Once Upon Another World

Once Upon Another World

Book One of the Salak'patan Series

By Shiva Winters

Edited by Melody Hewson

Copyright 2012 Shiva Winters

Smashwords Edition

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Chapter One: The Tangled Beginning

Journal Entry: 07/03/20XX

I've never written a journal. I've never really felt the need, not in the 25 years of life that has precede this one. The truth of my day-to-day existence is probably so very boring to most, that were anyone to ever read a conscientiously kept journal by me, it would suck away that person's essence and leave them to go on an undead rampage for brains. Still some part of me has grown convinced that such a record of my existence has become necessary, and for whatever reason my consciousness has come to agree. However, since almost nothing has ever happened to me and I fully expect that nothing will ever happen, however first there are some necessary legalities to get out of the way.

WARNING: Imbibing the contents of the following journal goes against the Surgeon General's advice. Should you choose to continue be warned that the boredom that results will cause severe allergic reactions in most people. Common symptoms include patchy baldness, rashes on the buttocks, Napoleonic complex, bloating, the desire to play the accordion, tax audits, traffic tickets, the need to have more than 10 cats, and boredom that often leads to coma and eventually death.

My name is Raven Sinclair and I was born in a small town in Indiana USA, located on the tiny blue and green planet called Earth. Though my origins are ever so humble, at this time I am living in New York City. And in all truth I have been regretting the decision to move here almost since the moment I first committed myself to it. While the city itself is amazing and perhaps even one of the wonders of the modern world, unlike most others I did not come here to 'make it big' nor simply because I was lured in by the bright lights. This city is like no other and as the saying goes, 'If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.'. Well there is something left unsaid in those well known words, if you don't 'make it here', this city will devour your soul and leave you an empty husk. And I am starting to think I have begun to feel just a little of that emptiness within myself. It is not that I am failing, quite the opposite in fact. I think my lackluster feelings for this place have almost everything to do with the fact that my motivations for coming here were not entirely pure. In truth were I to give voice to those motivations I would fail utterly at the task. I don't honestly know why I choose to make that decision, even in those first moments after I made them, other than the fact that deep down some persistent whispering voice was telling me that if I came here something would happen, something I've always wanted. For all that I long for the day when I can quietly slink back across the countryside and go 'home', that unspoken and unclear belief has still managed to keep me from leaving for over a year now. I can't help but wonder if that same voice that drove me to leave behind everything I have ever known in order to come here, is the same voice that now prompts me to write a journal that most likely will never be of any significance to anyone.

As I think back through the years, I can not help but feel that driving force has always been a constant in my life since I was a very small child. In truth, my life has been plagued by visions… perhaps 'visions' is too strong of a word. They are more like lucid dreams, but ones that would come both during my waking and sleeping hours, and lacked that disconnected sense of reality that dreams typically contain. Throughout my life I have been visited by a young girl my age who would appear out of thin air. And while this could simply be dismissed as the products of an over active imagination, these visitations have never been quite so unreal as to make that a possibility in my mind. While my sanity might still be in doubt, the facts of the matter have not yet disproved my mental stability, much less that these visitations are not entirely and wholly real either. At times she would only appear for mere seconds, other times she would stay long enough to talk with me in a voice not quite heard with one's ears. But as the years progressed she appeared more often and would remain at my side throughout entire days. As strange as it might sound to someone who is fully immersed in what most would consider reality, she has been my best friend for the whole of my life. As a child I told her everything, my deepest, darkest secrets, things no other person has ever known, or will ever know.

It could perhaps go without necessarily being said that I was never a 'normal' child growing up, and as a relatively well adjusted adult I do believe that even without my 'visions', that I would not have been considered to be like the other children. Even discounting my unusual visitations, as I search into those far off childhood memories, it seems to me that I've always been one of those people was on the outside looking in. It perhaps does not be need stated, but I was never one of the popular kids, and despite my sizable stature, I had no desire to play sports, no desire to go to parties, and really no motivation to undertake any of the things children of any age are supposed to do. I always stood at odds with the world around me, as if some part of my soul was always telling me that I did not belong there. Tis a strange thing to realize that you can look at the world outside your window and know deep down that this is not the world you were supposed to have known. But strange feelings aside, I suppose that disconnected state of being aided me in the career into which I have met with success, and nothing else need to be said on the matter at this time.

