Ketin Clarke

Of The History

• Of a Young Half-Breed

  WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!
  One night, on some insignificant planet in some distant, unknown corner of the universe, a young boy was plucked from the old orphanage in which he had spent his entire life, and whisked away by a great power. The men who took him were stoic and menacing, in crisp black uniforms donning a symbol that nobody in the orphanage recognized. Militant, surely, but of what force? Though intimidated, the keeper of the orphanage was forced to give up the boy when they presented her with the largest sum of gold she had ever seen. The boy did not want to go with the frightening men, naturally, but he had little choice once payment was made.
  They took the small boy onto a starship and put him in a bare room, where he waited in silence for the days that followed. He had never been on a starship before - few people had - though he would have preferred the adventure under different circumstances. It was so cold there, and the people were colder than the metal floor. Like robots - androids - opening his door to give him a freeze dried meal, and disappearing again until it was time to collect the waste.
  Then, the vessel landed, and the boy was hopeful that he would meet his new family now. He had fantasies to accompany him on the ride - dreams of some lonely, wealthy individual who would pay so great a sum just to have…A half-breed?
  No, the boy slashed that idea from his mind. Nobody wanted a half-breed. A detestable, diminutive subspecies of the human race, genetically modified with feral traits by the Galactic Slave Trade thousands of years ago. Created to serve the demand for exotic slaves, the idea of a young girl with a cat’s ears and tail was strangely alluring to specialty customers. Over time however, the novelty wore off, the half-breeds were set free, and the remainder of their genetic line retained the animal traits that they had been given.
  No wonder I had been given up at birth, the boy thought miserably one day, nobody wants a half-breed, not even a mother. Maybe she’d hoped she would get lucky and give birth to a human - but that doesn’t actually happen.
  When the door opened that last time and the boy was taken from his little room, any final fantasies of a pleasant life were dashed away. Not on the surface of a planet, but rather beneath it, the boy was presented with a long, white hallway, and a line of men more formally clad then those who had purchased him, though no less intimidating. Like officers, he thought, or scientists. Dressed in white. The man in the front smiled, but it was not a friendly smile. It was a toothy grin, dripping with a sense of victory. A sadistic intention. The boy trembled.
  When he next awoke, he was in a cell. It was a room the same size as what he had lived in on the starship for that long ride, but it was colder still. His clothing - old hand-me-downs - had been taken and replaced with soft, white cotton pants and a matching shirt, both which hung loosely on his lithe young body. His shoes had been taken, the steel floor was cold on his bare feet as he glanced anxiously about. Bars! No windows, but a bed and a toilet and sink, and bars! It was a prison! He sobbed and lay on the cot, trembling under the thin blanket they had provided. White. So much white.
  
  “13.” A voice, soft, but grating, wizened with age and yet dripping with that sense of opportunity, called from beyond the bars. The boy sat up, rubbing his blue eyes sleepily, and looked to the man. It was the bearded man whom he had met days before and not seen since. He must have been important, he was dressed like the other scientists, but he held the air about him of dominance. Sharp features, a gaunt face, that beard black with shots of gray and short, matching hair. He stood tall beyond the bars. The boy just watched him.
  “Good to see you awake.” He said, not smiling, though his voice not entirely unfriendly. Certainly not comforting, but any voice was a welcome sound to the boy. “I hope you’re doing well.”
  The boy nodded, though he certainly was not doing well by any means. He missed his friends. The bad food. His equally uncomfortable bed at the orphanage. As if being on a strange, foreign planet wasn’t bad enough, now he was trapped in this…facility?
  The Facility. That was what he would call this place in the coming years.
  With nothing to say to the man, he waited.
  “My name is Dr. Duros Aller.” The man introduced himself, expression unchanging. “I’m sorry I haven’t gotten the chance to meet you personally yet, but things have been very…busy.”
  A long moment of silence came over the cell, before the boy spoke up.
  “Why am I in this cell?” He asked - almost demanded, but there was just a faint enough hint of shyness in his voice to keep it from sounding too brash.
  “Don’t think of it as a cell, 13.” Dr. Aller said, smiling slightly. Almost comfortingly. Almost. “Think of it as…a bedroom. That’s what it is after all, isn’t it?”
  “Why am I here?” Straight to the point. Persistent.
  “You’re here, 13, because you’re going to be part of something wonderful. You may not be happy at first, but you will, trust me…” Again, Aller paused. “I must be off now. But we’ll see each other again, 13.”
  And that was it.
  For days - 13 assumed it was days, anyway, since time hardly passed in this white prison - he sat there, combating boredom by fantasizing about the world outside.
  Then, the cell door opened.
  
