Chapter Two (Part Four)

"How is that fair?" said Kaiden, whose voice had unsuspectingly gained heat. "I didn't ask for any of this!"

"You're right. It's not fair, but it's life. And you need to make a decision."

"What decision? What choice do I even have?"

"You have three choices. You can stay here, and take your chances in this den of wolves, or you can leave town, or even the country. I'll help you if that's what you want." Alexander took off his leather gloves and then pulled a thin stack of paper out from the envelope. "Or, you can sign your shares over to me. I'll provide you with a house, a car, and a monthly stipend of six thousand dollars. This way, you can live the peaceful life you want without having to worry about anybody in the family coming after you, since your signature will be useless to them."

"You'd do that for me?" Kaiden almost cried, but caught himself. "Yes, the last option. Please, that would be perfect."

"You'd have to stay in Cochrane though," Alexander went on. "This way I can check up on you whenever I'm in town."

Kaiden set about signing all of the documents in every spot that his great uncle indicated. Once he was finished, it felt as if a massive burden had been lifted from his shoulders. After all he'd been through, freedom meant worlds more than money.

"I'm meeting the Levesque's at an event after this. Would you like to come?"

"You wouldn't mind?"

"Of course not. Mr. Levesque was quite happy to meet you. It seems that there're plenty of conversations to be had between you two."

"Okay, I'll come."

They made idle chatter for the next twenty minutes or so, at which point Kaiden noticed that there were no lights on the street that the driver had just turned down. Why were they going down a county road?

About ten minutes later, they branched off onto a dirt road that discreetly led away from the main line.

"Take care not to get stuck in a snow drift," said Alexander, pressing the button that enabled him to communicate with the driver.

"Of course, sir."

Sure enough, it wasn't long before the car lost traction on a sheet of black ice and then seamlessly drifted into the side of the road. The driver's voice was transmitted a few moments later.

"My apologies sir! They haven't cleared this road yet, and since it's the shortest route, I thought that it would be best to give it a try."

"Just what we need," muttered Alexander as the driver exited the vehicle and went around to the trunk to retrieve a shovel. After the man struggled for a few minutes to clear the snow from around the tires, Alexander let out an impatient sigh, muttering to himself about how anybody with eyes would have known not to drive down a road in such conditions. "Kaiden, I hate to ask this of you, but can you go out there and help Roger out? There should be another shovel in the back."

"Oh, uh, okay. I'll be right back."

A few minutes later and he was back out in the cold with a bag of cat litter in hand, pouring it in the spaces behind the tires that he and the driver had painstakingly dug out.

"That should about do it," said the driver, who stowed everything away in the trunk and then slammed it shut. "Thanks a lot, kid. I'm gonna go give it some gas, you go up front and push against the hood while I give 'er in reverse."

"Uh, okay..."

With a vehicle this big in snow so deep, what difference would his measly strength make? And what happened to the formality in the driver's voice? It seemed that only Alexander was worthy of being addressed with such respect.

Kaiden had taken his jacket off after his vigorous shovelling had started to make him sweat, and he'd put it inside of the car with his great uncle. The temperature had dropped by a dangerous amount since he'd first snuck out of Penelope's window, to the point that he didn't want to try pushing the car without first putting it on.

He tried the door handle and it didn't give, a disturbing cold taking hold of him that had nothing to do with the weather.

"Uncle Alexander?" He tapped on the window and then hugged his body as he waited for the door to unlock.

That was when the window rolled down by about six centimetres, revealing only the man's eyes. For the first time since Kaiden had met with his great uncle, it seemed as if he were finally looking at the man's true face. The heartless gaze that he beheld might have belonged to the incarnation of greed itself. "A word of advice for the future, dear nephew. Never be so quick to sign a document."

"Y—you, you're going to leave me here? I—I'll die!"

"You wouldn't be the first one."

The window closed along with a sadistic laugh and the limousine reversed with ease, as if the road weren't covered in snow. Naturally the tires of the vehicle that one of the richest people in Canada rode around in were the best available for winter environments.

Kaiden wanted to chase after the limo as it continued to reverse back in the direction they'd come from, but he simply fell to his knees and began to weep. He wouldn't be the first one? Did that mean that Alexander was responsible for the death of his parents? To think that he had been fooled into giving his father's fortune away to the man that had ended him. His great uncle had likely killed his mother for the exact same reason, and now it wouldn't be long before he was responsible for Kaiden's death as well.

The sky was clear of any clouds, cold and crisp like the snow that filled the icy fields that lined the road. Kaiden's tears froze on his face as he yelled out in anger and frustration, forcing himself to his feet in a fit of self-pity.

Hopeless though the situation might have been, the longer he remained in one spot, the more body heat he would lose and the less time he'd have to keep breathing.

Snow stung his ankles as it quickly filled his shoes, the bottom of his jeans completely frozen over, now rigid as if they had been glazed with industrial glue.

He barely covered a kilometre over the next twenty minutes, hampered as he was by the cold and the snow. His arms and thighs burned and itched, his face hot as if from fresh burns. Several times, his eyes were frozen shut and he was forced to warm them by tucking his head in his shirt and doing his best to thaw them out.

He had no phone, no money, and no friends. He didn't even have a coat. Nobody in the world would care if he simply picked out his deathbed and sat down in anticipation of his last moments.

