Prologue

It was the twenty-first birthday party to beat all birthday parties. A hired yacht on the harbour; forty specially selected friends and relatives; gourmet food and, most importantly, an open bar. A present, from an immodestly rich businessman to his immodestly indulged son. The boat moved slowly across the harbour, an island of light and life in the inky water. Raucous laughter and drunken conversation warred for airspace with the music blaring out of the large banks of speakers fore and aft. One couple, maybe two, slink off into dark corners to partake of whatever their hormones suggest. One girl, too, leaned over the side, puking noisily while experiencing the deep philosophical revelation that vodka with a chartreuse chaser and a slug of Jack Daniels to wash it all down is perhaps not good for one’s health. Showy, pretentious, and utterly decadent - the perfect celebration for a futures trader who partied through the eighties, it seemed sadly under appreciated by his son.

The young man in question sat at the bar most of the night, nursing a bottle of remarkably expensive white wine, appearing unaffected by the joie de vive that surrounded him. He moved to pour himself another glass, but nothing more than a thin trickle of liquid emerged from the neck of the bottle. Sighing deeply, he rose from the bar and made to leave. Before he could move, he was accosted by an arm encased in garish jewellery.

"Hey, great party! I just adored that salmon pate they were serving, didn’t you?" He turned to see the tall, attractive woman to whom the arm belonged, her beauty somewhat marred by the large flecks of expensive pate smeared on her chin.

"Uh… yeah, it was nice, I guess," he replied. "You are aware you’ve got some on your face, aren’t you?"

"I do? Oh God, how embarrassing, I hope no one important saw me like this. ‘Scuse me while I clean up." She lifted the hem of her green silk gown, bent down, and wiped her face on it.

"Sorry, I don’t believe I know you"

"Oh, silly me! I’m a friend of your father’s from work, he invited me along. Isn’t this great? You must be having such fun!"

"Yeah, its great, really. Excuse me, I need to go to the toilet"

"Sure, honey, see you later." She planted a fishy smelling kiss on his cheek.

Shuddering, he wandered towards the front of the yacht, clambering around and over the speaker banks to the dark space beyond. He leaned against the railing, looking back at the lights of the city floating by. The ever-present wind ruffled his short blond hair as he closed his eyes and tuned out the everything but the breeze and the waves. He drifted with the boat, calm, peaceful, oblivious to the party that was going on, in his honour, behind him.

So caught up in his own quiet world was he that he didn’t notice the stuttering of the engine, or the gradual loss of speed from the boat. He was unaware of the skipper descending to the engine room to try to fix the problem, and the smoke that billowed from the motor. Neither he, nor anyone else, saw the spark that skittered around the engine, igniting the fuel where it most definitely should not be ignited. He also missed the sight of the huge fireball which welled up behind him when the main petrol tank caught fire, and the looks on his guests’ faces as the were burnt by the terrible heat. Of the cataclysm occurring right next to him he heard only a deep thunderclap, saw only a bright, yellow-orange flash.

The next thing he was aware of was a wash of hot air, and then flying through the air and landing heavily in the sea. He quickly started treading water, ignoring the burgeoning pain in his back. The burning torch that had been the luxury yacht had started sinking gracefully beneath the water, and soon its light was extinguished. In the cold moonlight, he noticed a few other bodies floating near him. Some were following his example and were trying to stay afloat, others lay on their backs and groaned, but many, many, lay still, moving only as they were lifted up and down by the motion of the waves. Still not having grasped the fact that most of his friends and family were dead or dying, Paul Feltham resigned himself to hope, and waited for rescue.

Across the harbour, up in the hills behind the city, Kiannen Delaney was ripped from a sound sleep, screaming. Pain, fear, and loss surged through him as he sat bolt upright in bed. As the scream faded from the air, he sat, shivering and sweating, in his sparse little room. The raw terror of the moment before was fading, but still he felt scared, threatened, and alone. He looked around his room for something, anything that might be causing his reaction. Shelves of books stretched along one wall, stuffed with everything from David Eddings to Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Several volumes had overflowed on to the floor near his bed, lying next to the box of tissues which had been printed with a rather tacky teddy bear design. His desk sat opposite the bed, dominated by a middle of the range PC, and scattered with papers and CD cases. Near the door, two wardrobe doors stood slightly ajar, next to the chest of drawers which housed various socks, blankets, hankies, and pairs of underwear. The whole scene was remarkably unthreatening.

Kian sat panting for a while, still scared and shaken, more so at being unable to identify the source. He got out of bed, wearing only boxers, and shuffled over to the chest of drawers, the ghostly light streaming through the single window bleaching his already pale skin a starker white, in marked contrast to his hair, which was black as wet asphalt. He bent down and opened the bottom drawer, extracting a slightly ragged blanket. This unique blanket had been made for Kian when he was three by an old friend of his mother’s. It was deep blue, with a pattern of slightly psychedelic looking frogs sitting on very definitely psychedelic mushrooms. He wrapped himself in its soft, familiar folds and fell back into bed. Despite the comfort of this childhood relic, it was a long time before he managed to fall back into an troubled sleep, still disturbed by a vague feeling of unease. As he drifted off, he fancied he heard the distant sound of sirens, heading down the hill towards the harbour.