Teaser Tuesday does some head-hopping

Hi everyone!

This teaser is from a little bit of a purposefully weird chapter of EMPIRE OF LIGHT. Ares has been taken by the Empire after bringing Damian back from the dead. And now weird shit is happening. Or should we say, more weird shit is happening?

Enjoy :)

Something was bleeping right by my left ear. It was one of those ridiculously high-pitched, horribly annoying sounds. Like an alarm clock from hell. I reached out to swat at it, do anything to make it stop, but I could hardly move. With excruciating slowness, I managed to turn my head on its side and lift my eyelids. At first they were stuck together with some crusty, dried goo, but at the second try I managed to open them. Bright white light stabbed my retinas, making me blink like crazy for a moment.

Then I was able to take in my surroundings. There was a bump in my arm where a long needle was buried deep in my vein, which would be why trying to move my arm hurt like hell. That and the gazillion of wires and cables coming out of me and running to way more machines than should’ve fit into the tiny hospital room. Though this wasn’t a hospital. More like…a lab.

Fuck!

Adrenaline spiked.

The bleeping got louder, frantic like my breathing as I tried to jerk free, ignoring the pain that flared up in my arm. I had to get out of here. Had to—

“He’s waking up,” a voice somewhere to my right said. A man with a beard, clad all in white leaned over me. I knew that face. The white hair, those purple eyes.

Raeyn…

No. This one was older. The bleeping amplified to a violent screech along with my panicked heartrate. Oh shit. Oh shit!

“Easy, easy,” Sirius Nymeron, none other but the Emperor himself said in a voice that sounded much too soothing to go along with those hard, lilac eyes. “You need to rest. You aren’t ready yet. Sleep.”

“Wh—“ I tried to get the words out, but my tongue was thick and numb in my mouth, so everything came out mangled. “What—“

A calloused hand brushed against mine, adjusting something connected to my index finger. “A little more of the sedative should put him under long enough,” someone to Nymeron’s left said and everything turned blurry.

“No…I—“

“Sleep, Ares,” Nymeron said again and suddenly sleep seemed like a pretty good idea. Only that—Wait a minute, Ares?

What the fuck—

“Damian! Damian, wake up!” Someone was shaking me.