Where my family was concerned, or not, my father was neglectful and inattentive for the few years that he was swirling about in my earliest of memories. By the time I was four years old he was gone, having divorced my mother and run off with some bar skank who may or may not have been a hooker when they first met. His absence from my formative years is perhaps of no great loss. As for my mother, well.. it is has been my observation that only a single mother can be as giving and self-sacrificing as she was. She was dedicated to the health and well being of myself and my younger brother. At times she worked three jobs to insure that we had food and shelter. And even though she often had to work late hours, no matter how tired she might be, she always had time for the two of us. The love I feel for her was in every way earned and deserved, and in every sense she did an amazing job of raising the two of us. While she could only do so much to meet the selfish demands most any child would make, I can honestly say having heard many a horror story from others who shared my generation, that I had a peaceful happy childhood. So were someone to go digging back into history long since past, I can not imagine they would not find much evidence as to the reasons why, or the causes behind, my little touch of madness, since the facts of my reality are not all that different from many of my generation.

My involvement with Sione, my 'imaginary' friend, continued throughout my childhood, awkward adolescence, and even through the crucible that is modern high school, broken only by her occasional absences. As we both grew older her visits grew more infrequent, perhaps only rightly so considering we both had a great deal less free time on our hands. This perhaps gave me more reasons to doubt the nature of her reality, but despite the doubts that did and continue to infringe on the beliefs I have held close for so long, it has not yet changed them. While I might one day come to believe that she was merely a figment or a fairy tale created by a fevered brain, which would be a very sad day for my current self, my belief still remains firm that she is every bit as real as I am.

I graduated high school with a joy unparalleled in all of human history, only too eager to leave behind the days trapped in the same halls and rooms with my so called peers. Rather than attending college like so many others did, I spent the next couple of years working meaningless jobs and trying to figure that age old question of what I wanted to do with my life. Having never been in the possession of much of a social life and having spent many a night outcast and alone, there had always been time and motivation to fill those empty hours with something to cut through the silence. For me, that outlet was reading, and it was a hobby I started as early as the fourth grade and continued throughout all the years of my youth. I suppose if one reads enough books, the desire to write one of their own will eventually strike them, at least this was the case for me. At some vague point in that first year after high school, it became a new hobby that I took up one evening when I had nothing to read and the TV had been on the fritz. As it would turn out, spending so many years reading fiction novels coupled with a 'unique' sense of reality gave me all the background I needed to become a writer myself. Shockingly enough, by the time that I was twenty-one I had my first best-selling book.

So it was that when the decision to move to New York prickled at the back of my mind, I had more than enough money as well as a few legitimate reasons to venture across the states, taking my chances in the big bad city by the bay. Especially since my agent, most of the major publishing houses, and the world at large all used this city as their doorstep. Still, there are far too many days when this city and the people that fill it, make me wish that I had stayed in my dark little backwoods of a home town where life was simpler…

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*BRING!* In the near silent confines of his apartment and those confines within himself, the sounds of his cell phone were shockingly loud and excessively abrasive to his already agitated state. But nevertheless, of those few people aware of that number, almost none of them would have called so very late in the day unless it was of importance. Glancing up to the dial of the silent clock as its' mechanical hands recounted the passage of hours since he had last paid it any attention, he hurried off in search of that infernal device as it sounded out once more through the room. He was neither surprised to recognize the number or at all put out by so late a call, answering it even before a third ring could ripple across the space.

Hello. He murmured across the line.

Raven.. He recognized the voice almost instantly and knew that his friend was deeply troubled, just by that single spoken word. It.. happened again.. Mr. Montoya told him in the darkest of tones and with very real fear hovering just beneath the surface.

Who? Raven asked him in return, needing to hear nothing else to be aware of the troubling matter they were discussing.

Amelia… we tried to convince her not to go there.. but she was so worried about Raymond.. Mr. Montoya told him sounding very nearly at the edge of tears.

Dammit.. Raven growled. You need to keep everyone else away from that place, my friend. Do whatever it takes… I'll… I'll go and I will find out what the hell is going on.

Are you..

