Empire's Son: An Epic Science Fiction Novel Series

A dull ache throbbed in my head as I tried to open my eyes, but they felt heavy and unwilling to cooperate. I attempted to move my body, but that felt too hard as well.

“Give it a minute. You were hit with a stunner. Those things can take a while to shake off, especially without a treatment,” a voice said somewhere to my left.

I tried to open my eyes to see who it was, but again they would not obey my command. I didn’t recognize the voice, and considering what had happened in the Hall of the Renowned that made me nervous.

“Who are you?” I tried to say, but all that really came out was an intelligible sound.

I heard quick steps coming toward me. “Relax, I’m a friend.”

I wanted to argue that I didn’t have friends, at least not in Ethia, not even Master Kiev. The memory of his betrayal sent a jolt of anger through me. I trusted him, and look where it got me. Though, at the moment, I didn’t know exactly where I was, or who this supposed “friend” might be.

I peered at the room around me as my eyes finally cooperated. The four walls were a deep umber-colored stone that met at a low ceiling. Along that ceiling ran a singular strip along all four walls and it glowed a pale yellow. It was barely enough to see by, not that there was much to see.

Besides the slender bed that almost didn’t hold my tall frame, there was only a small wooden table next to my bed and a matching chair between myself and a wide open door. There was no other furniture in the space, not that there was room for much else. I sniffed as I noticed a damp musty smell that reminded me of being in a basement.

“Are we underground?” I asked, finally getting my words to cooperate.

A man walked around the chair and came to stand next to the bed. He wore a skin tight black shirt and pants with hair closely cropped like all the others I’d seen at the College. It was hard to tell with the low light, but his eyes appeared dark almost like they were black, or a really dark gray. His skin had an olive tone to it. In fact, if he was from Earth, I’d say might be from Spain, Italy, or Greece. But the biggest thing I noticed about him was that he seemed familiar to me like I might know him, which was strange, because before that moment, I could swear I’d never set eyes on this person before.

“We are. It’s one of the old bunkers the College built when they first came here to get away from the violent sandstorms the planet can sometimes get, but they fell out of use years ago after the College installed a weather buffer.”

The man had a cylinder device in his grasp that I’d seen Caretaker Benite use on the Xlero before or right after some of my treatments. It usually delivered some sort medicine or vitamin cocktail that the Caretaker said I needed to get my physical body up to Ethian standards. Apparently, being on Earth for so long had been bad for my health, not that I had ever remembered being sick a single day of my life.

“This will help settle your muscles so you can move better. There will be a small pinch.” The man held the device to the side of my neck.

I felt the pinch. It was insignificant compared to the random spasming I had been experiencing through my body since waking. There was an instant cooling at the injection site that quickly spread to the rest of my body, and I let out a breath I didn’t realize I had been holding.

“Better?” The man asked as he took a step back and eyed me closely.

I nodded. I tested my arms and legs. They moved much easier and without feeling like they weighed a ton. I sat up and slowly swung my body around so that I was sitting on the edge of the bed. It felt a little shaky under me like it might not hold me up for much longer, or maybe that was just me. The room started to spin for a moment, but I closed my eyes until it passed. When I opened my eyes back up, the man had taken a seat in the chair and leaned back like he didn’t have a care in the world.

I narrowed my eyes at him, not sure I appreciated his unbothered attitude after all that had happened, or the fact that I had no clue where I was. “Who are you? Why am I here? What happened back at the Hall of the Renowned?”

For the first time, the man frowned at me. “You don’t recognize me at all, do you?”

I stared at him as once again that feeling of familiarity came over me, and yet, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where I knew this person. I shook my head. “No. I mean––” I hesitated not sure I should say anything at all, but I didn’t see any reason not to tell him, if he’d even believed me. “There is something. Like maybe I should know you, but I don’t know from where or why.”

The man’s frown deepened. “Aragon locked your memories of Ethia away, didn’t he? I suspected he might. He had talked about giving you a complete restart before he left with you. He said it might be the only way to give you your life back.”

I blinked at the other man. My whole world stopped as this man came into hyper focus like some invisible spotlight was shining down on him making him the most interesting person to date that I had met in Ethia. This man knew my dad in a seemingly personal way, and from the sounds of things, he knew me too before I had left the Empire.

“Who are you?” I asked again, though my tone now demanded more than asked.

The man’s lips parted in a smirk. “I’m Markus Nador. You lived with my family at River Palace for the first five years of your life.”

