"In which moment did this become all about you?"
Sasa said, as her palms rose upwards from her sides, a motion I eventually learned gauged her aggravation.

"It's been about me..." I turned my head swiftly in her direction, eyes squinting in dissatisfaction. "Have you forgotten the entire reason why you are here in the first place?"

It was arguments like this that would soon become ordinary. In an environment where emotions are always running high, and there is always something major at risk (such as someone's life or future) you cannot expect everything to always run as you had expected.
I remember what it was like to worry about the forthcoming of adolescence and early adulthood, when my biggest problem was deciding whether or not today was going to be the day I cared what people thought of me. I remember when what people thought of me actually mattered, even if to me only minutely. I remember my father painting me a vivid picture of life and the way it should be lived, in a warm safe place, surrounded by family, enjoying our freedom as human beings to choose what we love, and admonish what we hate. I have found through time that love and hate are accompanied by oddly similar emotions, and during war, can sometimes even be confused. In the past, I have had trouble finding where the line lays between the two. Even now, in these darker times, I tend to associate the same feelings with both emotions. Cassandra once told me that the only way she could gauge how much she loved something, was by how much she would miss it when it was gone. She would always say how she missed being home when she was on the road, but the moment she truly identified her feelings, was the day she missed being on the road when she was home.


September 3rd 2001
Brooklyn, NY.

The brisk breeze of the early fall morning lifted the copper coated stars back into the sky, creating a whirlwind of converging orange and yellow leaflets that sailed eastbound toward the rising sun. The sound of a waking community provided incomparable ambiance, as the hiss of an industrial trailers' hydraulic breaks warn neighbors of the new days' arrival. As the neighborhood dogs let off the first few warnings shots in this morning's war against the postal worker, a young girl tosses in her bed, the light striking her eye lids through a sea of dark strands covering her face. Her eye lids fluttered, coherence hard at work battling subconscious, the landscape around her becoming more blurry by the second. It was heaven for her, that dream she was having, and she felt it dissolving through her fingertips like sand through a clenched fist. The road began to narrow, the voices of her preferred company drowned out by the clatter of the city she was waking up to. Everybody has a recurring dream or two throughout their lives, and Cassandra reveled in hers. Sometimes, she used to say, she thought nightmares had caught a bad rap. In her words, when having your perfect world illustrated in your subconscious, in the company of people you know and love, waking up becomes the nightmare.

Her eyelids fluttered, finally opening as the strain of the light became overwhelming. Dark hair cascaded down her back as she sat up, feet swinging softly onto the blue and silver Turkish carpet. She blinked, and turned toward the window just in time to see the last street lamp flicker into hibernation. This, she thought, was the only good part of waking up; watching the autumn sky mimic a chameleon, as what once matched the rustic color of the trees, now slowly becomes lost on the horizon.


Cassandra had barely been awake for two minutes when there was a light knock on the door, it swung open, and a small middle-aged Spanish woman started to become visible. First only an eye through the crack in the door, then her whole head, then she slipped her whole small, plump, egg-framed body as quietly as possible through the opening and closed the door gently.

"I'm awake Rosalie," Cassandra said, as soon as she heard the locking mechanism on the door slip into its niche.

The small Spanish woman jumped a bit in her skin, before putting a hand to her forehead and breaking into a small laugh. "Ah, muy bien Sandra, tu padre told me to make sure you were up by six thirty para escuela," she said in a broken mixture of Spanish and English, all while she roamed about the room dubiously sweeping dust off the window sill with a wet cloth. "...y, why you no call me Rosa like everybody else, eh?"

There was a moment's pause, before Cassandra's bare mocha legs came sliding off the side of the bed, and she pressed her palms down at her sides to push herself into a standing position. She moved toward the window and pulled on the string, closing the shades and darkening the room. Finally, the young girl's gaze rested on Rosalie, and after a grueling fifteen or twenty seconds of eye contact that must have seemed like an eternity for the aging immigrant maid who just returned a small polite smile, Cassandra spoke.