  Kicking and screaming, 13 was dragged down the hall, forcibly, by men clad in black uniforms. Their faces all looked the same, he would have thought, but the panic did not allow for coherent ideas. The adrenaline was pumping desperately through him, willing him to escape their grip, and failing hopelessly.
  He was taken to a dark room, and forced onto a table. It was cold metal - they strapped his arms, his waist, his neck to the table, and left him. His head rested on a platform with a hydraulic accordion beneath it, that allowed the position of his head to be adjusted. All the mechanical devices in this new room would have fascinated 13, if he wasn’t so scared for his life.
  How old am I, he thought, trying to distract himself from the terror. He recalled those years in the orphanage. Ten. Twelve. Fourteen. Fifteen. I’m fifteen.
  The reverie was broken when Dr. Aller entered the room, with some faceless assistant, no less menacing, but somehow less important looking.
  “Now, 13, we’re going to make you a new person. A very special person. A person who will do great things for the universe. It’s going to hurt a little, and for that I am deeply sorry, but anesthetics could potentially hinder the nerves, so you’ll just have to bear with us.”
  And 13 began to scream, with a horror deeper than any he had ever experienced in his young life.
  
  The following hours were a blur of pain and terror for young 13. That needle descending from the ceiling, that rugged gripping claw, pneumatic joints, hydraulic pistons that controlled arms and appendages, and his eye. The sight, disappearing, blinded by pain as his left eye, that deep blue orb of his, was ripped from his skull with the cold and hard efficiency of a machine. His head burned, his face burned, he passed out from the exhaustion and the pain.
  And when he awoke, he was back in his cell, lying on his cot, and he could see again.
  Was it a dream?
  No, something felt strange. He sat up, and immediately the pain returned - though it was different now. A furious throbbing in his head that morphed aimlessly into something beyond a headache - like his brain was tearing itself apart from the inside. Again, 13 screamed and clutched his temples, fingernails digging into the scalp beneath that orange mess of hair. He writhed around in the bed, flailing, kicking his legs and pounding his fists on the thin mattress. This time, the pain was different and did not allow him to pass out from exhaustion. Instead, he entered a dreamlike state of suffering, his head tearing itself apart as he lay there semiconscious, barely able to move, certainly unable to think.
  
  
  
  
  And then, over time, after some eternity of indescribable pain, 13 began to think again.
  But they were not his thoughts.
  Like voices, but unheard. No sound, only ideas. Feelings in his head. A sudden surge of emotion, a fleeting glimpse of someplace else in the Facility.
  The pain subsided over the coming days - though time remained irrelevant to 13 - and slowly, the new thoughts, feelings, sights, became more comprehendible.
  And finally, one night, laying on his cot, 13 closed his eyes and entered into the eyes of Dr. Aller, seeing what Aller saw as he walked down the hallway…to 13’s cell.
  13 sat bolt upright, looking guilty, but Aller seemed unphased.
  “You’re coming along very well, 13.” They must have been monitoring me, thought 13. But…he had no way of knowing that. How could he have known that there were sensors in the wall that were detecting the electromagnetic frequencies being produced by his brain? How could he have known that Dr. Aller had installed a cybernetic eye where his left used to be, that allowed him to see through the eyes of those nearby, and hear their thoughts?
  But 13 DID know. He was sure of it. Because he had taken it from the mind of Dr. Aller.
  
