Pale Ants

When Alessandro Dunaro enters the military academy in the hopes of earning his father's respect, he has no idea that the man he so desperately wishes to please, the great General Dunaro, is an impostor. Alessandro's real father is long dead, and that secret is just one of many that the general would kill to protect.

Alessandro has always believed his parents' explanation that his ultra-pale complexion, his hypersensitivity to light, and his uncanny sense of hearing are simply the result of a random genetic mutation. But when he begins to suspect that his parents have been lying to him, his search for answers takes him to a mysterious network of subterranean caves. What he finds is an alien, yet familiar world, populated by people who look just like him but who view him as an outsider - or worse, as an enemy.

A secret war has been waging for decades between the society that Alessandro was born into and the society that raised him. Will he choose the right side?