"Well..." holding the eye contact with Rosa, she moved closer to the maid, so close that she leaned in and her lips were adjacent to Rosalie's left ear."I am not everybody else."

There was another moment of silence. The maid let out a quick burst of air from her mouth, before that polite smile crept nervously over those glossed, chapped lips.
"But of course senorita, you are the lovely Cassandra Valon." The older woman's thick accent wrapped around her words like a warm blanket. "Many chicas wish to be you, miss," Rosalie stated quite confidently, as she scurried back to the door leading downstairs.

"Where is she?" Cassandra said hastily, before Rosalie could fully close the door and secure her exit. "Your daughter, Rosalie--Where is she?"

The door creaked back open, the maid's small round face appeared in the separation, she looked confused, and a bit taken back. "Mija? Honduras, with her grandmother, miss."

"Why?" Sandra asked quickly, making steps in Rosalie's direction.

"She is in sch--"

"Well, perhaps she should be here, in the states," Cassandra hissed quickly as she approached Rosalie. Her young, sun-kissed hand pulled the door back open as the other was raised and placed on the elder lady's face, who then flinched and blinked her eyes nervously in response. "Cleaning houses on her hands and knees, like everybody else."

Letting the words linger for a few moments, she then brushed by the lady's thick frame, and headed toward the bathroom. Walking into the large second floor wash room with a hand above her eyes, the young girl prepared a shield for the surge of light they were about to experience. With a flick of a switch the overhead lights illuminated the white bathroom gloriously and the walls came to life with pieces of gold-painted artwork in a pattern across the wallpaper.

Cassandra moved forward towards the center of the bathroom where the large rectangular mirror and vanity resided, and on the mirror she spotted a small pink piece of paper held onto the glass by some adhesive substance. Her shoulders tensed, she ran her hands over the caramel colored skin on her face and through her almost midnight black strands of hair, before reaching out and grabbing the note. Her tired eyes squinted in attempt to read the small red ink scribed onto the paper.

"Your new adventure starts today. Good luck. Do not try to call, I'll find you in seven days."

The young girl crumpled the piece of paper inside of her palm and tossed it into the adjacent miniature trash bin. Putting both palms down on the marble sink she stared into the mirror intently for a few moments, as if she was deciding whether or not she trusted the depiction of herself that the mirror was offering. Finally, after a minute or two that could have been a lifetime, she shook her head quickly in an effort to break the enchanted state of deep thought she had entered and went on to prepare the shower. It was going to be a really long week.


-------------------------------------------------------


That young Colombian girl would turn out to be a real handful. I did not know Cassandra too well back then, and even if I did, I don't think it would change my initial perception of her. The first few emotions you feel when first coming in contact with someone destined to change your life, even if you don't know it yet, they don't wither, and they do not fade. Few discussions were held between us, and the most time I had to spend with her was during seventh period American History, the only class we shared together. We were both seniors at St. Edwards high school, and every year I had the pleasure of sharing but one class with Cassandra, and every year I made it a point to sit as close to her as possible. I admit I had a faint attraction towards her. She had the most mysterious, oceanic blue eyes that could both sail right through you or stop you dead and drop anchor flat onto your heart. It was a stare that could send a wave that ripples down your back and then soften, and make your shoulders fall like bricks to the bottom of the sea. I always felt like I had ... I don't know, a connection with her, a sort of; undisclosed, undetermined love for her. It was a kind of love that was beyond romantics or paternal love, a kind of love that connected us on a spiritual level ... a love that could capture and carry me like wings in a tailwind to our final destination. This year we did sit next to each other in class, granted, but we still didn't talk all that much. Once in a while she would shoot me an entertained look when I'd offer a smart-ass response to one of the teacher's lacking questions, or when I walked in to class late, and smelling of cheap cigar paper and marijuana. I'd share short, inappropriate jokes I had learned throughout the school day with her, and she would grin as she concentrated on whatever she happened to be doodling that day. I am telling you this now because it will make the events that transpired during that September all that much more peculiar.