  Dr. Aller brought 13 to a room, far from his cell. There was no struggle this time, no guards in black uniforms either. When they arrived, 13 was ushered into a room with nothing but a chair, and a mirror. Left there alone, he looked himself over in that mirror, sitting in that chair, examining the eye that he had been given. Red and gold. Unnatural, split horizontally in the middle with red on the bottom, melding into that gold at the top of the iris. He poked at his hair - beneath it, on his left temple, was a little metal plate, from which protruded a black wire that twirled about and disappeared behind his ear - that detestable fox ear. He had felt it before, even seen it through Aller’s eyes, but it was different to see it through his own.
  Well, his own, and this new eye, which he supposed was his own now too. It would take some getting used to.
  “Focus.” Dr. Aller’s voice startled 13, he jumped in his seat somewhat. “Focus on the thoughts of the mirror.”
  It was an unusual riddle, he thought, but anything to focus his mind on was worth a try. So, trying to understand how a mirror could possibly produce the kinds of thoughts that he had learned to tap into he focused on the mirror.
  At first, he had tried to read his own thoughts; an endeavor which proved utterly impossible. So that was not what Aller wanted him to do.
  Then, he noticed something, and when he honed in on it, 13 understood. There was someone behind the mirror.
  They were afraid, they were angry, and they were evil. 13 knew it. He focused, and the thoughts began to flood in, fleeting wisps of memory, of intention…
  On the other side of the mirror, where the man sat cuffed to a chair and staring through the one-way mirror at the young, redheaded boy, the voice of Dr. Aller rang over the intercom.
  “The location.” he demanded, but the man remained silent.
  And 13 spoke. The man’s heart sank, seeing the boy speaking, his lips moving silently.
  “NDS543-5432.” Said 13. “That’s what he’s thinking, but I don’t know what it means.”
  Aller appeared again in the doorway, beckoning 13 toward him. Hesitantly, the boy stood and approached the middle aged man, who embraced him lovingly.
  13 cried.
  “You’ve done a wonderful thing my son.” Said Aller.
  And he took 13 back to his cell.
  
  Not long after the interrogation, 13 began his training.
  “You are going to be a member of the Galactic Army.” Aller told him one day, sitting on his bed beside him. “You are going to use your gift to lead talented men into battle, to find their enemies and allow them to dispatch them for the glory of the Galactic Empire. And you will bring great honor to me, my son, and to yourself.”
  13’s eyes were filled with tears at Aller’s speech. The idea of it all was overwhelming, but those were tears of joy, and 13 was more than willing to accept the responsibility. For his father.
  Training was long, and hard. For a grueling year, 13 honed his skills, learned to live with that all-seeing eye as though it were a natural part of him, and it became as such. Through the months of interrogating, of learning to efficiently determine the location of ten, fifteen individuals at once, seeing through the eyes of one to locate the others, 13 became a terrible, powerful weapon.
  By intercepting the electronic signals sent from the retina to the brain, 13 could instantly live through the eyes of anyone within fifty yards in any direction. He could intercept the signals that formed thought, emotion, memory, and read fleeting wisps of those as he saw what they saw. When he had finally become one with his new eye, his training was finished.
  
  13’s first set of combat fatigues did not fit him well. They were too big on his little body - even at sixteen years old, he was still small of stature. There was no time however, to make him a more well fitting uniform, because the war, 13’s father had told him, had begun.
  They had found the rebels, weeded them out, and the surface of the planet Ardella was being torn apart by battle day by day. So far underground, 13 had been unaware of the combat on the surface, and he was anxious to go up. But it was his duty, he remembered, he was going to bring great honor to Father.
  So 13 was introduced to the platoon of men whom he would command for the coming battles. None of them seemed too pleased that they were to be taking orders from a teenager, but they knew what 13 was capable of, and they respected that enough.
  Loaded into an armored vehicle, 13 and his platoon were shipped to the front lines in their black uniforms, all bearing the proud symbol of the Galactic Empire.
  The rebels had done a terrible job in destroying the once beautiful vistas of Ardella. Father had told him stories of how lush and green the surface had once been, but now there was only blackened, charred remains. The dust and the gravel were all that were left, all because the citizens of the Empire couldn’t be content with their policies. Trivial matters that individuals too stupid to think for themselves deemed to be worthy of arbitrarily destroying a planet for.
  13 hated them. He hated the way that they fled when he and his platoon approached. Die with dignity, he thought, face up to your stupidity and die at the hands of my men! 13 built a reputation on the battlefield rapidly - no force against Platoon 13 stood a chance. They tore through the ravaged lands, mowed down the rebels where they stood, and after a long campaign, they arrived at the rebel’s capital city.
  Adrusade. Once the capital of the Empire, Father had told him, but the rebels spread their lies and their deceit to every corner until the Empire was driven out - and the officials killed in their homes. Disgusting. The rebels could hardly fight with honor even on the battlefield, hiding desperately behind cover, inside ruined buildings, trying harder to stay alive than to bring victory to their cause. What kind of cause was worth half-fighting for?
  When 13 received his orders directly from Father, he knew that the conquest of Adrusade was vital. There was to be no mistake. No mercy. Destroy every living soul in the city.
  And 13 saw to it that Father’s orders were carried out with extreme precision.
  For three weeks, 13 barely slept. His only purpose in life now was the final extermination of the rebels in Adrusade. Every waking moment he spent in the eyes of some stupid rebel, watching as they tried to save themselves or their children, or as they tried pitifully to fight back by shouting out their windows. Shouting! Protesting! As if they thought they stood a chance to begin with - perhaps they simply wanted to die with a bang instead of a whimper.
  But they all whimpered, 13 thought.
  How he hated them! How he loathed their pitiful cries for mercy, how he laughed as the rebel children were gunned down. He laughed, and he watched, through their eyes as they died screaming, through the eyes of the fearless soldier tearing them to shreds.
  Kill! KILL! Every last stinking maggot! Glory to the Empire! For Father and for my country! KILL! KILL!
  And at last, the war was won. Adrusade was a lifeless husk of a city, and not a single living soul stepped foot within its’ borders for a hundred years.
  
