The Return of the Gods (Children of the Sun Book 1)

Nef couldn’t believe how good the situation was turning out to be. Nira didn’t seem to suspect a thing, and while he felt bad about keeping secrets, he had promised not to say anything, so this was certainly good in that regard. He hadn’t seen it coming, but he sure wasn’t going to complain. If things continued like this, he might just do what he’d been asked to do, and Nira would never find out. He just wasn’t sure how exactly he’d be able to use the money he would be given if he couldn’t explain to Nira how he got it.

But that was a problem for another time. Or it would never become a problem if he got caught, but he didn’t like thinking about that. Alor’s boss had seemed confident that he would bail Nef out if something went wrong, but Nef worried it wouldn’t be that simple. He had no idea how this Luxarx organization worked, but getting away with it like that seemed off to him.

He also still hadn’t been given any means of leaving the apartment without making Nira suspicious. Yesterday, Alor had told him he’d pick him up again the next day, but he hadn’t said when. Nef supposed he shouldn’t worry because there wasn’t much he could do about any of this, but this lack of clarity made him restless.

Nef looked over at Nira who was scribbling something into a notebook, looking into one of the many books that covered most of the table every now and again. He smiled fondly before turning back to the laptop he had open in front of him. It showed some news website he could barely remember opening.

He had been too lost in thought since last night to concentrate on anything, but thankfully Nira had been too preoccupied with studying to notice. He could hardly believe he was glad she wasn’t paying attention to him because he usually hated when she spent her time like this during the holidays. It was such a waste, honestly.

Nef sighed with annoyance before he could stop himself and froze, cautiously watching his girlfriend. Thankfully, she didn’t react, so Nef relaxed as much as he could given the circumstances. The waiting was getting to him—he hated waiting in general, but this time it was just unbearable. If he didn’t get any more information soon, he would probably not be able to stop himself and try to get some answers on his own.

Just as he thought this, his phone started ringing, the vibrations making it slowly move to the edge of the table. Nef flinched a bit in surprise and grabbed the phone to check who was calling him. If this was Alor, he wasn’t being exactly inconspicuous.

“Who is it?” Nira asked but didn’t look up, and Nef shrugged.

“Unknown number,” he replied and picked up. Maybe it would do him some good to pretend he was interested in whatever they would try to sell him just to waste someone’s time.

“Hello?” he said, looking back at the laptop, lazily scrolling through the news.

Nira was now looking back at him with a curious expression.

“Hello, Mister Arithar.” Nef’s eyes widened.

“Professor Ergam?” Why would he want to talk to Nef? They didn’t exactly like each other. And the semester hadn’t even started yet. Nira seemed confused by this as well, but a second later she shrugged and turned her attention back to her books.

“Yes. I’m sorry about bothering you, but I’d like to talk to you about the engineering contest.“

Oh, so the point of this call was to criticize Nef’s ideas some more? Well, two could play at that game.

“I think I may have been too hasty with…what I said. Do you think you could stop by my office? I’d like to talk to you in person.“

Was he…actually giving him another chance? Was someone holding a gun to Ergam’s head?

“Mister Arithar? Are you still there?“

“Uh, yeah.” Damn, it was kind of a shame he couldn’t go see the professor. Nef would love to hear what Ergam had to say, but eventually, Alor would show up, and helping a government agency was a little more important. “But I don’t think….”

Nef trailed off. Or was this the excuse he had been waiting for to leave and go help his brother? It was pretty weird to get a call like this from someone who had implied that Nef’s work was crap.

“I guess I have time. I should be there in like half an hour.”

“Great. I’ll see you then.”

Then Ergam hung up. Nira was looking at Nef again, overwhelmingly supportive. Of course, she’d heard everything. He needed to lower the volume on his phone.

“He’s giving you a second chance? That’s great,” she said, smiling at him, and Nef shrugged shakily, steeling himself for what was about to come.

“Maybe he just wants to rub it in some more.”

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s why he spent his time looking for your number and calling you.”

Nef snorted and got up, pocketing the phone, and looking for his keys.

“They’re on your bedside table,” Nira told him as if she could read his mind, once again looking down at whatever she’d been reading.

