prologue
Monday, April 14, 2003 10:21 p.m.

Of all tasks, the most difficult is "to begin".

But things begin everywhere, all the time, as Fate tears forward on her temperamental tide, bearing us towards our end. I may have questioned Fate once, and I still question her now. But silently she leads us – blindfolded and ignorant players along her unlit stage, never stooping to answer.

Every story has a beginning, but every true story has another tale to tell before it. And another before that, all the way back to the first dawning of time. Yet before even then, was there still another lonely heart, another unguided soul...another untold story?

My story is one such, that leads without a beginning, and until I die, will leave without an ending. This is my story. This is my life.

This is me. HC0398.

Call me Rowan.

For me at least, this story should have begun with my birth, followed by the peaceful, laughter-filled days of childhood. It was a childhood I saw in other people's homes while my own was a bitter shadow of survival. I was a haclone -- an ethical stigma born from the union of a human and a clone. The 398th to do so, to be precise. Most haclones were never born due to genetic mutations and out of those that do, most never survive past their childhood, dying of radiation exposure in the wastefields where haclones were sent to work beside clones, robots and the condemned.

Humans themselves lived on water, their great cities sprawling across the vast oceans, abandoning a land long sapped dry of life. Now, centuries on, humans thought to rebuild the land, and it was us who were sent to chip away at the devastation humans left behind.

We were destined to die, consumed by the land we were to revive. Yet I had a different fate.

A human boy sought me out and sponsored me into Marinton. His name was Ash. I was to kill for him, and in return, I was allowed a piece of human life. He offered no alternative. Least of all, death.

All my targets were the Spirited. Humans had wanted to encounter the third kind, and they were granted their wish in the most unpleasant way when cloning was perfected. No scientist before then could have believed the existence of the soul and the soulless clones they produced were possessed by life from other planets. Earth exploded into riot, battered by faceless invasion from without and torn by moral disagreement from within.

Finally someone stood up and made a decision. Clones were no longer classified as humans. They were programmed and controlled by computers instead of being granted a functional brain. Emotions and thought were taken away from them.

It didn't change the existence of the Spirited – those who were already possessed. As the world quietened down, dangers were forgotten in a typically human way. People began to doubt that they existed as their fear melted away with their motivation. The Federal set up a secret subdivision of executioners whose sole purpose was to uncover the Spirited and destroy them. Ash was one member. Perhaps it was then that I should have began questioning how ethical an organisation could be if its chief members were children.

And so, five years later, there I was after another assignment, acting the part of a nonchalant Maglev passenger as I dragged a bulking overcoat over my blood-drenched shirt.

"Hey," someone tapped my shoulder. No sooner than I glanced up did the girl press a stunner to my head. "...a haclone...?"

Weary and careless, I tried to push her away. The next thing I knew was that she pulled on the trigger.

I woke up in a very plain room, just large enough to contain a bed and a chest drawer. The walls were a sanitised white and there were no windows to break the monotonous scene.

“Who would have thought that the blood of haclones were red too?” The same girl who had stunned me was now my hostess. “HC0398. Male. 16. Hair-colour: brown. Eye-colour: yellow. Height: 168 – wow, that’s short!”

I stifled a retort, recognising there was no point reacting to the bait, and she continued to list off my profile. “…School: Southwood…” she paused and asked, “Name?”

“HC0398,” I replied automatically.

“That’s not what I asked for.”

“It’s the only name haclones are allowed.”

“Since when were haclones so opinionated anyway?” she muttered. “Rowan and Ash Merling. Infamous. PUs.”

The feeling of your blood suddenly freezing inside you was not pleasant. “Wh-wh-what’s that?”

Belatedly I realised I could not read off her, and though I have met enough psychically protected people for me to have dismissed it, her defences were unusually solid.

“For your information, it stands for psychic unit,” the smirk on her face told me all that I needed to know about the effectiveness of my lie.

“What do you want?” I demanded, wanting to end this interrogation.

“How do you kill?”

“Want to find out?” I bantered.

At that point, the door slid open. “Lyriel—”

“Knock!” she snapped.

The young man grinned. “Give your poor brother a break.” His eyes fell inquisitively on me. “What’s this? A new toy?”

“Get the door,” Lyriel said right as soon as the doorbell went off.

“Ash Merling,” Ash announced briskly as soon as he stepped into the room, scrutinising his surroundings with disdainful eyes.

“Lyriel Randle,” the smirk returned to her face.

“Let’s go,” Ash said to me.

“That’s impossible,” Lyriel said pleasantly.

“What do you want?” Ash was immediately on the defensive.

“Must you sound exactly alike?” her smile as she chewed on the tense silence was half-delighted and half-taunting. Returning her attention to my plight, she said, “He can barely walk out of this room unaided. Besides, he’s been assigned a new partner.”

We were sometimes assigned partners to amend each other’s weaknesses and enhance our strengths. They were rarely successful because of psychic and emotional incompatibility. “Who?” Ash demanded.

My flailing spirit sank at the grin on Lyriel’s face, “Me.”

And so, as they say, the story began.