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Suits were never Nick Wilder’s thing. He wore one at prom, both Junior and Senior year, he had wore one when his cousin had gotten married. Outside of those three events he had never worn a suit. For interviews he dressed up, but still more casual than a suit. He couldn’t get away with that during this party. Not only had Delphi given him rules, but the invitation had rules on it. A strict dress code. Men were allowed to wear suits /only/. Women had a larger list of styles of dresses that were allowed, but nonetheless it looked like a pain in the ass.

He hadn’t even needed to tell Delphi that he didn’t have a suit that he could wear to the party. In the box of the Kreu suit, and the mic-earpiece, she had also included a white suit. Somehow she had known his size, so it fit just right. Whoever this Delphi person was, she amazed him more and more every day. Since he had gotten her letter in the mail, about his threats to the scum of Aro, about his real name rather than his alias and his parents’ robbery he had been amazed with everything that she did. The Kreu suit that she had sent him had to be worth at least five grand, not to mention that the ear piece was suit new technology that he didn’t /want/ to know the price of it. She had mentioned getting him a computer soon, and one that could fit in his apartment was up in the ten to twelve thousand total. He didn’t want to know where she got the money. He just hoped that her money wasn’t corrupt like they were trying to prove Xavier’s was.

She was amazing, whoever she was. He hoped that they would meet face to face soon, she had such a beautiful voice. If that was her real voice, though he didn’t know how she would make it sound any different. The technology for /that/, he didn’t even believe was invented yet. If this was going to be a partnership, he figured that he should know as much about her as she did him. It was only fair, after all.

He had dressed in the monkey suit, combed his hair, and drove to Xavier’s hotel. The traffic was wrapped around the corner, and even from that spot he could see the lights that were illuminating the hotel, as well as most of the street. He parked his car, checked his reflection, ran his fingers through his hair (which therefore caused him to ruin his effort of brushing it), and then put the earpiece in his ear.

It wasn’t until he got out and began to walk in the direction of the hotel that he heard anything from Delphi. “Have you arrived at the rendezvous point yet?” He tilted his head as he rounded the corner, and spotted more than a dozen people heading into the hotel.

“I’m outside of the rendezvous point, Delphi. There’s a /lot/ of people out here. How are we going to find Xavier in this?”

Tonight was her and Nick’s first mission together, well the first /official/ mission since their partnership had begun. Since she had shipped him the suit, the mic, and any other equipment she figured he would need. He was supposed to be arriving at Zachariah’s party any moment, and she had just finished getting caked up by her Mother’s stylist. The dress she was forced to wear was large, puffy, and especially itchy. However when she looked in a full body mirror she looked surprisingly elegant. The emerald of her dress made her eyes stick out especially well. Part of her hair was in a bun, the other part was braided around the bun. It kept her hair out of her face, and therefore out of her way. She was grateful to the stylist, because it made it easy to put the microphone in place.

Xavier had given her Father, therefore her and her Mother, a hotel room to get ready in. When they were finished dressing they could head down to the party at any time. Down the hallway was the balcony, which overlooked the ballroom, which was also the best place to keep an eye on everything that was happening. She had planned this out when she had been told that she would be going to the party. Originally, she had been expecting to sit home and listen to Nick’s description of the events happening. Now, she could stay out of the attention of everyone and still see what was happening.

After her Mother had left the room with her Father, Diane put the finishing touches in. She clipped the earpiece/microphone to her ear, and was grateful that the technology had advanced so much that it was smaller than a penny. She had done a little editing to the product, and had disguised it as an earring. Surprisingly enough, it didn’t look all that different than the one in her left ear.

She looked at herself in the mirror and turned on the earpiece. She tapped it lightly, twisted it as well, before speaking. “Kreu this is Delphi speaking, have you arrived at the rendezvous point yet?”

Day One extra 3: More openings

Where has our city gone?

An article from the Aro Chronicles 

Written: October 22^nd, 2010

By: Abigail Franklin

“Aro is a city with towering buildings that shrine in both the daylight and the moonlight. The people are charming; everyone seems to have their things together, tidy and straight. There is no other place I’d rather live the last years of my life, honestly.” Those are the words of my grandmother, fifteen years ago, a month before she peacefully passed in her sleep. I was twelve at the time, and we lived in Garumont, ninety minutes to the south. I looked forward to the long car rides to my Grandmother’s, because we’d always leave early enough to be arriving to Aro when the sun was beginning to rise, and we’d leave as the moon was in the air.

