Orion sat in the Observation Chamber, his fingers tracing patterns on the glass table before him. The room was bathed in soft white light that pulsed faintly from the walls. The holo-displays flickered, casting ghostly blue reflections across the polished surfaces, their data scrolling too fast for the eye to follow.
Across from him, Valeria and Marek stood side by side, their postures rigid. The central projection showed an array of genetic sequences, shifting figures, and pulsating anomalous markers.
Marek finally broke the silence, his voice cold. "This is the threshold." He extended a hand, tapping a specific point in the projection, which expanded under his command. The numbers sharpened into clarity.
"Every subject past this point exhibited either fatal instability or complete rejection of the Infusion Phase." He swiped again. The data reconfigured.
"I think by now it's safe to conclude that each human possesses a Genetic Threshold." He trailed off, letting the implication linger in the air.
Valeria folded her arms, her gaze unreadable as she studied the display. "This is no longer just an experiment," she said, her tone measured, but there was an undercurrent of something sharper.
Orion straightened. "Why is that?" he asked, his voice quieter than he intended.
She turned to him, her blue eyes locking onto his. "The Confederacy has approved formal recognition of Pythia Trials as a formalized system—on one condition."
"They want the Academy involved. They will oversee the next phase in the academy."
Orion stared at the projection, his stomach knotting. His fingers twitched against the glass as his mind turned over the implications.
Marek scoffed. "They presume dominion over it." His voice carried an undercurrent of mockery.
Orion's expression shifted as the pieces fell into place. "But wasn't this what Cassian wanted from the start?" he murmured, his voice tightening. His gaze hardened."
Marek's grin was sharp, predatory. "Now you understand."
Orion exhaled. The room suddenly felt colder.
"And if we refuse?" he asked, his voice low, measured.
Marek chuckled, but there was no humor in it. "Then the project stalls. The funding disappears. And any progress we've made?" He snapped his fingers. "Gone."
Orion's jaw tightened. He knew how these games were played. The Confederacy never makes an offer without an unspoken threat beneath it. Accepting their terms meant allowing them to dictate the future of the Trials. But rejecting them? That meant sabotage.
Valeria watched him carefully, her blue eyes sharp, calculating. "You understand what's at stake," she said. "This isn't just about the Trials anymore. It's about who holds the keys to the next step of human evolution."
Orion exhaled through his nose. "And they want to be the gatekeepers."
Marek smirked, leaning back against the console. "Of course they do. The question is—how do we make sure they don't get to decide everything?"
Orion's mind raced. The Trials had started as a way to harness the potential of the Genesis strain, a system to stabilize and refine its effects. But with the Confederacy's involvement, that selection would no longer be natural. It would be handpicked.
Only those deemed 'worthy' would be allowed to evolve.
And the others?
Orion swallowed. He could already see the fractures forming—the way this could divide entire generations into those enhanced beyond recognition and those left behind, doomed to obsolescence. The Confederacy wouldn't stop at controlling the Trials. They would use them as a weapon.
Orion turned on his heel and strode out of the chamber, the doors hissing shut behind him.
The corridor stretched ahead in sterile perfection, but his mind was anything but orderly. The Confederacy was tightening its grip, and for all their careful planning, he could feel the noose inching closer.
He needed to clear his head.
Orion accessed his neural interface, bringing up the city's transit network in his vision. With a few quick commands, a grav-cycle appeared in the lower docks, its credentials shifting to authorized and registered state.
Although Orion was only five, in his past life, he had been a penetration tester—which is just a fancy term for a hacker. He had once won the Turing Awards, a recognition reserved for the most exceptional minds in Computing and computer science.
Orion straddled the sleek frame of the hover bike, feeling the subtle vibration of its thrusters idling beneath him. The air rippled with a hum as the repulsor fields kept the hover bike floating in place.
"You're insane!" said a voice beside him.
Ren stood arms crossed, brows drawn together. But her eyes sparkled with the heat of rebellion.
"And this is illegal!" she added, her voice carrying both amusement and exasperation.
Orion smirked, tapping the dashboard where he had already overridden the vehicle's security locks. "Only if I get caught."
"That's exactly what criminals say before they end up on the news." she deadpanned, but her eyes couldn't contain the spark of excitement she felt.
"Imagine tomorrow's headline if we get caught—'Orion Reyes, the 18th heir to the Reyes family, caught riding a stolen grav-cycle through restricted airspace with his pretty sister like a pair of reckless thrill-seekers.'" she said, shaking her head but unable to hide her amusement.
The city stretched out before them, a maze of neon-lit transit lanes weaving through the skyline.
Below, grav-trains shot by in synchronized pulses, each one guided by a precise network of stabilizers and AI-controlled acceleration.
The upper lanes, where emergency response teams and high-clearance personnel soared, pulsed with the glow of hover traffic—silent, fluid, and blindingly fast.
Ren hesitated for a second longer before sighing and climbing onto the bike behind him. "If we get arrested, you're explaining this to your mother."
Orion turned to his professional meat shield in case his mother found out and laughed, revving the engine. "Why do you keep jinxing it?"
With that, he tilted the controls forward, and the bike surged into the night, leaving nothing but a whisper of ionized air in their wake. The hover bike hummed beneath them, gliding effortlessly through the upper lanes of the transit system.
Below, the high-speed rail lanes stretched into the distance, the blurred streaks of grav-trains pulsing in synchronized waves.
Ren leaned forward slightly, arms tightening around Orion as she glanced down. "Okay, this is kinda dumb. Why would anyone put hover bikes and triple-sonic trains in the same lanes? That's just asking for disaster."
Orion smirked, adjusting the bike's speed as they wove through the upper traffic. "It's actually genius if you think about it."
Ren scoffed. "Oh, I'm thinking. Thinking about how easy it would be to fall off this thing and get splattered by the train. All I see is a fast track to becoming a corpse."
"If a rider loses control, the bike's emergency system kicks in, counter-thrusters stabilize it." Orion said, banking slightly to the left as another bike zipped past. "If that fails, the AI deploys an ejection protocol, dropping them into the designated impact zones below."
Ren glanced down again. "Impact zones? You mean those weird panel things on the sides of the rail lanes?"
"Yup," Orion said. "And if we're attacked, the bike deploys its drone mode and and then ejects the rider to safety and engages the attackers until the Sentinel units arrive."
Ren huffed. "So this thing will toss me mid-flight into some glorified cushion that may or may not catch me before I redecorate the pavement?"
Orion chuckled. "More or less."
Her grip around his waist tightened. "Fantastic."