

     He started for the bedroom when he thought, I'd better go visible. I don't want to scare him.

     "Hi," he said.

     It caught him in the neck.

     And, damn! It hurt! It hurt!

     Trevor grabbed for it, his last conscious move.

     It was a fucking dart!  

     Where did it...How did it... 

     He dropped to the floor and went into convulsions. 

     Cole Harper stepped out of the closet where he'd been hiding. 

     He smiled as he said, "Welcome home, brother."

END OF CHAPTER ONE

HOME