My Nana was right. The buildings do shine magnificently. This city was something I idolized, adored, and I truly wanted nothing more than to live here, to die in a city where the buildings are the most beautiful things to be seen. The people were once charming, perfect people to go with the perfect city. Between the time I began at the University of Aro and the time I am writing this, a little less than a decade later something has changed.

The buildings still shine in the daytime; most of the people are still very fine. Within the last two years though, the crime rate has risen drastically. Murders, kidnappings, robberies of every sort are becoming something that happens weekly I have bit my tongue when it come to these matters. I thought that these things would never happen to me, and that they only happened in the ‘bad part of town’.

Last week my sister, Samantha Lynn Roberts, had her throat slit walking from my home to hers. She lives approximately five blocks away, and usually takes around fifteen minutes, tops. I swore I heard someone scream as I went upstairs to check on my infant son. I considered that it could have been on the television back in my bedroom, as he was already in bed. When I asked him what he was watching, it was indeed a brand new horror film. I let it go, thinking it was only my imagination, or that I heard it from the television. It’s the Halloween month, after all, I suppose.

However only a matter of hours later, when I was called by the police station and told that my sister’s body had been found did I realize that I could have very well heard her scream. She was only two blocks away from my house. I could have given her a ride home, I could have walked her home, and I can’t help but wonder if the killer would have not killed Samantha. If he would have let her live, or if I had been walking with her if I would have been murdered as well.

What is happening to our city? Since the time of my childhood, since the time of my son’s birth what has happened to our city? This city was not a city that I had to be worried that my sister would be murdered, or I would be murdered, walking home a little after ten o’clock. I don’t want to point the blame towards anyone; I want to believe that this city is simply in a bad point of its history, and that it will grow out of it. Like a child with their bad habits, we always wish that they will grow out of it.

I wish that I could say I have good hopes for this city. However I don’t. I see no light in this dark, dark tunnel. Criminals are showing up more and more with every passing moment, every passing second. Our city is wrought with criminals, with death, and with failure. I leave you with a question: where has our city gone, and where will go in the future? Because if it continues this way, there will be no hope, no glory, and Aro will no longer be known for its sparkling buildings but for the crime rate and the death that fills this city. Do we want that to be Aro’s future?

 

Chapter One

Friday the 12^th of August 2011

Arianna could hear her boss’s fingers tapping against his chair; he had just had a “business meeting” with some heavily shrouded people - five of them if she had counted correctly. She didn’t think much of it; honestly, he had the same people in there before. They always concealed themselves with some kind of robes. Never did she see their faces, but one time she could have sworn that she smelled a strong smoky campfire odor coming from Mr. Zachariah’s office.

The people in Mr. Zachariah’s office radiated a sense of power impossible to ignore. Anyone that did business with Mr. Zachariah had to have great power: he was possibly the most powerful man in the city of Aro, he didn’t deal with small business people, or the riffraff that wanted help—money, more often than not—from him. The people he dealt with on a monthly basis, like her own father, were close “business partners”.

These people had come every week since the beginning of the month. Normally when she asked who was a part of the business meetings, he would tell her everything. A process took up to an hour away from the day; Mr. Zachariah profiled every person: what business in Aro he or she controlled, and what he or she was accomplishing in the meeting that day with him. However, when she asked the first time these mysteriously covered people came in, he patted her head and smiled at her, “Don’t worry your pretty little head about those people.” She had beamed; a compliment such as ‘pretty’ from Mr. Zachariah was the highest of high compliments in her opinion. She went on, ignored it until they came in the next time, she’d shoot him the same curious look, and the process repeated.

Usually after meeting with those people, Mr. Zachariah was deep in thought, digging through notes that he made during the meeting, typing away at his keyboard and looking things up on the computer. Sometimes he made Arianna grab files from his file cabinet in the safe, but she never looked any further than the outside of their covers and names. She had no idea what he was doing really; she assumed he was doing research for a business opportunity.

Today, he had his chair turned to face the city skyline; he hadn’t called her in for anything. He seemed irritated, though she hadn’t heard yelling in the meeting. Actually, she didn’t hear much of anything inside of his office when the meeting had been going on. This was different than most of his meetings, when she could at least hear voices, or if she tried, make out at least a little bit, of what was being said. She shifted in her seat, fiddling with her papers as she continued to hear the nonstop tapping of Mr. Zachariah’s hand on his chair. Why did the thought of these meetings of his unnerve her so much?

She grabbed her notepad and pen and walked into the doorway of his office, “Sir? Do you need me for anything?” He didn’t speak, but turned his chair around and faced her. Therefore, she had thought correctly, his very dark brown eyes narrowed at her. He only gave her that look when he was fed up with her, even if it was due to something else entirely. She sharply inhaled, preparing herself to be lectured about interrupting his thinking time.

