Chapter 1

An agonized scream was all that could be heard inside the room. If it weren't for the soundproof walls, the entire city would probably have heard if there were any nearby.

The boy's motionless body lay on the floor in one of the corners of the room. The wall was painted with splashes of blood. But that didn't seem to bother the four men who worked there, for all that mattered was whether the experiment had worked or not.

"Go see if the brat is still alive, Davis!" The shortest and thickest of them ordered the one closest to the door of the small office inside the room, where they protected themselves from the energy generated by the Stone.

Erick Davis nodded and opened the door, walking toward the fallen child. He checked his vitals and found he was barely alive. Davis wasn't evil, and if he had depended on him, that boy wouldn't have gone through this ordeal.

He gave Andrew Thomas a negative sign, who punched the table in front of him. He looked at the other two men present and indicated that they should go after the remaining pieces of stone, as they heard when it exploded.

"Get rid the brat's body. Burn it, it's safer. I don't want any snoopers seeing more than they should and bringing the media around here." Saying that, Andrew left the room, frustrated.

Howard Luccas and Dominic Johnson were picking up the remains of the Stone, but they noticed that the small ventilation window was open. They looked at each other. Had any pieces ended up out there?

While the two were busy, Erick took the boy and walked out the room's door. He walked through the empty hallways and into the cremation room. He placed the boy on top of the gurney and stood in front of the camera. There was another body there, an adventurer who had seen too much. The camera wasn't seeing this one, so, for all intents and purposes, the boy's body was placed inside the oven and cremated, and not the adventurer's.

Erick passed through the lobby that led to the exit, where the garbage was dumped. There have been no working cameras since Thursday. Since the incompetents in the IT department hadn't fixed the problem, no one would know he'd been there.

He positioned the boy against the wall and went back inside. When he got out of office, he'd grab some garbage bags and use the excuse to get rid of them so he wouldn't attract rats. Then he would pick up the boy and take him to where he would be helped.

*

"Louis, go wash your hands! It's lunch time!" Mila Florence yelled through the kitchen window as she finished preparing dinner.

Louis was sitting on the grass by the river behind their house. He loved drawing nature, and as it was late August, the temperature was still hot. He loved to watch the clouds, but unfortunately there, they were scarce. When Mila called him, Louis was already gathering up his drawing supplies and putting them in his bag.

"I'll be right there, Mom!" he yelled back.

Louis took one last look at the river and around, to make sure he hadn't left anything behind, before getting up and walking towards the kitchen door. However, before his hand could touch the doorknob, the sound of something falling into the water caught his attention, and he looked back. The surface of the river was disturbed, forming rings. Curious, he returned to the place where he was before and searched inside the crystal clear water. Near a rock, something resembling a wing was there. He grabbed it and pulled it up, revealing an animal that looked like a bat.

"Louis, I won't ask again!" by Mila's tone, she was already irritable. She hated saying the same thing more than once.

The boy placed the animal inside his bag of drawing supplies and entered the house, muttering a 'sorry' to his mother and entering his room as fast as he could. He was wanting to get a better look at the animal, however, he would have to hold back his curiosity. If Mila called him again, she wouldn't be as kind as the other two times.

He wrapped the bat in his sheet and left it on the bed, behind the pillow and ran to wash his hands before entering the dining room.

Mila made an approving sound as the boy sat down at the table. They thanked for the food and started to eat it.

Louis' father, Antoine, had died in an accident at work. He was a construction worker and one of the machines was faulty, causing him to fall from a good height, killing him. So Mila and Louis received a pension from the company. As the value was not very high, the mother needed to have another service, which was to ironing clothes for other people, in order to supplement their income.

"There are classes tomorrow. Have you prepared all your homework and packed your stuff?" She asked, as she took a spoonful of Cassoulet to her mouth - a kind of French bean stew, with white beans and meats.

Despite Mila not having much education, she wanted her son to be different from her, so, even though she was very busy, she made a point of encouraging him and paying attention if the boy was learning his lessons well and taking school seriously. She dreamed that he would have a bright future, far from that small commune of Les Angles, in the French countryside.

"Yes mom. It's all prepared!" Louis said, smiling. He was trying to eat as quickly as possible, which Mila didn't miss.

"Excellent. Now, eat slower, or you'll end up choking!" She took another spoonful to her mouth, as if to show the boy how to do it. Louis swallowed the large portion of food that was already in his mouth and nodded to his mother and did as she said.

"I'm sorry." He tried to follow what his mother was saying, but in a faster way than she, chewing very fast, before swallowing. He did it calmly, so as not to choke.

As soon as he finished with the last spoonful, Louis got up and took his plate to the sink, washing his dishes afterwards. He thanked his mother for the food and went to his room.

Mila knew the boy was in a hurry for some reason, still unknown to her. However, as Louis was always a good boy and never gave her reason to suspect that he was doing anything wrong, in those ten years of the child's life, she did not seek to investigate what was making him so reckless. 'Probably more ideas for his drawings,' she thought.

Louis entered his bedroom, closed the door - without locking it, as this was absolutely forbidden in Mila's house, and he ran to bed. Seeing that the animal was still there, he put his hand to his chest and sighed in relief. He moved closer to make sure the bat was still breathing.

Carefully unrolling the animal from the cloth, Louis realized that this was a bat a little different from what he was used to seeing in drawings and photos in school books. This one was tiny, and very light. Its coloration was more brown on top, with the chest more whitish. The hairs were long and fine. His face was small, quite different from his ears, which were long and open.

On the animal's chest was a kind of lilac stone, glowing faintly. Around the yolk, the beast's skin was hideous, reddened and almost purple, its fur splattered with blood. It looked like someone had buried the stone very hard in his chest. Louis lightly touched the edge of the bruised skin and the bat gave a light squirt.

Their eyes met and Louis felt a connection, as if the animal understood that he wasn't a threat, it just wanted to help him.

"I'll take care of you, little bat." The boy promised. "I just don't know how, yet, because if my mom finds out you're here, she's going to be furious." Mila hated flying animals.

Louis then remembered that he would need to feed the bat. He knew that some fed on fruit, others on blood, and others on insects. So he would have to test it.

Opening the door carefully, Louis peeked in and noticed his mother was in the living room, ironing clothes. The house was wooden, humble, and he had to be careful when stepping on the floor and opening the doors, because it all creaked. He tiptoed into the kitchen and fetched water and an apple. He returned to the bedroom and closed the door slowly.

The bat gladly accepted the water, but the apple was no longer well received. Before testing the blood, Louis decided to go after an insect. That idea didn't appeal to him in the end either. Give one animal to another to eat was weird. 'We don't do any different when we eat meat, though' he reminded himself.