  13 was welcomed back home at the Facility with the honors of the greatest hero of the Empire. Without him, the war would have not been won - or at least it would have taken more grueling years. Instead, the whole ordeal took only a single year, with 13 present for a mere 6 months of it.
  The last thing that 13 had wanted was to retire from his military career now, and Father knew that. As such, he was taken again to that operating room, strapped down once more but now there was no struggling this time. An upgrade, Father had told him, and 13 gladly accepted the gift.
  Now able to manipulate electronic and electromagnetic signals, 13 was given the task of working with computers. Instead of fighting on the front lines, he was fighting behind them, making sure that the Empire’s newfound power over the stupid people of Ardella stayed strong and true.
  It was more of a challenge now. 13 could not interfere with the signals that operated an intelligent brain, because they were far too complex. As such he could not simply make people do what he wanted - and besides, the Facility was too far underground and isolated from the cities for his influence to reach anyway. Instead, he was limited to computers, which was just as powerful once he got the hang of it - if not more so.
  He could control the electronics of anything that could be influenced by other electronics. He could see through the lenses of security cameras, he could access data from any corner of the net, he could tamper with peoples’ personal data - he was a god here, and the feeling was euphoric.
  Over the next year, 13 kept the people of Ardella in line. He made potential rebels dissapear by whatever means necessary; anything from hacking illegal or false information into their personal computers, to opening fire on them from remote security turrets and passing it off as a freak accident.
  Before long, 13 had total control over the entire network of Ardella. But there was something wrong. There was more data out there, connected to the Ardella network, that he did not have access to. It was as if there was nothing there, but 13 could feel it. He knew it. It was being hidden from him, just outside of his proverbial vision. He had to find out what it was.
  It didn’t take a great deal of effort. 13 was easily able to gain access to that hidden net, and what he found there shocked him to the core.
  Ardella was the whole of the Galactic Empire’s territory. They were sending dropships out to begin conquering other worlds, sure. Soon, they would likely be an actual galactic empire, but for now? They had been bound to Ardella the whole time.
  What was worse?
  Ardella had never been the paradise that Father had told him it was. There were never lush green fields, grand pine forests. It had been a barren wasteland of black rock and brittle limestone when the first settlers had arrived there…
  In exile from the Sol Republic.
  The Sol Republic was the largest, most powerful regime in the known, habited universe. Two hundred years prior, the ancestors of Father and the Galactic Empire had tried to stage a rebellion against the Republic, and failed. They were exiled to Ardella for their crimes, and from there, a divergence occurred. Some of the exiled were content to build cities and live out their lives, but others still wanted to rule. They continued their rebellion, allowing the passives to build their cities, giving them just enough time to settle in, before…
  Before beginning to build their army again.
  Before beginning the cybernetics research that allowed 13 to reign supreme over the nets and the minds and eyes of men.
  Before beginning to spread out again into the universe to destroy the Sol Republic from within.
  Before beginning to make 13 feel like some great war hero, crushing the resistance of a peaceful and glorious empire, when instead all he was doing was destroying the lives of thousands of people who just wanted to live in peace. People who were frightened of him. People who had done nothing wrong, save for being cursed with their ancestors - the same ancestors as those in the GE - as Father! - who were elitist pigs who thought that they deserved all the power in the universe just because they said so.
  The more 13 researched into this new outer-net, the more he despised the people he had grown to love. Had he grown? No, he had been forced. Coerced. Brainwashed. And he had killed for them. Killed children.
  Willingly.
  By choice.
  Because that man who tortured him and altered him and claimed to love him…
  Had just been using him to kiss up to the so-called Emperor. To get a good seat of power. A comfortable life.
  While I lived in a cell for my entire life!
  13 despaired. The despair turned to rage, but he hid it - he kept his emotions under control. Now was not the time.
  But that time would come.
  