“Ari,” he began, with a surprisingly pleasant tone rather than one from someone that was angry. Whether the tone was phony or not, she didn’t know. “Be a dear and fetch some papers for me from the safe. They’re in the folder Project Nocens.” She nodded quickly as he ran a hand through his hair, and when she started out the door she heard him softly sigh.

She hurried toward the safe, more because of nerves and not wanting to irritate Mr. Zachariah any more than he already was. Once she got to the safe, she entered the pass-code and stepped into the large, dimly lit room. She went through the alphabet in her head as she scanned each file cabinet for the right group of letters. Finally, when she reached “Po-Pro” drawer she opened it. There was half a dozen different “projects” in the drawer, none of which intrigued her except the one she was looking for.

She grabbed it with her hand and looked curiously at the cover. Project Nocens.  Could this have anything to do with the people that have been coming in Mr. Zachariah’s office every week? If she just peeked… No, she wouldn’t dare pry into Mr. Zachariah’s things. That was wrong, unprofessional. She was his assistant now, no longer the nosey teenager that was bored and sometimes shifted through his things just to see what she could find.

Nevertheless, she slowly pried open the cover of the folder… she looked around the room to see if there was a camera watching her. Staring at the folder, she realized she was shaking, nervous about what Mr. Zachariah’s reaction would be if he saw her going through his things … oh but the thrill of finding out what he wasn’t telling her! He didn’t keep secrets from her; he always told her everything … except about those five people.

She heard a loud noise from outside the safe and she dropped the folder instantly. The papers went everywhere, pictures were scattered, and she was cursing loudly as she bent to pick them up. The first picture she picked up was of a strange looking…woman? She couldn’t really tell in the dim light. The person looked like they were on fire, completely nude. She flipped the picture over to see Mr. Zachariah’s handwriting, “Iris Wenn”.

Had Iris Wenn been in Mr. Zachariah’s office? Was that why she had smelled smoke? Arianna gathered everything up as neatly as she could, placed it back inside the folder, stood and walked out of the safe. It closed as she walked toward Mr. Zachariah’s office.

He sat smirking at her and it terrified Arianna. Arm stretched out over his desk, she handed him the folder and he kept that eerie smirk on his face. It was as though he’d been watching her the entire time through the security cameras.

“Arianna, sit down. I would like to tell you about Project Nocens and how you can help me with it…”

                Arianna sat, and she looked at the insides of the folder she had just given Xavier. He placed before her five pictures, just like the one she had looked at in the safe. Attached and behind the pictures, there the papers with information on every one of the people in the pictures were.

                “Project Nocens is just a piece of the future Arianna, and I want you to be a part of that.” He paused, and leaned over the desk and took her hands in his, “With me.” Her heart fluttered at the gesture, and she almost pulled back from him in reflex. However, she let him hold her hands, nervous and carefully listening to everything he said.

                “These people before you are the Nocens. They, along with you and I, are going to be the future. We are going to make Aro greater than it’s ever been, Ari. We’re going to make this city ours.” He let go of her hand and pointed at the first picture. It was a man that was well dressed, but had a short body. He couldn’t be taller than four feet, his fingers mangled into wrinkled, crooked, pointy stubs. He had three fingers instead of the normal five, and his face was not pleasant to look at. He had beady black eyes; they stared into your soul and stayed there until your soul was long gone from your body. Arianna had to force her eyes from the picture and looked to Mr. Zachariah.

                “This is James Cavalier. Call him that and he will surely haunt you, he calls himself Mulog. It’s an awful name, but I do believe it fits for someone like him. He is a genius, Arianna. You won’t understand this until you meet him, but his mind is above anything that the world has known.”

                His finger now moved to a different picture, a woman. Not the Iris Wenn she had picked out earlier, but instead a woman dressed entirely in black, a black jacket over a black blouse and black dress pants. She had long, curly hair that went down to her armpits. She had this smile on her lips that made her look seductive, despite the fact that her clothes weren’t revealing at all. She was attractive and appealing to the eye. That was obvious enough.

                “That is Emma Cleaver, code name Alethea. She is a talent thief and hacker; she can hack into almost anything in a record time. Not to mention delete any records of her being in the system, she’s a gift to have on the team. She is also extremely agile from what she’s told me, and I believe every word of it. ”

He paused, tapped the picture and smiled. “She’s a clever little thing, always willing to try something new if it involves her stealing. She is a bit of a kleptomaniac; I can hardly trust her to keep her hands off something incredibly valuable. She has an eye for things that are expensive and likes to take them for her own. I have a feeling you’ll like her, or at least she’ll like you.” At least someone of the group would like her, outside of Xavier that is.

