"Now remember, boys---you only have an hour to roam around. I don't have time to be chasing you all over the city."

He kept his eyes on the speaker, as he had been instructed to do on his first day at the boarding school---which had been over six years ago now. He had been a student at the academy since his tenth birthday. A year after that, both his parents had been killed in a violent car crash. He had been well taken care of since then---all their money had gone towards keeping him in school. And since he had no other living relatives, he stayed at the academy all year-round, including during holidays. It was a lonely existence, but he had gotten used to it---and to doing as he was told.

He was not extremely well-liked by most of the other students. They found him to be aloof and distant, and the fact that he usually kept to the rules made them believe that he simply wanted to butter up the teachers and become the favorite. He told himself that he did not care what they thought. He had to obey rules if he wanted to become a police officer some day, and he had already promised himself that he would. But still there were times when he felt so very alone---even when he was in a crowd. Often he wished that there would be someone who would understand him, just one person out of the billions on earth, but he knew that the reality was that there was not any one who cared. He had to rely on only himself to survive. That was how it had been for the last five years, and he did not have a reason to believe that things would change.

He came back to the present, automatically answering the chaperone along with all the other students. "Yes, Mr. Manning."

Mr. Manning nodded approvingly. "Alright. Go off to your own devices, but be back here in an hour. And don't be late! You know I don't tolerate tardiness." With that he turned and walked off himself, most likely to visit the local bookshop. On their day-trips, he could always be found there, poring over the latest books on philosophy or religion.

The students immediately separated to go their own ways. Some dispersed in pairs, while others---such as the young man we will be following---went alone. He could not think of anything in particular that he wanted to do, so he simply began to wander up and down the streets. He was quite fond of this time when he knew that he could be by himself without any frustrating distractions. Mostly he would spend the time thinking---and often remembering happier occassions. He missed his parents. Even though he tried to be strong, and he knew that was what they wanted of him, it did not change the aching and the loneliness that he felt. He had been forced to get used to this new life of being all by himself, but he would give anything to take it all back again and have his parents instead.

His train of thought was interrupted by the sounds of a scuffle just up ahead. Narrowing his eyes, he moved closer until he could see what was happening. To his surprise, a boy about six years younger than him was viciously hitting and kicking another boy who was flat on his back and struggling in vain to defend himself. The academy student watched for a moment, then came forward and grabbed the attacker around the waist, pulling him back. "Hey, cut it out!" he snapped with a frown, holding onto the boy until the one on the ground was able to scramble up and run away.

The child pushed and shoved against his captor, even resorting to cursing when he could not get the older boy to budge. "Let me go already!" he yelled. "This wasn't any of your business!"

The student grunted, finally releasing the terror and frowning at him in disbelief. "Okay, so it wasn't my business," he agreed. "But what were you doing beating up on that kid? He looked a lot smaller than you. Haven't you ever heard of picking on someone your own size?" He crossed his arms over his chest, studying the angry boy in front of him.

"I wasn't picking on him. He had it coming." The boy clenched his fists stubbornly, glaring at the other. His brown hair was wild, flying nearly every way possible, and his clothes were old and torn. There were various scrapes and cuts on his arms and face, revealing that he had been in other fights recently, and his hazel eyes were dark and cold, filled with a hatred that the student had never before seen from a child. It was as if he was an adult in a boy's body---one who had seen many things that he never should have and who had never been allowed to have a childhood.

"He had it coming, huh?" The older male continued to regard the younger with a dark look of his own, but now he was feeling a familiar prick in his heart. He felt some of that same anger. Many a time he had longed to lash out at the students that gave him so much trouble, who hated him, who believed that he had it all made. He felt as if his life was in tatters, and that the only way to pick up the remaining pieces was to stay strong and never do what his enemies wanted of him. They wanted him to snap, and so he would not, even though they pushed him so badly that he longed to. The boy before him did not have the same self-control, but that was not really a surprise. He looked as though he did not have anyone to guide him, anyone to keep him on any kind of a right path. He was a local delinquint, perhaps an orphan. And the student felt a certain kinship with him.

