Zero Hour: Where are our Children (A Serial Novel) Episode 5 of 9

by Gary Sapp

one that I could have emulated. That is why he is one of only two human beings that I can factually say that I not only adored—but loved as well.”

  “What?”

  “Your father, Isaac Prince, is one of the answers that every Person of Color in this country wants to know. Your father was the founder of Pandora. He was the Caretaker.”

  There is a prolonged silence.

  Chris opened his mouth to speak but he only tasted mothballs.

  And so Serena spoke to him and for him.

  “He told me many years later that he was surprised at the paths that his beloved children had taken: You chose to go into law enforcement as he had done between seasons as a House in Chains founder. Xavier took a more direct path in his footsteps—although the incident at Princeton probably nudged him over that preverbal edge into the role of the One.”

  “I don’t want to hear anymore.” But Chris scooped up the available documents anyway as he back peddled towards the door from which he came. “I want you to stay away from me. If you come near me again I will kill you.”

  “Xavier doesn’t possess your strength.” Serena continued on as if Chris had never spoken at all. “I’ve done all of this…shown you all of this in hopes that you will share this information with your brother. If he knows the truth about your father’s secret life and identity as the Caretaker, I know that he will stand down from the threats he has carelessly made against me, Pandora and his country. You will recover from this as a stronger man. But this information will destroy the very foundation of their House.”

  “I asked you to stay away from me.”

  “I need you to do this for me, Chris.” She moved towards him. He couldn’t find that damned door handle. “The Whirlwind can only be avoided if Xavier stands down now. And I believe that this Whirlwind will be far worse than even what I’ve seen in my flames. There are other factors involved that are even out of my influence. Grace Edwards listens to Xavier. The Circle listens to her. Make your brother listen to you.”

  Chris halted his retreat long enough to say: “So you’re using me to get to him.”

  “I’m empowering you so that you can finish what your father started. He wanted to keep the peace and for two races ever at odds to remain tolerant of each other. He wanted your people to take pride in themselves and their communities. He wanted to avoid the slaughter of innocent young Black men and women by a superior force. He sacrificed you in an attempt to stop it 30 years ago.”

  “No,” Chris said. “I don’t think so. I can’t help you. I need more answers than the ones you are providing.” He gave the room a once over. “And I’m not entirely convinced that I believe any of this.”

  “I understand,” Serena said as a concession. “You should go see Benjamin Scott. He knows the truth that I’ve been telling you about your father. Go. There isn’t a lot of time left.”

  Chris turned to leave, found the door handle at last, and heard her call his name one last time.

  “You should hurry, Christopher Prince. Everything rest in your hands now.”

  A half hour later Chris found himself parked outside Scotty’s apartment in East Atlanta.

  “Scotty,” Chris yelled for him half way up the walkway. “Scotty, where are you at you bastard?”

  Scotty pulled up one of his bedroom windows with all of the composure and calmness that Chris would never have even under the best of circumstances.

  “Come inside, Christopher.” He said. “I’ll put on some tea. Come inside. We’ll talk. We need to talk.”

  “You lied to me. You lied to Xavier.” Chris waved the folder full of documents up high where his father’s dearest friend could see them. “You’ve kept this hidden from us for years.”

  Scotty folded his hands in front of him and searched the sky for answers that higher powers weren’t going to provide for him tonight. Instead, he waved Chris up and the testy younger man finally agreed.”

  Sitting on Scotty’s sofa a few minutes later, Chris glared at the steam rising off of his own cup of tea.

  Scotty sat next to him. “Serena must be pretty desperate to risk disclosing this damning information to you now. Xavier’s Zero Hour threat really hit home.”

  “So you are telling me that all of this bullshit that I’m holding in my hands is true.” Chris said. “These death certificates I have with me; this dental work in this file. She told me that my father was the Caretaker.”

  Scotty nodded to everything he was saying. “I know that none of this will be easy for you to understand, Old Man.”

  “I thought that my father loved us.”

  “He did.”

  “I thought that you loved me and my brother as well, Scotty.”