He moved his finger, this time on a masked man. The man had a wicked smile painted unto his lips, and eyes that told more stories than Arianna ever wished to know. He frightened her; he had the look of Arianna’s prototype lunatic. Of course Xavier’s words didn’t really relax her any. “This is Heath Reynolds, calls himself Rowt, a serial killer. He’s the one behind the murders of all those young women in the last few months. He’s mute, or chooses not to speak I’m not entirely sure, generally the only noise he makes is a high-pitched giggle. Brilliant mind, that one has. He’s a bit unpredictable, though he’s a strong link in the team.” Xavier nodded, smiling at Arianna. She wasn’t sure, if he couldn’t see her fear, or if he was choosing to ignore it.

He moved his hand to another picture, the picture she peeked at in the file. Iris Wenn. She moved on the edge of her seat, looking at the picture, eager to see what Xavier was going to say about her. “Iris Wenn, code name ‘Vereni’. She was one a beautiful woman, before something misfortunate happened. She has yet to tell me, and the information is very top secret. However, whatever happened caused her body to manifest into this. She has flames all throughout her body, and can set fire to anything she wants to. However she can also extinguish parts of her body from the flame, it’s a very interesting gift. She’s a very interesting member of the team.”

Xavier moved his finger to the last picture. It was not of a man, or something that even seemed to have once been human. The thing was large, and monstrous. He was at least eight feet in height, his limbs were thick and there were dark green vines embedded inside of his, also green, skin. Though the creature was looking towards the camera, his eyes were hard to see. There was something that resembled a mouth, and two white fangs hung over his lip.

“Asher Matthews. He was once a wrestler, though he got involved with the wrong people and he was thrown into a highly toxic swamp. This is what is left of him. We call him Koboid, and he goes along with it. He hardly remembers his old life… Nevertheless, he is the muscles and the strength of the group. He has horrible mood swings; he goes from being perfectly content to throwing things across the room. This team is called the Nocens. ”

“And that, Ari is what Project Nocens is,” Xavier Zachariah leaned across his desk, peering at the petite, redheaded woman sitting in the chair across from him. Her trembling hand was hovering above the pictures on the desk in front of her. Her head tilted and her mouth slightly open…she was shaking all over.  Terrified and nervous —feeling as if she should be punished for being told this information. Perhaps, she was wondering how the people in the pictures came to be the way they were; her mind still reeling from everything he just told her.

“So… what you’re telling me is…” After she had begun to speak, she hesitated, looking down at her feet and hiding her eyes from him. Her hands continued to tremble. He continued to lean forward, pushing the pictures even closer to the end of the desk, and her. She looked up, gray eyes meeting his dark brown, for a moment he saw a flicker of confidence in her. A sign of strength that he never thought possible. “Why tell me this? I’m just your assistant.”

He blinked, thought about it for a moment, and then spoke. “Because you, Arianna, are beautiful,” she seemed to sit straight up in her chair, hair no longer covering her eyes. He continued. “As well as intelligent, and you’re the only person I can trust.” She shifted slightly in her seat; her cheeks turned a light pink color. Flattering her was too easy. The fact that she was falling for this was just naïve and sad.

The truth was Xavier Zachariah did need her.  Arianna’s Father had nearly as much power as he did. Arianna was great arm candy for those parties that he attended for the sake of keeping up with public appearances. She was beautiful and her social status was sound. Even if she tried to separate herself from ‘Daddy’ by working for him, she was still Arianna Neville. That awarded her the social status that made her the ideal final piece to this puzzle of his.

The tiny girl shifted in her seat again, leaning forward and letting her fingers actually touch the pictures this time. “When can I meet them?” Her voice changed, it went from uncertain to eager and that confidence was back in her eyes. They moved from each of the five pictures and then to him, there was a smile on her lips. She was almost too eager for this.

He tapped his fingers on his desk, thinking of when he could pull something together so that all seven of them could meet. It couldn’t be in public, nor could it be at one of his parties. Too many people expected to be invited to his parties, even if he called it a party for very, very close friends. He didn’t call anyone that, but people still assumed if they did business with him it was an automatic invite to his parties. All of them. No matter if, it was the second largest company in the city, or if it was the grocery store down the street, they wanted to be invited. He supposed they felt special that way.

