Chapter 1
“He’s not ready.”
Despite being alone in his room, Caspian Davis sat very still.
His face was buried in his crossed arms over his desk.
Unlike a typical ten-year-old boy’s room, Caspian’s was filled with electronics, most opened and taken apart like a game of Operation.
From Macs to PCs and tablets to gaming systems, Caspian had them all.
But recently, he’d been more interested in what each device could do over what parts were inside them.
His shelves were filled with broken-in books on the Caesar cipher, Morse Code, the pigpen cipher, data structures, and algorithms.
His desk wasn’t a simple top with a drawer or two.
It was a large, mahogany, bilateral, double stack that had belonged to his father, Rear Admiral Larry Davis.
During their last transfer, the Rear Admiral had decided to get a new desk, and had gifted Caspian his old one.
It was so large that Caspian used one of the tall kitchen stools and an old couch cushion to be able to see his equipment properly.
The Victorian house the Davis Family called home came with a room-to-room intercom that the previous owner’s alarm company had installed.
The security company that the Rear Admiral had contracted with did not use it, and the intercom had remained a forgotten relic within the house until Caspian had rewired it.
Now he used it to eavesdrop on his parents during their ‘adult’ conversations when they got to decide his future.
The system was low-tech, but sometimes those were the best ones to stay hidden in this day and age.
At ten, Caspian should have been in fourth grade, learning division, language arts, and ecosystems. Unfortunately for his teachers, classmates, and parents, he’d taught himself all that while his peers were having nap time in kindergarten.
He was now reading at a college-level, was self-teaching Advanced Calculus, and had no interest in science.
It was embarrassing, but he tended to get squeamish around blood and gross things.
Computers were where his passions lay. Not in sports, to his father’s disappointment, or in social events, to his mother’s.
“He’s bored, Jen. He literally corrected his math teacher’s work in front of the entire class and the principal.
” That was the Rear Admiral. Caspian had been raised to have a healthy mixture of fear and respect for his father.
In this house, there was no higher authority.
And right now, Caspian was silently rooting that his mother was not able to sway the Rear Admiral’s opinion as she was so desperately trying to do.
“I’ll homeschool him,” was his mom’s rebuttal.
Caspian’s eyes rolled at that. He loved his mom, but she was no Marilyn vos Savant.
She struggled with basic technology, and just yesterday, Caspian had to show her—again—how to print wirelessly from her phone.
His father could keep up with Caspian during many debates and conversations, but unfortunately, the Rear Admiral was no coder.
Ever since Caspian had started to get into coding, the two of them had stopped coming up with things to talk about.
“Jen, be reasonable—”
“No, Larry.” Guilt struck Caspian when he heard the tears in his mom’s voice. “He’s ten. He is not ready for high school. And what about his health?”
Caspian winced. His health… That’s what it always came down to. It was how his mom won every argument and kept Caspian a virtual prisoner in their home until two years ago.
He was just six months old when he’d been diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, or ALL.
The doctors started him on invasive chemotherapy, along with antibiotics and infusions.
It had worked. His parents had rung the bell at St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, and taken him home.
But unfortunately, their luck did not last. When Caspian was three, he relapsed.
It progressed fast, and he needed bone marrow and stem cell transplants.
Neither of his parents were a match. They tested aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents… No one was a match.
So his parents decided to make one.
With the help of a fertility specialist and geneticist, his mom was able to go through an IVF treatment to become pregnant with the match Caspian needed to survive. Nine months later, Keller was born.
One of the reasons Caspian had no interest in biology or the sciences was because he’d researched everything about his case and treatment when he was seven. Thanks to the transplants provided by Keller when he was just six months old, Caspian went into remission, and this time, it took.
But the fear was always there. Not in Caspian. Based on the research he’d done and the conversations he’d had with his oncologist, the chances that the leukemia would return were low, and they continued to get lower with each passing year that he was cancer free.
Caspian could understand his mother’s fears. Unlike Caspian and Keller, their parents remembered the entire experience, and they’d both suffered for it. Understanding was one thing, but unlike his mother, Caspian refused to allow his tentative start in life to affect his future.
He was ready for high school! He wanted to learn. He wanted to see what else was out there beyond what he could teach himself from reading books and taking apart electronics and machines. He wanted a challenge.
And maybe… Maybe he could even find a friend.
He tried with Keller. Weren’t brothers supposed to be friends?
They used to be, but even at their young ages, they could understand and sense the differences between how their parents treated their two sons.
Caspian was coddled and protected, and basically given anything he asked for.
While Keller was…just there. It was the sad truth of it.
He’d been created to serve a purpose, and as far as Jen and Larry Davis were concerned, that purpose had been served.
They had two sons, but no one would ever guess it.
Caspian tried to look out for his brother. He didn’t know what Keller knew. At six, did he even understand why his parents treated him like a red-headed stepchild? Caspian wasn’t sure if that was something he should talk to Keller about. Was it even his place?
Recently, Keller had been getting into fights.
He’d already been kicked out of one kindergarten program, and if he didn’t stop misbehaving, he would soon be expelled from his current one, too.
His troublemaking also extended to their home.
A few weeks back, Keller came into Caspian’s bedroom while Caspian was at breakfast to pee in Caspian’s bed.
Unfortunately, their mom still believed that Caspian had been the one to wet the bed.
After that incident, Keller had brought in cockroaches, dropping them into the electronics Caspian had scattered around the room.
Caspian had started having to lock his bedroom door when he wasn’t in it to keep Keller out of his things.
He didn’t know how to help Keller, but nothing Caspian said seemed to be getting through to his little brother. And Caspian had learned a long time ago never to bring his parents’ treatment of Keller up to them. His Aunt Lauren had tried that, and now his mom no longer spoke to her sister-in-law.
Caspian felt bad about wanting to go to the private, gifted school, and not just because it would make him feel like an X-Man in training.
But in all honesty, beyond needing to be around people who were like him and spoke his language, he really just wanted out of this house.
Away from his overbearing parents who self-diagnosed a sneeze as his cancer returning and his little brother who took out his misery about his existence on Caspian.
Please let me go, he thought desperately to his mom. Please…
* * *
Keys, Age 15
“All rise!”
The shoelace of Caspian’s dress shoe caught on the leg of his chair. Gravity and momentum had him landing on his ass on the floor rather than standing on his feet as the bailiff ordered. His cheeks flamed with embarrassment, and he mentally cursed himself for his clumsiness.
A throat cleared. “Mr. Davis, are you planning on joining us?”
Caspian was tempted to say “no”, but also knew that he couldn’t let this one act define his future. He’d already had one of those experiences, and it was still affecting his life fifteen years later.
Getting to his feet, he brushed off his black slacks, though these floors were so clean that it likely wasn’t necessary.
Force of habit, he supposed. His cheeks still red, he faced the judge across the courtroom.
He could practically feel his father glaring daggers at his back.
No doubt the newly appointed Vice Admiral had stopped his wife from checking on Caspian when he fell.
There were criminals in this building who weren’t as angry about being here today as Larry Davis was.
His mom was already on her second tissue box.
Caspian wasn’t heartless. He hated himself for making his mom cry, but he would have hated himself more if he’d let her tears sway him.
“Sorry, Your Honor.”
“Are you okay, son?” Judge Callahan was in his mid-fifties with kind eyes that Caspian truly appreciated. He supposed that was a good trait for a family court judge to have.
Caspian nodded once. He didn’t excuse his actions—because really, what excuse was there for getting one’s shoelace caught on a chair?—and instead waited in impatient silence for the judge to announce his decision.