Well, I wrote a prologue to Project Gert early this year, or maybe even last year? I can't remember. But I haven't done anything with it at all... so I decided I'll publish it. Here it is in unadultered form. If I ever get around to republishing Project Gert or re-writing it, this could be the prologue. Or maybe I'll never touch all this again... but I thought it'd be nice to share with you all what I was thinking about since I got MANY complaints on the original first chapter. Hence... this whole "prologue" idea. *shrugs*

Prologue 

Jason

“This is a truly amazing house, honey. The Government has really spared no expense, here.” Jason said, dusting off an antique table with an old black tee-shirt. The moonlight shone through the old cabin window, illuminating everything, light bouncing off the unique finish of each piece of furniture. The massive frame of the front window was about eight foot by eight foot.

“It’s nothing more than a glorified witness protection program. In fact, I’m pretty sure Ferris’ team is just pulling favors with the FBI. Regardless, it’s effective,” said Sarah. Her speech was interrupted by a faint whistling. “Did you hear that?”

“Probably just the breeze, the air, we have to get used to this place, and its particular noises.”

Another sound came, but it was more muffled, obviously further away. And it sounded upset, like an animal in mourning.

Jason and Sarah ran for the back door just as it was opening. Kroz ran in, his young brown eyes wide with wonder. Their eleven year old child looked like he had just found out Christmas was going to be early.  

“Stay in the house, Son” Jason said, as he burst through the backdoor.

Sarah exited into their backyard alongside him. A large, wide open area, well worthy of the cabin they were staying in. Jason blinked and waited for his eyes to adjust to the low moonlight, from the interior he’d left a moment ago.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“Dad, I saw something…”

“Get inside, Son, we’re going to figure this out.” But even as he said this, he knew it couldn’t be true. Who could it be? The Chinese? The Russians? A private company? He removed his gun from his belt. Sarah was running back into the house for another gun, dragging Kroz with her.

Into the darkness, Jason walked, gun level with his chest, eyes focused down the shaft of the weapon, ready to pull the trigger at a moment’s notice. It was probably an animal… but the way his son looked. A faint, wispy light suddenly lit up, about seventy yards away. It danced, back and forth, like an elusive ghost. Then it sagged, as if it was trying to ascend, but couldn’t.

Then, just fifteen feet below it, on the ground, a triangle of lights lit the area. Red, green and blue, accompanied by a much more distinct sound this time. A wail, like that of a mythical dragon. Jason held his gun at the ready, and almost fired, when he realized the thing was not after him, but the magical light headed for the clouds. Jason ducked, eying the two visitors. The triangle ascended into the moon lit night, and he could see it wasn’t bigger than a canoe. It didn’t appear to have any weapons, but it turned over and danced in the air as if it was finding its bearings. It didn’t seem to know how to fly on this planet. Or had forgotten. And the light, it taunted the machine, spun around it, spiraling back towards the earth. This seemed to alarm the flying triangle, which didn’t look too much different than a slice of pizza, in shape, but had an infinite amount of detail in its edges, and underworkings, leaving no doubt of its alien design. And that meant it was here because of him. He fired a warning shot.

The giant triangle reacted, but not in a way he’d have expected. It became even more aggressive in pursuit of the little white light, which seems to have remarkably slowed. The doors beneath the flying machine opened, and several lasers scanned the light. Just as they connected, both entities dropped to the ground again. The machine malfunctioned, and sputtered. Then caught fire and burned. But the little light was gone. The strange little wisp was nowhere to be seen.

Before Jason had time to examine the wreckage, another flying triangle headed over an outcropping of trees, towards him. This one much more nimble than the last. It closed the distance between him and it within seconds. He was the target. Jason fired his government issue handgun at the machine, hitting it a dozen times. But the machine seemed to be turning and dancing about in the air, regardless, almost like it enjoyed deflecting these shots. He heard Sarah firing several shots at the thing as well, from the sound, it was probably an M-16, but the rifle barely seemed to affect it.

As with the wisp, the machine revealed its underbelly, a door, and a thick particle beam shot out from under it. But this time, it was aimed at Jason. It caught his chest, and Jason felt he suddenly had no control over his limbs. He stood, arms outstretched, and knew he was waiting for the machine to take him. He tried to tear himself away from the beam, but failed, quickly losing time as the machine’s arms came out from under it, as it sought to grasp him with something more solid. It meant to harvest, not kill him. He nearly blacked out from the effort of trying to wretch himself away, before the mechanical arms reached him. Sarah had stopped firing. Hopefully she was gathering Kroz and getting the hell out of there. But no, she would never do that. But what was she doing?

