Empire's Son: An Epic Science Fiction Novel Series

I repositioned the old Halloween costumes into the box that was marked for Goodwill so they wouldn't tumble onto the floor, and then stood up to review my progress. There were seven other boxes nearly bursting with old items we no longer needed or wanted to be hauled off to the thrift store. It felt good to have it done, but I was not happy about missing out on a weekend with Anna. Mom had insisted this needed to be done because we'd been putting it off for too long, so Dad and I had been spending our Saturday afternoon helping mom get rid of the old. I watched as he came out to the garage with box number nine.

I sighed. "How much more?"

Dad shook his head. "Don't know, but she's on a warpath. I'll be surprised if we have anything left but the essentials by the time she's done."

I looked into the box to see an old soccer trophy sticking out of the top. I reached in to grab it with a stab of disappointment. "Really? She's throwing out my trophies now?"

Dad gave me a dangerous look. He knew how Mom got when people tried to save things from the "get rid go it" boxes. "If you wanted it so badly, then why was it in the attic?"

I rubbed the worn tip of an almost palm-sized metal gold star. At the center of that star was a black and white soccer ball and a small plaque stating our team's first place win for the season.

"I forgot it was up there. It must have gotten misplaced when I repainted my room a few years back." I set the trophy on the worktable beside me. It was the one and only time I'd played soccer. I had gotten into other extracurricular activities in third grade and beyond, but I had always felt proud at being a part of a winning team the first and only time I'd ever played.

"Don't let your mother see that," Dad warned with a stern look.

I scooted the trophy back behind the toolbox on the table in case Mom decided to come out to the garage. I nearly jumped and put the trophy back in the box when the garage door opened, but it was only Emmaline. I did a double take as it registered what she was wearing.

My fourteen-year-old sister looked like a straight-up hooker. She had on black fishnet stockings, a short black shirt that rode so far up you'd see the glory land if she'd bent over, and a bright pink halter top that was more of a wide belt than an actual shirt. The most disturbing were the two big mounds underneath that halter top. They were significantly bigger than they should have been, not that I paid much mind to that sort of thing on my sister. But these were hard to ignore.

"Whoa!" I said as I quickly crossed the garage to step in front of her. She'd come out the door clearly, hoping we wouldn't see her as she made a mad dash for the open garage door and the street just beyond. "Where do you think you're going, little sis?"

"Out!" she said in a crisp tone from her blood-red lipsticked mouth. She tried to duck around me, but I moved to block her. She stood there, scowling at me.

"Oh, I don't think so. You need to go upstairs and change out of your little Halloween get-up, right this minute."

"You aren't the boss of me! And this isn't a costume, Michael. This is the new me!" Emmaline said as she crossed her arms under her new extra-large mounds.

"Dad?!" I said to our father with an expectant look, knowing that even if she wouldn't listen to me, dad would lie down the law, not that I was a fan of getting in trouble or putting my siblings in hot water. But this sort of thing would lead to all the wrong kinds of trouble. There was no way I was letting my baby sister walk onto the streets of New York looking like that!

I was surprised when I heard nothing as I watched him trying to stack the donation boxes. In fact, the one he'd just stacked gracelessly careened to the floor, causing him to cuss as the contents went flying everywhere.

"Dad?" I said again, trying to refocus him. This was important. Didn't he care that his fourteen-year-old daughter looked like a freaking call girl?

"See. He doesn't care," Emmaline gloated with a smug smile. "I'll be back by midnight. Maybe." She had backed away from me and went around the front of the BMW I had dashed around to stop her. She walked right past dad as he started throwing things back into the box, and around the other side of the car.

I moved to intercept her, only to find a large buff dude standing in my way at the trunk of the car. He had a shaved head, arms the size of tree trunks, and stood nearly a head taller than me. Where the fuck had he come from?

I blinked at the man as Emmaline came to stand by his side with a wide grin. "Oh, I see you've met Lyle. Isn't my boyfriend dreamy?" She wrapped an arm around his large bicep, which was easily three sizes larger than my own.