No,.. I am not sure of anything, but I feel damn certain that I can at least get away. Mr. Montoya tried to talk him out of his decision for at least a few more minutes, before he relented since he knew deep down that all of them needed to know what was going on. Soon enough Raven was able to end the call and drop his phone onto the empty couch cushions. With his thoughts even more dark and troubled than they had been moments before, he turned to the windows to peer broodingly out over the city in the distance. Had it not been for Mr. Montoya and his vast circle of friends and acquaintances, Raven would probably have left the city after merely a month spent in its' shadows, with his proverbial tail tucked between his legs. The robust, 'over the top', and at times eccentric older man, Mr. Montoya ran a small but wonderful Italian restaurant on the east side of the island. The restaurant served almost exclusively as a gathering point for his vast circle of friends most days and every night. People simply flocked there, drawn in by the warm personality, caring nature, and the vague indescribable sense that this person was someone who was larger than life. Raven had few doubts that just about anyone, even the most contrary or mean-spirited sort of people, who spent even a small amount of time in Mr. Montoya's presence, could not help but wish to be considered his friend. And Raven was all but certain that it was impossible for Mr. Montoya to ever have anyone who would consider themselves his enemy. The man was simply magnetic, drawing in all manner of people from all different backgrounds and making them wish to be his friend.

Raven had met him in those vague first weeks after Raven coming to the city from 'MiddleofNowhere, USA'. He had been suffering from an overly abused and bruised sense of self as he did nothing but question the wisdom of remaining in a city that was so unlike anything he had experienced before. At the time he had taken to all but wandering the streets like a little lost puppy seeking something, anything that might allow him to regain some sense of balance inside his head. Like the miracle he had so desperately needed, but had not truly asked for, he found Montoya's Italian Eatery. To say that he was drawn there would be an untruth, for he had woken up one morning and was leaving his tiny hotel room before he was fully awake. Unerringly, he had crossed through the unfamiliar city until he found himself going through the door of the eatery. It had felt almost as if he had simply woken up that morning with a mission, knowing where he was going and only too aware of how he would be greeted when he got there. Practically within the first seconds of his arrival, Mr. Montoya was welcoming him like some long lost member of the family. Before Raven was truly aware of it, he had spent the whole day sitting in the same booth being visited repeatedly by Mr. Montoya and his three rather pretty daughters, as the four of them made their rounds.

Raven was just deciding that his long stay made him uncomfortable enough to make a quiet retreat out the front door when Mr. Montoya was sliding in across from him, almost as if he had been summoned. Even in his most wild of fantasies, Raven could not have expected Mr. Montoya to invite him, a complete stranger, to 'dinner with the family'. The truth about the unusual nature of the 'family dinner' became more clear eventually, but Raven could still no more have denied that far too charming man his request than he could willingly removed one of his own limbs. That evening, Raven discovered that he was far from the first, and most likely not the last, person to be drawn to that quiet little refuge from some far flung corner of the city. The 'family dinner' was actually a support group of sorts for a wide range of diverse people, all of whom, himself included, could not be considered 'normal' when compared to most everyone else in the city. All of them were in possession of some ability that was usually assumed to only exist in the realm of science fiction. Telepaths, Empaths, Telekinetics, Pyrokinetics, and other even stranger abilities, all possessed by regular people. They had all been drawn in by Mr. Montoya's presence, and all of them, including his own daughters, took just a little extra strength and comfort in knowing that those abilities which had made them different for most of their lives. What Raven had unknowingly stumbled upon, or perhaps been summoned for, was a weekly meeting of a vast and diverse group of friends who shared the troubles and benefits of the things within them which had set them apart from those around them.

Raven, who had long ago become aware that he was different from all of his childhood friends, quickly became addicted to the sense of belonging, especially since it was the first time that he could ever remember feeling it. Had it not been for that one event, he likely would have long since given up on that other vague and indistinct calling that had lured him across the country. While he had no doubt that the voice would not have simply left him alone had he retreated to home and hearth, he would have gladly ignored had it not been for that small group of people who had welcomed him into their number so openly and joyfully. As that year had passed, Raven had learned about all he could about them and they had learned about him in return. In time, he had come to the conclusion that they really were the family that Montoya had claimed them to be, and much to his surprise he had become a part of it.

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Raven’s mind was still chewing its' way through the lingering shadows of his disturbed thoughts, when he picked up that plain, unassuming looking business card that had become such an ill portent in recent weeks. During the past month and a half, several of the people in their group had reported feelings of dread, or the vague sense of something malicious shifting across the land; almost as if a demon from the days of yore or some unknown creature were slowly circling in on the oblivious city. A short time later, the first of the mysterious business cards had appeared, placed in front of some of Mr. Montoya's extensive network of contacts, friends, and family. One by one, over a dozen people had responded to the invitation those business cards were offering, and one by one they had all disappeared, not to be seen or heard from again. Raven assumed that the first ones to disappear had gone largely unnoticed by anyone. While his new friends were well connected, even they could not know everyone. When more and more people had gone off and had not returned, a sense of fear began to grow among those closest to them. It only grew worse as people known by their group followed the fates of so many unknown others. Then that deeply worrying situation had struck all too close to home when one the members of their very own group had gone to answer the call and was now missing.