"They always have it coming." The boy spit red onto the ground. His lip had been split during the fight, but it was not the first time. He was used to it by now. And he knew what would be waiting for him when he arrived back at the prison of a home he had. He would be beaten severely for his involvement in another fight. His guardians never tried to help him overcome his bad temper, nor to understand the pain that was behind it. They only added fuel to the fire that was burning in his heart. "They bug me, they taunt me, they think they're so much better than me. So I need to take them down a few notches, let them see that they're not all that great."

"Yeah?" The student fell into step beside him as he started to walk away. "You talk like this kind of thing's happened before."

"Almost every day." The boy sniffed, annoyed as he felt his nose starting to bleed. "People think I'm weak 'cause I don't have a lot of muscles. So they bother me, thinking that I'm easy pickings, and I let 'em know I won't take it. I'm a lot stronger than I look." He stopped, tipping his head back. He felt the blood run down his throat, but he did not care. After a moment he stopped and looked over at the other. "What are you doing? Following me around? Get lost already!" He clenched a fist. "I could beat you up too, you know."

The student shrugged. "Yeah, you probably could," he agreed, then hesitated before speaking again. "Don't your parents get ticked off about you fighting all the time?"

"Eh. I don't have any." The reply was bitter.

That did not come as a surprise. "You're an orphan?" He pointed to himself. "I am, too. My parents were killed in a car crash."

"I never even knew my dad." The child was still speaking sourly, glaring at the student and not knowing what to think of him. Yet, somehow, it felt natural to be around him. He was so starved for a bit of attention from someone who would not insult him or bother him or try to beat him. He had been certain that he would never have that, but this was the first person in a long while who had actually treated him in a civil manner. This confused him, and it annoyed him that this older person seemed to think that they were alike because neither of them had their parents. They most definitely were not alike, and the boy was anxious to prove it. He was not like anyone else. He was only like himself---a monster, a demon, as he had been told since he had been old enough to understand words.

"You had both parents, like almost everyone else does. My dad left my mom all alone, and when she died, Aunt Cleo and Uncle Bradford got me." His eyes flashed, and it was obvious that he did not hold any fond feelings for them. "They don't care about me at all! They're always saying that I'm evil and that I'm a 'child of sin,' whatever that means. They're mad because of stuff that my mom did." He glowered at the ground. "Then I get mad a lot, and I hit people and stuff, and they say it's because I'm not good." And maybe it was true, he had decided. But he could not seem to control himself. When people would attack him, and hurt him, and place themselves above him, his natural instinct was to attack back. He spent most of his time on the streets, since he hated being at home. That was only a place where he could sleep and eat, and as soon as he could get away from there, he would.

The student was stunned. He frowned, watching the strange and haunted boy. They certainly had their differences where their situations were concerned. He could not comprehend someone's own family treating him in such a way. He had known only kindness and love from his parents when they had been alive, and it had only been since their untimely deaths that he had began to be familiar with the cruelty and indifference in the world. This boy, on the other hand, sounded as though he had known nothing but cruelty and indifference. It was likely that he did not even know what it was like to be loved, or to know that someone cared if he lived or died. They were opposites, and yet the similarities were still there. While the teenager's own guardians---the teachers at the academy---were not self-righteous and vindictive, he knew that they did not care about him. Most likely he was a burden to them, a charge whom they wished that they did not have to be saddled with. And his peers had never understood him. Most of them hated him. He was anxious to be free of the whole wretched lot of them. He could sense the same feelings from this boy. Perhaps they were like two sides of the same coin.

"You think it too, don't you?!" the child cried then, his eyes bitter. There were times when he wished that he had never been born. He hated his mother for all the things she had done that had made his aunt and uncle despise and loathe him so much. He hated his aunt and uncle for always telling him how wicked he was and beating him. He hated that they never realized how much he was hurting inside. And he hated all the people on the streets who oppressed him. Someday he would be powerful and they would fear him. They would not dare to hurt him then, and if they tried, they would regret it tenfold. Someday . . . but not today.

But the older boy shook his head. "I don't think it too," he said firmly. "Look, we've both had it rough. I know things aren't the same for us in a lot of ways, but things are pretty stacked against us both when it comes to people caring. If I died tomorrow, there wouldn't be anyone who would miss me. And that's the same with you." He did not say it aloud, but it seemed to him that all that they each wanted was for someone, anyone to recognize that they were aching. They wanted to be understood. To think that someone would love either of them was too much, but if they could just be understood, would that be such an impossible thing to hope for? In some ways, he wondered if that was even less likely to happen than for someone to care about them. One could care and not necessarily understand, and likewise, one could understand and not always care.

