Prologue
The night was dark as sin. Distant stars could do little to substitute the light of the moon, which was but a sliver in the sky. Dusk had long since fallen upon a small village neighborhood. In a nondescript house, a young family slept like many of their ilk. With as silent a whisper as the wings of a powerful owl, an advanced aircraft alighted upon a grassy hill just to the east of the community. A man dressed in black crept through the night and stealthily infiltrated the aforementioned house. All was calm: so far so good. He ignored the electronics, jewelry, and anything of apparent value. The objective was something far more significant. He quietly opened a door adorned with a poster of Spider-Man, and entered the room. A little boy slumbered in his bed. The intruder removed a hypodermic needle from his bag, and injected the contents into his target. The boy never stirred as his sleep went from peaceful and natural to a forced, dead-still muteness.
The man hoisted the motionless body over his shoulder and glided out into the cool night. Before he could reach his aircraft, the boy began to squirm. That was not right. The tranquilizer should have lasted for hours, not mere minutes. The kidnapper hurried toward the waiting vehicle, his speed impeded by the struggling child on his back. The aircraft began lifting off. His co-pilot must have been spooked, and in a moment he could see why. A modern fighter jet had appeared, and was closing in fast. The captor knew he could not reach his retreating vehicle with the extra weight slowing him down, but he could not sacrifice the mission. Thinking quickly, he used the spent hypodermic needle to extract a blood sample, dropped the boy, and sprinted to the getaway craft. He leapt from the hill and barely grabbed onto the flying machine as it rose from the earth. A missile streaked across the sky from the jet, just as its target entered stealth mode. The rocket went wild and obliterated several houses in the neighborhood, including the home from whence the boy had been taken. The pilot of the jet knew he would be unable to follow the fleeing enemy, so he made a vertical descent to the ground. He exited the aircraft, and stared at the bewildered child for a long moment.