Although he was never one to brag about such things, it was widely acknowledged in Raven’s small circle of friends that he was the one in possession of the strongest extra-sensory talents and he was capable of things none of the others had ever considered as being possible. Because of this, it was not too long before his worried friends and colleagues had asked him to investigate the string of unexplained disappearances. What little he had already found was far from comforting; a few days previous he had gone to one of the places where others had received one of the unassuming business cards. He hadn't needed to wait more than a few minutes before a dark shadowy presence had impinged on his searching senses. Only too aware that the other man was not 'normal', the mysterious figure had gotten to his feet, walked past Raven's table, and dropped a card in front of him. Raven had been debating what he should do about it ever since then, but his choices seemed to have narrowed once one of their own had disappeared and no one knew what they were up against.

The card itself had offered no clues about what lay behind the unknown series of events only peripherally related to it, imparting only the name of one Dr. Michael Ronen and his title as the head of Research at Weslyn enterprises with a New York street address. The ubiquitous and often indispensable Internet offered even less useful information, which was surprising considering it was in some ways the core of human knowledge. Hours of searching turned up only a tiny blurb of information regarding a recent government contract for Wesley enterprises that had been awarded earlier that year, allowing them to conduct confidential research. The decided lack of information started to seem even more sinister when coupled with the fact that on the back of the business card was a hand written invitation to come visit at any time. Simple human curiosity was the only thing needed to lure people into whatever game was being played. Raven was not the only one who disliked what the simple card implied, and everything else about the situation.

By the coming of the next dawn, Raven woke after only a few scant hours of troubled sleep. His agitated state and the knowledge of what he must do come morning had kept him from settling down until well into the latter hours of the night. As he peered through the small apartment at the door to the hallway beyond, he wished, not for the first time, that he could get away with walking through the city beyond with a sword strapped across his back, like a character from a novel. Unfortunately, that did not quite strike him as being a choice for his current situation, since he was fairly certain that the police frowned on that sort of behavior. He briefly considered more conventional weaponry, but he did not own a gun much less a permit to carry it into the public, and he had few doubts that a pocket knife would never get past the guards and metal detectors that defended most every building in that security minded day and age. Only too mindful that danger was waiting for him at the end of his trip across the city, and that any attempt to face it with more than fists and the abilities that put him at risk would only draw still more trouble, Raven left his apartment to face whatever was lurking in the shadows.

To the rest of the world, the Weslyn building was a plain and ordinary kind of brick and steel office building, one not unlike a thousand similar buildings that filled the confines of the city with their unassuming exteriors. To Raven, however, even approaching the front entrance was like stepping into the black, ominous shadows cast across the landscape by dark storm clouds. It was a sense of something evil and not quite right that permeated the region for more than a block in every direction, a sense of something terrible lingering just out of sight. No matter how hard he might try he could not push aside nor banish that insidious seeping ooze of 'wrongness' that poured off of the place. Had he been just a little less stubborn, Raven would have turned around in those first terrible moments, retreated back across the city in a rush and never spoken of his failure to anyone. But just as he had not let his unsettled dreams turn him back, he would not and could not turn away when he was on the cusp of confronting evil. Though his mind might tease him for trying to interject a touch of poetic fiction into something so very serious, he had no doubts that something that was indeed very evil had been taking place inside the building. The place stank of it, of those acts that had happened unseen from the outside world. He tried not to think too hard about the fact that he was walking right up into the front doors, only too aware of the sense of a trap ready to snap closed behind him.

Raven was honestly a little bit disappointed when he found neither metal detectors nor any obvious contingent of armed guards after entering the Weslyn building. When he had presented himself at the reception desk and asked to speak with the head of research, the rather dour woman on the other side of the desk had neither seemed surprised by the normally strange request, or curious as to who he was or why he was asking. He was directed to take a seat in the waiting area, and did so with his mind screaming to get out of the place immediately. As he sat there waiting, he noticed any number of strange people, the kind of people most wouldn't even look twice at on the street, but the kind of people he saw and felt almost instantly suspicious of after seeing them. It was as if they were hiding things from the eyes of the world, like they were strangers in a strange land who did not quite belong there, and he could not help but notice all of them were aware of him as well.