I sat up straight as I now realized why I was getting that familiar feeling. I did know this man, or had, in my previous life. Dad did say that if I wanted to unlock my other adaptable lock that I had to spend time with the Nadors, and here one sat right in front of me. Excitement bubbled up through me. Maybe it wouldn’t be long before I got my early memories of Ethia back. But then I remember where I was and what had happened at the Hall of the Renowned, and my excitement took a steep nose dive.

“Why are you here, and wait…” For the first time, I really took in his dark clothes that looked an awful like a body suit, which just so happened to be something a person would wear underneath a suit of armor. “Please tell me you weren’t the one in the black armor that killed those Pledges and knocked Master Kiev and I out?”

Markus chuckled like I’d said something immensely funny. It set my teeth on edge. “Those Pledges aren’t dead. I made sure the worst of the collapsed wall fell away from them. I just wanted to knock them out cold and make your abduction look good. They are both probably nestled in their Remakers right now rejuvenating themselves back to full health.”

It was like ice water had been injected in my veins as I took in the man’s words and his nonchalant behavior like he collapsed walls and abducted people everyday. I shivered and I wondered if maybe this was some weird joke. I had finally found a person that might help me remember my past life in Ethia, and he had freaking kidnapped me. What the actual fuck?

I stood up and ignored the room spinning as I did. I wasn’t about to stay in this room any longer than I had to. Markus stood up too, and he peered at me with his dark eyes with what I could only classify as concern.

“You really shouldn’t be moving for a little while, Adar. You aren’t fully over that hit from the stunner.”

I paused as I looked at the other man in disbelief. Never mind the fact that he’d zapped with with that stick, which of course, I did mind very much, but now he was using my first name? “What did you just call me?”

“Adar. That is your name, isn’t it?” Markus looked at me like I was a little touched in the head.

I opened my mouth to say something, and then abruptly shut it. He wasn’t wrong, but I had gotten so used to everyone but my father calling me by my title that hearing it from this complete stranger seemed wrong? Weird? Unsettling? Especially after the trouble I had gotten from Kiev over it.

“Yeah, it is.” I said absently as I tried to figure out what the heck was going on.

This guy claimed to have known me when I was a child. He definitely seemed to have known Aragon. Had we been friends, or just acquaintances? And why in the world was he knocking out Pledges and abducting me?

Master Kiev’s words came back to me. I apologize in advance for what’s about to happen, Adar. You have to know that I didn’t want it to go this way, but it’s getting harder to find people to trust at the College to protect you. And I know I could trust him.

A suspicion came to me and I shot Markus a sharp look. “Why did you bring me here?”

“To protect you,” the man said simply like it was an obvious fact.

I raised an eyebrow. “To protect me? This seems like an odd way to do that.”

Markus shrugged as he placed a foot on the seat of the wooden chair and leaned a forearm across the high backing, which I also couldn’t help but notice the he’d effectively blocked me from moving around him to the door.

“Well with those that are coming after you, and all the potential threats at the College, it seemed the best option. If we’d left you as you were, they would have taken another pass at you sooner rather than later, and I doubt they’d settle for just killing your guard the next go around.”

I looked around the room like I had missed a whole other person or persons even if the room really was too small for more than the two of us. “We?”

“I’ve had help from another Pledge. Her name is Gayle Tau-mine. She’s now setting up the second phase of my plan.”

There was a phase two? I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that, or what other craziness this person was cooking up. I blinked at the man. He seemed so incredibly calm about all of this, which must have been nice for him, because at this point I felt like I was teetering on the edge of a cliff.

The one person I thought I could trust had somehow been involved with getting me abducted by this person, who I wasn’t sure was an actual friend, or just someone pretending to be a friend for god knows what reason. How did I know if anything he said was even true?

A feeling of irritation and overwhelmingness rushed through me so strongly that I had to close my eyes for a moment and count to ten just like my mom had taught me for situations like this, though I could safely say I’d never been in quite this sort of position before. After a moment, I opened them and looked directly at the man in front of me with a hard glare as my mind finally settled on a course of action.

“If you want to help, then get out of my way. I think maybe my time at the College is over. This has gotten way out of hand, I’ll just have to pick a Protector from the White Palace.”

Markus snorted. “You do realize the assassination attempts will just follow you back there, and you’ll be without a Protector who might actually be able to at prevent some of those attempts from reaching you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Just some?”

The other man shrugged. “It really depends on the Protector. Some are more effective than others, and Zorren isn’t someone many people can counter effectively, not all the time.”

This news set me firmly back into the confusion state. “Wait? Zorren? What does he have to do with this?”

