Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,10
that night was the best experience of my life.
The morning after, however, was the worst.
That was a long time ago. And now I’m… well, now I’m different. I haven’t seen Ares since that night. That was how it had to be. Sterling took care of everything – moving us and acquiring for us a new place to live, protecting us from the authorities and a host of other aggressors, and making sure no one could find us. Not even Ares.
What I gave him in return was apparently worth all he did for me and my family. He was grateful for the exchange. And honestly, I was grateful too. I was ashamed at first… but when I watched my little brother grow up over the next few years, even from the distance I had to eventually keep from my family, I was thankful to the man who’d made Joshua’s existence possible. I was glad for the deal that saved his life.
And it turned out I was right about my brother’s smarts. He’s a physicist now at Cambridge. I’m proud of him. That’s what I tell myself when I think back on 1968, and remember Antares Mace.
Chapter One – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The conference room fell into an expectant hush, the closing notepads and set-down pens the signal for Annaleia to begin her pitch. She pressed a button on the controller in her hand and dimmed the lights. The screen behind her came to life with light and a black and white pen drawing of a hunched elderly woman wearing her hair in a loose bun.
“An old woman is sitting at a kitchen table alone,” she began, and the screen behind her reflected the coming-to-life line sketch animation of the story she began to tell. It was a rough draft sort of thing that she’d imagined utilizing for this pitch due to the transition effect it offered later in the ad pitch. Anna was hoping it would give her ad idea the winning edge. “The kitchen walls are gray and undecorated. There are no paintings, no calendars. The room is devoid of any real indication of life. The old woman’s face and hands are weathered, ancient,” she said. “She is holding a cup of coffee but there is no steam rising from the cup, and the woman’s gaze is distant. There is no music, but the wailing of sirens and sounds of the city can be heard in the background.”
The conference room’s deep quiet indicated involvement. Anna was encouraged, and she continued.
“There’s a knock at the front door of the old woman’s house. She very slowly rises, and each and every step can be heard by the viewer as she makes her way to the door to answer. When she does, a young lad, perhaps a neighbor or a caring newspaper delivery boy hands her the morning paper. She thanks him and he wishes her well. She returns to the table and slowly unfolds the paper, which the reader can hear crinkling. It is still eerily quiet, and this quiet lends to an atmosphere of eager tension. The viewer begins leaning forward in their seat, watching closely, waiting for whatever it is that must be about to happen.”
It was amusing to some degree, but mostly promising, that the people in the conference room were doing the exact same thing.
“The camera focuses on the old woman’s face, zooming in on her eyes as she reads. Then she runs her ancient, veined hands over the paper and the camera pans around to a point of view over her shoulder so that we can read it ourselves: The date on the paper’s first page is April 16, 1987. The headline reads, ‘Seventy-Five Years,’ and the subtitle beneath it says, ‘Three Quarters of a Century Since the Sinking of the Unsinkable.’ It has been seventy-five years since the sinking of the British luxury passenger liner, the RMS Titanic.
The woman says nothing, but the sound of a ship’s fog horn plays soft and distant, low enough that we still hear the sounds of the attic and the city beyond it. When she looks up, her gaze is distant. Very slowly she stands up from the table and makes her trudging way up the old wooden staircase of her home. We hear the floorboards creak beneath her slow, shuffling steps.” Anna particularly liked that part – she could hear and see it so clearly herself as she described the scene to the decision makers in the room.