I hail from a small family that resided in the Bergan Beach area of Brooklyn, New York, in what my father would tell me was the best country in the world. In my eyes we were a regular family, from a regular city, that did the most regular of things. My father worked from seven in the morning until five o'clock in the evening most days, and my mother would work from the computer at home. There was pretty much always a paternal presence in my household. We ate every night together when my father arrived home from work. My mother would chat him up and fill him in on my work at school, and my father would listen and consume his food without many questions. For the most part I had lead a normal childhood, birthed eagerly into early adulthood, and was currently trying to fit in somewhere between teenager and young adult.


As a child, basked in your ignorance, you are more than likely to accept the natural inclination that urges you from the inside to accept your parents as the best example of what is fair and righteous. From the day you were born they have been telling you what is right, what is wrong, what is good and what is bad. If you did not have many friends and were not able to capture the essence of other households or identify any differences, you had a sense of surety that the way it was in your home was the way it was everywhere. At least I did. I come from a very private family. My mother did her work on the computer while my father did his in an office building, and when they arrived home I was the topic of conversation. I had never heard my mother in my entire childhood ask my father anything additional about his work other than an initial "How was your day?" To this he often offered a short vague response or none at all. I was interested in what my father had done for a living, but every single time I had ever inquired about it I would get a similar vague, dismissing response, "He is a businessman," or when I asked him personally he would deflect with a joke.

"What do I do? I'm a business man son, I do business," He would say, flashing that smile of his, and giving me a reassuring pat on the back. Dad never elaborated further than that. I figured hey, if I had to spend nearly twelve hours every day doing the same damn thing for the last fifteen or twenty years, I probably wouldn't want to talk about it when I got home either.


The entire reason I became more interested, and my curiosity began to overshadow my respect for my father's privacy, was that the job I was told he did conflicted very much with his personality. Sure, he was smart, quick witted, and chose his words carefully but he was also so outgoing, adventurous, and resourceful. My father would insist on going camping in upstate New York every fall for as long as I can remember. He would teach me how to survive, hunt small game, and live off the land. We would go to the same camping grounds every year, and every year he would tell me the same story about an Israeli intelligence agent who saved both their lives from a vicious black bear in that very spot. That reminds me, after that incident my father set out to master the Israeli self-defense system labeled Krav Maga, and if he was going to master it, so was I, per his orders.


We spent many a fall training in that New York wilderness; learning how to survive, how to procure drinkable water, how to defend ourselves using a variety of different self-defense systems and martial arts techniques. Come to think of it, you know that series of questions kids ask each other, such as naming three things or people you would take with you if you were marooned on an island? Well you could answer "David Harley" to all three. You could put my father anywhere in the world and if he could get his hands on a few sticks, some leaves, and some material to use as rope...well, he would keep you hydrated, healthy, prevent you from becoming a meal for a black bear and still have you home before dinner. Think about it, does this seem like the type of man who would let his life waste away for eleven hours a day in an office building? It sure did not to me, not one bit.


When my father never returned home from work on September the 2nd, I sat upright in my bed all that night gazing out the window at the flickering headlights of cars passing. I watched, I waited, but I knew. Something inside me told me he was not coming home, for a reason I did not know, and perhaps could not understand. I think my mother knew as well. She proceeded to come into my room four or five times that night to check on me, and I had never seen her look so concerned, so puzzled and so...relieved. I remember thinking that she had this look on her pale white face like she knew this day would come, and she was relieved because she did not have to worry anymore, at least not about that Harley.


