My story begins in much the same place as it ends: in a prison cell. Shivering. Dirty. Streaked in blood and dust. I sat on the floor in the corner of that tiny room, my head pressed against the soft, earthy wall, my knees hugging my chest, as more men than seemed could possibly fit within the cell stood shoulder to shoulder, arguing with one another or posing me questions I wasn’t really hearing. My entire world had risen up against me and changed in an instant, and there was no changing it back.

I hardly even knew my father. For as long as I could remember, he lived up on Oasis, running the universe - or at least that’s what it seemed like he did. I lived on a small island off the eastern coast of Tor, the main continent of Albatraz. The senior Maddock Traz, for whom I was named, visited maybe a couple times a year, all short visits, having as little to do with me or my life as possible. Until, that is, my eyes started to glow.

I didn’t even know anything had changed until I sat down in the kitchen for a meal and Margo, my caretaker, dropped my food on the floor and stood staring at me wide-eyed, her trembling hand half-covering her mouth. As soon as she got over her initial reaction of horror, she signaled my father immediately, as much so she could put in her resignation as the need to inform him of my “situation.” The very next morning, I was on a transport headed for the stars, or more accurately, the space station, Oasis. There, they had facilities for those like me, whose eyes shined with a pulsing light all their own, what they called “Prodigies.”

As the transport doors opened, I stepped down onto what I had been expecting would be a metal floor of some sort, but instead found my soles touching some kind of vegetation. It looked and felt sort of like moss, but it was a dull, grayish blue, and it spread across the entire floor, walls, and the ceilings of the hangar in which I found myself, making the space station seem like nothing one would expect to find in outer space. It was more like a well-lit cave.

“Dock!” a booming voice shouted from across the expansive room filled with docked transports as well as a few sharper-looking vehicles. I looked up, a grin already spreading across my face as I spotted Tremor striding toward me. Tremor was a large man, built like a mountain, and with a grip strong enough to snap me in half without any effort at all. Although Tremor was the only Taijian I had ever met, from what I had been told, he was actually short for a man from Taij. But for me, a remarkably small boy even for my age or race as an Alban, Tremor was a giant, more than twice my size. Before I could even greet the bear of a man, he already had me in a fierce hug that actually lifted me off my feet for a moment. He seemed about to pick me up even more when he suddenly hesitated, set me back down, and released me. As he stepped back to look down upon me, I noticed his cheeks flushing a little. “Sorry ‘bout that. Probably shoul’nae treat you like that, now that ye’re a man an’ all. An’ a trainee to boot,” he added with a little jab to my shoulder that nearly sent me sprawling across the floor had he not managed to grab hold and steady me again.

I had known Tremor my entire life. As my father’s oldest friend and one-time war-buddy, Tremor had no reason to regard me in any higher esteem than my father had, and yet, he had always made time to come see me and spend time with me. In many ways, Tremor had always been the father that Maddock Traz had failed to be. And he was also the reason my glowing blue eyes did nothing to frighten me. Because as long as I had known Tremor, his eyes had always glowed the same shade as blue that mine now did as well.

“I always knew you’d turn out special,” said Tremor in as soft a voice as he could manage as his hand engulfed my shoulder and he led me across the room. As Tremor said this, I could feel my own face flushing with heat, and I smiled a small private smile just for myself. If there was one thing that had been making me nervous about the situation since my eyes had begun to glow, it was how everyone else had started looking at me. Although Prodigies had been around in Nau-Az for a long time, it was only in recent years that their numbers had really begun to shoot up. “Normal” people didn’t seem to know what to think of us. They were frightened. And considering what happened with many Prodigies, especially just as they were first developing their new abilities - like what would happen with my father mere hours after getting off the transport on Oasis - they had good reason to be afraid.

The next few hours were like any spent in an entirely new environment. It was a little overwhelming. At the same time, a little boring. And I felt totally out of place. Unlike during the short time I had spent as an eye-glowing Prodigy back home, people on Oasis seemed to be more used to Prodigies, and the sight of a young boy with glowing blue eyes being led around the station by a seven-foot-tall man also with glowing blue eyes wasn’t enough to garner much attention. I did still get a few stares, but that was the usual variety, the sort I was well-used to. They were from those who recognized me as the son of THE Maddock Traz.

