Storm whistled softly. "The woman you're engaged to lets you talk to her like that?" As he watched the blood drain from Sol's face on realizing what he'd done, Storm almost laughed out loud. Yeah. The man was in for it alright.
Sol recovered his grumpy pants quick enough and stepped out into the hallway. His greeting was brusque and efficient. If you took away the scowl, it could have been delivered by a robot.
"Welcome to Jefferson Unit. People are on the way to show you to your digs. Get settled in. Briefing tomorrow afternoon." He started back into his office then turned back. "And stay out of trouble till then." He slammed the door.
Glen smiled at the Zs and hunched his shoulders in apology for Sol. "Like he said, welcome to Jefferson Unit. See you around?"
Torn stuck out his hand. "Sure, kid. We'll be seein' you 'round."
The next couple of days were relatively quiet except for a catfight between two nurses of all things. Rumor was that it had something to do with Torn Finngarick, but he wasn't overly talkative on the subject and neither were the two women with nail scratches on their faces that were so deep they were practically gouges.
CHAPTER 2
Halcyon Dimension, Fifteen years earlier.
Angel Wolfram Storm seemed to have been born knowing things, like math for instance. His mind would grab on to a concept on first presentation and then, while his classmates struggled, he would look around for something to occupy his busy mind. That something usually ended up being disruption.
His parents loved him, but the school faculty misunderstood his gift for disruption. He was smart, bored, and went about doing whatever he pleased while ignoring objections to the contrary. In short, no one in his life up to that point had given him an adequate reason to think that anarchy was not the best policy.
The majority of his time in school was either spent in the hallway outside class or in the waiting room outside the vice principal’s office. His parents agonized over what to do, but never found the answer.
One day he was sent to the V.P.’s office under protest claiming that, for once, he hadn't done anything wrong. Maybe he didn't have a right to feel self-righteous about being wrongly accused, but if they'd been paying attention, they would have realized that he'd never shrunk from taking responsibility for his antics. Yeah. He got in trouble a lot, but he hadn't tried to weasel out and claim innocence.
He sat down in his usual chair to wait for the usual carpet ride thinking about the obvious chasm that exists between stoically silent and, "I didn't do it." When his dad showed up looking even more grim than usual, he knew it was that final hammer. He wasn’t being suspended. He was being expelled.
The V.P. opened his door and leaned out. "Storm. Your father is here to take you home. Clean out your locker. Don't dawdle. Don't talk to the other children. And, do a thorough job because you won't be coming back."
Angel didn’t miss the fact that Mr. Rodgers sounded happy. Well, the feeling was mutual.
His dad waited in the car while he cleaned out his locker. His mind was a blur of possible scenarios about what no school might mean and none of them were good. He stopped long enough to think about missing his friends and realized that he didn't have any friends who were important enough to miss. On the way out he passed the classroom with the ugly ass teacher who had ejected him for the last time. Class was in session, but the door to the hallway stood open.
Prune Face Blackmon followed the eyes of her students to the open door. “Mr. Storm. Do you not have someplace you need to be?”
He stared at her for a couple of beats while he processed that question. Actually no. Thanks to her and Mr. Rodgers he didn’t have any place where he needed to be.
He looked to his right toward the front exit. If he went that way he would find his dad was waiting for him in the car. Then he looked to his left down the long polished hallway that led to a rear door. It takes a fraction of a second to make a choice that alters the course of a life so profoundly and irreparably that everything from that moment forward is a result, reward, or consequence of that one little choice. One of hundreds of choices routinely made in a day's cycle.
Angel Storm gave Blackmon the finger, and trotted away toward the rear exit, away from the weary father who waited, away from everything he'd known. He was grinning at the uproar of laughter from the poor douches who were going to be stuck in that hellhole the rest of the hour.
"Not a bad exit," he thought to himself. "Points shaved for lack of planning, but..."
He didn’t know where he was going or what he was going to do. But, if he could have looked into his future, even for a moment, he wouldn't have been grinning.
He was fourteen.
CHAPTER 3
The day after Elora Rose was born, the proud parents brought her home to the villa they had each dreamed about since adolescence.
Litha was stretched out on one of the two long leather sofas that faced each other. "I'm falling asleep. Again."
"Go ahead, Mama." Storm looked at the baby sleeping in his arm and brought her up to rest on his shoulder as easily as if he'd been performing that maneuver for years. "We've got this covered."
"You need to put that baby down sometimes, Beautiful. You're gonna make her sore."
He looked over at Litha with a half smirk. "I think that's an old wives tale."
"You're not calling me an old wife."