Prologue of The Outcasts: Origin

The night Landon Kessler’s life ended, they played parcheesi.

It was a very common sight around the dinner table on Wednesday nights. Landon’s parents would switch off their computers and place their phones down the throat of a large painted vase they kept tucked in their impressive kitchen for exactly this purpose. Andrea insisted that no situation would ever be so dire that they’d break the vase to get to their phones; it had been a thank you present from a village in China after hers and David’s work with the Kessler Foundation had saved the people from starvation during an especially ruinous winter.

All Landon cared about was that once the phones were in the vase, he had his parents’ undivided attention.

The game progressed as it usually did. Landon played aggressively, sending out his pieces without any mind for strategy and reveling in what few victories he could manage over his parents in the way only a twelve-year-old could.

David never set out with any plan to win but instead lived to tease and obstruct his son any way he could. Sometimes he would block the way for rounds and rounds, laughing at Landon’s progressively redder face. Other times he’d go out of his way to capture Landon’s pieces even when it made more sense to go after Andrea’s or when it hurt his own chances at winning.

Andrea rolled her eyes at her husband’s antics and chose instead to spend the game demonstrating proper strategy to her son—both by word and by soundly defeating them as efficiently as possible.

“Oh come on, that’s not fair!” Landon protested. “I would’ve won if Dad had moved his stupid elephants!”

“You know, I might’ve won if I had moved my stupid elephants, too,” David replied seriously. “That sounds pretty fair to me, Landon.”

“He always does this! And then you always win!”

Andrea took a long sip of her tea before turning her hazel eyes onto her son. “Oh, Landon, stop complaining. I would’ve won regardless.”

“Oh yeah? Prove it! Let’s play again!” He jabbed an accusatory finger at his father. “And you better cut your bullshit!”

David roared with laughter and Andrea sighed, though a smile curled her lips. Landon grinned and started to set the game up for another round.

Just as he set the last piece into its starting circle, a phone buzzed. The sound sent a chill up the young boy’s spine. It carried with it an ominous, echoing quality because of the vase it was hidden inside, like the eerie cry of a midnight fox.

“David,” Andrea accused.

“Dammit, I thought I put that thing on silent,” he muttered as he rose from the table.

Landon knew that he should protest. He had done so a thousand times before. He was supposed to whine about how game night was sacred, and David’s treason demanded compensation. Tomorrow would have to be a game night as well, or maybe he would demand they go out for burgers or pizza together instead of eating whatever disgusting, vegetable-ridden meal their chef prepared for them. He knew he should say those things, and his parents would respond in kind, as they had done a thousand times before. But he couldn’t bring himself to say those words.

“We need to leave,” Landon whispered instead. “We need to go, now.”

His father froze. “What did you say, son?”

“We need to go, now,” Landon repeated, a bit louder this time.

“Go where?” His mother asked, reaching out a hand to rest on his arm.

Landon couldn’t feel her touch. “Anywhere but here. Please, there isn’t much time!”

Despite the urgency of his tone, Landon did not, could not, move from his chair at the table. He was frozen, as if fate itself was telling him there was no escape from what was coming. And all the while, the phone continued to howl from within the vase, tolling away the last seconds they had left. His wide, terrified eyes squeezed shut.

As if on cue, the sound of shattering glass echoed through the mansion, followed by the thunder of dozens of booted feet. Andrea rose at once, and David, phone all but forgotten, raced back to the table and tried to hide the two of them behind him. He looked furious but not surprised.

The door to the kitchen burst open, and four people armed with assault rifles filed inside. Each one was dressed for combat and wore a matching no-nonsense expression. “They’re here,” one of them called into their radio. The others trained their guns on the Kesslers.

David raised his hands in front of him. “Don’t hurt my family. They don’t have any part in this.”

Andrea, who had pulled Landon into a tight embrace, leaned into David. “Any part in what? What’s going on?”

“Shut up!” Another one of them snapped. “The Kraken is on his way.”