Nef went to find them, grabbing his car keys as well. It would be weird if he pretended to go to a university on the other side of Enbrant without those. As soon as he found them, he wasted no time leaving, and with a see you later he walked out the door.

Nef let out a long breath and thought about where he was supposed to go. He couldn’t see Alor anywhere on the street, so he went to the parking lot like he would if that call had been real. Nef hoped it hadn’t been real because if it was, the next semester would be pretty awkward.

It seemed his intuition had been right because soon enough he could spot Alor in the distance, leaning against Nef’s car. Nef’s heart doubled its blood-pumping efforts.

Alor noticed Nef just a moment later and smiled at him sadly. Nef almost rolled his eyes. He got that Alor hadn’t wanted to involve him in this, but it wasn’t like Nef was risking his life. Right?

Great, now he was even more nervous.

“That phone call wasn’t real, huh?” Nef asked when he was close enough to his brother.

“Your professor’s not expecting you to show up, if that’s what you’re asking,” Alor said, and Nef raised an eyebrow.

“You mean that was actually Ergam I talked to? How d’you manage that?”

Alor shrugged. “We bribed him.”

“Of course you did,” Nef muttered to himself as he tried to imagine how the bribing of Ergam must have gone. “So, we’re taking my car?”

Alor said nothing and just watched Nef patiently until the younger man huffed, unlocked the vehicle, and they both got in.

“So we’re going to the Flare again?” As soon as he said this, the car took off and Nef groaned. He’d not meant to give it instructions. He loved this car, but it was old and sometimes it just pissed him off to no end. Next to him, Alor chuckled, as if this was funny.

It wasn’t.

“You gave me this car because of stuff like this, didn’t you?” Nef complained, and Alor snorted but didn’t say anything, so Nef changed the topic. “You got so much free time you can come pick me up, and no one questions it?”

“Well, yeah, we don’t have any missions planned for this week. And I’m not a part of Kaleth’s team to plan things, so my job doesn’t start until you and Kara find out something for the rest of us can investigate,” Alor explained.

“Kara is your resident hacker, then?” Nef asked and Alor nodded.

“She knows how to fight too, though.”

“Isn’t that one of the job requirements? You’re government agents.”

Alor just hummed and said nothing else, which only made Nef wonder if he was being kept in the dark about something still, or if Alor just didn’t want to talk about what sorts of murder techniques he had learned.

Actually, on second thought, Nef wouldn’t mind being kept in the dark about that kind of thing. It was all very cool in theory, but the idea that his brother may have killed someone was not something he wanted to think about much.

“Y’know, I hate that I dragged you into this,” Alor said, and Nef wanted to groan. Like he hadn’t noticed that yet.

“Oh, it’s fine. You know me—I like money,” Nef joked, attempting to lighten the mood. He didn’t want Alor to feel guilty, but it would be hard not to turn this into a fight if Alor kept talking like this.

“It’s not just that it’s dangerous,” his brother continued as if Nef hadn’t said anything. Nef looked at him with a frown.

“What’re you trying to say?” Nef asked impatiently when Alor didn’t continue. His brother didn’t look too enthusiastic, but it was his own fault for starting this. Like hell was Nef letting him leave it unfinished.

“Look, uh, there’s something about our family that you don’t know about and….” he sighed again but this time continued without a prompt from Nef. “It’s not a coincidence that I do what I do. It’s kinda a family trade.”

Nef stared at Alor with shock for a moment, during which Alor looked away. Once Nef got over his shock at least a little, he mustered a confused and disbelieving, “What?”

“Yeah. Mom used to work for Luxarx, too. So did Dad. That’s…how he really died, actually.”

They were both silent as Nef tried to process the new information.

So it wasn’t just Alor who had been lying to him—it was their mom, too. That really hit him when he repeated it inside his head. She had told him that his dad had died in a car crash. Slightly cliché, yes, but it did happen sometimes. He’d never thought to question it.

“So she straight up lied to me,” Nef muttered and shook his head in frustration. Alor seemed to want to say something but then decided against it, only sighing as the car flew into the skyscraper, slowing down and landing a few seconds later. Nef got out and slammed the door, kicking the side of the car angrily.