  “I do.” Scotty replied and moved closer to Chris. “But I loved your father even more. He and David Hicks were the brothers that I would never have. Isaac wouldn’t have gone through with this full transformation after Keaton’s failure with you and the other boys if I hadn’t given my word to watch over you and your brother after he was…gone.”

  “You told us he was dead, Scotty.”

  “No, I told you that he had left us. I’m not trying to mince words with you, Old Man. But I did not lie to you.”

  “Did my step mother know?”

  Scotty shook his head. “I disagreed with the harsh, unfathomable steps he was taking. I hated it. We argued. Our arguments eventually came to fisticuffs. We argued some more. Those conversations only hardened his resolve. It only made him more determined to see his long term plans through.”

  “What plan?”

  “Your father wanted to avoid the eventual conflict that we now find ourselves mere hours away from. He felt that his sphere of influence was limited as the leader of a House in Chains. He felt by working behind the scenes in his new role with Pandora that he could influence policy from the opposite side of virtually the same coin.”

  “So he orchestrated the first round of the Atlanta Child murders.”

  “He did.”

  “He sacrificed me, Scotty.” Chris said. “He freely and willingly gave one of his own sons to a madman and a pedophile.”

  Scotty hesitated, measured his response, said: “He did just that, Old Man. He profiled Keaton for years before approaching him. He’d first arrested him on some petty exposure charge five years before. He knew that Keaton wouldn’t touch you. I can’t tell you how. I won’t try to convince you otherwise. And yet, he knew.”

  “So my own father, this Caretaker persona, was the brainchild behind these abductions. What about Muhammad Clark?”

  “I know that his parallel operation was one that Clark had perpetrated for his own personal, sick gains.” Scotty backed off of his belligerent tone though when he said: “Clark had struck at least a half a dozen times when some local and national papers first started publishing stories about the ignition of a race war as the motive for the crimes. Your father jumped on that idea—and made it so. You were allowed to be taken soon after.” Scotty sipped at his tea. “Keaton made you his general just as his psychological profile suggested that he would. He wanted you to watch over the other children, to keep them safe, protect them from outside forces that could harm them.”

  “And yet, if Keaton poked them in the meantime it would be okay.”

  “Your father was trying to save a generation of his own race the best way he knew how, Old Man. He was so confident and assured in what he was doing that put you up as collateral against its failure.”

  Chris sat his head in his hands. “Oh my God, so when I didn’t return to the place where we were being kept when Xavier saw me passing through our neighborhood—“

  “Your father…your father killed those children himself. But just as he could ask no one else to sacrifice their child to Keaton…he could not bestow the dishonor of those boys’ murders on anyone else in Pandora. He alone went back to that residence and cut those boys throats and burned their bodies.” Benjamin Scott paused as emotion bested him for the first time during this conversation
. “I know it means nothing to you now, Old Man, but Isaac Prince was never the same man after that. A piece of the man I’d known for decades truly did die that day. It set back his entire cause from both sides of that preverbal coin that we spoke of before. I believe that it was in those days afterwards that the plan for his first birth rights and name to die so that he could finish his work of saving lives was born.”

  “I don’t think all of that matters a hell of a lot to me, Scotty.” Chris said. “How could my own father do this to me…to his family?”

  “I watched your father evolve into many things over the years: He was a cop. He was the Civil Rights leader. He was a bad husband…but not in the manner that you’re thinking.” Chris could tell that Scotty had another story to tell but it would have to wait for another day. “But if I have to describe one word to describe him even all these years later then I would use one word—selfless.”

  Chris stood. “Is that supposed to help me forgive him?”

  “No, it should not, Old Man.” And Scotty stood as well. “Just be reminded during your worst bouts of anger in the days to come that Isaac Prince wasn’t going to ask anyone else to sacrifice anything he wasn’t willing to sacrifice himself.”

  “My God,” Chris said again. He had the strength to mutter nothing else.

  “Years later, a young woman who’d fled the ideologies of the FBI and witnessed great sacrifices in her own young life became his prized student. He made her give her word that she would carry