The child snorted. "You're wearing some fancy school uniform," he retorted. "You're probably pretty popular in whatever stupid school you go to."

"I'm really not," the other answered truthfully. "Anyone who does know I exist looks down on me." He shrugged. "That's just the way it's been for years. I've had to get used to it, but that doesn't mean I like it." A bit of bitterness slipped into his own voice as he spoke. Sometimes it amazed him, that he had been so naive before his parents had died. He had believed then that the world was much kinder than it was in reality. And then, when he had suddenly been thrust into things all alone, he had begun to realize exactly what life was like and how few people there were who honestly did care about anyone other than themselves.

"Yeah?" The boy crossed his arms, thinking about this. Even though he did not want to admit it, there was a part of him that was slowly warming up to this person. The student was older, but he did not treat him as a child or as a demon---but simply as another human being. He had never experienced such a thing before. Anyone in the past who had been nice to him had only been using him, and they had never spoken so candidly as this person had.

"You don't talk like you're from around here," he said after a stretch of silence.

"I'm from Brooklyn," the teenager responded. "I got sent to this school a year before my parents died."

"I've always lived here." The boy glanced down the street, his words tinged with venom. "I saw some people from Brooklyn once before. They had a guy a couple of years older than me who kept bothering me every time I walked past their house." He smirked. "I broke his nose."

"Heh." The student slowly shook his head. He was about to say more when he saw one of his classmates hurrying over to him. "What is it, Carter?" he demanded.

The one called Carter barely gave the child any notice as he spoke. "Look, you've gotta be heading back," he exclaimed with derision. "Manning's going to be out of that bookshop in five minutes and you know how punctual he is. I'm surprised you're not there already." Then he took notice of the other student's acquaintance and sneered. "But I guess you're too busy hanging out with the riffraff. I never thought I'd see the day." He laughed and ran past them, and the boy glared after him, his eyes burning.

"Boy, I'd like to give him a good thrashing," he muttered. "Stupid windbag."

"I wouldn't mind it, either, but it wouldn't really solve anything." The student turned to go. "I'll see you later."

"I doubt it." The boy rolled his eyes, then looked genuinely curious. "What's your name, anyway?"

"Antonio." He glanced back. "What's yours?"

The child shrugged. "My mom gave me a name, but I don't remember it. My aunt and uncle never use it. They don't really call me much of anything that you could really call a name." He turned away. "You'd better go."

"I know." With that Antonio hurried off, barely making it back to the meeting place before Mr. Manning did. By then Carter had told everyone that Antonio had been mingling with a local juvenile delinquint, and all the students stared at him curiously as he approached. He ignored them, crossing his arms over his chest as he waited for Mr. Manning to come so that they could leave. He knew that he was not likely to ever hear the end of this, but he did not care. For the first time in years, he had met someone who had actually been able to understand him, and whom he could understand, even if only somewhat. None of the other students would be able to comprehend that.

He thought about the strange boy often after that. He wondered if the child still lived with his aunt and uncle, or if he had finally been sent to a juvenile correction center. He had a hard time believing that anyone could tame such a wild spirit. Wherever he was, the boy was most likely raising Cain.

Likewise, the boy thought about Antonio. For days afterward it surprised him that he had found someone who had actually been willing to listen and not pass judgement. He did not know quite what to make of it. After so many years, distrust and hatred had built up in his heart and he did not know that anyone was able to be trusted at all. And yet part of him wanted to be able to trust that student. Part of him wanted to believe that someone in this cold world actually did understand him.

Neither of them ever thought that they would meet again. But, as fate would have it, they did---several years later. Though they had each not forgotten the strange meeting from the past, neither recognized the other under their new circumstances. One was a noted police detective, the other a notorious criminal. And their paths would continue to cross after that, as each came to an important realization. They would never be friends, nor would they even necessarily like each other very much, but that did not change that deep in their hearts, each did understand the other.

Go to chapter 1