Chapter 82 The Doctors Second Chance* (1/2)

”Doctor Sagen Zaroth, your inability to carry out the task given to you has resulted in a devastating blow to your benefactors. As a result, you are hereby removed from your position until further notice. You will be escorted to a holding facility where you will be detained for the time being. You are dismissed”.

The words echoed in and around Zaroth, but he couldn't seem to bring himself to acknowledge them. No. He was Cornelius Kildare's most trusted man in research and development. He couldn't possibly have been condemned like this. But why else would he have heard those words?

Zaroth was escorted out of the estate just as the Duke had proclaimed, and then taken away in a carriage far less auspicious that the one he had arrived in. He had no idea what part of the city he was taken to. He was too stuck in his thoughts, wondering where he truly went wrong, to think of anything else. He had been nothing but loyal to the Duke. And prior to this, the Duke had always allowed him to have his own side projects before. Now that he'd presented the results of one of his successful ones, he was cast aside? That just...it wasn't right.

The carriage stopped, and the door opened. A guard roughly pulled Zaroth down from the carriage.

”Come on,” he gruffly spoke.

Zaroth had no words of protest as he was dragged from the carriage. Well, to be more accurate he had plenty of protest, he just didn't know how to put it into words. The guard dragged him inside a small guard house and deposited him into one of the cells inside. From the brief glimpse he had gotten of the outside, and Zaroth's limited knowledge of Fountain Ridge's topography, he guessed he was somewhere beneath the cliff to the North-West of the city that the Kildare Estate was situated on. Still, Zaroth was no fighter, so that information didn't exactly help him.

The day passed by and Zaroth paced the cell, determined to think of a reason that the Duke would have to take him back. It was well into the evening when the guards were in the middle of their meal that Zaroth was visited, though not at all by who he expected.

”Where's Rassa?”

The child spy. He may have been a couple of years older, and his hair now shaved on the sides where before it had been long and messy, but it was certainly the boy that Zaroth had been informed was dead.

”You're dead,” Zaroth stated.

Aegin rolled his eyes, and turned as another man joined him from the shadows of the hall, this one older, and all too familiar to Zaroth as well. Though the last time Zaroth had seen this man, Zaroth had been feeding his lover Voluton Fruit and delighting in the results.

”Phillip Kildare,” Zaroth said in shock.

”Just Phillip,” the man replied, his face no longer youthful as it had been before, ”I'm not much for arrogant, lying, pompous bastards”.

Zaroth frowned, ”So he is your son? I did wonder when Cornelius mentioned his familial relation to the boy”.

”Where is my son, Zaroth?” asked Phillip.

”Jerrica,” Zaroth replied, ”Where he will stay until his last day”.

Phillip looked at Aegin, ”Make the preparations”.