  13 turned 18 years old. He would not have know it if he hadn’t researched his birth certificate and determined the date of his birth. Unfortunately, his parents information had never been recorded - not uncommon. He was still small, still short, but he was wiser now. He knew.
  When they took him to the operating room again, Aller had told him he was getting the ultimate upgrade. This time, he had to fight it. No more upgrades! And Aller would not tell him what it was? There was no reason for that - 13 had been freely given all information since his victory over - his massacre of - the people of Adrusade.
  And 13 knew what it was.
  They were going to make him immortal.
  
  They forced him onto the operating table, cutting the wire that linked his eye to his brain, and that was when the truest panic since the eye was installed set in. 13 had spent the last 3 years connected at least subconsciously to every mind in his vicinity, every computer or electronic device within range, and now he was confined to his own head. It was terrifying. He felt like his brain was closing in on him.
  And the world went black.
  
  When 13 awoke, his eye had been restored, but the doctors - and Aller - looked surprised. 13 was surprised too - he was still in the operating room - he had awoken early!
  He could feel it inside him - the eye manipulating his brain, integrated so thoroughly that it was able to constantly repair his cells - not enough to heal wounds or give him regenerative properties, but enough to counteract the systematic degradation of cells that lead to aging. He was trapped at this age now, forever.
  Sure, he could kill himself, but there was a frightened young boy under all those cybernetics in his head. 13 did not want to die. He wanted to be free. To live a normal life.
  And he screamed again.
  The idea that he would be stuck like this - that they had done it to him and he failed to stop them…that they had lied to him all along and that Aller’s love was nothing but manipulation…it was too much.
  13 screamed and pressed himself down into the operating table, clawing at the metal surface as he writhed about, eyes closed tight as the newly upgraded electromagnetic manipulations systems in his eye went to work at creating meaningless chaos throughout the room. Small, loose objects went flying at incredible speeds, with no control over their direction, as the magnetic pulses which surrounded them went mad. A scalpel shot with the velocity of a bullet straight through Aller’s left eye, and he slumped over, bleeding out of the wound onto the white floors.
  13 sat up just in time for the soldiers in black uniforms to enter through the sliding doors and raise their rifles at him. They pulled the triggers, but the weapons backfired violently, tearing their heads into shreds, spattering blood in a gruesome show of violence.
  13 stepped off the table, and slipped in the accumulating pool of crimson that had jetted from Aller’s head. Falling hard and spattering his face with it, he looked into the lifeless eye of the man whom he had called Father, and his heart sank deeper than he could have imagined.
  No more killing, he thought.
  No more killing.
  
  13 leapt over the twitching corpses of the guards who only moments ago had intended on ending his life. Wiping Aller’s blood off his face with the white sleeve of his relaxed wear as he ran barefoot down the hall, alarms began to sound. They startled 13, who had never known anything but sterile silence in these halls, but he held his focus. This was not going to be easy.
  Having immediately been declared rogue, 13 had become a target and every guard in the Facility fully intended to end the life of the pretentious little brat that they had been forced to obey and respect for those three years. 13 raced down the halls, calling up in his mind a map of the Facility from their own databanks, seizing control of defense turrets both to allow him to pass unharmed, and to shoot wildly at the feet of the pursuing guards. Random clutter went flying as he passed, being close enough for the intense electromagnetic disturbance to affect them.
  And at last, after a bout of skillful navigation through the Facility’s endless white corridors, 13 arrived at the starship docking station - the massive dome that breached the surface of Ardella and allowed for great behemoth cargo vessels to land and supply the Empire.
  It was easy to determine which cargo vessel of the numerous that had docked there was about to launch, and continently, there were two. One was manned, the other automated - piloted remotely from somewhere far away. Accessing the manned vessel’s systems and overriding the safety protocols 13 opened the rear cargo bay door just enough to slip in and close it again, just in time for the vessel to begin its’ ascent into the sky. As it rose above the surface of Ardella, 13 pinpointed the location of the missiles that were homing in on him from the Facility’s air defenses.
  13’s eye caused a slight, though extremely distinct disturbance in the electromagnetic field surrounding him. The Empire had developed missiles that could track that disturbance - they had defenses in place to snuff him out the whole time.
  The realization made 13 want to cry, but he held those tears back, instead focusing on the automated cargo ship which had launched at the same time as the one had had stowed away on. There he caused as much chaos in the systems as he could, overloading the computers, causing critical failures all over the machine - and by some stroke of luck, the missiles rerouted and made contact with the wrong vessel.
  The Facility staff must have told the crew of 13’s cargo vessel that they had made a mistake, presuming their fugitive to have been destroyed in the blast, because the crew never searched for him.
  Now safe aboard the ship, with his entire life behind him, 13 cried. He sobbed himself to sleep, and he dreamt of Dr. Aller’s face; the way he smiled that day, just over three years ago.
  
