Operation Barrage was a disaster from the very beginning. It had seemed too easy at first after the first bomb had detonated. Father had left out one crucial yet minute detail, malls had mall-cops. Regardless I had to learn the hard way that there are cops inside to aid in others safety. I ran from the first weapons cache to detonate and steal, exactly like Father said. Clearing the expanse was easy and looting was simply exhilarating. After a while I heard the second bomb go off, and went to detonate the third one before the cops found it. Unfortunately they already had.

Like a cracking whip we immediately pulled out our firearms. My training running drills in my head, telling me to react first. Father's words ringing in my ears urging me to pull the trigger. I let the automatic rapid fire beat the cops back scattering them in every direction. One of them off my left flank was able to fire two rounds. As the first bullet made impact with my sternum the second one buried itself in my right arm. Falling back in shock I realized there was no pain, only a minor tingling sensation. Instantaneously, after I had fallen two cops pinned me further into the ground and handcuffed me.

Facing the outside world was a little like expecting to see death. I imagined Father standing to the side taking me by the arm to Torture, and the worst part is not knowing when I will reemerge. An ambulance had arrived but we didn’t stop so they could at least take the bullets out. It figures now that I am one of the most wanted people today. No, instead they shoved me into the back of a cop car. Luckily I was alone in the car so that meant they hadn't captured Mel yet who was probably still causing unknown havoc. Staring out the car window toward the mall as someone was coming back holding a syringe in one hand. My last memory was the pinch of the needle going in and the faint click of the car door shutting.

My mind continued to switch between places and phases of reality and fantasy. One moment I was faintly awake and in the blink of my eye I was falling down into a cavern of self belief. I have no care for much of what happened at the mall. All I know is I might be dead or at least on the cusp of it. Trying to articulate words while in the faintly awake world is tiresome. Mel. She is the one I’m trying to say something for, to let her know I’m alive. She must be worried senseless about me and how I am.

The time that has transpired has happened. In healing for Mel I am also working on a plan to prove my loyalty to Father. Despite every moment in Torture and endless training sessions I've endured I would still work for Father. Without him I would be playing baseball, grown up soft, grown weak as I got older. Mel may not understand what Father has done to us but I do. She, for one thing, doesn't know that Father is a criminal. In New York, Tennessee, and Texas he is charged with burglary and grand theft. But before all that he was a medical surgeon.

Father was always experimenting on people to enhance our own natural human abilities. Soon people were starting to consider his work “a dangerous endeavor in the hands of a reckless person”. His degree was revoked and he was shunned from his earned profession. Every office he had worked for had shunned him and would never correspond with new employers about him.

That is where Mel and I come in.

Together, we were a part of a medical breakthrough. His training regimes were merely a test for his human guinea pigs. For Mel and I he changed our physical and metaphysical standings, and improved them. Giving us extraordinary strength, endurance, and a complex brain.

On me he improved my physicality. I can run farther, hit harder, and kill without second thoughts or guilt than a normal, soft human. Some people would say he created a weapon, others say I’m like Frankenstein, but they're all wrong. Because I am enhanced, but I wish I could say the same about Mel’s powers. She seemed to get the less useful of the two powers.

For her when she gets into a special frame of mind she can manipulate physical objects and at times she can view real events in real time without even being there. Most of the time she is a dormant being, almost useless, yet in dreams she can watch events unfolding in her mind's eye without realizing it.

Maybe it was simply chance or rare luck that Father gave us these enhancements. I know better. Thanks to Father he has unleashed upon Mel and I a better way of life. One if he hadn't taken us, would never have happened. I thank Father for all that he has done, and if it were between Mel or Father it's a no contest.