Alan Westfall stepped out into the cool night air, pulling his coat tighter around him and breathing into his cupped hands to stay warm.
His head was bent low as he walked down the city street, surrounded by people and still totally alone.
It wasn't that he minded much, he'd been more or less alone most of his life since his father's death just over ten years ago. His mother and sister here in America, his father's loyal assistants only around long enough to train him and keep child protective services away.
Once he had come to America in search of his sister and mother there had been the foster homes, but he hadn't stuck around in many of them for too long.
He had finally found a foster family he felt secure with when they died in a car accident. And then, after seeing his name in the paper, his sister, now 18 and living on her own, had found him.
To be honest, she probably wasn't the best mentor ever and let him do just about whatever he felt like, but that worked perfectly for someone in his... current proffesion.
He turned a corner, laughing silently at how strange a word that was to his family. Profession.
No one in his family could justifiably say they had an honest job.
First there was his father, the former head of one of the largest terrorist organizations in Europe. He had killed over 2,000 men when a stolen machine exploded durring testing and then himself and nearly his son when the second exploded in an underground laboratory beneath their home in Amsterdam.
Then there was Alan himself. Trained since birth to take up his father's proffesion and then drenched in the residue from the exploded "meta-machine" he had never had a very normal childhood. Luckily for him one thing had gone wrong for the organization. Alan had witnessed everything from the innocent perspective of a child. Although he had been taught in martial arts and weapon handling, he had never truly been told about the organization till several years after his father's death. By this time he had a view of right and wrong. The family business was wrong.
So in vengeance and a want to fix his father's sins and stop them from being repeated in future years, he had taken up the mantle of the Ghost. Though noble, fifteen-year-old crime-fighter was not exactly a "profession".
Then there was his mother. She had taken his siter and run away to America when he was too young to understand what was going on. She had run away again later, this time leaving Anastasia behind to be taken care of by foster homes and orphanages.
And there was Anastasia herself who, at 18, was now taking care of her little brother and trying to get through college.
She stood a better chance at "proffesion" than anyone else in the family.
He reached a street corner. Still two blocks away from his sister's apartment. It was only midnight. It was summer. The night was young, why go home yet?
He turned again and walked down the sidewalk, looking into open doors of clubs and all-night drugstoors.
Coffee, he needed coffee.
He found an open coffee shop about a block away and went in. After getting his order, he went to sit down at a table in the corner.
Around him were tables of people. The night-life. Guys in leather, girls with bright mohawks, a man at the bar in a suit, pecking at a laptop next to a woman talking on her cell.
Everyone was in couples or groups. Everyone except him.
There had never been many friends growing up. A few friends in school here and there, once in a while there would be a foster family that had a child, but for the most part he hadn't really had many good friends.
Of course it was hard to keep friends. Not only the constant moving around, but the chance of discovery. His identity, his powers. There had been once though, once that he had almost been discovered. Sometimes he wished he had been, it would have made thing so much easier for the rest of his live.
The bully had been bothering him for three weeks. Jack Connors was the perfect stereotype of a school bully. He was six feet tall, 278 pounds and in fourth grade. He had cornered Alan in a school hallway, slammed him up against a locker and pulled back his fist to punch him.
He never got to it.
It took concentration for Alan to work his powers correctly, so spur of the moment wasn't predictable. He had lowered the gravity at he intended.
He had made the fist less dense. As he inteneded.
He had also made Jack's entire body less dense and lowered the gravity through the entire hall.
Lockers, trash, bags and the bully (who's density was now about the same as a cloud's) went up.
The bully when halfway through the roof before Alan got himself under control.
There was a crash as lockers and trash crashed back to the ground, there was a cracking sound as Jack's enormous body hardened again halfway through the roof.
Jack meanwhile was confused. He had no idea what was going on. One second he was pounding a kid, the next he was flailing between the hall bellow and a bathroom full of shrieking girls, some of whom were kicking him in the head to try and make him go through to the hall bellow.
Alan could only smile.
