Prologue:

The world was quiet for nine years. I never knew anything was wrong for nine whole years. And then the world I knew ended in a moment of blood and terror.

My mother and father brought me to this planet before I was even born. I was just a dream growing inside of my mother, one that she nurtured and cared for until the day that she died. We lived together in a small house out in the middle of fields. I don’t remember where exactly, not anymore. There’s been too many other places since then. For most of my life I’ve been running from one place to another dreading the day that my past finally catches up to me.

When I was a child living in that small house though I remember being happy. I remember my mother’s smile and her laugh. My father was less easy going, but he still cared for me in his own quiet way. I was nine years, 5 months, and so many days old the first time they came for me. Soldiers from another planet sent to hunt me down and bring me back to the home planet for reasons I didn’t understand for a long time.

My parents had grown careless and relaxed in the years after I’d been born. They hadn’t been expecting the attack and were caught completely defenseless. The last memory I have of my mother is the image of her being run through with a soldier’s sword as my father runs away with me in his arms. After that we spent years just running and hiding and never talking of that day.

There were nights though when he’d lay me down to bed—sometimes in an actual bed, sometimes in the backseat of a car, or in a sleeping bag—and he’d watch over me as I would try to sleep and he’d begin to tell me stories. Memories of his from the home planet; memories of 

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my mother, his childhood, and the planet before the King took over. Each story he told me I held onto like a precious gem.

We lived like that for years. Never staying in the same place for more than a year, always on the run, and always watching over our shoulders and waiting for the soldiers to find us again. When I was 17 though even that life came to an end. One day my father was there and the next all I had left was a note from him. He had run away again, but this time without me. My father had thought that us separating would be safer, harder to track. He left me with only his stories and money to help me survive on my own.

Thirteen years later and I still don’t know if he’s alive or dead. The only thing I do know is that I’m tired of running from monsters.