Have you ever been awakened to the most terrible, unsettling feeling in the world shaking you on the inside? Roaring with a vengeance from the tips of your toes to the strands of hair on your head? Well, on September 3rd, 2001, I woke up with that feeling. It is a feeling that I will never forget for as long as I am able to breathe oxygen into my lungs. I could not describe it to you, or explain it to you when I sat up that morning; no, not coming out of adolescence, not having seen what I have now witnessed and participated in since then. I'm much older, filled with more sorrow, and wiser. Wiser to know it was the feeling of an impending loss, an unforeseen gain, and the rebirth of life as I had once known it to be crashing and thrusting its way throughout my bones and throughout the universe. It was the end of anything familiar I had come to ever know, and at the same time, the beginning everything.

Author Notes

Kevin Harley is the narrator and protagonist. The Global Covenant books comb through Kevin Harley's memory beginning on the day after his father's disappearance. His father is discovered to be an elite operative of a worldwide clandestine agency that is deeply involved in covert operations around the world. The information he discovers and the people he encounters will guide him into a series of events that will permanently alter the course of his life and countless others. *I did not want to separate Cassandra's intro from the prologue. Its purpose here will come to better light in following chapters.

Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of language.

PART ONE:

September 3rd, 2001.
Brooklyn, New York

September is an odd month, especially in the northeast. As the first month after the summer vacation comes to a close, every day is a seasonal adventure. One day may be chilly, the next it may be hot, there is just no telling what September will bring. It's actually similar to life in that respect, you just never know what you are going to get. One day you are a warm-hearted citizen making a consistent contribution to the community you live in, and in the blink of an eye you are a cold-blooded savage blinded by your personal ideals and vendettas. Alright, maybe I am being a bit extreme but don't let my awkward sense of humor take away from the point I am trying to convey. Life can change in the blink of an eye, providing your eyes are open in the first place.

"I'm not going," I said to my mother as we took our seats across from each other to eat our breakfast.

"You're going to go Kevin, and to every single class. I am not going to say it again."

"I want to go to the police. We should go to the police," I said, stirring my spoon around the rim of the bowl of cheerios in front of me.

"I already spoke to the police. We cannot file a missing persons report until forty eight hours has passed. You are giving up on your father so quickly Kevin?" she said, quirking an eye brow and staring at me intently.

"Of course not."

"Then why the long face? Why such huge concern? Your father is more than capable of handling himself."

"Maybe something is wrong, maybe he needs help," I said. I was beginning to become a little irritated at the extreme change in my mother's attitude and composure overnight.

"He is fine, I'm sure." She said with what seemed to be a false sense of confidence. "He survived that awful war, these horrid streets..."

"Are you trying to convince me Mom, or yourself?"

"He even survived that terrible black bear attack up north," she continued, obviously avoiding my rebuttal.

I had had enough. I dropped the spoon into my bowl and stood up. The sound of the metal coming in contact with the porcelain seemed to echo throughout our small house, and my mother flinched slightly and blinked in response to the sound. "Yes he did. He still had help, didn't he?" I said, as I pushed my chair under the table and started for the closet to fetch my jacket.

"Pay attention in school. Pass all of your classes," she said, I could hear a small bit of frustration in her voice. "You want to help your father Kevin? Don't jeopardize everything you worked for these past four years just to..."

"Help him?" I zippered the jacket up to my neckline and grabbed my book-bag off of the floor next to the door. My mother followed me with her eyes, and looking down before speaking.

"I love you Kevin," I heard as I closed the door. I was sure of that much. I knew she loved me. What I didn't know was the location of my father, or if he was even still alive.

My mind ran rampant. I moved down the cement block steps of our small one family home and started off in the direction of my high school. The walk to school was a long trek over busy city blocks that were equally as crowded as my head at the time. I just could not seem to focus on anything else but my father. We had spent so much time together, accomplished so much, and I was powerless. Powerless to change whatever events had transpired. He spent many years teaching me how to protect myself, but he never taught me how to protect him. Hell, I didn't even know what the man did for a living. I had nothing, less than nothing, but I had to help. I had to find him, I had to know what kept my father from coming home that night to the one thing he loved most; his family.