“Dammit!” he yelled, half in anger, half in pain. He really should have thought twice before kicking solid metal. He moved his toes a bit, making sure that he hadn’t broken anything.

“Mom did it to protect you,” Alor told him patiently, and Nef turned to face him.

“Yet here we are,” he said, throwing his arms out, receiving odd looks from about twenty people who were also in the parking lot, but Nef couldn’t bring himself to care. He was too angry to focus on anything but his brother.

“Why d’you think she hates me?” Alor asked, obviously trying hard not to yell at his brother.

“Oh, please, she doesn’t hate you,” Nef scoffed and glared. He had no idea what Alor was talking about. Their mother might not have been the most affectionate person, but he doubted she could feel something as strong as hate toward one of them.

“Oh, really? When was the last time we both visited her at the same time?” Hearing Alor’s bitter response was worrying, but Nef ignored it and instead tried to remember the last time he had been in the same room with Alor and their mom. It turned out to be pretty difficult.

“It’s never,” Alor said, his shoulders slumping. “Since you moved out, I’ve only seen her a few times and alone. She found out about my…career a few months after you left, and I guess she didn’t want you to know so she pretended everything was the same as ever.”

He hanged his head and stayed silent.

So their dad had died because he had worked for Luxarx, and their mother was angry with Alor for working for them too because of it? Nef couldn’t believe that he had thought of their family as relatively normal. He still didn’t quite believe that their mom hated Alor, but maybe it wouldn’t be such a good idea to go confront her about lying. Nef didn’t want her to find out that he was technically working for Luxarx, too, now.

“Sorry, Al,” said a voice from behind his brother, and a woman about Nef’s age appeared next to Alor and put her arm around his shoulder. Since she was a lot shorter, it looked very funny and weird. “Gotta cut your family discussion time short—Kara’s getting cranky.”

The woman’s accent was weird. Something eastern maybe? Nef wasn’t good at recognizing them. Her hair was dark but straight, so maybe she was from Artex? Her eyes were amber, which wasn’t a color Nef saw often, though, not this gold-ish, anyway.

Assuming that this was one of Alor’s colleagues, she didn’t look like a secret agent. More like an edgy college student, what with the black leather jacket and purple stripe in her hair. Weirdly enough she was also wearing a very striking gold watch, which didn’t seem to fit her outfit at all.

Alor let out a long sigh but didn’t react otherwise. It was like he had been expecting the woman, but had been hoping she wouldn’t show up.

“And you must be Arithar Junior,” she said, looking at Nef, who shot her his best look of irritation. “Wow! You really are related. Alor makes that exact face when he’s pissed.” She was grinning, not even remotely affected by Nef’s expression, which only aggravated Nef more.

“Rayni, didn’t you just say we’re supposed to go see Kara?” Alor asked the woman, who still hadn’t moved her arm away from his shoulder. Alor sounded tired, but it only seemed half-hearted.

“I said she was cranky, not that you had to go see her, but all right, whatever you want,” Rayni said, shrugging and began strolling to, presumably, an elevator. For a few more seconds, Nef didn’t move, staring at Rayni’s back in annoyance. He wasn’t sure what to make of her, but he knew he didn’t particularly like her.

He moved only when his brother gave him a nudge, but that didn’t mean he stopped scowling. Noticing that they began following, Rayni started talking again.

“Well, prepare yourselves, gentlemen, because this is probably the only time we’ll get to use the bosses’ elevator,” she said with excitement and grinned at them, walking to one of the two elevators on the left side of the wall. There were ten in total, but those two looked a bit different—like they were for staff only. They seemed wider, as well, and were farther away from the rest.

“Why do your bosses need special elevators?” Nef asked, frowning. There were enough of them anyway, weren’t there?

Rayni laughed. “Because they’re our bosses. They get a lot of stupid and redundant privileges.”

She turned to the elevator door and pressed a black and silver card to the wall next to them. It was very similar to the one Alor had shown Nef earlier.

“You guys made a card?” Alor asked with surprise, but Rayni didn’t reply, too invested in what she was doing. The door didn’t want to open, it seemed. Finally, after about a minute of moving the card all over the wall, the elevator dinged. Then she finally turned around.

