Author's notes: Nearly (note: I said nearly) all words in italics come from the song Self Deception, by Lacuna Coil. Main inspiration for this story.

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Prologue: The Glass Shards

"Wow!"

"It's so cool in here!"

"Yeah!"

Their tiny voices echoed off the empty walls of the derelict house in the heart of the system. Sounding so excited at their discovery, yet it soon was to be short-lived.

They were five young children, no older than ten years, at the rebellious stage, wanting to go explore the world. To them, finding an empty house such as this one was like visiting a distant planet.

The first, a mischievous little boy, opened the dusty door to one of the upstairs rooms of that cavernous house. Feeling rather apprehensive and courageous at the same time, the five watched as the door creaked open as if in slow motion, creating a new pathway to the deeper depths of the house. And they entered the room.

Gasping at their expense, they discovered a large and empty room. The dust flew around them in a spiral like swarms of flies lusting for blood, the sunlight steaming in from one lonely window on the far side. The rest of the room was bathed in shadows.

As each child made their way tentatively into the heart of the room, the naked wood of the floor beneath them creaked perilously, threatening the children, telling them it was safer at home than to be staring this house in the face.

There was a red substance splattered over one of the weary walls, and it looked suspiciously like blood in the cold light of the day outside. Yet the children did not notice this as their attention was brought to a small shining object in the corner of the room.

"Look at this!"

One child, a dark haired girl, ran over to the object, and picked it up. It shimmered in the light as she held it up above her head like a trophy. It was a green glass bottle, scratched from the darkened claws of the shadows of the house, resting here for so long that it had been left behind in time.

"A bottle!"

"Oh, wow!"

"A bottle, here!"

Clearly the children had found a treasure of the deep, left, in their eyes, by some deadly pirate in his rush to escape from the enemy, or perhaps by a fair princess who had once left a message inside it for a prince to come and rescue her....

As each child made up their own adventure for the bottle, another small boy of the group began to sing.

"Ten green bottles, hanging on the wall!"

The rest of the children joined in, and soon, the room was filled with bouncing voices of the victorious explorers.

Yet the boy who had first opened the door to the treasure room was still not satisfied. He eyed the glass bottle, so delicate in the dark haired girl's hands, and suddenly shot out a greedy arm and snatched the glass from her grasp.

"Hey!"

Squeals erupted amidst the joyous singing, and it was not long before there was a struggle against the boy and the remaining four children, who now were having their own adventure, a struggle for the cup, survival of the fittest.

The struggle became deeper. Bodies thrashed against the floor, loudly and startlingly brutal in the darkness of the room, where the shadows seemed to be holding their breath. The noises were so loud; the children did not notice the faint sound of heavy and powerful footsteps on the stairs.

A fair haired boy gave the bottle a tremendous tug, and the bottle broke free of the mischievous boy's grip, and flew across the room, catching the sun's rays as it went.

"NO!"

Every child in the place stood up and gave a cry as they watched their treasure's progress in horror. The glass bottle hit the floor and shattered into a million shining pieces upon the floor. It had been destroyed - or had it?

For as the children continued to watch, they saw the glass shards repair themselves as if the moment was being rewound, as if time itself was being manipulated....

And a second later, a shining green bottle stood on the floor before them, no longer a bundle of glass shards. The children stared. Had they discovered a timeloop? Or something altogether more sinister?

They were young. They did not understand the importance of their discovery, or the significance it would have if they found out about the world that they really lived in.

However, they did not have time to dwell on the extraordinary event that had just taken place, for the door suddenly swung open with a deafening bang, scattering dust into the air like autumn leaves. And in the doorway there were three sinister looking men in identical black suits and matching sunglasses, all with the same blank expression.

One of the men, the one in the middle, stepped forward, seemingly looking at the motionless bottle in the middle of the floor. The children moved back into the confinements of the daylight near the window, maybe hoping it would protect them from these intruders.

The man who had made the first move bent down to the bottle, tapped it with a curious finger. The bottle wobbled, but remained the same. The man straightened up and turned to his comrades.

"It was this one."

His voice chilled the children to their tiny bones. It was so.... Stiff and unhumanlike. One of the children, a timid little boy, actually started to cry, his sobs echoing into the shadows and reaching the ears of the three men before them.

The man that had spoken turned to the five children; his sunglasses catching a few rays of sunlight from the window they were huddled against. He was definitely the leader of his group. Slowly, and with great power, he walked up to the crying child, whose sobs seemed to grow louder as the man bent down before him.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said, in a suspiciously gentle voice. The child's cries calmed down, yet he was still distressed as he stared into the stranger's cold blank lenses. Suddenly he wished he were at home with his mother and father.

"All I want to know," the man continued, this time including the rest of the children in his gaze, "is what just happened to the bottle that stands behind me now."

The crying boy gave a whimper, but the mischievous boy spoke up. He was not scared of the man, like his cowardly friends were. He would show them.

"It smashed on the floor, then it went back together."

Hearing his voice gave his friends confidence to air their views, too.

"It was like a tape going backwards!"

"Scary!"

"Weird!"

"It was.... Like time was being sent backwards," said a quiet little girl in a hushed voice. The remaining children nodded at her words in earnest.

"Yeah, what she said."

"Like something was wrong with time."

The man in the black suit before them waited until their voices died down, then stood up straight.

"Just as I thought."

His colleagues behind him nodded in unison. They moved forward slightly, ready to make a move if necessary.

Then the man in the middle turned to look at the children again. And he slowly reached up and took off his sunglasses.

The children saw that his eyes were blue, the coldest and cruelest shade of blue they probably would ever see. There was something hidden behind the blue that was boring into their minds, extracting information to be analyzed, to be used against them. Instantly the children knew that this man was bad. And so were his comrades. But it was too late now. Because they blocked the only way of escape out of here alive....

"Do you know who I am?" the man softly asked them, danger dancing on every syllable of his words. The children recoiled as far as they could, up against the wall. Their blank looks supplied the man with an answer.

"I am here to make sure that you do not tell anyone about what you have just seen. It was all in your minds, understand? No one is to know."

"It wasn't in our minds!" shouted the naughty boy suddenly from the front of the group. The other children chorused their agreement, bombarding the man in the suit. He stood up and hastily put his sunglasses back over his eyes, a scowl of great dislike upon his face. He signalled to his colleagues.

"Take them!"

Instantaneously, the two men behind him marched forward in unison and automatically grabbed two of the children each, clamping strong hands around each child's mouth. They immediately screamed and struggled, but they were no match for the men. Then the leader advanced upon the remaining child, their leader, the one who had discovered the room in the first place. He looked up at the man towering over him with large frightened eyes.

"You will not ignore the words of an Agent!"

Then the man roughly grabbed the boy by his neck and dragged him away into the shadows of the outer world. The two remaining men followed suit with the other four.

Moments later, bloodcurdling screams could be heard from the downstairs of the same house, screams that told listeners that five children were being murdered.

Then all was still. All was calm.

All was left uncovered again.