The document provides backstory on Johnny and Jade, two young people who have been living alone on a deserted island for months. They are attacked by armed men in black wetsuits who capture Johnny. Jade is able to escape on an invisible alien spacecraft. Though frightened, she uses the ship's controls for the first time to locate Johnny, who has been taken by the attackers.

1. -Preface-
The sub cruised silently under the azure waters, ripples of
light reflecting off her dark hull, looking not unlike the
blue and grey sharks that inhabited these seas. And like the
sharks, the sub was wide-awake and alert.
Captain Frank Little entered the bridge and took up his
position in the centre of the small, crowded room.
‘Officer on deck!’ the shout went out. His junior
officers stood to attention, and he relaxed them with a lazy
wave of the hand. He was well respected by his crew, and
rightly so. Young for command, he led his men by
example, and expected his officers to follow suit. He was
strict but fair, and not above sharing a joke with even the
lowliest of men.
‘All in order?’ he asked nobody in particular.
‘Yes Sir!’
‘Good,’ he replied. ‘Give me an update. Heading and
position, if you please,’ he instructed.
‘We are currently on station off the north coast of
Cuba, Sir – fifty-three nautical miles due north of Cayo
Romano, and thirty-nine miles south of South Andros
Island, Sir. Heading one-two-zero.’
Captain Little looked down at the charts on the desk in
front of him which showed the islands of the Bahamas.
The twin islands of Andros stared back at him, with the
bulk of Cuba to the south. East of Andros was a tiny line
of islands, like a string of pearls, with evoking names like
Rudder Cut Cay, Compass Cay, and Big Farmers Cay.
He pondered the map for a moment before raising his
head. ‘Make ready to surface,’ he barked. ‘New heading
zero-one-five.’

2. The helmsman echoed his order as bells and alarms
signalled the sub’s intentions. He made his way to the
conning tower, and the moment they were on the surface
he opened the hatch and clambered outside.
‘Aah ...’ he breathed in the sweet, warm air. It was
stunningly beautiful outside, and not for the first time did
he dream of the day that he could afford to take a year out
of his life and sail his little yacht, “The Swallow”, around
these islands at his leisure, dropping anchor on a whim.
His second in command, Lieutenant Seers, joined him
on the tower.
‘Anything out of place, Captain?’ he asked politely.
Little stood with both hands on the bridge, staring across
the unbelievably blue sea at the smudge of land in the
distance that was Andros. He ignored the question.
Lieutenant Seers was well aware, as were the rest of the
crew, that a nuclear submarine such as this could remain
submerged indefinitely, and his polite enquiry masked
genuine curiosity.
‘Order full stop, Lieutenant,’ he ordered. Seers’
eyebrows rose a few inches, but he knew better than to
question his captains orders.
‘All stop! I repeat: All stop!’ he shouted into the black
hand piece.
Captain Frank Little gave his second-in-command his
sternest glare. ‘I want the crew organized into teams of
twenty, mister Seers. I want them paraded one group at a
time on deck for my personal inspection.’
‘Yes Sir!’
‘Dress code, Seers: Bathing trunks and water wings!
Understood?’ he asked, frowning.

3. A wide grin split Seers’s face as he replied,
‘Understood, Sir!’ before disappearing down the ladder
into the gloom of the sub.
Let them have some fun, Little thought. Two months
bottled up in this tin can with no clear assignment is
enough to drive anyone crazy, and he wanted to let his
men blow off some steam.
The first group arrived shortly, excited and cheerful,
and he smiled indulgently as they swam and bathed in the
sun. By sunset they would be under the water again, and
not feel the warmth of the sun for many, many days.