“Tonight, I’ll arrange a limo for your pick-up after five-thirty. Don’t talk to anyone about where you’re going, all right? Dress nicely but don’t… over do it.” He knew how she could be told there was a party and she’d go out and buy some five hundred dollar dress for one night that half a dozen people would see her in. He had known her since she was a spoiled rotten child, and she had grown into an equally spoiled young adult. “And by don’t overdo it, Arianna, I mean don’t go out and buy a brand new dress between now and five.” Her beaming face shifted to one that was pouting, her bottom lip trembled and her gray eyes seemed to get obnoxiously big and bright.

Then she spoke, it was that peppy voice that he hated. “Yes sir!” She paused, looked down at the pictures again that were sitting on his desk, and then looked back up at him. Her voice faltered and she lost the spark of confidence - as well as that annoying peppy tone. “Can I go now Mr. Zachariah?” He nodded, and she got up from her seat and headed back to her desk.

He then added, not wanting any more disturbances until he left, “For the day, Arianna.” She turned back towards him and smiled. He knew she was gone when he heard the sound of her heels stop at the elevator.

Day One extra 2: More openings

Recorded November 21st, 2023
[Dad]
Son, I want to tell you a story. It’s a good story, a great story even. It’s a story of the last ten years that I truly felt alive. You’re nearly four years old now, and it’s been nearly that long since I’ve felt passion about anything I do. One day I hope you listen to this, and remember how much your mother and I cared about you. I hope one day you listen to this and are proud of what I did.

The last four years have been hard on me, being there for you without your Mother around. But I’ve been doing research, digging things up, reading things that your Mother left to me. All of that I did for you, so you’ll know the full story. I’ve spoken to people that I never wished to see again, and some of those conversations I’ll let you hear or tell you about. They let me into details that I didn’t know before, and made me realize that this story is much bigger than I. It started long before I was ever involved.

It started thirty years ago, four years after I was born. It was the day that Zachariah Corporation was open. No one took the company seriously; it was located in a three story building that used to be a hotel. Even then, half the building was vacant and unused. There simply weren’t enough people willing to work there.

I don’t know what happened, somehow between that date and your Mother’s first birthday (which was that following year) business erupted. And Xavier Zachariah was a millionaire at twenty-three years old. To say that it ever began with me would be a joke, my part of the story comes much later, and this is where it began.

The money that Xavier Zachariah was not all clean money, but what businessman makes just legal money? He did many things for the city of Aro in the years that followed; he donated money to help fund restoration of historical buildings. He donated to the Police Force, the school system, the local college. He built neighborhoods that weren’t in bad areas; he brought people to Aro on tourism. His money funded the billboards that were built hundreds of miles away advertising Aro.

Aro went from being a forgotten city to being a city that had hopes for tomorrow. It was all thanks to Xavier and Zachariah Corporation.

But things went wrong somewhere; I’m not sure what happened. Maybe his head got big, or his pocket was padded enough that he didn’t care any longer, or maybe he just wanted to jump head first into the dark side. The point is that he got corrupt, and quickly. Funnily enough, not very many people noticed it.

The police suspected it after a crime had links to his name and company. It was a few years prior to the Tower being built, when Zachariah Corporation was not Zachariah Tower. The crime was petty, a few hundred dollars got stolen but the money happened to be transferred under Xavier’s name. He didn’t do it, but the simple thought that he could have stolen money was enough to have the highest security in the city. Cameras, guards, an occasional helicopter going over, you name it and they had it.

However Xavier had his way around those things. He had manual access to the cameras, and even if he hadn’t he could have spoken to the Tech department. When discussing daily things with guards, he slipped them money. Fifties, hundreds, and when he was feeling cheap it was a twenty. How did he get around the helicopter? He didn’t, really, but he made it known that if he ever wanted to hide something from the police he wasn’t going to do it in his own building.

He had an architect hired to build Zachariah Tower. Seventy stories tall, forty more than the building had the time, and the top floor? It was to be completely circular, and the walls were supposed to be made of glass.

Why?

‘I’m not hiding anything in my Tower, the citizens of Aro can be certain of that. If the police ever want to check out my office, all you have to do is look through the walls. I can’t hide anything, where would I hide it?’ He said that during a press release when the tower had just opened and another crime, similar to the first, had been linked to him.

Most people admired Xavier, but many didn’t. There were more than just a handful of people that believed Xavier was behind many of the crimes that were starting in Aro.

