Page 1 of Striker

Chapter 1

Striker

16 Years Ago

December

Age 14

My first memory isof darkness.

Then the darkness bled away, and bright lights illuminated faces I didn’t recognize and places I didn’t understand. After that,hecame, and I was thrust into a bone chilling cold and a different kind of darkness. A darkness where light couldn’t bleed in through cracks under the door. A dark so black, so cold, I knew that I’d go to sleep again if I allowed it.

Despite the biting cold that surrounded me, I held onto reality, feeling its icy fingers dig into my skin, creeping beneath my ribcage and robbing me of my breath.

I stayed in that darkness for so long, I feared I’d never come out.

But then I did.

The only memories of who I was before here are shadowy, blank spaces. Just a hollow emptiness and angry pain in my throat and belly. Flickering memories of falling asleep and waking up surrounded by people I’d never seen before. Of fear. Terror.

I don’t have any memories of a mother before the darkness other than flashes of a gold bracelet tinkling like little bells around a thin wrist. I know it’s her. My mother. How, I’m not sure. Some deep rooted feeling that lives in my gut, I suppose.

Sometimes, I’ll flash on a pretty bracelet and a wave of fear and sadness envelopes me. But then I remember the delicate gold chains wrapped around the gypsy’s waists at the market. I always enjoyed going to town, watching the gold bells and charms clang together as they walked by. Back when he allowed us to leave the school when we were boys. But we don’t go to the market anymore.

Not since we turned of age.

I was five years old when Fallon brought me here, which seems odd that I don’t remember my birth mother’s face or havememories that aren’t black waves of nightmarish terror. Five is old enough to remember your mother. But I was told my mother was a whore and didn’t have time to raise a boy, so maybe that’s why. She was too busy spreading her legs to earn money so she could shoot poison into her veins.

I remember Fallon telling me this when he sat me down on the icy floor in the cold room. I also remember thinking it was odd anyone wanted to put poison in their veins. When I said that, he told me it was because she was a stupid whore.

“Do you want to be like your mother?”

I didn’t like the look in his eyes, so I said, “No.”

“I’m your father now,” he said, standing over me so that I had to look way, way up to see his face. The way he said each word was strange, like he had sand in his mouth, and couldn’t pronounce the words right. “Do you understand?”

I nodded. But he didn’t seem to like I only nodded, so I told him, “Si.”

“Do you want to be strong like yourotets?”

I wasn’t sure what anotetswas, but I figured it was something he called himself. I looked at his long legs, his broad shoulders, his short black hair and eyes the color of water. He looked big and mean. The way I thought fathers should look according to what little I knew about them. I’d never had one before. But I liked the idea of him being mine, even if his face was stern and I had yet to be rewarded with a smile.

“Si, otets.”

Then he shut the door, and I was alone.

And cold. For a long, long time.

When the coldness or blackness tries to creep back into my mind, I remind myself I am no longer that boy sitting in that room desperate for a stranger to be my father, since my mother didn’t want me. I’m a soldier.

At least I will be when I complete this part of my training.

“Striker!”

My name whips across the rooftop as harsh as the wind over the platform where we stand in formation, snapping me back to the present.

I straighten my spine, tightening my fists, blinking to focus my mind. I was floating again. My eyes find myotets. My father—Commander Fallon—he insists we call him when we are in training. His brow quirks, but he says nothing.

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