The pod climbed out of the central hub and the city fell away beneath him.
Genma-986 opened like a postcard someone had taken too seriously - forests stitched across ridgelines, lakes catching late light like spilled glass, and mountains rising in clean, sharp layers that made the horizon look like dream. The dedicated corridor cut through it all with quiet indifference, a perfect line laid over a world that did not need it.
Areon watched it without seeing it. Beauty required a spare part of the mind and he didn't have one.
He pulled up his message pane and typed with hands that felt slightly delayed, like his body was still back at the hospital doors.
Theo Vance. Wesley Renn. Two names that still belonged to past - feels distant now. Both of them are students along with Areon in Institue of Science in Genma.
He sent the longer message first, because if he didn't say it cleanly now he would end up saying it messy later.
"Dad KIA. Mom is in stasis due to autoimmune genetic degradation. I may need help finding access pathways for restricted substrate for corrective genetic augmentation. Can you talk?"
Then, because desperation made him less picky, he dropped a shorter line into his cohort group chat - twenty students from different districts, not close, but connected enough to be useful.
"Urgent. If anyone knows procurement or authority pathways for restricted substrate, please DM."
He barely had time to let the messages settle before his comms flared again.
Theo called first.
His face popped into the small holo pane, eyes already focused, voice steady in the way it got when he was trying not to panic.
"I'm coming," Theo said. "Tell me where you are."
Wesley cut in half a second later, joining the call like he'd overridden the etiquette by force of will.
"We're coming," Wesley corrected. "Don't argue."
Areon stared at the route display in the corner of his vision.
Their concern pressed through the call like hands on his shoulders, and he felt himself recoil - not because it wasn't good, but because it was one more thing he had to respond to, one more piece of himself he had to keep intact long enough to answer properly.
"I need quiet," Areon said. "Just tonight. I'll talk tomorrow."
A pause.
"You sure?" Theo asked, careful.
Areon's throat tightened. "Yes."
"Fine," Wesley said, frustration and care braided into one word. "But message when you're ready to speak. Don't disappear on us. You'll feel better if you talk."
Areon didn't promise anything. He just ended the call before his voice betrayed him.
The pod began its descent.
---
His home sat in a quieter district built along the side of a mountain, facing a wide valley thick with vegetation. The air smelled clean in a way the central hub never did, like the world here hadn't been touched ever.
Small animals moved through the shrubs - rabbits, something deer-like - as if humans were weather and the house was just another rock formation that sometimes lit up at night.
The villa was two floors with wide glass and a front pool that reflected the sky like a shallow second universe. Solar panels lay flat along the roofline. A simple rainwater harvester sat near the rear edge, functional and almost modest, as if his parents had wanted at least one system in their life that didn't require permission.
The home AI identified him before he reached the steps.
"Welcome home, Areon Vonn."
The main door opened. Lights came alive across the porch and then in sequence through the interior rooms, a practiced routine that suddenly felt obscene in its normalness.
Up on the second floor, visible even from the entryway through the glass, the Seventieth Canvas waited.
When the focus light turned on, it looked like it had been caught mid-breath.
Areon went to the kitchen without thinking. He took a bottle of water, drank it all, then grabbed another and carried it upstairs as if hydration was a task he could complete to prove he still knew how to do anything.
He stopped in front of the painting.
It was enormous - wide as a cinema wall, eighty percent complete. A stormy lake cut through mountain backdrops, a boat from an older age trying to weave through violent water. Even the figures working the ropes were clear, bodies angled against invisible force, knuckles white around lines you couldn't see but somehow felt.
Only the wide sky was unfinished.
Thunder existed as faint veins. Clouds were missing, the storm refusing to fully arrive.
Areon stood there, and awe hit him like it always did with his mother's work.
Then pain followed, because awe was supposed to be shared.
He remembered Jasmine's voice in the antechamber: finish my last painting. Don't let it sit unfinished like a wound.
His father's laugh rose too, unwanted: this looks like an argument between gods.
Areon stared at the empty sky of the canvas and felt the same emptiness inside his chest. He didn't know how to paint a storm.
But he knew he couldn't stand still. The house felt too quiet. Not the quiet of an artist working. A hollow quiet, like sound had been evicted.
He moved toward the hover tray beneath the canvas.
Brushes lay arranged like tools. Paint cans stood in careful clusters, labels in Jasmine's handwriting. A smear of blue-grey pigment stained the edge of a palette - her habit, her presence.
His thumb brushed it without thinking.
Paint transferred to his skin.
A stupid, small thing - and grief hooked into it like a barb.
He opened his personal AI and forced his voice steady.
"Fastest path to obtain strategic substrate required for corrective genetic augmentation."
The overlay responded with clean, indifferent structure, as if his mother's life was a spreadsheet.
1) Civilian pathways: impossible
2) Philanthropic grant: very low probability
3) Institutional procurement: requires authority
4) Experimental procedures: elevated fatality risk / loss of critical time
5) Military service-linked access: highest probability / fastest
Areon stared at the last line until it stopped looking like text and started looking like a door.