Four years prior to the Tower being finished, Aro’s shining reputation wasn’t so crystal clear. There were murders of young women on Aro University’s campus. A journalist that wrote an article criticizing Xavier, her sister was found dead a week after. After her next publishing? Her obituary was printed in the paper the next DAY. Robberies were happening: banks, gas stations, small coffee shops were all being held up and the police weren’t getting there fast enough. Then people started getting held at gun point.

This is where I come in. When you listen to this, I’m sure you’ll have wonderful thoughts for your Aunt and Grandparents. You should, they’re great people. What got me involved was the thought that I was never going to see them again.

It had been after work when I got the phone call, I had been ‘resting my eyes’ on the couch. When I picked up the phone I didn’t even have the chance to say, ‘Hello’ before someone spoke. “Is this Nicholas Wilder the third?”

“Yes.”

“This is Police Captain Richard Emerson, down at the Aro police station. I have your parents and little sister here. They’re being spoken to right now, but I have to tell you some bad news.”

“Yes?”

“They were robbed this evening, walking home from dinner. The man had a gun, and so far all we know is he got away with your parents things. No one was hurt, thankfully, but everyone’s suffering some shock from the situation.” The conversation was as simple as that, and by the time I hung up the phone my heart was pounding and my fists were clenched.

I felt responsible. I felt like I had to do something. I don’t think you’ll understand when you hear this, but living in Aro my whole life it was obvious the changes in the city. I had been born only a few years before Xavier made his first million. He built my middle school; he had put expansions on my high school. He had built the house that my parents and sister were living in. He had had a huge affect on everyone’s lives in Aro.

At one point in time you were able to sleep with your front door unlocked. There was no worry that a murderer was going to sneak into your home and put a bullet in your head. There was no fear that your daughter was going to be abducted and then her body was going to be found mutilated. That fear didn’t exist because of Xavier, but then it had because of Xavier.

I didn’t know this at the time. I knew that something was up, and that the crime rate was increasing so quickly that it was ridiculous. I wanted to help. Now that I look back at it, I needed to help.

So I did something stupid. I found some of my solid black clothing and packed it away in a trunk. I bought a ski mask, and put it in the same trunk. I was planning on being some sort of hero. I still don’t know if I succeeded.

But we’ll get back to that soon. Our story begins in August of 2011, and this isn’t just my story. This is your Mother’s story, Xavier’s story, and Aro’s story.

Recorded November 22, 2020 
[Dad]

Arianna Neville was Xavier’s assistant up at Zachariah Corporation. Many believed that she only held the position because of her Father, which isn’t a false statement at all. Xavier had many business partners, but nonetheless her Father was one of the most important. Hiring his nineteen year old daughter a year before the Tower was finished, was good PR, and it got him invited to some parties that her Father threw.

I actually had a conversation with Arianna a few months ago, so I’m just going to let you hear her account of things, rather than retell them myself.

[Arianna]
I was blinded by the power that Xavier had. To say I was infatuated is possibly the most understated thing of my whole life. I was in love with the thought of power, the same kind of power my Father had, but it had its own spin of things. I was oblivious to every corrupt thing that Xavier put in front of my face, but the thing I didn’t suspect the most was the Nocens.

The Nocens was a list of five names: Emma Cleaver, Iris Wenn, Asher Matthews, James Calavier, and Heath Reynolds. These were names I was familiar with, but I never actually met any of them. I never found it strange when the group of them were scheduled that Xavier would let me leave early. Sometimes he’d call and tell me just to stay home for the day, I wasn’t needed. In addition to that, he sometimes told me to go get a spa treatment with his credit card.

I didn’t complain, that was for sure. I let everything slide by right under my nose; I was just oblivious enough for Xavier to keep me around. If the cops after asked about anything, I didn’t know anything so he wasn’t worried. They never did, not for years to come, but by then it was too late.

I remember the day that Xavier told me the truth about the Nocens. It was the year opening of the Tower, and there was supposed to be a celebration between a small amount of people. Surprise, surprise the only invitees were the Nocens. The list was five names deep, I really wasn’t expecting for him to invite me along. It was practically protocol for me to come to large parties, but small ones like that? It was unheard of, unthinkable. But it happened.

 

Day One extra 1: More openings

Chapter One

From my mother’s earliest notes, Zachariah Corporation was always there. The building itself was bought out by Mr. Zachariah the year she was born. My personal research has brought some other historical dates and facts into mind. Zachariah Corporation was initially a hotel when it was bought, and it took most of a young Xavier Zachariah’s funds to revamp the entire building into something he could use. Two years and seven months later, on my mother’s third birthday, Mr. Zachariah at age twenty-six, made his first million dollars.