4. Chapter 1
-The Island-
Johnny heard her footsteps on the sand and looked up in
pleasure. Jade walked towards him, a coconut cradled in
one arm, the other swinging in rhythm to the swaying of
her hips. He stared at them in wonder. It did funny things
to his stomach and made him feel slightly ill, but he had a
hard time tearing his eyes away nonetheless. She smiled at
him as she caught his eye, and he grinned back.
‘Enjoy your walk, my pretty butterfly?’ he asked her
playfully.
‘I did, my lord,’ she said, throwing him a kiss and a
wink. It really was incredible what a few months on a
secluded beach, miles from anybody else, could do for a
person’s soul. Day after blissful day they spent swimming,
eating, and talking – getting to know each other. Lying in
the sun and watching the palm fronds wave in the gentle
tropical breeze. Neither of them had ever experienced this
kind of life before.
Johnny came from the greys and browns of
Johannesburg, and he only knew tarmac roads and a
skyline broken by the skyscrapers of the city and the dirty
yellow mine dumps that pervaded three of the four Rands,
or regions, that surrounded the city. The East, West, and
South Rands all had them – only the North Rand, or
Northern suburbs, was free of these eyesores.
Jade, on the other hand, had never seen a tarred road
in her life, having grown up in the depths of the Brazilian
rainforest. Until a few months ago, her life had centred on
village culture, where one hunted or fished for food, spent
every evening around the communal village bonfire, and

5. retired at the end of the night to a grass hut in the middle
of the jungle. Johnny was the first person she had ever met
who wasn’t from her village, and she still thought of him as
a god.
This island setting was new to both of them. White
beaches, turquoise sea, blue, blue sky, and a sense of
wellbeing that even Jade had never known. They were at
peace, but it wasn’t always so. Their dramatic departure
from Jades village two months previously had impressed
upon both of them the danger and fragility of their
situation.
What had Cheryl Parker, the CIA agent who had
tracked them down to the deserted village, said?
‘You know that there are people out there who will try and stop
you, Johnny. A kid flying around in a UFO isn’t the kind of thing
that makes governments very comfortable.’
And that was the bones of it, really. All Johnny wanted
was that they be left alone. He wanted to keep Jade safe,
sheltered, and happy, but Cheryl’s words were never far
from his thoughts and he worried if, or when, her words
may turn prophetic.
Jade crossed her legs and sat down in the shade,
placing the large coconut on her lap. She started the long
process of de-husking it with the viciously sharp knife they
had found in the ship’s armoury, and Johnny felt a glow of
pride at her innocent independence; her unaffected
happiness. She had endured terrible trauma – losing the
old man that was as a father to her, then captured by the
brigands who had decimated her village and beaten her so
severely that, had it not been for the technology of the
ship, she may have died. Yet now she sat and hummed a
simple tune as she stripped the husk from the coconut.

6. Johnny felt a lump rise in his throat. She had saved his
life, even though she was on death’s doorstep herself. The
guerrilla leader, Francesco, had overpowered him on the
ship, and would have succeeded in gaining full control had
Jade not awoken from her pain-induced stupor, picked up
the discarded gun, and shot him in the head.
That simple action had some serious connotations.
The gun belonged to the ship and to the strange, blonde
gods who had built it and flown it thousands of years ago.
When Francesco attempted to use it, it had nearly taken his
hand off in a flash of blinding refusal, yet Jade had picked
it up and killed him without any difficulty. Johnny had
researched this enigma, questioning the ship at length, and
it had made it quite clear that both Jade and Johnny shared
a genetic link to these long lost people, whereas the
brigand did not.
Johnny and Jade both knew now that they weren’t
human, per se, despite appearances. While Johnny could see
quite plainly where Jades blood came from, he was at an
absolute loss as to where he may have inherited their
genes. Jade and her entire village claimed direct lineage
from the ancient gods, with Jade and the Guardian carrying
the royal gene undiluted through the millennia. But all that
Johnny knew about his own past was that his parents had
adopted him, and when his father told him, he’d knocked
him senseless and run away.
They couldn’t spend the rest of their lives on this tiny
island however, as attractive as it sounded, and Johnny had
been meaning to speak to Jade for several days now.
‘Goddess, the brilliance of your countenance fills me
with wonder, and I grovel in the presence of your divine
hotness!’ he said with gravity.