"What happened to Brad?"

"Oh, Brad is old news. Lyle is much more my style."

I eyed the man before me. He looked closer to his early twenties than his teens. "And how old are you, Lyle?"

Emmaline rolled her eyes. "Get over it, Michael. He loves me, and I love him." She pulled Lyle out toward the street and the shiny blue Corvette that was sitting there. I never even heard it drive up. "Don't wait up for us!" she called.

Lyle gave me a toothy grin that totally dared me to stop him, and then he let Emmaline lead him to the street. I stood with mouth wide open as I watched them getting into the car, wondering why I couldn't seem to say or do anything. I was powerless to stop them.

The car engine revved, and Lyle screeched the tires as he peeled away from the curb. It wasn't until then that I could move. I saw Dad standing there watching them go.

"What the hell?! Why didn't you stop them?" I knew he could, even better than I did. Lyle's enormous size wouldn't have even been an issue for my dad. He would have dropped him in a second and made Lyle scream for his mother.

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Dad shrugged. "She said she'd be home by midnight." He then turned to walk back into the garage. He made for the door leading into the kitchen and shut it behind him, leaving me alone. All I could do was stare and wonder about the bizzaro world I was suddenly in.

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

I shook my head, trying to process what had just happened and in a panic. I didn't like the looks of Lyle or the glint he had in his eye. I knew I had to save my sister, even if Dad had lost his freaking mind. I strolled back into the garage as my mind raced with what to do when a loud crack jolted me out of my thoughts.

I turned to the sound to find a jagged crack in the wall that connected the garage and the kitchen. Where the heck had that come from, and why hadn't Dad noticed it? It was quite large as it's zigzagging line ran from the ceiling and almost to the floor. I watched the crack as it seemed to widen.

The next moment, a golden light started to radiate from it. For a moment, I could just stare at the growing fissure, and then I took a hesitant step forward. After another step toward the wall, I could reach out a hand to the crack. I felt a sudden tug, and before I knew what was happening; I was being sucked into a vortex of golden light.

The world around me shifted and changed. I felt my insides squeeze tight, and it almost made me throw up. Then I felt the pressure on the outside and I just knew I'd be crushed like a grape. And then, as suddenly as it started, everything stopped. The gold brilliance around me dimmed until it disappeared altogether, and then I looked around me in absolute confusion.

I was no longer in my parent's garage, or even New York City for that matter. I was in a room of black and white. The floor beneath me was some sort of hard, shiny substance, and it was black as night. It stretched out as far as I could see in every direction, even behind me where the garage should have been. There were no walls or ceiling that I could see. There was just a pulsing soft white light ahead, above, and on every side of me; only the darkness of the floor broke up the white.

"Where the hell am I?" I said.

There was no answer, not even any sound. There was total silence. I took a tentative step forward. I heard the clack of my boots as they slapped across the floor. I looked down at myself. The Earth clothes I had been wearing while I was in the garage had disappeared. I was now wearing a royal blue and gold long coat. The one I'd been wearing before slipping into sleeping attire and going to sleep aboard the Quortous.

I frowned, my hand touching the elaborate scrolled embroidery on my chest. This wasn't right. I had been dreaming about my life on Earth—about my family, about Emmaline's bizarre behavior that never actually happened. The dream had felt so real, so vivid that for a moment I'd forgotten who I truly was.

"A dream within a dream," I muttered, my voice echoing strangely in the vast emptiness surrounding me. "Or something else entirely."

I took another step forward, the sound of my boots against the obsidian floor reverberating through the strange space. The white light pulsed in response, as if acknowledging my presence. It reminded me of the way the inside of a Remaker looked when I stepped in for a treatment.

"Hello?" I called out. "Is anyone here?"