As it turned out, all of Oasis was covered in the thick, soft mossy stuff, although some areas had a different color or texture to them. I couldn’t make any sense of why it was one color or texture one place and another in another place. It seemed totally random. Furthermore, as Tremor led me from one floor to another, I quickly understood that it would take a lifetime to learn the layout of the whole station as well as Tremor seemed to know it. Not all the decks were as big as others. Some expanded in every direction further than one could see, even if there weren’t walls blocking the way like there were on some decks. There were some others, particularly near the top or bottom of the station that were as small as single rooms. The vegetation that the station seemed to have been formed from was a deep shade of purple on the outside and best resembled a spiral, with points on the tops and bottoms, a various degrees of width between, the widest in the middle. All the elements of the station combined made for an environment as diverse as any planet, depending on where and when you are in the station at any given time. In short, it was magnificent.

After a long tour that took us to every corner of Oasis (except for certain military or governmental areas that were off-limits to civilians such as myself), we finally came to a floor that was designated as “The Academy,” which was set aside both for the training of new Prodigies, as well as the training of Guards, which was the interplanetary military force established by none other than THE Maddock Traz. Here, Tremor led me to an unoccupied dorm room, barely big enough to contain him as he stood in the center of the room and I sat on one of the beds.

“This’ll be the best place for you till we get you set up and registered in the Academy,” Tremor said, glancing around the little brown-mossed room. “Once that’s all done, they’ll probably move you in with another trainee as you begin your training.”

Tremor started to shift around and duck as he moved toward the door, but he stopped and swung his head around as I spoke up. “Tremor? Are you going to train me?”

“I’ll be one of your instructors.” Tremor nodded. I smiled and nodded back, and Tremor wedged himself back out the door before it slid shut with a soft “whoosh.” Still smiling, I spread out onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling, my stomach already jittering with a mix of excitement and nerves as I thought about what it would be like to learn to use and control the power I hadn’t even felt yet; wouldn’t even know I had if it weren’t for the glowing eyes.

I must have drifted asleep as I lay there, thinking, but I can’t remember. The next thing I knew, I was standing in the center of a room that I had never been in before. It looked like a living space. There was furniture beside me, a couch and an armchair, both of them black and sleek, stylized just as I knew the furniture in my father’s quarters would be. I knew it was my father’s quarters instinctively, the same way you know a place is a certain place in a dream even if it’s not a place you know or can remember having seen before. There was also the fact that my father was half-standing, half-crouched, between me and a huge window displaying space outside the station, and the bright-multicolored “sun” called Az, to support the assumption that it was my father’s quarters.

Maddock Traz was hunched over, one hand clutching at his chest as if he were having chest pains, the other hand held straight out to the side of him, the hand curled into a claw. His face was red and tightened, and his bugging eyes were pouring with tears as he turned his anguished look up at me.

“Dock!” he wheezed, barely able to get out the words. “No!”

And then, just like that, there was a loud ripping sound as if the very air around us was tearing in two. My father’s hot blood splattered across my face, and he was gone. One minute he was standing there. And then next...

I don’t know what happened. How I got there. What exactly happened to my father. There were Telepath Guards who examined the scene and determined that I had used my power to literally tear my father apart, but I didn’t know how. I had never even used my power before. There wasn’t even a reason why I should have been there in the first place. I didn’t know how I got there. Nor did anyone else. But these were the questions that dozens upon dozens of men I had never before seen and would never clearly remember were asking me all that night as I huddled in a corner of a cell in a detention section of Oasis. They asked me these questions, in various forms, using various tactics, with various faces asking the questions for weeks afterward, all the while investigating the crime scene with every other resource they had at their disposal to try to determine what exactly happened that night, only to ultimately call it an “accidental Prodigy power burst” - their terminology - at which time I was finally released and started my training to control the power that I had somehow used to destroy a father I had never even known.

For the entire time that I was held in custody after killing my father, I did not sleep. Not even for a second. I wanted to. I was so very tired. But whenever I closed my eyes, I only saw what I had seen in the seconds just before my father vanished in an explosion of blood and dust. And I could not sleep. Only when I was finally back in the Academy dorms, confined to a room I would never share with another trainee because no one could be made to share a room with the murderer of THE Maddock Traz... Only then, did sleep finally come to me.

And that’s when the dreams started...

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