“No, this is a real one,” she answered and got into the elevator, Alor, and Nef doing the same.

“What do you mean a real one?” Alor continued, now looking more confused than ever. That seemed to amuse Rayni, and her grin grew even wider. She made the elevator go up with the card before explaining.

“Well, when we told Kal the plan on how to get Nef here with as few people as possible noticing, he said that using a fake card was too risky because the system might notice, or something. So, naturally, I asked him if he had a better plan, to which he replied that he was going to do something questionable.” Rayni said the last part in a terrible Imberan accent and even added air quotes. “Half an hour later he comes back, gives me the keycard, and leaves again.”

“Wha—How did he get it?” Alor questioned, folding his arms and glaring at the card as if it had personally insulted him.

“I assume he swiped it from someone. I mean I hope so. Hell, I dunno what Kal considers questionable—he used to be an—” Rayni stopped herself and shook her head, her smile ebbing. “No, I really shouldn’t tell you this. He doesn’t even know I know. I doubt he’s proud of it.”

So the Imberan guy used to do something that could be considered morally wrong. Damn, now Nef wanted to know what it was, but he doubted he’d get any answers, as usual.

“How do you even know? He never talks about himself,” Alor asked with genuine curiosity, not sounding even remotely concerned about the fact that his boss could have been a murderer or something.

“Oh, he didn’t tell me, no. I, uh…overheard him talking about it with Elrin. Well, talk is not exactly the right word. They were arguing, pretty loudly, too. I listened from behind the door ’cause I thought it would be funny.” She went silent for a few seconds before continuing with a grimace. “It wasn’t.”

The elevator finally came to a halt, and a completely different section of Luxarx came into view as the door slid open. Nef swallowed automatically as they walked out. He had been prepared for a long walk, but it took only a few seconds to reach the right door, and they didn’t meet anyone on the way, which was probably a blessing. Once they got to the door, Alor quickly opened it, and they all got into the small, dimly lit room.

It was bare except for a single table with four monitors and chairs and a giant rectangular piece of metal that took up the rest of the room and was obviously a computer. And an impressive one, as well. It captivated Nef so much that he completely missed the not-very-tall, angry-looking woman glaring at all of them from where she was sitting at the table.

“What took you so long?” she asked, folding her arms. Nef almost jumped and immediately looked at her instead of the computer. This had to be Kara. Well, at least she wasn’t annoyingly positive.

“Oh, c’mon, it was like five minutes tops,” Rayni said, trying to sound reasonable, but it came out sounding kind of whiny. Kara let out a long-suffering sigh, her glare losing some of its strength.

“Just get out, Ray,” she told her, pointing at the door. Rayni bowed to her and grinned before she backed out of the room, whistling a happy tune.

“You too, Al,” she said when she noticed he was still there. Alor gave Nef a nod and did as he was told, closing the door behind him without a single word. Nef only now realized he had been frowning at the whole exchange and forced himself to stop.

“You already know who I am, and I know who you are so let’s not waste time and get to work, all right?” she told him, turning back to the computer screen. Nef narrowed his eyes but took a seat without comment. He wanted to see how fast that computer was.

“I totally feel the love,” he muttered, making sure to say it loud enough so that Kara could hear it. He had expected her to glare at him, but she just rolled her eyes, not looking away from the screen, typing rapidly.

“We already have a few sarcastic individuals, try something else,” she replied with an equally sarcastic tone.

“You realize that using sarcasm to criticize my sarcasm is a bit—”

“I am one of those particular individuals,” Kara cut Nef off, finally looking over at him. She looked a little too mad given the situation, so she was probably pissed about something else, not just at him. Nef had to admit that glare made him reconsider whether or not he should annoy her some more but, then again, he had never been wise.

“I see the position of the interrupting individual is also taken,” Nef commented, and Kara somehow managed to look even angrier than before.

“We are supposed to be finding out what the Management is hiding, which might be something that’ll affect this country’s future. I think we should focus on that right now. Then we can bicker.”