How can I help you today… Mr. Smith? The woman who approached him certainly did not look like a Michael, so Raven could only assume that they were delegating their victims down a chain of command.

I was in a restaurant three days ago. A man passed by my table and dropped this card in front of me. Raven stated, working hard to keep his voice calm and even as he held out the indicated business card towards her.

Ah! The woman murmured with a false sense of excitement that didn't quite reach her eyes as she took the card from him and examined it. Mr. Smith, we are currently conducting a research project using talent scouts and human resource experts to find people who fit our criteria. You wouldn't happen to have the time to add your perspective into the data we've already collected, would you? When Raven strained his senses towards her, he was frustrated to find that he felt nothing from her, not even the sense she was bored. This could only mean that she had somehow learned to hide her thoughts and feelings from people with abilities similar to his own. That fact alone would have been enough to make him even more intensely ready to be anywhere else and doing anything else, however he had already gone this far and could not turn back until he knew for sure what was going on inside the ill feeling building.

I have nothing else to do today. Raven told him as he pushed his doubts to the side and summoned his resolve with a deep breath.

Follow me then, please. She requested of him, gesturing him past the lobby and towards the elevators that he had glimpsed in the distance. With a decisive movement, Raven pushed out of the chair and followed the doctor. He paid very close attention when she produced a security card from the pocket of her lab coat, swiped it through the scanner, and rapidly entered a ten digit code into the key pad. A soft bell announced the arrival of the elevator a second before the doors slid open to reveal the extremely plain interior. The woman gestured for Raven to proceed her into the enclosed space, and with great reluctance he did so, feeling the trap doors snap shut behind them.

You're probably not aware of this, but we are doing research on extra-sensory perception. She announced as they began their ascent towards the 20th floor. We have people traveling all over the city looking for possible candidates to participate in the study. When they think they have found someone, they give them a card very much like the one you received. Curiosity is a very powerful motivator and a perfect tool for our purposes, since the people typically show up here sooner or later.

Fascinating. Raven replied, trying very hard to sound interested while his dislike of the situation only grew.

It really is. She commented pleasantly, but she had a smile that was just a little like one a particularly nasty kind of predator might give once it had lured it's prey within striking distance. Would you be willing to be a research subject for a few hours.

I suppose so, I have always had a fascination with the paranormal. Raven murmured back to her, even as his mind screamed at him for being a complete and total idiot. The elevator dinged about that time and the doors opened into an indistinct hallway that would not have been out of place in just about any building inside the city. The hall was studded with regularly spaced dark wood doors, most of them closed, the obligatory scattering of plants, reproductions of famous works of art, and more people wearing lab coats. Just as it had been down in the lobby, when they passed out into the hall, he caught several veiled looks of curiosity sent his way. Those few that did not give him more than glance gave off the very distinct impression that they were not what they appeared to be, and some of them had distinct bulges of artillery under their lab coats, which did not bode well for him.

Raven and the doctor walked down the plain white halls and past little plain white rooms filled with plain kinds of cheaply built furniture. At that moment, Raven could honestly say that never in his life was he more pleased that he hadn't gone to college and gotten one of those 'honest' professions his grandmother had been so very fond of harping about. If he wasn't intensely aware of the danger closing in on all sides, or the fact that he was knowingly treading closer and closer to that sense of the unclean, then the five minutes he had spent there, might have driven him stark raving mad . He worried briefly hat he would lapse into a coma after being in such an uninteresting environment for so long. However, it could just as easily be assumed that the blandness was part of the trap, some kind of psychological warfare meant to put a potential victim at ease. It was just another thing that was altogether unpleasant to think about while he allowed himself to be lead along, just like another lamb to the slaughter.

Oh!! Having just turned a corner along the hallway, he couldn't be sure who was more surprised to find that more than one person was trying to occupy the same bit of space at the same time. The collision was inevitable, and his massive frame came into abrupt contact with her much smaller one. Instinct and quick reflexes, however, saved him just a little bit of face as he automatically reached out to catch her arm, preventing her from being thrown bodily to the floor.