What gave him the strength to keep pushing forward, to move his numb, senseless legs one after the other despite their sudden heaviness, was his hatred for Alexander Collins. That greedy piece of garbage was the reason why Kaiden was in the process of freezing to death in the middle of the night mere minutes before his birthday, with nothing but the moonlight to guide him down the long and lonesome road. The head of the Collins family had killed both of Kaiden's parents just so that he could become a little bit richer, and had shamelessly left their son for dead after accomplishing his devious goal.

If Kaiden died like this, then he would never be able to face his parents in the afterlife. How could he explain that he had gifted their murderer with the silver platter that he'd long sought after, in addition to handing his own life over like a meek little lamb?

It took Kaiden a moment to realize that he'd fallen to the ground, and was now lying face-down in the snow without any feeling in his body. Just a deep, penetrating chill that seemed to pierce his very soul.

Am I not even going to make it to my sixteenth birthday?

It took everything he had to turn himself onto his back. Somehow, he knew that death was only moments away, so he wanted the light of the full moon to be the last thing that he saw. He was scared that if he died with his head buried in the snow, the last thing he'd see would be darkness. His tears were able to melt the ice on his lashes enough to give him one last look at the sky above, which was profoundly striking in this most dire of moments.

Mom...Dad... Please...I just want...to see...you...aga...

Kaiden fell into a dreamless sleep unlike any he'd ever experienced. When he woke up a short while later, he felt safe and warm, and his mind was clear as the highest quality crystal.

He blinked his eyes open to see that the moon had moved by a substantial margin, signaling the passage of at least a few hours. A good amount of snow had been blown onto his body by the occasional wayward winds, but most of it had melted, only to partially freeze in some places.

In such a situation, Kaiden should have been asking himself an endless amount of incredulous questions. Why wasn't he dead? Was he about to die, or had he already and just not realized it? Only, he was perfectly aware of his physical condition, that his body was at a healthy temperature and his limbs were fully mobile.

Kaiden stared up at the stars, thousands of them in view now that he was outside of the polluted city limits. The reason he hadn't died was because the celestial energy within his body had stepped in to regulate his internal temperature as soon as he had lost consciousness from the cold.

Celestial energy... He raised an arm as if reaching up to grasp the moon, which felt much less majestic for some reason that he couldn't quite recognize. Why do I know about this?

He could see wisps of golden energy in the air, thinly dispersed throughout the countryside like some sort of selective smog. Closing his eyes, he could sense a dense ball of celestial energy within the centre of his chest, an intangible object that existed right beside his heart. This was his dantian, the vessel within living beings that held their soul, or rather, the amount of celestial energy that they were bequeathed with at birth.

A tiny voice in his mind decried this mysterious knowledge as ridiculous, though he was so confident in its correctness that he began to feel a surge of excitement as he lay there partially submerged in the snow. Somehow or other, he had survived his brush with death by the skin of his teeth, and had also awoken to a world-changing wave of knowledge that fit perfectly within his psyche as if it had been there from the beginning. Celestial energy, not water, was the source of all life on Earth, of all life in existence. It was impossible to know how things had developed in this way, but he was now vividly aware of a method to extract this energy from the environment and to directly assimilate it with what was already stored in his dantian. The purpose of doing such an astounding thing? To strengthen his body and increase his lifespan.

Kaiden sat up and then settled onto his knees, his gaze defined by gratitude and reverence as he stared out into the infinite expanse of stars that seemed to swallow up his vision.

"I'll never forget this favour. Whoever it was that saved me, thank you. Thank you so much." At this moment, Kaiden was convinced of God's existence.

With nobody around to see his weakness, Kaiden began to cry. This time, however, he was shedding tears of relief and excitement.

The Sun and Moon Meditations...

He closed his eyes and focused on the energy within his chest, which he coerced into circulating throughout his body by willing it to follow a certain course. Like blood through veins, the energy adopted a rhythmic pattern, which didn't surprise him in the least. He'd known exactly what was going to happen, just as he wasn't the slightest bit shocked when a nearby strand of celestial energy was pulled into his body in passing. The thin strand of golden mist immediately wound its way into his dantian and replenished a bit of the energy that had been used to maintain his body temperature.

His eyes lit up as he succeeded in absorbing another strand. The jolt of excitement caused him to lose focus and the bulk of energy within his body returned to his dantian. This is so bizarre. Too bad there's hardly any energy out here. He had a feeling that if he went somewhere where life thrived, like a forest or a town, then he'd see more than just a few aimless wisps.

As things were, a stray bit of energy floated over every five minutes or so. Hmm? When he increased his focus, he saw that the moonlight seemed to be giving off tiny traces of celestial energy. Like evaporated water that had condensed into a cloud, he noticed that the energy would clump together in certain places and then rise up in the form of another of the many wisps that idled throughout the countryside. While he couldn't quite recall the reason, he was aware that the moon radiated celestial energy, as did the sun in stronger wavelengths.

I can test out this technique another time. Right now, I need to find a place to stay.

He got up and resumed his death march down the desolate county road, though now with a world of difference to the purpose behind his steps.

So long as he cultivated his body with celestial energy, he would eventually become strong enough to exact his revenge on all who had wronged him. Every curse that his cousins had sent his way, every slap or punch to undeservingly find his face, along with every shirt-soaking splash of whatever happened to be in their cups, he would repay the favour by tenfold. Naturally, he would save the worst for last.

"Just wait and see, you motherfucker," he growled aloud, picturing Alexander's smug expression as he rolled up the car window, his driver flooring it in reverse. "I'm going to take everything from you and your scumbag family."