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Though Conrad had never witnessed it, she claimed their son was becoming a brat. She said he was getting poor grades in school, always goofing off, never taking anything seriously. But when he’d decided to become a Hunter, everything changed. Kyle did a complete one-eighty. He learned self-control, politeness, even the true definition of honor. He became mature. He started trying harder at school, began getting better grades, and every weekend he would sit in front of the TV and play the required Henry the Hunter video games. All in hopes that when he turned sixteen it would be good enough to get him into Artemis University.
    Conrad knew eventually the truth would come out. He knew the day would come when he would have to sit his son down and confess to him why he and Denise had lied all these years. But Conrad knew Kyle would understand. He would have to. He would have to see that it had been for his own benefit, that it was the only way to ensure his protection.
    “Sure,” Conrad said, holding the catcher’s mitt up, “let’s see what you got.”
    After pitching, they worked on fielding. Conrad stood with the house to his back, the line of gray pine trees to his front, and with a metal bat hit grounders and pop-ups to Kyle. These Kyle had no trouble with, having always played outfield in Little League, and they didn’t spend much time on them. But before they stopped, Kyle called to his father, telling him to give him a really high one. Conrad popped one way up in the air, and while he’d tried to keep it in the square that was their backyard, the white ball soared over the gray pines.
    “Don’t worry,” Kyle called, “I’ll get it,” and dropping his glove and turning away, he bolted into the woods.
    A minute passed. Another minute. After the third minute, Conrad grew uneasy. He glanced back at the house but Denise wasn’t watching from one of the windows like she sometimes did—all the windows were empty—so he turned his attention back to the tree line. He waited another ten seconds and started to take a step forward when Kyle reappeared, the white baseball in hand, running toward where he’d dropped the glove.
    “What took you so long?”
    Kyle picked up his glove. When he reached his father, he shrugged and said, “I don’t know. I thought I heard something.”
    Some dead birds twittered to themselves in the trees.
    “It sounded like … I don’t know—it sounded weird.”
    Staring past his son at the tree line, Conrad said, “Maybe we should go inside.”
    “But you said I could bat.”
    Conrad, still watching the tree line, blinked, shifted his gaze down to his son.
    “Didn’t you?” Kyle said.
    He thought again about trying to sleep earlier, seeing the face of a woman he’d never seen before, and despite his better judgment, he handed over the bat to his son.

 

     

     

     
    Chapter 5

     

     

     
    The Herculean was the tallest building in the world. Standing almost two thousand feet, it sat right in the heart of Olympus. The skyscraper was home to countless offices, businesses, stores, apartments, condos, bars, nightclubs, and pretty much anything else that was fit for the mainstream public. Olympus was the largest city in the world with over ten million residents, and the Herculean was the symbol that reminded the rest of the world just how strong and powerful the city truly was.  
    The building was also an unspoken scale of social structure—the higher up the floors went, the more things cost, until you got up past the one hundredth floor and had to be unbelievably wealthy to even consider viewing the city out of one of those upper-echelon windows.
    So when Conrad took Denise to the Herculean that evening, led her to one of the private elevators, she said, “You’re kidding me.”
    Conrad suppressed a smile as he nodded at the guards who stood in front of these private elevators, who had already been tipped off that one of the world’s prominent Hunters was coming with his