As my mind continued running countless scenarios through my head, I was approaching St. Edwards High School. I had my head down most of the walk, and just as I picked it up to navigate the turn onto school grounds, I collided into a female and knocked her straight to the ground.

"Don't you have eyes?" she snapped, as she moved onto her left knee and began to stand up.

" I'm -- I'm sorry." I extended my hand and offered help, but she ignored it as she rolled onto one knee in order to stand back up.

"Sorry does not fix the dirt stain on my brand new jeans," she said with a firm look of discontent across her face, managing to get back to her feet. She then stared into my eyes for a long moment, which had seemed like forever to me. I did not know her as well as I do now, and I would have sworn up and down she was trying to figure out where she recognized me from. Experience with her tells me she was most likely considering how many witnesses were in the general proximity, and where she would flee to after she disemboweled me. "You are Kevin Harley, are you not?"

My lips curled into a small smile, a bit taken back that she had remembered my full name. "Last time I checked."

"Ah. We have had classes in the past together."

I grinned, way more flattered than I should have been. "Yes, and history this year."

"Right. I thought I recognized your scent ... "

"My scent?" I asked. Did she smell me often? "It's just a Calvin Klein knockoff,"

"It's marijuana," she said quickly, before leaning in, putting her nose to the cloth that covered my left shoulder, "--and yesterday's shower."

A bit embarrassed, I smiled nervously, but before I could begin to reply and defend myself she had already started to walk away. "Wait! I was not even aware you knew who I was!" I said as I broke into a light trot to keep up with her fast pace.

"I don't," she said as she kept her pace brisk, and her eyes forward.

"Well, can you slow down?" I asked as I reached out and wrapped my open hand around her arm.

In one fluid motion she wrapped her left arm around mine and forced me into an arm brace, her right hand racing up towards my neck. I managed to slip my own left arm around her right as it came up to grab my throat, a defensive maneuver which it appeared we both knew well. She backed me up into a conveniently placed street light, both of our arms tangled within each others grasp.

"I just wanted to talk Cassandra."

Just as I finished her name I felt her knee move between my thighs, as she began to put pressure on the part of a man he prizes most. "Let go of me now--and don't call me that," applying a progressive amount of force to my groin during her sentence.

"Fine, well, what can I call you then?" I untangled both my arms from hers, and she leaned back fixing the sleeves on her black hooded sweatshirt.

"You can call me Sasa,"

"Sasa?" I grinned. "I like that. It's sort of ... sassy."

She was not entertained. "Are you high?" she asked inquisitively, as her deep blue eyes pierced my own.

"No, why?" I asked with haste and a bit defensively.

"Your eyes are bloodshot and you reek. I don't associate with people who use drugs."

"I am not high. This hoody needs to be cleaned," I said as I relieved the street light of my weight, and unzipped the sweater, preparing to take it off. "I was up all night, that is probably why I look like shit."

"Well, sleep is important."

"So is finding my father ... " I said, again, with haste.

Cassandra was still straightening herself out, but stopped everything when I mentioned my father's disappearance. After a few moments of silence and stillness, she spoke, "Most adult men find themselves in bars after work. Perhaps he didn't come home because he got too drunk and passed out somewhere."

"My father doesn't drink. How did you know he didn't make it home from work?"

"I assumed."

"A very accurate assumption ..."

"Lucky guess," Cassandra said dismissively. She took a look around at our surroundings as she often did, before beginning to walk in the opposite direction from our high school.

"Where are you going?" I asked, taking a few quick steps to bring myself up to speed.

"We should start asking questions at a bar. Regardless of whether or not you think your father drank or not, a bar is the perfect social habitat for rumors and hearsay to flourish. Businessmen of all calibers can be found there, and more often than not they socialize with at least one person, if only the barkeep."

"We?" I asked. The fact she was not only immediately volunteering to help, but also attempting to lead my investigation had caught me entirely off guard.