To say that she was beautiful was as close to a lie as any understatement might come. She was luminescent, almost glowing in the sheer magnitude of her utter beauty, and easily the most amazing figure Raven had ever touched, which might have explained why his fingers tingled where they encircled her arm. It was perhaps why he also felt drawn to her, almost as if she were in possession of some spell that made him wish to be even closer to her. She had a flowing mane of dark hair, like a fall of black water, pouring down over her shoulders and ending just above her perfectly shaped bottom. The color of her hair was so deep and intense, that even in the rather poor lighting it almost seemed to glow a dark sapphire blue, save for one perfect streak of white at her right temple which twisted together with darker strands in all too fascinating fashion. Her face would not have been out of place in an ancient Greek sculpture garden, being the face of a goddess descended to the Earth. She had prominent cheekbones, shapely lips, a straight and perfect nose and delicately arching brows all with perfectly pale skin. She also seemed surprised by such a strange chance encounter, and Raven felt his heart literally skip a beat when her intensely emerald toned eyes looked deep into his. Even though she projected an aura of innocence and youth, she had the body of a trained warrior. Some part of his mind, not struck dumb by the beauty of this stranger, noticed how perfectly she would fit in as the Heroine of any fantasy novel.

He hastily tried to apologize past a tongue that did not wish to work, but he was further distracted by the oddity of her clothes. Even though they looked like some of the fashions of the day, they had a certain cut to them that did not quite fit into his everyday kind of world, almost as if there was not a fashion designer in that world who could claimed them as their work. Even as they staggered apart from each other, both apologizing and trying to take the blame, Raven couldn't deny the intense reluctance he felt at stepping away from her. Nor could he fail to notice that her own backwards steps seemed to hesitate in much the same way. The sight of perfect beauty could not change the facts of the situation Raven was in while he continued to follow the doctor down the hall, but it was enough to make him look back, hoping that he might get just one last look at her, only to find that she had turned to watch him depart. He was surprised to see her blush as she turned quickly away and hurried out of sight. Even though he was convinced that there was something inexplicably familiar about her, his mind, once free of such a potent distraction, was quick to remind him of the facts of his situation. After a long walk, they finally arrived at a small and utterly uninteresting room, and he was asked to have a seat with the muttered promise that someone would be with him shortly. The space was bare, the floor was gray tiles, the walls were white plaster, the table was painted aluminum, and there were two uncomfortable looking chairs. Raven had seen more than enough cop shows in his life to take note of the long, oversized mirrors that dominated one of the side walls, and knew instantly that he would soon have an audience. Raven took the seat that would allow him to sit with his back to the wall as the door was closed behind him.

He could not yet feel anyone on the far side of the mirror, but he did catch his own image in it and couldn't help but study that person. He was not and would never be considered handsome, and had never deluded himself into believing otherwise. His profile was too hawkish and angular, his bone structure too heavy. His strong jaw line tapered towards his chin, his lips were too thin, and even when he smiled he appeared to be scowling. His nose was thin, a touch too long, and tapered upward towards his heavy brows, which made his eyes look sunken into his skull, as if to escape his face. This insured that his eyes seemed dark and mysterious at all times as they peered out at the world with a silvery-gray gaze that seemed to bore into him while he stared at his own image. His eyebrows were thin blond streaks along the ridges above his steely gaze. His hair was drawn into a short tail at the back of his head, a pale gold color that already showed strands of white, belying his age. He was large and tall, well muscled, with broad shoulders and a heavy set of bones that made him resemble a living brick wall when he stood facing someone. By his sheer looks alone he could intimidate even the most aggressive of figures or scare small children into a cowering silence.

The subtle sense of movement behind mirror turned his eyes from his own image, followed by a rustle of soft sound and the sudden feeling that someone, somewhere was looking at him. The door to the room opened in the next moment, allowing a plain dressed man in a white lab coat to pass into the quiet space. Raven received a nod of greeting as the door closed behind the plain, unassuming figure and he took the four steps necessary to cross the small room and slide his thin little body into the other chair.

The scientist slid a box onto the table, he had the air of someone who was thoroughly bored with such proceedings and the shuffling of papers and supplies seemed unnaturally loud in the dead motionless air. Unlike his escort, the man's mind practically screamed at Raven with his unprotected thoughts and emotions while he slowly spread his materials out on the table. Unfortunately, he knew nothing important to Raven beyond what tests would follow and how little he expected Raven to do any of the things he would be soon asked to do. There was a small stack of cards, a small closed box that rattled as he moved it, and a selection of file folders. Raven knew that he could call the test off right then and safely get out of the