Silence was a permanent guest in that room.
It was not an ordinary room—the walls were covered with glowing screens displaying equations and data that no one but their owner could understand.
The floor was almost invisible beneath layers of wires and scattered devices, arranged in a strange order that made little sense at first glance, but in Leo’s mind, it was the most logical thing in existence.
Leo sat in his usual chair, his eyes shifting between the screen in front of him and the watch on his wrist.
It was not an ordinary watch.
It was almost entirely black, with delicate rings slowly rotating around its center as if they were breathing, and tiny golden points of light glowing across its surface like stars.
If someone saw it on the street, they would probably mistake it for nothing more than a strangely designed watch.
But Leo knew what was inside it.
A faint smile escaped him.
“Four years…” he whispered to himself.
“Four years to make you.”
The wall clock struck eight in the morning.
From downstairs came his mother’s voice:
“Leo!
Breakfast!”
With a single press, he shut down the screens and quickly slipped the watch into his pocket with the practiced motion of someone hiding something he had been doing for years.
Because that was exactly what he had been doing for years.
He walked down the stairs lightly and found his mother setting breakfast on the table while his father read the newspaper with half-open eyes.
“Good morning!” Leo said cheerfully as he sat down.
“Morning, Leo,” his mother replied without looking up.
“Stayed up late again?”
“Not at all.”
His father raised one eye over the newspaper.
“Leo.”
“Okay…
a little.”
This was Leo’s morning every day.
An ordinary family.
An ordinary house.
An ordinary street.
No one knew that the boy sitting there now, eating his fried eggs with a goofy smile, was the same boy carrying something in his pocket that could change the balance of power in the entire world.
And Leo preferred to keep it that way.
End of Chapter One