A minute passed before a man swept into the room. Unlike his more practically dressed underlings, he wore a long black coat over a shirt and tie, with a silver pin gleaming on his breast. A sheathed sword was affixed to his hip, so long it nearly touched the ground.

“Kessler,” he snarled, drawing out the name like it was a curse.

From within his mother’s embrace, Landon peeked at the man and saw dark eyes over a deep scowl. No, not like this, he thought. Not again. 

“Lord Kraken,” David replied warily, ignoring Andrea’s accusatory stare. “I thought I made my position clear.”

“You did. Very clear, in fact.” The Kraken stepped closer until he was right in David’s face. Landon could see the pin on the man’s chest: a stylized “M” set over a swirling pattern of metal. “But what made you think that you had a choice in the matter?”

The howl of the phone hadn’t ceased since the Kraken’s arrival. With one fluid motion, the Kraken drew his blade and spun, striking the vase from the counter and shattering it. Both phones clattered to the floor with the force of his blow, and he drove the tip of his sword through David’s phone, the buzzing finally silenced.

David flinched as the sword came to rest an inch from his throat, but he didn’t back down or lower his arms. “What do you want from me?”

“I want to renew our deal,” the Kraken hissed.

“I can’t do that.”

“Look around you, at the position you’re in. You refuse me? Even now?”

David looked back and met Landon’s terrified look with grim determination. “Yes. Especially now.”

The Kraken studied David’s face, seemingly searching for any kind of weakness. Finding none, he sheathed his blade and stepped away from the Kesslers, his long coat sweeping behind him. “Very well. Perhaps I will have better luck with your successor.”

David made to chase after the man, but the soldiers kept their weapons trained on him before they, too, exited the room. The sound of footsteps faded out, and an eerie calm fell over the house.

Andrea turned on David, all the color gone from her face. “What did you do? Who were those people?”

David turned to look back at her and Landon with tears in his eyes. Whatever he was about to say was drowned out by the thunder of a dozen explosions all throughout the mansion.

The next thing Landon knew, he was pinned under the flaming debris of the floor above, the ceiling a gaping, smoke-filled hole. He coughed and tried to use his one free arm to pull himself out to no avail. The wreckage of his home was too heavy, his small body too weak. He cast his eyes around him, searching desperately for his parents.

Andrea was still beside him, her body bent in a way no bone or joint was ever meant to. The worst of the falling debris had found her rather than him, and Landon could tell at once this was by her design. She was always the strategist. But this time she’d lost.

“Mom,” he whimpered, grasping at her with a shaking hand.

He heard a choking gasp through the crackling flames and crumbling masonry. For one brief instant, Landon thought that maybe, just maybe, his touch had somehow revived his poor mother, but she hadn’t stirred. The sound came again, and Landon finally found its source.

“Landon,” David gasped from about a yard away, barely visible from beneath the wreckage of a once elegant four-poster bed that had fallen from the floor above. He was on his back, and one of the wooden posters was speared through his gut. “Landon, listen…to me.”

“Dad, I—”

“Promise me, son.” David’s eyes bore into Landon’s with the last of his strength. “Promise me that you’ll…you’ll find your place in the sky.”

“What does that…Dad, what are you…?”

“Promise me.”

The light left his father’s eyes, and he was alone.

No, please. Don’t leave me. Not again.

He screamed. He screamed until it hurt and then screamed more.

The scream echoed through Landon’s soul as he burst upright in bed, lean body drenched in sweat and pulsing with every deep, desperate breath he took. He sank his bearded, disheveled face into shaking hands, clawing at the familiar scars that circled his narrow, angular features. He felt the scream build inside him, as fresh and powerful as it had that terrible night, and released it, hoping against hope for some kind of relief from the pain.

But nothing came. No sound emerged from his lips, and if it had, he wouldn’t have been able to hear it. Nevertheless, he tried harder, fingers clenching at the thin, ratty bedsheet as he pushed, trying to force out a single syllable to carry his torment away to no avail. He was silent, and silence was all he knew.