Chapter 3: By~ Christopher Stephens

CHAPTER 3

~ A NEW PLANET ~

10 hours later........

The spaceship was on fire as it came into Earth atmosphere, and it was shaking and spinning out of control. It crash landed around 5 miles out in the Tasmanian Sea and was washed ashore by the tide. It sat there for about a day when a elderly couple was walking down the beach and saw it. They were very curious so they poked around it until one of them accidentally press the key on the side and then they heard what sounded like a pressured airlock had been released, then a door on the side opened and out popped a babies head. 15's body had changed in adjustment to the atmosphere of Earth, and he know look just like a human. This couple took him home and named him Damon and gave him their last name, Fletcher. They raised him as their own until he 10 year old when his village was raided by slave traders. He was dragged out of his home and as he struggled to get free he saw his parent get pushed to the ground with guns raised to their heads and then they went off. Damon looked away but not quickly enough, that image would be forever implanted in his mind.

They took him to commercial van, park off on the side of the main road, and threw him inside with the others who had been taken and the door was closed behind them and a moment later they felt the movement of the car as it drove away. There was a tiny crack in the side of the van and Damon stared out of it at his only know home. The farther they drove away, the smaller his village got until it was finally of out of sight. Damon silently cried for hours when the van jolted to an abrupt stop. They were at an airport it was night time and there were three planes waiting to take them to three different place to be sold as slaves. Men with guns were guarding the planes, and when the leader of the raiding party who had taken Damon came up to the guards he said, “League: Ace of Spades, Operation 357, code word Alpha1.” Damon would never forget these word for they would come back to haunt him in his not so distant future. The slaves were split into 3 group, one for each plane. One plane was headed for North Korea, and the other two for Germany, and South Africa, Damon was put in the group going to Germany. It took about 11 hours to there and they land on a private air strip so that they could smuggle the slaves unnoticed. Then they lock them in a storage shack on the eastern side of the property until night fall when the bidder arrived to buy the slaves. They were auctioned off like animals, Damon along with a girl named Sophia and several others were sold to the man who was like the King Pin of Berlin. If a crime happen there it was usually somehow connected to him; his name was Derk Kessler. The slaves were chained together in pairs, Damon was chained with the girl, Sophia. They were pushed along to a horse trailer and forced inside. It was very crowded in the trailer so much though that they were shoulder to shoulder. It was a short drive into the outskirts of Berlin; there they were all unloaded and lead into a shed. Then a man with a scar across left eye walk up and opened a trap door in the floor. 

Beneath it was a stair case leading to an underground room, it was a very large room with many tunnels lead to different sections, and gruff looking men posted at the entrance of each tunnel. It was obvious what they were doing; they were mining for valuable metals and other materials. As they were lead through the main room, Damon looked down several of the tunnel where there were others working, mostly children and young women. They all looked poorly fed and lacking enough sleep to work efficiently.

There group was again separated and lead down different tunnels and given jobs to do. Damon and Sophia were given shovels and told to start digging in a corner of the small room. They began and a door was closed behind then this was to be the majority of their lives for the next 2 years. Sometimes they were sent to get water of a stream above ground or brought out to work in other sections with the others slaves, and on several occasions a slave would collapse from pure exhaustion, then one of the men overseeing them would begin to whip the slave, but Damon always seem to get in the way and stand over the slave until the man would stop. But Damon never seemed to get very hurt and when he did he healed quickly.

Then one day this happened again and the guard just went all out on him, hitting him with sharp sticks. Then more guards joined in, some had knives and the slashed him and driving them deep into his body. Some of the guard standing by and watching went to call for the man in charge, Derk Kessler himself. When he got there he made the guards stop and then he had his men drag Damon to his car and then throw him in the trunk. Damon laid there for about and an hour as they drove the car to it intended destination. Suddenly Damon felt the car stop and then the trunk open and he was taken to a small room in a rundown building. He was strapped to a chair and a bright light was set in front of him. Derk sat down in a chair directly in front of him, and he had a strange looking object in his hand. “What's your name son?” Derk asked him.

“Damon,” he whispered between gasps for air.

“Well, Damon you know what this is?” he said with a sly grin on his face.

Damon swallowed and said, “No.”

“This, Damon, is a miniature laser gun, and you know what I'm going to use it for today?” He paused for a moment and then he said, “This is how I'm going to burn your eyes out if you don't stop get in the way when my men punish a worthless slave. So what will it be, will you stop trying to be a hero and mind your own business.”