An arm extended towards him, but inches away from his body, it spun in the opposite direction. Hit by a shot from his wife. The arm was only attached by a small thread now, having been hit by a fifty caliber sniper rifle. One. That was one shot. The clip held four. And it had three more arms. The machine nearly dropped him, but then changed its mind and started to ascend. Jason was ten feet in the air before she found her mark again, hitting the corner of the machine, she spun it around completely three times. And now it flew as if it had a broken wing, though it was only missing the corner. Jason tried to wrench free again, but again felt himself ready to lose consciousness, so relaxed closer to the ground again. His wife fired a 3^rd shot. This time she took it through the center and the machine literally almost hit the ground right next to him as it lost all power.

Jason sprung to his feet, arms up, back-peddling, half dizzy from the crash landing, away from the thing so his wife could take her final shot. The machine darted into the air, and took a final shot in its rear as it headed off over the trees. Like a yelping, wounded animal, it sputtered off but was no longer target practice for his wife.

He ran over to her, but could barely see her in the moonlight. Amongst a bag full of guns, she lay sprawled in the grass, dark hair tied back and her rifle resting on a miniature tripod.  She broke down the weapon and had it back in the bag before he approached.

“Cassandra’s in the area. Let’s get her over here,” Jason said. “I want to be here if that thing comes back, but not him. And we must check the premises for any more alien artifacts.

“This place isn’t safe.”

Jason took out his phone and called Cassandra. “Cassandra, we need you over here right away…. Our address should be in your phone, you just need to link the contacts…. Ok, hurry, Is anyone else in the area?... tomorrow’s not good…” His wife looked at him with questioning eyes.

“We need to call Ferris. This changes everything,” Sarah said.

Jason called the man, “Ferris, we’ve been hit by an alien attack… right… we’d like to search the area, but… I see. Five locations?.... Sarah, they’ve been hitting everywhere…. I see, I see. Well, we’d certainly like to check out some of these other locations, but we kind of have our hands full right now. No, but I saw a light, and two of these giant triangles were here. Yes, two! No, they were attacking us, one of them grabbed me! Ok, no that seems like a fine idea. I’d rather not leave Kroz with just anyone, especially not a family member who’s not in the program. Ok, Ok. It sounds like our best shot.” Jason hung up.

“What is it?”

“We’re going after them.” Jason answered.  “Ferris has a team that’s been tracking the landings of these crafts across the US, but he doesn’t trust his current team, led by Steve, to do reconnaissance. He’s going to send us!”

“We need to get safe first!”

“There’s no time, sweetheart, and there’s nobody as up to speed as we are. Ferris thinks he can use this alien technology, and if what we heard about the moonbreaker is half true, he probably can. We can do this.”

As they approached the house, they noticed it was unbelievably quite. Jason hoped his son was ok.

“Kroz!”

Jason yelled upstairs again, as he headed up. “Kroz!”

Kroz’s bedroom door opened, “Yeah, Dad?” His son looked tired, and the room dark. He pushed his straight dark hair out of his eyes. “What was that thing out there?” a look of confusion on his face. “I won’t go out there again, I just want to know, did you guys need to destroy it? Was it dangerous or something?”

“It was probably some government technology left over from the last guests of this house. Son, we won’t let anything hurt you. But it’s probably not safe for you here.”

“What? I have to leave?”

“We all do, Kroz. But me and your mom have to stay for a bit. We’re the only ones with clearance for this area.

“This area? But what do you mean. “

“No more questions. Pack your things.”

“But”

“Pack them!”

“Just pack your things, Kroz. It’s going to be an adventure. You’ll see. You’re going to meet some new friends tomorrow at school. But right now, we can’t all be here.”

Jason went downstairs. Sarah stayed with their son, to help him pack. He kept his ears pricked up, but didn’t hear any more sounds like before. Still, the chance of them coming back had to be real. He went to the bathroom, and looked over his chest, where the machine had used its tractor beam on him. There didn’t seem to be any scarring, hardly any redness on his olive skin. He sighed, splashed some water on his face, and went to the couch to contemplate matters. It seemed like only a few minutes had gone by, but it had been fifteen. His wife was sitting next to him, and someone was at the door.

He rushed to answer it, and found Gertrude. No, that would be Cassandra. The two redheaded twins were unidentifiable, one to other.

“Cassandra…. Thank you for showing up. It’s been crazy.”

“We can talk about that later. I’m supposed to get your son out of here. I want to leave now, before they come back.”

“They’ll come back?”

“You said one escaped?”

“Yes”

“So, maybe they’ll come back. If it’s a targeted attack, then they have a mission. And I doubt their mission was to get blown apart by sniper rounds. They’ll come back, and you might have one shot at capturing one alive. That’s what we need. Ferris has the moonbreaker tracking their movements, and if he can capture one machine whole, he thinks he can get inside its neural network and release a retro-virus.”

“That’s crazy!”

Cassandra smiled. “Where’s Kroz? I’ll get him out of here. He can stay with Gertrude and James for a few days, right?”

“Sure, he’s in his room…”