7. Jade giggled. She couldn’t resist it when he turned the
full force of his charm on her, but she had learnt to play
along. Without looking up from the coconut on her lap,
she replied.
‘Well, servant, I see you have yet to learn the sacred art
which is grovelling. It is a pity, for I am, in truth, a little
fond of you.’
‘Really, my queen? How much?’ he asked, laughter in
his eyes.
‘Just a little,’ she teased. She played along with real
pleasure, enjoying the game, but she was still a little in awe
of Johnny and it felt weird to be so familiar with him. She
knew she was in love with him, and she believed with all
her heart that he loved her too, but they were both still
very young – far too young to think of marriage or the
other benefits that went along with it. Johnny was thirteen,
though he looked and acted closer to seventeen, and Jade
was twelve, but – as with Johnny, she appeared a person
much older.
A stranger happening upon them may assume they
were high school sweethearts on the verge of adulthood,
and would have allowed them a certain degree of license
when it came to their private indulgences, but they didn’t
go there. In fact, they stopped short of open affection,
limiting themselves to affectionate teasing and innocent
flirting instead.
They both knew, though, and were content for the
moment.
Johnny smiled at Jade. ‘Such insolence! Why – mere
months ago you thought the sun shone out of my ...’
‘Johnny!’
‘Okay, okay – just kidding, my precious flower,’ he
laughed. ‘I actually wanted to speak to you about

8. something, Jade.’ She looked up at him, noting the use of
her name.
‘We know there must be others of our kind
somewhere, Jade,’ he said. ‘I’ve been wondering whether
...’
He didn’t finish his sentence. Jade was staring out over
the breakers, frowning in concern, and Johnny turned to
see what had distracted her. He heard it at the same time
that he saw it. A black inflatable dingy was skimming over
the water, about to reach the outer breakers, and several
men dressed in black were on board.
Jade seemed uncertain, having never seen an inflatable
boat or wetsuits before, but Johnny knew without a doubt
what was going on.
‘Run Jade! Run now! To the ship!’ he shouted. She still
seemed unsure, and Johnny grabbed her by the arm and
propelled her up the beach towards the ship.
‘The enemy is upon us!’ he shouted into her ear as they
ran, and she snapped out of her confusion. She had been
involved in attacks on her village by hostile tribes many
times in her young life. Her parents had died in just such
an attack, and she ran with renewed purpose.
The ship was invisible to the naked eye. They both
knew exactly where it was, however, as, besides the trail of
footprints they’d left over the last two months, it had the
very useful feature of leaving the ramp and doorway
visible, like a portal to nowhere.
Jade ran with Johnny directly behind her. She heard a
gunshot, and her heart stopped as she heard Johnny cry
out.
‘Johnny!’ she screamed, turning back. He lay sprawled
in the sand, holding his lower leg. The boat had reached

9. the shore and the men in black were running towards
them.
‘No! No! Run Jade! Get to the ship. Leave me! Get to
the ship – it will obey you, Jade. Trust me.’
Jade hesitated. She knew she didn’t have the strength
to carry Johnny, and the ship was still a dozen or more
meters away. The attackers had covered over half the
distance to them, and with despair, she realized they would
be on her within moments.
She turned and ran with all her might, hearing Johnny
urging her on as she ran. Glancing over her shoulder she
saw men stooping over him, and with a cry of fright, she
saw the rest coming directly at her. She ran up the ramp,
turned around, and placed her hand on the imprint used to
close it. The man in the lead was moments away, and she
sobbed with relief as the ramp shut just as he closed the
last few feet that separated them. She ran up the stairs to
the third level and sat down behind the controls. She
looked at the two indented handprints that she has seen
Johnny use so many times before and tried to swallow her
fear.
Although Johnny had come into her life nearly three
months ago, and although they had been together almost
constantly in that time, Jade had never interacted with the
ship before. Not at this level anyway. That was Johnny’s
department and she was quite happy to leave that to him.
Jade now had to face the fact that she had no choice,
and the ugly reality loomed over her like a dark shadow.
The ship killed or seriously harmed all who attempted to
use it without right. They had discussed at length the fact
that she shared Johnny’s genetic legacy, but she had never
actually put it to the test. Not in the cold hard light of day,
at least. It didn’t occur to her that the simple act of closing

10. the ramp proved it, and now she sat trembling at the main
controls of the ship.
Thinking of Johnny, she fought back her fear, closed
her eyes, placed her hands ten-tatively on the controls, and
let out a cry of delight. The entire view of the beach
opened up before her, even clearer than when she looked
at it with her own eyes. At the same time, she felt a warm,
energizing force flow through her body, and she knew now
how Johnny felt when in control of the ship, and why he
loved it so much.
‘Greetings Mistress. How may I serve?’