That moment forward was when all the trouble began. Xavier was soon Aro’s famous philanthropist; he put more money into the city in one year, than half the city made over a ten-year span. Twelve years after Zachariah Corporation took off, the tower blueprints were thought up, and in the fall of 2011 it celebrated its first year of being complete and open to the public.

Funny thing is, after all the work and money that Xavier put into the city, the tower was still the highest watched building in the city. Not only with the security that Xavier had hired, or the cameras that he had put in, but due to the sheer amount of large police force in his building. Ready to arrest Mr. Zachariah if he were ever to step out of line. Nonetheless, the efforts the police made were highly in vain.

With all the glory and happiness that followed the money that flowed from Zachariah Corporation accounts, the trail for corruption was close behind. Though few knew about the corrupt business that Mr. Zachariah took place in, or what he was funding in the business partnerships that he made that were so excellent on the surface. The person that arranged all these meetings, the person that was closest to Zachariah in both relations and proximity, was the same person that was naive and clueless about what exactly she was setting up, and what her boss was doing.

Arianna Neville was twenty when she shadowed Mr. Zachariah’s assistant of the time. Arianna took over the place of the assistant only for a few minutes during a cigarette break. When the assistant came back, she found herself replaced by a much younger girl who was ‘much more efficient on the job, and she doesn’t have to take breaks so much’.

When someone said the only reason that Ms. Neville got the job to begin with due to her father’s relationship and business deals with Xavier, they weren’t lying. Xavier didn’t trust her, or her Father, more than he could throw them. But the business deal was good for relations, and there had to be a reason as to why he confided so much information in her over the next few years.

So our story begins in August of 2011.

As per the reports that have been written since this day, Arianna Neville was sitting at her desk, likely typing out a letter to one of Mr. Zachariah’s many partners. There was supposed to be a year anniversary party of the Tower, for only Xavier’s closest friends. Oddly enough, out of the hundreds and hundreds of people that he could have invited, the list was only five names long.

Iris Wenn, Emma Cleaver, Heath Reynolds, Asher Matthews and James Calavier. These were names, while recognizable to Arianna, which did not have faces in their files nor in Arianna’s mind. There had been meetings between Xavier and those five people, but never had she been in the building when it happened. She later did research on the names and found out, whenever there was a meeting with those five people, she was either told to go home early, or told not to come in at all.

However the mysterious unfaced people were not a concern to Arianna when she had been typing out those letters. What was Mr. Zachariah’s business was his own business, and while she would have liked there to be no secrets between the two of them, it wasn’t likely. He was a much older man, who had a lot of things to hide from a naive girl that was two decades his junior. So she didn’t say anything, as Mister Zachariah would have expected her not to, and kept her mouth shut, going about her day as everything was normal.

When the letters were finished, Arianna pulled the last from the typewriter and piled the five pieces of paper on top of each other, bounced them on the table to make sure they were even, and stood from her chair. She walked from her desk and typewriter and to the open door where Xavier Zachariah’s office began. “Mister Zachariah, the invitations are finished, what would you like me to do with them? Are we hand delivering them or sending them through the mail?”

Xavier was sitting with his back towards her, looking through the solid glass wall down to the city. The view from the whole top floor was magnificent, but the position of his office was purposeful and gave him the best view. His schedule was empty for the day, so it was a matter of waiting out the hours and seeing if anything interesting happened in the Tower during that time. So Arianna did not even consider that she could have been disturbing him, even if it were simply her interrupting his peace. Nonetheless he turned around when he chose to speak to her.

“I’ll be hand delivering them, the party is tonight after all, and we have a lunch meeting to attend to. Did you write an invitation for yourself? I count only five in your hand, Arianna.” Her response was only to blink at him, her mouth gaped open with more than a small dose of shock.

Sure, it was fine for her to be invited to a party that over three hundred people received the same invitation. It was standard, if nothing more. However to be invited to a close, small gathering of only five people, was a great honor and something that Ms. Neville had never expected from her employer. “Me? You want me to go?”

“You are my assistant, Ari. Besides, this meeting is important to you too. Go fetch their files out of the safe and I’ll explain to you the importance of the meeting tonight.” Arianna obeyed faithfully, like a well-trained dog would when told to fetch, or to roll over.

While there is no concrete evidence of what Xavier told Arianna in that following hour, we know it to have peaked her interests, because she attended the gathering that evening. Arianna herself doesn’t remember exactly what Xavier said to her, but she told me during a short interview: ‘If I had known that night what I was getting myself into, I would have never gone to that meeting. I did, though, and perhaps that’s the greatest mistake of my life.’

