I was never happy about sleeping with a loaded gun under my pillow. Every night I felt it nestled against the side of my head, the pillow not making its contours any softer. And what if it had fired? What would I have done with a laser bolt through my temple? Yet Merlin, my cyborg roommate, always insisted that I have it there. For a half human, he worried too much, and meddled more than he ought have. Maybe that was his mechanical half talking.
But if it hadn't been for that gun, I would not have made it here, sitting in a leather chair at the top of the world. Arthur Pendragon, CEO of Camelot Corp. It's not a title I'll ever get used to. My office is near the top of the building, windows taking up three sides of the space, ceiling to floor. I could see over the entirety of Albion if I cared to. The city stretches out in metal spires that strain to touch the sky, and streets that roar with the engines of Weavers, vehicles carrying the Albionese from place to place, dodging in and out of the spaces between one another. But the view is not something I care for. I'm not a man accustomed to the ostentatious tastes of my late father, Uther Pendragon, my predecessor as CEO of Camelot Corp. And if it weren't for the gun, I would never have been lead to find out the truth of my paternity.
I grew up in Caerleon, a middle class part of Albion, where we had enough food to eat, but not the means to own something as extravagant as a Weaver. I took up residence with a young, dark haired man called Merlin, who, after an accident involving a plasma beam, had to replace half his body with mechatronics; a false arm, organs with synthetic fibres, metal joints in his hip and knee. He retired as a scientist after the accident, living instead as a tinkerer of old technologies, repairing broken appliances of our neighbours. He gave me the gun and told me to keep it close. Caerleon was known for its midnight robberies.
Merlin did not mention where the gun came from, and months after I'd settled into a routine of sleeping with it, a masked squadron burst through the door, blasters aimed at the small gathering of friends we had sitting in our living room. Poor Gwen and Lance were as bewildered as I was. But Merlin understood. He'd stolen the gun from Camelot Corp before he left. It was a prototype of the most cutting edge automatic pinpoint technology, firing in the right direction before the gun wielder had the time to aim. The first of it's kind, it was valuable. More so because it revealed that the gleaming façade of Camelot Corp was a two way mirror, the inside of it grimy with the fingerprints of a crime syndicate, and weapons manufacturing, with the tarnishing breath of Uther Pendragon over it all. And I was unwillingly dragged into it.
I suffered through the underbelly of Camelot Corp, where men and women in hoods had no qualms about soaking us in fetid water and sending an electrical charge through the liquid, our skin sizzling in the dank basement. I ran through twisting corridors with locked doors, and a building that sliced into the Albion sky. I came face to face with people I'd only ever seen on the NewsTube, and had to accept a new reality. That I was Arthur Pendragon, son of Uther Pendragon, and brother to Morgana Lefay, a raven haired woman who was vice CEO to Camelot Corp, and took her mother's maiden name instead of our father's, out of fear that an obvious familial relation would make her a target for those who hated Camelot Corp. After all, not everybody was fond of rapidly advancing technology, and Camelot Corp was at the heart of it all, spawning bionanotechnology, flight systems for spacecraft, and mechatronics, as well as engineering new forms of protective armour for the Albion Militia. Or maybe those opposing the company had a gut feeling that not everything was as clean as it seemed. There's no such thing as a clean company, after all. They've all got dirty secrets festering in the darkness of their basements. And I was one of those secrets.
When Uther died, his office sealed itself and projected a hologram of the man, claiming that the only person to gain access to the office and thenceforth be appointed the new CEO of Camelot Corp was his true heir. Everybody tried, nobody got in. Until I stumbled across the office while trying to escape the pursuit of Morgana Lefay's henchmen, and put my hand in the fingerprint scanner. The door opened without a hitch.
If ever you want to make a woman angry, take from her what she thinks is rightfully hers. When the news filtered its way down that I had opened the door to Uther's office, Morgana's wrath was unthinkable. I can't say that I don't understand it. Why Uther decided that I would be the next CEO of Camelot Corp, ignoring the fact that Morgana was more suited to the task, I will never know. I assume without me the office would have been broken into eventually, the wiring in the security broken, and Morgana would have assumed responsibility of the company. Most days I think that's what should have happened.
And it would have, had Merlin, that moronic cyborg, never decided to steal that gun. I have my suspicions that he wanted to lead me into this, that he knew all along. A brilliant scientist such as he would have no trouble hacking into the secret files of the company, after all. And no doubt there were always rumours. It's impossible to be the head of a company like Camelot Corp and not have rumours buzzing around you like flies over a rotting carcass. This too is something I'm learning, along with how deep the corruption of the company goes, how far its poison tentacles have spread; from Militia, to Albion's Government, to the drug fuelled underworld of the city, where people kill one another to afford one more shot of a nanobot that produces hallucinations before white blood cells force it to disintegrate. The biggest challenge I face is severing those ties. I will not walk in the footsteps of my deranged father.
And there is hope. There is always hope. Morgana has disappeared, retired to lick her wounds, I suppose, but I have no doubt I'll hear from her again. I have Merlin, whom I've decided to forgive, because I am rather fond of him, and he has been a good friend, despite his involvement in this situation, as well as Lance and Gwen. When you've been through torture at the hand of a crazed woman, you cannot help but bond irrevocably over it. With them beside me, I cannot help but think that ridding Camelot Corp of its filth is achievable. It's the first step in making Albion a better place.
Author's Note: Alrighty, so I know it's short. That's the point. I had the option of writing fan fic for one of my uni classes, but it could only be 1000 words (I went over, of course, but shhh). So, what I'm asking for, as a student, and as a writer, is for any criticism you might have. I will personally PM you my thanks.