2002, off the coast of Blackpool Beach.

The heavy downpour drenched the only three people on the cruise boat to the skin. Gravity seemed to have turned up a notch. Five-year-old Liam sat quietly, teeth chattering due to the merciless draught. He rubbed his teary eyes. Jenny, his nanny, had been tossed over the railing like she weighed no more than a sack of cotton. The red hue staining the water told him he would never see her again.

Hours later, Liam lay unconscious on an operating table, as a pair of electrodes were implanted inside his skull, followed by a device right behind his ear, connecting the auditory nerve. His life was about to take the ghastliest u-turn ever.

******

2016, Southern London.

It seemed to be several hours later when John Lawrence found himself alone in a bare brick room. Ignoring the splitting headache, he yelled, "This is outrageous!! I am a well-known journalist!!"

He screamed and kicked even as two teens entered and pinned him down. He gripped the table, the room spinning in ever-increasing circles.

"You can't do this to me!!"

The unyielding grip on his limbs said otherwise.

Two people entered the room. A huge man who looked like a prizefighter and the blonde, empty-eyed teen who had knocked him out earlier in the alley.

"I'm Brother Donovan," the man spoke.

If John hadn't been terrified out of his mind, the name would have registered as the scientist who was caught using humans to discover a measuring unit for pain.

"You've crossed paths with the Instruments."

Fear oozed through his pores. He recognised the boy as the murderer of a British spy.

' His Nikon clicked away at 9 frames per second.

The razor-sharp blades of a toy helicopter skewered the inattentive man's neck. Blood spewed from his mouth, coating the flesh of the half-eaten apple.

As he collapsed, the boy who had given him the apple tied his arms to the wooden cross made with the help of a hatchet.

The hammer swung high and crashed down on the man's face.'

"I only have to click this pen and you will get incinerated instantly," Donovan spoke flatly. "There's a five-second fuse to this gelignite chair. Ryan Lawrence is gone and so would you, Mr Doppelganger."

John gasped.

"However, that's not what our brethren want," Donovan laid out his notebook and all the photographs John had clicked over the past few months in front of him.

Tears rolled freely as he wondered how everything could go so wrong.

John had been proud of his persistence.

' "A kid?" He inquired.

"Yeah. Two lassies last week, I heard. Left just before that murder at the airport. No one knows that the killers are a bunch of kids. All cameras within fifty yards were jammed." '

But now, as he sat across imminent death, he wasn't sure whether it was perseverance or curiosity.

His day had started normally. He had woken up just as the "Journalist of the Year" trophy of his dreams loomed up in his vision.

Not looking where he was going, he had bumped into someone as he was about to enter the general store. "Hey! Watch it!"

It was that teen. Liam, his tag read.

He had a very strange array of items. His basket contained a hammer, a hatchet, some rope and an apple.

The television of the store had been showing a blurred image of the fifteenth murder in London, of a shady businessman, Ryan Lawrence.

John had smirked, thinking how much his story would be worth when he spilt the beans about teenage assassins. But now, in the lions' den, he wasn't sure how much his own life was worth.

He had given his debit card to pay for groceries.

"Sorry. It's empty."

"What?!"

Soon after, he had lost his ATM card in the machine, and his phone had stopped receiving signals.

He had just come out after a huge quarrel with the manager of the bank about outdated technology, only to be told that his account had been closed a month ago.

His eyes had landed on his photograph right under the morning headlines which screamed, "Businessman killed."

He had 'died' last night.

He had been so shocked that he couldn't scream even as Liam's hammer dislocated his shoulder.

******

Who else could have twisted his life out of shape with such ease, if not The Instruments, a criminal organisation??

Just what had he gotten himself into??? How he wished he had never heard of this.

"Would you like to have an apple before starting, freelancer??" Donovan's smile was as sharp as the hatchet in Liam's hand.

Somehow John sensed that the vivid red of the apple, a stark contrast against the monochrome of the city was the last colour he would ever see.

Cross my heart, hope to die,
Welcome to my dark side.

XD

Love,
Erus555.