  After days of hiding out aboard the cargo vessel, it landed and 13 was able to sneak off into town. It was a dark, seedy city, but it was better than the cramped quarters on the ship, so he went out exploring. With some credits that he had managed to snag from the crew when they weren’t looking, 13 went to an old thrift store tucked away under a bridge somewhere in the heart of the city of which he didn’t even know the name - because he had not checked. He picked out some old jeans, canvas shoes, a T shirt, and tossed it onto the counter, where an old woman smiled warmly at him. It was the warmest smile 13 had ever been given, and he returned it wholeheartedly.
  The woman rang up the purchase, and 13 used up the paltry funds he had on them, using the changing room to dispose of the sweaty old white cotton with the blood on the sleeve that he had been stuck in for so long. When he emerged from the dressing room, that woman was still smiling at him as he ruffled up his hair, glancing somewhat vainly in a mirror on the wall.
  She beckoned him to come closer with a finger, and curiously, he did.
  She produced from a rack a leather jacket. It was fine leather, dark auburn, a deep, rich color. She slipped it over 13’s shoulders, and he put his arms through. It was just slightly too large on his lithe form, but the old woman smiled at him anyway.
  “You’re a handsome young fellow, you know.” she said, grinning. 13 smiled cutely. “What’s your name, son?”
  13 almost said “13”, but he stopped himself. That wasn’t a name, he thought. That was the identity that Aller had given him. 13 of 13, lucky 13, the one successful experiment. It was Friday somewhere, he thought, amusedly. But his name, what was his name? When he lived in the orphanage, he had a name - a generic name given to him by the owner. A meaningless name. 13 had a golden opportunity here - to choose his own name - a name that was meaningful. A name that would stay with him forever.
  “Ketin.” He said, nodding sagely.
  “Well Kete, I’m sure you’ve got a long life ahead of you. Make good use of that jacket will you?”
  “I will.” Ketin replied, and could not stop himself from reaching around to embrace the old woman as though she were some long lost relative. “Thank you.”
  
  Ketin left that city on another cargo ship, and he began to travel. No responsibilities now, only adventure. A life to be had. It looked good.
  He took work when he could get it, he slept in alleys and in hotels. He stayed with kind families, lived for weeks or months in dingy apartments with irritable landlords. He made friends, he made enemies, and he traveled on, and on. Three hundred years passed, and Ketin was still the same. He watched as the Galactic Empire grew and grew until it overcame the Sol Republic as the dominating force in the universe. It bothered him deeply to know that he allowed it to happen - the GE turned out to be just as evil and corrupt as he had expected it too.
  Not all was lost, however. The universe was an exceptionally large place, and there were thousands of populated planets that had never even heard of the Sol Republic or the Galactic Empire. There were planets in all periods of development ; some were so ancient that they had reverted to the ages before space travel. The universe was big enough for him, thought Ketin. There was lots of room to run from his guilt.
  [IMG][/img][/IMG]
  
  Back on Ardella, deep underground, cell number 13 was empty. The cot that the boy had slept in those three years, the bars he had gazed endlessly through, the sink and toilet, and a counter; on which sat a white microwave oven. On the front of the door of that microwave oven was the little emblem of the company that made it - an artistic “K”. Under it, in streamlined letters, the company’s name was spelled out.
  “Ketin.”