This whole time Damon had had his head lowered, but at this time he raise his head with a determined look on his face, “Never! You can kill me if you wish, but if I must live the rest of my life standing by watching my fellow slaves be whipped and beaten I would rather die. So do what you will!”

“Then so be it,” and with that Derk burned through the each of the pupils in his eyes. Damon passed out for the excruciating pain. Derk had his men take Damon and dump him in a rundown part of the city. When he finally awoke the sun was setting but everything was dark to him, but some how he knew, it was as though he sensed it. It was good for him that it was almost night for the moon would be out, and something Damon had learned about himself from all the times he had gotten beaten up by the guard was that when he was exposed to the moon light he healed quicker then if not. But that night it was overcast and the moons rays were covered it was the same the next night, and all throughout the next 2 days his body slowly healed but they left long jagged scars. Finally on the night of the second day the moon just barely came out from behind the clouds and throughout the rest of the night his body healed complete except for his sight, and when he awoke the next morning he felt his wound had been healed and he felt stronger then ever but his eye sight was gone. He stood himself up using and a large metal garbage can and then leaned up against it. Suddenly he slammed his fist on the side of the it and just broke out crying, “Why, why me! Why!” He kept hitting the garbage and he realized something he was seeing; it wasn't the same it was like looking through your eyelashes, but he could see and it was brought on by the sound resounding from him hitting the garbage can with his fists. He stumbled out of the ally, and he kept hearing loud noises all around him and with every sound he heard it some kind of sight that could be best described as radar vision. At first he kept bumping into things, but then he began to learn to focus his hearing on the sounds closest to him to make his sight more clear. He could hear rain drops hitting the ground, a bee buzzing from several meters away, and even the sound of molecules bouncing off each other in the air.

He slowly made his way to the train station and sneaked into one of the boxcars on a train headed for London, England. When it got there he hopped off, and went into the city. It was almost night which was the time he felt the most at home. He had slept the whole train ride but he was still tired but he wanted to get as far from Germany as he could and he couldn't think of a place farther then America. He was getting more used to the radar vision so he walked all through the night looking for an airport. Early the next morning he finally found one. He sat down and leaned up against a building facing the horizon. A minute later the sun began to rise, it was the first he had seen in over 2 years; it was magical! For a moment everything he had been through seemed almost worth it just to see this sunrise. Then everything began to shake and it all went black, he had fallen asleep and someone was shaking him. Startled Damon jumped to his feet and got ready to run. “No sonny, don't run, I'm not going to hurt you,” it was the man who had awakened him, the voice was so kind, he had only heard a voice like that once before from his father in Australia. Damon stopped, he looked up into the face of the man using his radar vision, he saw how kind it also was. The man looked so tall to Damon, the same way he remembered his father. Even though he didn't know this man he felt he could trust him somehow. The man said in his kind voice, “Need a lift somewhere, sonny.”

He hesitated for a moment but then Damon answered “Ya, I'm on my way to America.”

“Really? Well if you want I believe I could get ya there. What'd ya say?”

“OK... ya thanks.”

“Well lets go then.”

“The man stretched out his hand and said, “By the way my name's Randy Mitchell, what's yours.”

“Damon, Damon Fletcher.”

Damon and Randy walked to a private jet that turned out to be Randy's. On the flight across the Atlantic, Randy and Damon talked, but when Randy asked him about his family and how he came to be at the airport, he shutdown and wouldn't talk for flight.

They arrived later that day in New York with a limousine waiting at the airport to take them to Mr. Mitchell's home. When they got there his family was waiting at the door to welcome him back home. He introduced Damon to his family, and they brought him into their home and treated him as one of them. He was given a room of his choice in their large home, and he chose one of the closest to the roof because he wanted to be able to see the moon at night.

That night right before they went bed, Randy came into Damon's new room and sat on the bed, “You know ya can stay here as long as you wish. You could consider this your home if you have no where else to go. Do you have any family here in the States?”

“No not that I know of.” Damon said in a quiet tone.

Randy sat there on the bed for a moment in silence and then he said, “Well if you ever want to talk about anything just let me know. Goodnight Damon.”

As he walked out the door, Damon caught him by the arm and said, “Thank you for all this, it means a lot to me.”

Randy smiled and nodded his head, then left the room. This boy was a mystery to him, and he hoped one maybe one day Damon would open up to solve all this for him.