My laptop crashed, taking most of my story notes for this serial (and a project…) with it. Additionally, after that happened, I’ve realized that I have a better and more developed concept for the sequel(ish) to this story than for this story itself, so I’m going to start that, with some modifications, and mix this story in with it. They take place in the same time period, so it’s not hard. Really sorry about this!

The new story will start once I’ve worked up a good enough buffer.

Got hit with a heck of a lot of schoolwork over the past week or so. I’ll put up all the missed updates tomorrow.

Martin tried the door again, then checked his keys. No, his house key was still with Mom. He tried the handle again, despite knowing full well that it wouldn’t budge. He opened the mail slot and put his face right in front of it.

“Hellooo! Helll-oooo?” he yelled through the thin opening.

Martin turned around, surveying the neighborhood. Now he hoped his mom would get home sooner. He didn’t want to wait right in front of his house for an hour, unable to get in. The clouds above him were a bit of a lighter gray, and Martin doubted now that rain was coming. He sighed, walked to the curb, and sat, waiting, for a few bored minutes.

He decided to take a walk. His mom would take a while to get here, and it beat sitting in the car listening to bad radio. It was good exercise, too. Martin looked up again, smoothing his brown hair, and got up.

Maybe I’ll go down near my old house, he decided. Before they build some high-rise on top of it. There had been lots of construction activity in this suburb lately, and Martin guessed that the land here was finally getting valuble. It was annoying, watching giant bulldozers driving down the road and seeing giant holes in the ground where houses used to be. At least he didn’t live near much of it. His friend Allen lived near one of the construction sites, and had to put up with pile-driver noises for three weeks.

The walk was relaxing. The clouds and fear of rain had forced most of the suburb’s citizens indoors, and the only sounds were the whoosh of passing cars and the sporadic chirping of birds. There were more cars than usual on the residential roads today. Mostly blue ones, he noticed. A slight wind kicked up.

As he walked, however, his feeling of relaxation faded, or changed somewhat. He began to feel distinctly uncomfortable after about fifteen minutes, but he knew he had no reason to. The weather was the same, there still wasn’t anybody else on the roads, the birds still chirped. Maybe it was still some residual frustration from the rest of the day. Maybe it was something else…

He kept walking, spotting the fencing and dirt of a construction site up ahead. He started jogging, trying to take his mind off of the unease. The construction site was on most of the block that his house used to be on - they were building something on top of it, he thought - and, for the moment, it was abandoned.

Martin walked up to the fence and looked down into the giant hole that had been dug. Apparantly it would eventually become something with a basement, possibly an apartmant building. Backhoes and a few bulldozers and dump trucks sat at the bottom. Martin stared at the scene, imagining what it had been, and what it would be. His old house had been where he was standing.

He turned away, glancing at his watch. His mom would be home in half an hour. Time to head back. He half-looked back at the construction site, and just before he started on his way home, a blue flash caught at the corner of his eye.

Martin’s head jerked towards it instinctively, seraching for the source of the flash. It looked like what might have been one of those cars, but there were no vehicles anywhere he could see. No moving ones, anyway. Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t heard any of those birds in a while, either.

Martin narrowed his eyes, thinking. That strange, uneasy feeling was back again, this time much stronger. This time there was at least a bit of a reason for it, though.

He glanced at his surroundings. Same old houses, some brick, some with plastic faux-wood siding. A few American flags. Many parked cars. Nothing that would all of a sudden decide to send out a faint pulse of blue light, at least not on this overcast day. Then, the construction site - chain-link fences, yellow vehicles, dirt. A cluster of pipes sticking out of the ground, presumably what would become part of the building’s plumbing. Martin thought again about returning home; the skies were getting rapidly dark.

Those pipes, though. They were at just about the angle the flash had come from - maybe there was something in there? Before he knew it, Martin was walking towards the gate.

The fence screeched aside, but the sound failed to reach anybody’s ears but Martin’s. He wandered down the dirt ramp to the construction site’s ground leve. The bulldozers were much more intimidating up close. He was tempted to clamber up on one of them, just to see what it was like. Curiosity drove him on, despite his growing unease. The sky was getting still darker, a part of him thought. He ignored it.

The pipes were right in front of him, and his unease was at its greatet. He peered into the largest pipe, its terminus lost in darkness. Martin squinted, looking deeper. Was there something in there? It seemed to him, almost as if the darkness itself was moving, swirling…

A door nearby opened and shut, shattering the silence. Martin’s heart did a backflip, and he almost jumped away from the pipe, running to a good hiding spot behind the wheel of a backhoe. Some lady was looking at the sky, no doubt worrying about rain or something. It was really getting dark.

Martin resisted the urge to go back to the pipe, waiting until the woman went back inside and closed the door. Then he sprinted back to the gate, dragging it halfway closed. Fear gripped his heart like a black hand - who might have seen him? He could be arrested for trespassing, or some kind of official charge. It had been stupid of him to assume that just because nobody yelled when he opened the gate that nobody was there.

That’s not the only reason you’re scared.

Martin ignored the thought as he ran home, not noticing the light blue SUV that pulled out of a side street and followed him there.

“Late.”

Mr. Demev looked up from his desk, face creased with age and disappointment. He wasn’t even looking at the stapled collection of papers that Martin had just laid on his desk.