In the United Worlds, technology didn't just heal people. It decided who got saved. The cure existed - and still wasn't his.
He needed someone who understood doors.
He called his professor.
---
Professor Caelan Rowe answered through a VR link, image crisp and practical.
He was in his office, wearing a headset. An old personal machine sat beside him and handwritten notes were scattered across the desk like he didn't trust anything that couldn't be touched.
Rowe looked irritated - then saw Areon's face.
"What happened?" Rowe asked, and the irritation vanished.
Areon told him straight, because if he let the story wobble he would collapse in the middle of it: mother in stasis, father KIA, tribunal redactions, Sunday closures, Monday Central Court intake.
Rowe listened without interrupting. Then, like a scientist, he asked the only question that mattered.
"Diagnosis classification?" he said. "Subtype?"
"Autoimmune genomic degradation," Areon answered. "Dr. Pembert said it's curable with corrective augmentation. But the substrate is restricted."
Rowe's mouth tightened. "Restricted as in strategic."
Areon nodded.
Rowe exhaled once. Not surprise. Recognition. "You won't get that through civilian channels. It will be impossible on the rim."
Areon's jaw locked. "So what do I do?"
Rowe held his gaze. "You obtain authority."
The sentence landed cleanly, the same way Keene's procedures had landed. Different voice, same universe.
Rowe lifted his hand and a prompt appeared, polite and formal.
"I'm going to add someone to this call," Rowe said. "He works closely with military procurement and admissions. You need clarity, not hope."
A request blinked on Areon's overlay.
[Professor Rowe requests: add participant]
Areon nodded once.
Rowe executed it.
Xi Wue joined the VR space a second later - older, posture precise, eyes sharp in the way of people who spent their lives reading risk. Xi didn't waste time on comfort.
"Areon Vonn," Xi said.
"Yes."
"If it's that substrate for autoimmune genomic degradation," Xi said, "you will not procure it through the Institute of Science. Not through directors, petitions, or money. The substrate is treated as a strategic asset. Access is tied to clearance."
Areon heard himself breathe slowly and deliberately, because a faster breath would have turned into panic.
"So I'm trapped," he said.
"No," Xi said. "You're being redirected."
Rowe leaned forward, voice gentler, as if softening the angle of the blade. "There is a route into the United Worlds Institute of War Studies."
Areon's stomach turned. "I'm not a soldier."
Xi's gaze didn't flinch. "You're a son with a clock."
Rowe continued carefully. "There are strata. Understand them. Then decide."
Xi listed them like a briefing - short, clean, brutal.
"One: normal route. January intake. Apply through New Trinity. Competitive. Slow."
"Two: elite route. Requires a sponsor of Active military alumni. Minimum rank - Major."
"Three: strategic class. Internal promotion. No public documentation worth trusting."
Areon's throat tightened. "I'm seventeen," he said. "I turn eighteen next year. I was going to go to the Milky Way galaxy. Do a postgraduate degree and then a PhD."
Rowe nodded once, as if acknowledging a beautiful plan someone had just set on fire. "This is the correct window for intake. Brutal and perfect timing at the same time. Depends on which side of the clock you stand on."
"Tomorrow you speak to Director Halden," Rowe said. "Genma Institute of Science - the branch admin head. Not because he can procure strategic substrate. He can't. But he can route referrals, accelerate pathways, and put you in the corridor that intersects with authority."
Xi added, colder, "And he can tell you what you will owe."
Rowe glanced at the local time. "I'll speak with Halden tonight. Go Monday. First thing. I'll message you the slot."
The call ended.
---
The house didn't feel quieter. It felt heavier, like it had accepted the truth and was waiting to see if Areon could carry it.
He opened his personal AI and built a list because lists were how he kept the world from dissolving.
1) Central Court: belongings intake and documentation
2) Pension and death benefit transfer (nominee succession)
3) Memorial appointment confirmation
4) Stasis coverage timeline
5) Stasis monitoring terms (attending unit contact)
6) Genma Institute: Director Halden meeting (referral pathways)
The list looked clean. His life didn't.
Areon faced the Seventieth Canvas again. The boat fought a storm that hadn't fully arrived yet.
He picked up a brush.
He didn't know how Jasmine would have painted clouds. But he knew wind. He knew pressure gradients. He knew how nature behaved when forced.
His native augmentations - mathematical abstraction, relentless focus, metacognition, learning plasticity - did what they always did when presented with a problem.
They sharpened.
He mixed pigment until it matched the faint thunder veins already living in the upper sky. Then he began laying clouds into place in deliberate strokes - curl, density, shadow - building a storm the way he would have built an equation.
It wasn't peace. It wasn't healing.
It was motion.
Outside the glass, the valley darkened into evening. Somewhere above the mountains, the moons kept their distances, indifferent and perfect.
Areon painted anyway. Because tomorrow, offices would open.
And he would start asking for the kind of authority that only came with a price.