"Yes," she stopped walking and turned to her right so she was facing me. "You want my help, do you not?"

I bump into her, knock her straight down to the ground, scuff her jeans, and now she wants to help? I admit I had an initial feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was not exactly right with the scenario unfolding, but I could not afford to deny her assistance. She obviously had some form of training. Like I had warned you earlier, I knew next to nothing about her at the time, but high school kids gossip, and I had heard before that her father had owned a military funded research company called Valon Industries. Maybe she was trained for a more complex and physically demanding version of corporate espionage? Perhaps they were unfounded rumors? Either way, I wasn't prepared to say no. The opportunity to get closer to Cassandra Valon, who I spent many a day imagining myself with, was not going to slip through my fingers so easily. I only wished I could detect her motives.

"Well, sure, I'll take any help I can get," I stated, but I was still so curious about her, I had to push the envelope a bit further. "How did you become so knowledgeable of the adult male's after-work social behavior anyway?"

"My father is like a cop. He taught me some ... useful things," she said as we had once again began walking the busy city streets toward a destination unbeknownst to me. "Especially about catching the largest and most elusive criminal," she paused and turned her head towards me, "the American businessman."

"Ah, I see. What does your father do?" I was surely interested, and it must have sounded like I was, because she instantaneously shot me an agitated glare.

"Are we looking for my father or yours?" she snapped.

"Right, well I was just--"

"What does your father do Kevin?" she asked, the attitude in her voice insinuated that her patience was already depleting.

"He's a businessman,"

It had been ten or fifteen minutes since we had first started walking away from our school, and after a few more steps Cassandra stopped walking and turned to our right once more. I followed her gaze to a large florescent green sign. I supposed that this was the bar she was speaking about. I could never picture my father walking inside and having a drink, let alone associating with people who would populate such a place.

"Perrrrfectt," she said with a faint half-smile, holding her stare on the sign before glancing quickly to her left, and then to her right.

"Business or Pleasure? The name sounds like a strip club," I said, staring at the name of the tavern which was large enough to be a billboard hanging over the top of the entrance.

"It does. I suppose they did not think that one through," she said as she let a small smile creep over her plump, pale pink lips. "Well, go inside," she raised her arm toward the door as a butler would to his employer.

"Ladies first," I grinned, extending a hand towards the door, pulling it open for her and standing aside so she could pass.

"Try not to look like a drug addict," she snarled as the door closed behind us.

I could not help but keep that stupid grin on my face, even with a possible tragedy looming over my head and tons of unanswered questions. Something about her light Spanish accent--it whirled in and out of her words, like the September city breeze did with the strands of her dark hair. It was settling. Despite her stern, borderline nasty attitude, I found comfort in her voice, and her eyes. Those eyes, those nearly shining, mesmerizing blue eyes of hers ... had for a moment made me feel like everything was going to be alright.

That moment was fleeting. The door shut with a hard slam, and we only made it a few steps inside the tavern before a large, burly middle-eastern man stomped into our path.

"Identification please?"

--------------------------------------------------------------

Author Notes

The introduction showed you Cassandra's morning on the same day as the beginning of this chapter is taking place. The rest of the introduction would introduce the protagonist, the first person point of view in the novel, Kevin Harley. It ended with him waking up on September 3rd with a terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach, and that is where we begin in Part One of Chapter One. * In the Prologue (referred to here as the introduction) you were introduced to Cassandra in the third person point of view, and then switched to Kevin Harley, the protagonist and narrator's first person point of view. That will not happen again, or is yet to be planned to happen again throughout the rest of the novel and I apologize for the confusion. I felt it imperative to the plot, storyline, and perception of her character. So just to be clear: Kevin Harley is the narrator, and first person point of view. Thank you everyone for reading. We may start off a little slow but I tried to keep the dialogue interesting to make up for it, and things will pick up sooner than you expect. Best wishes and thanks in advance for your time and reviews, -D.H *Image courtesy of google images.

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