“But, I need-”

The teacher cut him off by tapping a sign displayed just above his head. It read, “NO LATE WORK.”

Martin continued anyway, saying, “I- I need this assignment, sir. I was absent yesterday.”

“Unexcused.”

“Mr. Demev, my mom just hasn’t written the note yet, and I need this grade! It’ll all be worked out - “

The bell rang over the intercom, cutting him short.

“You may have a seat, Mr. Clovis,” the teacher said, handing the project back up to his student.

Martin Clovis made a noise halfway between sighing and grumbling, took the sheet, and walked back to his desk. Behind him, Mr. Demev began a lecture about early American government. Martin sighed again, pulling his books out of his backpack.

“Dude, you have got to stop skipping so much! If the attendance office bothered to count all the time you’ve lost, you’ll get detention till the end of the freakin’ world!” said a blond teen leaning over to whisper in Martin’s ear.

“Shut up, Dan. Don’t wanna talk,” Martin replied.

“I’m just saying,” Dan finished as he leaned back into his seat.

Martin was still pissed after what had happened that morning. He’d woken up, and started to put the trash outside for the garbage man, only to find his mother getting rid of boxes and boxes of old stuff - his dad’s stuff, to be precise. They’d argued for half an hour, with his mom complaining about how they took up way too much space, and they could hide insect infestations, while Martin told her she didn’t have a right to empty the boxes without asking him, and there were no bugs in the house. The argument had been cut short by the garbage man coming in and shoving the boxes in with the rest of the trash, the driving off before Martin could stop them. He’d almost hit someone in the drive to school, barely had time to print this damn project out in the library, and now it wasn’t even being accepted. And, truthfully, he’d had an excuse for the previous day’s absence - dental appointment. He’d even have the excuse slip, but his mom had forgotten to fill it out amid the morning ruckus.

“Mr. Clovis, what war did Theodore Roosevelt get the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating an end to?”

Martin’s head jerked upwards at the teacher, struggling for an answer. “Um, uh… World War One?”

Some of the people close to the front of the room sniggered.

“Minus one point, for not paying attention. Now, like I was saying, in addition to negotiating the end to the Russo-Japanese War, President Roosevelt championed food safety reform…”

Mr. Demev turned back to the chalkboard to continue his lecture, apparently assuming that public embarrassment would be a good motivator to get people to concentrate. It didn’t work, and as the class went on, Martin found himself slowly falling asleep. He thankfully got up when the bell rang after what had seemed like ages.

His exit was cut short by Mr. Demev’s beckoning hand. Martin turned away for a moment to make a face, then walked back to the teacher’s desk.

“Now, Mr. Clovis… You have a D. You need to concentrate more in this class. What is the problem?”

Martin looked right at the aging history teacher. Right at his ridiculous white moustache, in fact. You should know what the damn problem is! Everyone knows! he wanted to blurt out.

“I… I didn’t sleep much last night,” he managed.

“Strange, considering you had all day in which to sleep.”

“Mr. Demev, it was a doctor’s appointment! It should be excused! I’ll have it sorted out tomorrow!”

“Tomorrow,” the teacher said, “is Saturday.”

“Monday, then. Can I turn in my project now and give you the slip then?”

“No. Supposing you do convince Attendance to accept a late excuse slip, I might accept it.”

He could have done with just the ‘no.’ Martin well knew that Mr. Demev would forget the agreement over the weekend, and nothing would come our of the five-page report. Instead of replying, Martin just turned around and left.

 The hall was empty, and with a sinking feeling, he began to run. The bell rang, and he started running faster. The final class of the day was Drama, his favourite subject and the the only class in which he had an ‘A.’ They were giving out parts for their next play, a stage adaptation of Dracula, and Martin wanted to get the title role. But the drama teacher hated lateness. Finally, he staggered through the doorway, panting for breath.

“Late.”

Again.

He set his books down, and they got to work auditioning the various parts. Martin thought he’d done well, but the disappointed look in his teacher’s face reeked of ’secondary role.’ The bell rang once more, and Martin grabbed his bag and walked outside. He hoped his mother would be late - the last thing he needed on a day like this was another argument with his mom.

The sky outside was cloudy. It didn’t help anyone’s mood, least of all Martin’s. He walked out to his car -a beat-up old sedan - and sat down, clearing trash off the passenger’s seat for his backpack. The drive home took longer, an accident forcing him to take a detour home. Eventually, he drove into his house’s driveway, then grabbed his bag and keys and got out. His keys seemed oddly light, and Martin remembered that his mother had lost her house keys and borrowed his.  He hoped she’d remembered to leave the door open. He didn’t feel like having to wait outside or in his car for an hour.

He tried the door.

It was locked.

Shit.

Hello, dear reader, and welcome to the world of Red Sunrise.

Red Sunrise is a fantasy webserial in a modern setting, concentrating on Martin Clovis, a disaffected teenager who has suddenly found himself the object of a titanic confrontation between two opposing covert organizations.

He quickly falls under the controlling and dubious protection of Pyramid, one of those sides. Embroiled in the center of a dangerous war where neither side has his best intrests at heart, Martin will be forced to question the motives of both Pyramid and Astrum, the cult-like opposition, and even the nature of his birth.

Updates will be twice (or more) weekly, usually on weekends. The first entry will be tomorrow.