The Stronghold

Albin

"I leave you alone for ten minutes!" S raged, hands balled into fists. "Ten bloody minutes for you to behave! That was all I asked!"

He'd dragged me to his office, fury bubbling in his red eyes. The second that the door shut the rant began.

"I didn't break anything," I muttered. S growled deep in his throat and paced the room, hands shoved into his pockets.

"That's not the point!" he yelled suddenly, spinning around and slamming his hands down on the desk. I jumped backwards in shock, almost falling out of my chair.

"What is the point?" I asked in a small voice.

"The demon! It's out! It's been unleashed!"

"Is that why you randomly got some guards to take Tom away?"

"Tom?" S echoed scornfully. "Is that what it told you its name was?"

"He," I corrected him. "And yes."

"He's evil. Stay away from him," S ordered, slumping back down into his high backed chair.

"He isn't evil," I argued, leaning my elbows on the desk. "He helped me stop Rebecca from murdering us."

"She was trying to murder you?"

I explained what had happened with Rebecca, including everything beforehand. S nodded in understanding; her screams had attracted him to the classified room.

"I'm not even sure why we have that machine in the first place," he murmured, rubbing his eyes tiredly. "Maybe... but no."

"Um..."

"You can go," S said, looking up at me. "Go and collect Tom from the cells. Tell the guards that... that Albin ordered it."

"Who's Albin?" I asked curiously.

"Do you want to go or not?" S snapped, glaring at me once more. I nodded and stood from my chair, hurrying out of the room.

*

As soon as Pepper's footsteps faded out of hearing S moved. Holding his hand to a specific tile on the wall he opened a secret passage, shrouded at first in darkness. Before the electric torch lights flickered into action S was already marching down the corridor, speeding away, going further into the depths of Thunder.

"Sir," S said, knocking frantically on the door at the other end of the corridor. "Sir!"

"What is it?" the man growled, flinging the door open to his room - or was it a jail cell?

"Pepper activated the machine and got rid of the demons but nobody died and this other dude has appeared who is good and was part of Pepper's conscious mind but is made of magic but he's human and says his name is Tom and he isn't a demon and they made the machine work correctly and why do we even have it? and everybody is alive and sir, oh sir, I told Pepper your name!" S began to cry out of fear, terrified of what his master would do to him.

Albin stayed silent for several seconds, watching blood red tears pour down S's pale face. Somewhere in the back of his heart he felt sorry for the boy, knowing about his past, his family, his connection to Albin.

"Look," Albin said eventually, struggling with the emotions battling inside him. "I'm not going to murder you. Yet. Sit down and I'll explain."

S lowered himself into the only seat in the room, trembling all over. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped away a few remaining tears.

"Years ago," Albin began, "about twenty three, to be precise, I had two sons. Twins that looked nothing alike.

'They were with one another for about a year before being separated. One was given to a family with a sickly little girl a few months younger than the boy, the other stayed with me.

'When the remaining boy was around three years old his mother, my wife, died. She had always known that there was something wrong, her work ensuring that. She was hunted down and killed and I knew that I had months left to live.

'So I created a robot for my son. It looked after him and had only two very strict instructions. One: no alcohol. Two: the boy must be sent to the same school as this girl, to be encouraged to be friends with her.

'The plan worked perfectly. I went into hiding here, at Thunder, my son bonded with the girl and only caught the rare glimpse of his real brother. The family the boy had been given to, despite us not knowing at the time, was a little... dysfunctional. The girl had a limp, a birth defect. The mother was overly protective and so when the girl was taken by Rainfall, the mother killed herself. The father was weak and died shortly after his wife.

'All that time I knew what was going on. I ensured, via contacts at Rainfall, that both boys worked there at a young age, having it as their home. I also gave orders that they never meet although that was not to be the case.

'Rainfall smelt a rat. A large, metal rat. So they transformed the girl into a robot that could wipe memories and made my son forget that he ever had a brother and forget the girl's name.

"Of course, then everything was okay. The son given away never knew anything. The two boys, now men, could meet and go about their lives knowing nothing of their blood bond. But they would get along as siblings do, fighting but friends.

'Everything was fine. Up until now." Albin sighed and ran a hand over his jaw in thought, ruffling the dark beard he had growing. "Because I just told you this. Because you told Pepper what my name is."

"Why is that bad?" S asked in confusion. "It's got nothing to-"

"Salt, Pepper is my son. And so are you."