We do know, while it’s not what Xavier told Arianna, what he showed her. It was the five files of the invitees to his party. They were stashed away in a cabinet labeled: Project Nocens and the folder indicated that they themselves were ‘the Nocens’. I can make my own guess as to what Project Nocens was, nearly fifty years later, but at the time there were few that knew. Arianna was one of them that just happened to be told at the beginning of the end.

Inside the file were detailed profiles on all of the Nocens, anything from their birthplace to how they became who they became.

Day One: The Opening

Goal: To write something that I’m happy with as the opening scene for my novel series.

Word count goal: 500-1500+ words

Actual word count: 437 (close enough)

Possible ideas:

1. Christopher opening the novel

2. Nick starts his journal/video reading

3. Or a young Christopher being told about the city.

The one I like the most? Idea three The one that actually works: Idea three, apparently.

Actual writing:

A young boy sat upright in his bed. His navy blue pajamas were crooked on his tiny body, and a few buttons were mismatched on his shirt. However there was an eager look to his eyes as he stared at his bedroom doorway. He was waiting for his Father, tonight was finally story night.

 All of his ten years his Father promised that he would one day tell him a story like nothing he had ever heard. He had watched his Father fill journal after journal of writing, and sometimes he had friends over to discuss the story (they had their own journals). This week he had finished the story, and tonight was going to be the night that they began it.

 There was excitement throughout his whole body. He had never looked forward to going to bed before. Especially not a full hour before he normally went. The young boy bounced up and down slightly on the bed, barely moving his body at all. A sigh of relief, excitement and joy was exhaled when his Father walked in carrying a black leather-bound journal. He only said three words that nearly made the little boy’s heart skip a beat, “You ready Christopher?”

 His father was tall with messy light brown hair, making him look younger than he was. Though the dark circles under his eyes, and wrinkles when he grinned were proof that he wasn’t so young anymore. He and Christopher only shared the same dazzling green eyes, the rest of the little boy’s features he had gotten from his Mother, whom he could no longer remember. “Yeah Dad, I’m super ready!” Christopher tucked his legs underneath the blanket and looked at his Father eagerly. The older man ruffled his son’s hair, pulled the rolling chair from the nearby computer desk, sat in it next to the bed and began to read.

 “Zachariah Tower was once the busiest and tallest building in Aro. Now to the average person thinks of the Tower as nothing more than abandoned skyscraper, not a piece of Aro’s history. Few know the story of the Tower and its closing. Most don’t believe anything bad happened in the years up to the closing, but those that lived here remember. We may not want to remember, but we do…

 “It was nineteen years ago that it started. It was on the very top floor of Zachariah Tower, where the walls are made of glass. Arianna Neville was the secretary to the owner of the tower himself. She was young, she was naïve, and that afternoon of August 2011 her life was going to change…”

 

Nick on himself

“We know you’re the main character in the novel series, what’s that like and why do you think Alli chose you over any of the others?”

Nick responded:

“I’m the main character? Well, that’s news to me. No, I’m just kidding, aha.” He laughs, smiles and then continues. “It’s stressful. I mean I know Jude and Emma get their own books and such, and Nora gets herself, but to have the main story surround me? It’s stressful. I mean, I know everything that happens in the story some of it just sucks.”

“I’m trying to be positive by saying that nicely, but the things I had to go through. Jeez. Saving the city isn’t as easy as they make it seem in the movies and comic books, and to think it… crap. I can’t say that, I’m under contract. I can’t give away the story. Uh. Let’s just say that everything doesn’t turn out well for us.”

“I don’t know why Alli picked me, actually. Originally it was going to be the story after me, with Christopher (my apparent son) as the main character. I guess that was a flop. Maybe it’s because of my dashing good looking and personality? I… uh… I’m joking, if you can’t tell from the text you’re reading this through.” He pauses, sheepishly looks down at the ground and then looks back up.

“To be serious, I think it’s because the hero I become, or try to become, is a symbol. I don’t have the money to have the gadgets and the cool equipment at first, and I don’t really have a sob story behind my past. I have a reason I wanted to do this thing, it’s because of my sister, and my parents, and my friends. Later on it’s about Diane too, Evan as well (I guess), and Nora.”

“I didn’t have to have my parents killed in front of me to want to become this, I didn’t magically gain powers that made me want to do this. I did this to protect my family from what Xavier wanted to do. In a way I succeeded, and in a way I didn’t.”

“That and I have to go through hell and back to get where I end. I can’t tell you how it ends; you’ll have to read that for yourself.”