Markus blew out a long breath as he took his foot off the chair and stood to his full height, which was almost a head shorter than myself, but his presence made him seem like a much larger man. “I know you are eager to be elsewhere, but if you will sit down and give me a few minutes, I can explain what’s going on. Then if you really want to take a ship back to Dyniss, I will escort you to a shuttle myself.”

I paused for a moment to consider his offer. Was he being genuine? The weird thing was, I wasn’t getting any sort of emotions off this man, which I was starting to realize was a little weird. Since coming to Ethia, I had started to really rely on my Empathy Dome-ni to help me get a feel for the people I was around. I had found that most people were always emanating at least a small amount of emotions, and if I was standing face to face and talking to them, I could generally pick them up to some degree.

But with this man, he was like the Sahara Desert when it came to emotions. I wasn’t sure what to think about that and it certainly didn’t help my trust levels, but then I had gotten a lot of good feeling vibes from Master Kiev and look where it had gotten me.

I shook my head firmly. “No, I don’t think so.”

Markus was now standing to one side of the room, if I moved around the other side of the chair, I’d just be able to make it through the door. I wasn’t sure if he’d stop me, but at this point, I didn’t think I had anything to loose. I hesitated a moment as I realized that if I walked away from this man, I actually might loose a good chance at getting my old memories back. But if he was into abducting people, maybe I didn’t want to know more about him, or about the family he’d come from.

I moved my body around the chair and made for the door. I half expected him to stop me, but he didn’t. His eyes followed as I went, but he didn’t try to reach out or impede my progress. I stepped out of the tiny room to find myself in a much larger space. The walls, floor, and ceiling were still made out of rock, but it was about five times the size of the room I’d just exited.

There wasn’t much in the way of furniture. Most of the room was wide open except for a rather sad looking wooden table and chairs off to one side, a bank of shelves that spanned the entire left wall and had more cobwebs than stuff filling them, and a few heavy looking chests near were my room was, and all of it looked like it had been there since the College had first come to Sora X. One thing I couldn’t help but see was a noticeably new addition, which was a sleek black helmet and a matching set of body armor that had been discarded near the heavy chests. That sight made me walk faster to the closed door at the other end of the room.

“You know what the hardest part was when I had heard that your brothers had almost killed you all those years ago? That I hadn’t been there to help you. That you had to go through that all alone. When I finally got to see you after Aragon smuggled you out of the White Palace, you were but a shell of yourself. It was hard to see, but we spent two weeks together and you were starting to be you again.

“I could see the glimmers of it and I realized that you would be alright, eventually. But then, they decided you weren’t safe in the Empire anymore and you had to leave. I was devastated, especially when my father told me I couldn’t go with you. It made no sense to me. We were best friends and I was the one you were responding to, the one that was getting you to come back around. I wonder if Aragon would have found it necessary to lock your memories away if I could have had at least a little more time with you, or they would have let me go to wherever it was you went.”

His words had caused me to stop in my tracks. I was close to the middle of the larger room. I turned around to see the man standing in the doorway of the tiny room I’d vacated, and while I couldn’t feel the emotion coming from him, I could see them playing across his face––the sadness and regrets, and something else I couldn’t quite place.

“So we were friends?”

The man nodded. “You could say that. But I get it, you don’t know me, or remember me. You have no reason to trust anything I say, or do. And I suppose abducting you wasn’t the best way to reintroduce myself to you. Sorry, I tend to handle these kind of things badly.” And for the first time since I’d met this man, he looked uncomfortable and unsure of himself, which I knew instinctively wasn’t something he was used to.

“I just would like an opportunity to tell you my side of things,” he continued. “That’s all, Adar, and if you want to leave after that, then you can go. I won’t stop you.”

I turned to look toward the door of my exit, but I realized that I couldn’t go through it, not yet. I was curious about this man who claimed to once be a friend. I wasn’t sure about the whole abduction thing and stashing me in some underground cave, but I also realized that if this man wanted me dead, I would be. He certainly had plenty of opportunity. And if he had other nefarious plans, then maybe the best way to get to the bottom of them was to hear him out.

I also wasn’t completely defenseless. I had my knowledge of quat-lo and many other Earth based self-defense techniques my dad had taught me that this guy didn’t even know about. There really was no reason not to at least hear what he had to say. So I went to the nearby table and chairs. I had to swipe away a mass of cob webs and brush a thick layer of dust off the seat, but then I settled myself down and motioned for Markus to take the chair across from me. I did, however, make sure I was in the chair closest to the door.

He settled down and gave me a small smile. “I suppose I should start at the beginning. Well the beginning of me getting involved here at the College at least.”