There is a strange kind of peace in forgetting the world is cruel. For a boy like Deuce, that peace looked like warm synthlight drifting through curtainless windows, the smell of fried eggs crackling in a pan, and the soft humming of his younger sister, Pandora, as she flipped through one of their mother's old books.
The residential zone of Aerilon Crest stirred with quiet rhythm. Screens flickered to life on apartment blocks. Mag-trams rumbled across elevated tracks. In one modest high-rise on the city's lower ring, Deuce tugged on the sleeve of his hoodie and called out to no one in particular.
"Where's my other boot?"
No one answered. Pandora giggled from the other room.
At twelve, Deuce was lanky and fast-growing, with wind-tossed black hair and a stubborn streak. His world was small but steady: school, games, family, street food carts, and late-night stories whispered under bedsheets.
Today was his twelfth name-day, and for once, his mother had taken leave from the infirmary to cook breakfast herself. His father, usually buried in construction schematics, had even turned off his commlink.
They were going somewhere, though no one would say where.
The drive out of the city was long. The windows of the skimmer car played advertisements in silence while trees blurred past on either side of the highway. Deuce leaned against the door, Pandora beside him, already asleep on his shoulder.
Their mother sat up front, reading something on her tablet. Their father drove, humming softly to a song only he could hear.
It was perfect in the way moments sometimes are when you don't know they're about to become memories.
Then came the flash. A scream. Pandora jolted awake, eyes wide in confusion and terror, just in time to feel the world rip itself apart around her. Metal tore through air.
Impact.
And silence.
Deuce didn't die.
But for two years, he wasn't alive either.
A coma, the doctors said. Induced by trauma. Stabilized by the System.
Somewhere in that time, their apartment was dissolved. The city reallocated their assets. His parents were confirmed dead, one during the crash and the other lost to a surge-beast attack while traveling to retrieve his sister.
Pandora, still just a child, was taken in by a certified foster house under System law. Orphaned children were a common sight now. No one questioned it. No one told her where her brother had gone.
Deuce lay hooked to machines in the basement level of Aerilon Crest General. His vitals flickered between static and survival.
On the seven hundred and thirty-first day, the hospital prepared to shut off his life support.
They never got the chance.
His eyes opened.
And the world, already broken, would never be the same again.