The strange stone said and did nothing as Noem internalized his panic attack. He couldn’t sell the stone. Just owning one was enough to draw the ire of every single conglomerate in the world, and stealing one was… it was…

It was unheard of. Because nobody was fucking stupid enough to transport one by nearly unguarded skyrail. And now he was doomed because of Ajiana’s moronic decision.

“Fuck, alright. Fuck, okay.” He muttered to himself. Thoughts and possibilities danced through his mind like bladed leaves on the summer winds, scouring mental wounds that killed off so many ways out. “Cancel the bidding. Even if someone wanted to buy this thing, they’d just end up getting me killed.”

Would his contacts accept that? A random cancellation just a few minutes after he put the call out? No. Definitely not. He had to come up with a reason. Noem crossed his arms and kicked aside one of the box’s fallen panels as the perfect excuse came to mind.

The digital taint. Or the great sterilization, as some countries and religions called it. “Tell them I tested everything and that Ajiana teleported them before-hand to fuck with me. So nothing’ll grow no matter how hard they try.”

Noem paced around his small living room and glared at the two lights in the corner of his vision. One of them went out a few minutes after his message, but the other hung on annoyingly long. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. It never went off. And thanks to all the fucking anonymity filters, Noem couldn’t tell who was being the clingy asshole.

Just as he was about to start the call and force the last one standing to back down, the light mercifully blinked out. Relief flooded out in a waterfall of horrible understanding, but none of that mattered. His reputation had definitely taken a huge hit for being duped, but the truth was so much worse.

“Lock all the doors and activate the high-tier surveillance.” He ordered as he swept his hand through the air, summoning a pair of electrodes and a small screen from his inventory. “If anything we haven’t seen before shows up, even if it’s just a hoarder made from the wrong metal, inform me.”

Days. That was all he had. Maybe weeks if he was exorbitantly lucky, or if Ajiana hadn’t procured the corundum from a reputable source, but he highly doubted it. He needed to get ready to move, and to run until he could get rid of the stone in a way that nobody could trace back to him. Unfortunately, there was one sickly problem with his plans.

Noem steeled his nerves and gently pushed aside the door to his sister’s room. Sterile white greeted him along with the beeping of life-sustaining machines. The horrible stench of pure alcohol and stagnant flesh assaulted him to the point of tears. He wiped his eyes at the combination of emotions and sensations, but soldiered on to the body that he knew existed under the mass of cables, tubes, wires and fluids.

A body that belonged to his little sister, Mona. Eight years younger than he was; just at the age she was supposed to go off to university somewhere and make something wonderful out of herself. Instead, she was trapped in her own body thanks to something that no doctor had been able to cure. Life support had sustained her for years, and Noem couldn’t remember what she looked like under all the patches and plastic that kept her alive.

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“Sorry, Mona. I fucked up something fierce.” Noem chuckled weakly as he bent down and placed the electrodes on what little exposed skin remained on her forehead. “But I’ve got a few favors left in me, so I should be able to get you out of here. Blackened Shores will get you a new name and a place in some top-notch hospital, and I’m pretty sure Gitacan Solutions can get you a marrow transplant that’ll make you come up as someone else.”

Noem tapped on the screen once. A barbed circle filled in almost instantly, then slowly began to spin as the very much illegal mind-spike invaded Mona’s dreams. He’d paid out the ass for the thing a few years back, but it was the only way he could confirm Mona wasn’t braindead without having a whole lot more medical knowledge than he did. Watching her dreams every night had become a sort of guilty pleasure, and one that he knew Mona would hate him for when she eventually woke up.

But it was his only connection to her. To the last member of his family that hadn’t abandoned him. So he wouldn’t abandon her.

“Here we go.” He grunted as he pulled over a stool and sat hunched over at Mona’s bedside. The mind spike crackled as it fully synchronized the visuals with the audio. “At least you’re still alive, Mona. Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

The screen bled from darkness to… not-quite darkness. It was still extremely black, but the sort of black that was intentionally painted onto a wall. Not the unintentional black that appeared in the absence of everything else. Mona was still alive. That much was almost enough for Noem. Through the silence, though, he heard the crackling voice of something else. She was dreaming–and he wanted to know what about.

Scattered voices and strange shapes slowly coalesced into something understandable. On the small screen flashed a symbol Noem recognized from one of his history classes; a five-pointed upside-down star surrounded by a ring, with the bottom-most point extending down twice as far as the others. It shone brilliant white for a split second when it all came together, then calmed into a much mellower dull yellow shot through with vibrant orange streaks and red flecks.

The sign of the unnamed goddess of cleansing. Noem leaned forward into the screen–the last time he’d seen a god in Mona’s dreams, she’d gone into cardiac arrest less than five minutes after.

“Be ready to resuscitate her.”

Nothing confirmed his command, but he knew it had gone through. He watched helplessly as the crackly screen played forward, inching ever so slightly further away from the symbol. The darkness bled away into what he assumed was a brilliant temple, but the screen’s pitiful resolution turned it into a mass of pixels and colour.

“Hello, young one. You have met such a horrible fate, have you not?”

The goddess appeared before Mona’s eyes. A mass of Qi and energy smashed together into something that the screen could barely fit into the shape of a person. Too many arms reached out from either of the goddess’ sides, each carrying a ball of power that sparkled like her symbol. Noem winced and averted his eyes as the screen grew unbearably bright.

“Fear not.” The goddess continued. “For though your life was cut tragically short, there is another that wishes to end. Kept alive by someone so monstrously selfish that he cannot even be considered a person.”

Mona looked down at her hands. They were the wrong colour. White as snow, with skin so thin and filled with scars that she could barely move them. She curled her fingers with a whimper of pain, showing fingernails that bled along their beds.

Noem couldn’t breathe.

“Where am I? I’m… dead?” Mona asked, but it was in the wrong voice. Her normal voice was raspy and harsh, even before everything happened, but this voice was soft and weak. As if whoever it belonged to was scared of making too much noise. “But I…they said I would get better!”

“My sweet child, life is so fragile. Nobody can be so arrogant as to believe they can resist the call of the promised end.” The goddess said without a hint of pity. Her words burned with a radiance only those with absolute self confidence could manifest. “Your time on Earth came to its natural end. And your time on Terret begins now, Keira Baker.”