Nef stared at her for a moment, slightly surprised at her outburst, before turning to the computer screen in front of him and starting to work.

“I didn’t think it was that serious,” Nef muttered after a moment because he was having trouble concentrating in such an uncomfortable silence, and also because he wanted to know more about the situation.

“Did you think that Kaleth would involve a civilian if it wasn’t?” Kara didn’t yell at him this time, but she looked very unimpressed.

“I know next to nothing about Luxarx. I dunno how you do things.”

Kara quirked an eyebrow. “That’s the point.”

Nef wanted to curse. It was so hard getting information around here. He just wanted to understand. He hadn’t thought about it that much yesterday, but now he couldn’t help but wonder just why there was a whole organization in charge of handling one terrorist group. Even if they were specialized, or elite, or whatever, wouldn’t they just handle terrorism in general?

Besides, the only terrorists Nef was aware of were the ones from the Iritharian Empire, which meant that either Luxarx was amazingly competent, or the Umbra were from the Empire.

He focused on trying to break through the database’s defenses, but the questions just wouldn’t leave him alone.

“So these Umbra people,” Nef started, making Kara look irritated again.

“We’re working.”

“I’m multitasking,” Nef replied, forcing himself to keep staring at his monitor. “Anyway, are they from Irithara, or what?”

“No. And you’re not required to know any of this.”

“Yeah, but…” Nef said as he tried to come up with a convincing argument why she should tell him. He failed. “Come on, please?”

Kara huffed and turned her eyes back to the monitor. “You’ll just annoy me until I tell you, right?”

“Yep, that’s my master plan,” Nef replied, grinning when Kara sighed in defeat.

“Well, seeing as you’re probably going to see files that not even I have access to, I guess it doesn’t really matter.” Nef did a little happy dance inside his head. “But you have to keep working.”

“No prob,” said Nef, eagerly awaiting new information.

“The Umbra aren’t exactly a normal terrorist organization. They are religious fanatics.” Not only religious but also fanatically religious? In a country full of atheists? Well, it explained the weird name, at least. “And they also have, as everyone loves to call it around here, superpowers.”

Nef’s eyes widened, and he stared at Kara for a bit. She rolled her eyes once more. “Why didn’t you lead with that?”

She ignored him. “Enhanced strength, and psychic abilities mostly. We fight them because some of us have these powers, too. It’s some kind of anomaly. There’s been a ton of research on it, and still, no one knows why this phenomenon exists.”

“Wait, so does my brother—”

“No, the only ones on our team with these abilities are Kaleth and Rayni.”

That was a bit disappointing, but still—superheroes apparently existed. Who knew?

“Focus,” Kara told him, and Nef did his best to do so.

Neither of them spoke for a moment, which was just enough time for them to finally break into the database, but what he found there really wasn’t what he had been expecting.

“What the hell…?” he said out loud, unable to deal with the situation another way. There sure were a lot of files there, but none of them were readable. Nef opened one after another, but it was written in the same weird script. The letters looked similar to the normal alphabet, but as a whole, it was complete gibberish.

“What the hell indeed,” Kara said as she sat next to Nef and ran a hand through her short hair. “Is that an actual language, or some kind of code or…?”

“So you have no idea what this is?” Nef asked, feeling disappointed that even though they might have found something, they couldn’t use it at all.

“No, I really don’t, but it’s definitely something. I mean, why would our superiors write in…whatever this is?” she said, waving her arm in the direction of the computer screen.

“Okay,” Kara said after a while, letting out a long sigh. “I think the others should see this before we do anything else.”

“…All right,” Nef replied, shrugging and getting up. It didn’t sound to him like she was expecting Alor, Rayni, or Kaleth to know what the hell kind of writing this was, but he couldn’t come up with a better plan.

“Oh, no, you’re staying here,” she said as she hurriedly sent copies of several files to her phone, and then left the database. She didn’t give Nef time to protest as she continued talking. “It was hard enough making you disappear from one camera before anyone noticed you.”

While Nef sort of agreed, he still folded his arms in annoyance at this injustice.

“I’ll lock the door so nobody will wander in here and find you. I’ll be back.” With that, Kara walked out of the room, leaving Nef alone with the computer.