I heard the laughter of a child from behind. I swirled around and, to my surprise, I saw a little girl, no more than five or six, standing a few feet from me. She wore a pale blue dress that brushed the tops of her shiny black shoes. She had two braided pigtails that settled across her shoulders and a scattering of bright freckles across her face. She grinned at me and then turned to run.

"Wait!" I yelled at her to stop. "I just want to know who you are and what this place is!"

The girl skidded to a stop and looked back at me with an incredulous expression on her pixie face. "You don't know where you are? Are you playing a trick on me?"

I shook my head. "No, no trick. I really don't know what this place is. Please could you tell me?"

The girl stood there for a long moment, as if unsure what to do, and then she took a tentative step forward. She came back across the black shiny floor to stop about where I had seen her before.

"You are in the dreamscape." She tilted her head to the side inquisitively. "How can you be in the dreamscape and not know you are here?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "I don't know. I was having a dream." I stopped as I thought of Emmaline's garish behavior. "Well, more of a nightmare when I saw a crack in the wall. I got close to the crack… and, well, I guess I came here."

The little girl's eyes widened. "You saw a crack? A golden crack?"

"Yes," I replied, suddenly alert. "Do you know what it means?"

She nodded solemnly, her pigtails bouncing with the movement. "The dreamscape has invited you in. That means you can travel it now."

"I take that sort of thing isn't normal?"

The girl shook her head. "No, usually dream walkers are born. They already know how to get here. Those who come from the crack are different."

"Different how?"

"You weren't born a dream walker, silly." She said like it were the most obvious answer in the world.

I blinked at the girl, trying to wrap my brain around what she was saying. "Then how am I here?"

The girl shrugged and then ran away. She laughed as she raced away from me.

"Wait!" I called, jogging after her across the endless black floor. "Please, I need to understand what's happening!"

Her laughter echoed as she darted ahead, her blue dress fluttering behind her. I quickened my pace, determined not to lose sight of the only person who might explain this place. The white light pulsed brighter as I moved, almost as if responding to my urgency.

"You have to catch me first!" she called over her shoulder, her voice carrying a playful lilt that contrasted with the eerie emptiness surrounding us.

I pushed myself harder, closing the distance between us. Just as my fingers were about to brush her shoulder, she vanished—simply blinked out of existence. I stumbled to a halt, spinning in a circle.

"That's not fair!" I shouted into the void.

"Life rarely is," came a different voice, deeper, older, and obviously male.

I whirled around to find an old man hunched over a cane. He hobbled toward me where moments ago there had been nothing. His weathered face was lined with countless wrinkles, and his eyes—a startling gold color—seemed to glow with an inner light. His clothing was simple: a gray robe that pooled around his feet as he moved.

"You're chasing shadows, young Adar," the old man said. "Or should I call you Michael? You seem confused about which one you are at the moment."

I stiffened. "How do you know my names?"

The old man chuckled, the sound like dry leaves rustling. "The dreamscape knows all dreamers, especially those marked by destiny." He tapped his cane against the obsidian floor, creating a ripple of golden light that spread outward.

"Marked by destiny?" I eyed the golden ripples with suspicion. "What does that mean?"

The old man eyed me intently for a moment, and then frowned. "Hmmm… you seem to be marked by something else as well."

I didn't like the way his golden eyes bored into me, like they could see right into my soul. "What are you talking about?"

The old man shook his head. His white wispy hair floating in all directions. "It is not my place to say, and I think I have said too much." He turned away and started to hobble away from me. His cane tapped across the black floor with a steady sound.

"What do you mean? Please, wait! Please, tell me what's going on?" I cried out to the man. I began walking toward him to catch up, but even though he did not change his pace, the man was clearly outpacing me. I blinked in shock.

"You should speak to the one who marked you." He said over his shoulder as he kept walking.

"And who was that?"

But the man did not answer, and before I knew what was happening, the old man's form started to shimmer, and then he too was gone. I stood there for a moment, looking at where he had been, wondering where he had gone, and what the hell he was talking about. Who had marked me?

It then came to me in a flash of realization.

Razivi.