The school, luckily, had blamed it on poor flooring in the girl's bathroom. Jack knew that if he told anyone, they would say he was insane.
But Alan couldn't tell anyone either. No one knew, there was still danger of discovery, he was still alone.
Alan finished his coffee and left the cafe`, ignoring one of the mohawked girls who was now flirting with him shamelessly.
He walked back towards the apartment. What was the point of staying out when nothing was going on? He was just making himself feel lonely.
He was here now, with his sister, old enough to keep secrets. He could make friends this year, it wouldn't be hard...
He was only a few streets away now, he could see the lights of the apartment complex over a steeple.
It was late December, Alan was six and the dirty snow caked around his feet and ankles in some drifts. Green grass could still be seen in patches, poking through the white carpet of snow. And there was the black splotch of dirt where the mahogany coffin that held the remains of his father was lowered into the ground.
Dent Westfall had not lived a good life as the preacher said. He had, in the sense that he was rich and... succesfull... But his life had not been good.
Of course Alan didn't really know this yet. He was only starting to understand what his father had been. He was only six.
People in black suits were around him, some women crying into satin handkerchiefs, but much of it had been planned. Dent Westfall had very few people that genuinly mourned his death.
The thick hand of Carson Selman, a man that could have passed for a profesional weight-lifter or bodyguard (and he was both), rested on Alan's shoulder.
Snow fell on his shaved head and ran off in rivulets of icey water. His shoulders were almost as broad as Alan was tall.
He wore a black suit and blue tie, no creases, everything tightened and buckles and pressed into perfect place and covered with a loosely open black overcoat.
In his pockets were a wallet, black sunglasses to shield the reflecting sun from the snow, a handkerchief, keys and a cleanly polished, fully loaded sig sauer incase things got interesting,
Alan, almost three feet shorter than the behemoth bodyguard behind him, wore a black suit that would have cost more than most people's cars at a normal funeral. His watch was, unknown to him, designed specially with a tracking unit and a tiny stun bomb that could be set off by a severe increase in his pulse to shock would-be attackers.
He looked up, his normally messy, matted brown hair combed back instead of in his eyes and stared at the steeple of the church building before them where the black limos of the funeral-goers were lined up, many also guarded my bodyguards or being watched secretly by snipers hidden in the bushes that had been hired to take out anyone that didn't belong.
The steeple was the last thing in the world that seemed normal right now.
Alan was now inside and up the two flights of stairs.
He pulled a ring of keys from his pocket and unlocked the apartment door, then stepped in silently and closed it behind him, relocking it and pulling the latch that his sister (now asleep in her room) always left open for him.
He took off his old, beaten brown leather jacket and hung it on a hook, then tossed his shoes aside into the closet and pushed his bangs out of his eyes.
He walked to the couch and fell onto it tiredly. It was nearly one now and he'd been out on his "short walk" sense 11.
He snuggled down in the cushion, even though his bedroom was just a few feet away, and fell asleep, still in his t-shirt and brown jeans.
The night was cold, as it usually was in Amsterdam. Alan was wearing baggy black cargo pants and a black tanktop along with a silver-plated Rolex and a rolled up black ski-mask. He was in superb shape for 11, which was good sense he was carrying half of his belongings in a heavily loaded pack strapped to his back.
It would have been odd, had anyone been watching, to see this child decked out in a spy outfit, carrying a huge backpack and climbing out of a five story window to slide down a roof and stop, hanging by one hand over a four story drop.
But no one was watching. That was the point.
He swung slowly then, gaining momentum, let go and hurdled toward the ground, landing hard in a snow drift.
He pulled himself out, shivering against the cold, picked up his pack again and then raced away.
It was too late to turn back now. That wasn't true, but he tried to convince himself that it was. Make it seem like a game or a movie so that he would be stupid enough to take the insanely dangerous risks he would have to take to sneak out of the country... Off the continent for that matter.
He had to get to America and find his mother and older sister. He had to get away from his father's past, he had to create a new future for himself.
He raced past the buildings, blending into the darkness like a ghost.