Chapter 0: Prologue

My name is Cale Hale and I never felt lucky in my whole life. I was born in Dresden, a city in Germany located at the south of the capital Berlin. My father, Finn Hale was an old man in his late fifties who was only interested in alcohol and whores, and that is how he met my mother, Lena Wagner, a hooker from Dresden who was addicted to spend money in drugs and expensive clothes. The result of those two was me, your average waste of society. I didn’t look alike my father probably because he really wasn’t, I was a tall black-haired guy and really skinny because of my bad alimentation.

 I grow up in my father apartment alone with my father, and yes, he wasn’t the best parent of the world. He was really addicted to alcohol, but he didn’t want to work or make any money, so he spent the money that the country gave him to raise me in his drinks. As you can expect he did hit me when he was drunk but also when he wasn’t, saying that it was my fault that he didn’t have money for more, because he spends too much on my food. Reality was that my neighbor took pity of me and usually take care of letting me eat with her and even giving her son’s old clothes.

That was my life until I was 12, when my father suddenly stopped all the abuse that I was used to. In exchange I started working at his friend restaurant at a very low wage after school. My father kept most of my salary and I had to work for seven days a week. I worked for 3 years with that conditions until I decided to run from home at the age of 15. I got a raise from the restaurant owner and with my still low wage I rented a small apartment hoping that I will never see my parents again.

 However, my wish didn’t come true and 3 years later 3 gang members came knocking into my door. Apparently, my mother took a big loan from them and I was the one who was supposed to pay in case my mother couldn’t. They told me that either I paid them 50.000 euros, or I was going to Brazil and sell one or two of my organs. When I told was not paying, they ganged up on me and threatened my boss to fire me, and when I went to police where I was told that they will look into it, I was ganged up again and got my landlord threaten and kicked out of my apartment. That’s when I decided to take the plane to the US and run away before taking the next plane to Brazil hoping that they won’t reach me in America.

*****

Three months later Cain woke up in the house he shared with four other people in East Harlem, New York. He took his usual morning shower and went downstairs to the kitchen. The other four guys were not what you would call his friends, the main reason was that his English wasn’t good enough to speak with them comfortably, so he just greeted them as always, had his cheap cereals as breakfast and went his way work. Cain worked on a construction site in Brownsville, so he went to the subway station where he usually takes the subway to reach his workplace.

He was going down the subway stairs when someone started screaming like he was in a great pain and after that more people started expressing the same pain as if there was something really hurting them, Cain wondered was going on until he started to feel the same way. It was an immense headache, his sight started to blur, and the pain continued until he finally passed out like all the people around.

When he woke up the first thing that appeared in front of him was a strange message.

“What the fuck is going on.”

Cain was shocked, the last thing he wanted was to have some kind of mental illness, and this did look like he was on hard drugs. When he got up from the floor, he saw that all the people there was either unconscious on the ground or panicking and wondering what is that text box that they are seeing. After realizing that he wasn’t the only one with that problem he decided to go home before things get worse. When he arrived home and checked that his housemates also were seeing this text box, he went to his room to check the internet and try to know what was going on.