NOTE: This story needs to be edited and there are changes that need to be made before it is published.

Chapter 1

Strange encounter

An old man was feebly moving his arms and legs while lying in the dirty little alcove where the Convention Centre ended, and the next building started. The sprawled figure appeared to be cold, worn, wet, and disorientated.  Jason Lerner paused in the cold, wet sleet for reasons that would be hard to explain. Afterward, he decided it was the fact his great-grandfather had frozen to death in Boston just after the war that had motivated him to stop, although, at the time, this reason did not consciously register. In truth, it was simply the sight of an old man who appeared to be in trouble that brought out feelings of benevolence towards his fellow man. Plus, the fact he looked to be dressed like one of the cosplay participants at the convention may well have had something to do with it. There was practically no one else in sight this late, and the traffic swishing past in the wet conditions had declined to merely a steady trickle rather than the daytime charging herd.

“Hey, man. You been mugged or just slipped over in the wet?” He asked, moving to the huddled figure and bending down to lend the moving and, therefore, not yet dead oldster a hand.

The huddled figure tried to brush his hand away rather weekly and muttered something doleful Jason couldn’t catch.

“Come on, old man. You can’t stay here. You’ll freeze to death by morning!” He said loudly and took firm hold of the huddled form.

Still muttering, the old man relented enough to allow himself to be pulled up with the sodden and battered-looking coat he was wearing falling open to reveal black trousers made of some shiny synthetic-looking material that was obviously expensive but now rather begrimed, plus he had on dark, elaborate leather boots. His shirt was some silken material, a dark grey with silver flecks forming some sort of pattern that was too hard to make out in the dim light afforded by the street light a little further along the boulevard. The silver filigree, or whatever it was, almost seemed to writhe on its own as if it was alive. Must have been at the convention for sure, Jason said to himself, seeing the rich and strange clothing underneath.

ARCon wasn’t one of the real big conventions, but it was one of the better ones, or at least Jason thought it was. It was one of the few literary-themed conventions still running these days, rather than being movie franchise or pop culture based. Or at least it had been. The comic book superhero juggernaut was slowly overwhelming the more traditional literary aspects of the convention, which he supposed was to be expected in this day and age, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. With the recent changes to its coverage, it now attracted a more diverse crowd, and the cosplay people could be anything from a hobbit to a Marvel character to something really obscure.