The gleaming moon hung brightly in the dark sky, surrounded by various constellations, with barely any clouds visible. Not for the first time, this sight left Dante in awe. For all the pain and suffering that the arrival of aether a hundred years ago had caused, perhaps the atmosphere’s cleansing was a thin silver lining.
Tonight, Dante had no time for stargazing. There was a hole in the guards’ changing shifts, and this was the only moment he could use to escape without alerting them, who would, in turn, alert his parents.
He clenched a fist as he thought about how they treated him like a prisoner.
Well, no longer.
He shouldered his expensive Victory Veil-brand endless backpack, sparing only a single thought to the fact that his family’s technology would help him break free from their confines before launching into a run. The tap-tap of rugged travelling boots on concrete quickly shifted to wet, muddy splashing as he moved from the walkway to the rest of the grounds.
The grounds of the Sinclair family’s small upper-class residence in Neo-London were somewhat removed from the rest of the city, enabling the presence of actual greenery and even a large, clear pond. The moon was so bright that he could see his dark-skinned features reflected in the pond as Dante ran alongside it. It was a little amusing to think that if the moon was not out tonight, it would be much harder to spot him in the dark, considering the primarily black jacket and similarly black cargo trousers he wore. Wet grass parted as Dante moved quickly through the field, transferring droplets of rainwater from the earlier downpour to his socks despite his travelling boots. He was almost sad he couldn’t enjoy the rain, but this was an acceptable substitute. Dante had always been a big fan of rain.
It didn’t take long for him to reach the main path to the villa, and from there, it took about five minutes to get to the city proper.
Neo-London at night was a captivating sight. The high-rise buildings lit up with electronic screens displaying advertisements or news reports were as much a testament to humanity’s ingenuity and tenacity as the throngs of people still out and about at night.
We not only survived the arrival of aether and the geni, but we also grew despite it.
Thinking of aether and the geni always left Dante with mixed dread and excitement. The geni were a completely different species from humanity. Where humans had biological instincts that led them to a desire for copulation and propagation, geni only desired personal power and the growth of that power.
Dante was endlessly fascinated by geni. No one understood how aether could cause animals, plants, and sometimes even inanimate objects to become sapient. It was real, modern-day magic. It was unfortunate that humanity could only harness it through technology.
Dante was already a good way down the main road when he pulled himself out of his thoughts. Although V2 was nominally based in what remained of the US, Dante had travelled a lot throughout his younger years. As a result, he was no stranger to the bright lights at the storefronts, the clash between contemporary and aged architecture. Even though the original London was long gone, overrun by feral geni along with most of the north of England and Ireland, Neo-London was a sprawling bastion of humanity. It grew out of Nottingham’s Mid-Eastlands territory as an outpost and continued growing as more magisters came to live there, alongside workers, business people and more.
It took Dante twenty more minutes of dedicated speed walking to reach his destination in the heart of Neo-London – a small building compound, home to one of Europe’s foremost experts in geni studies, Professor Xavier Murray-Hussain. The compound was small for the type of building, not its size. Dante had never been to this corner of the city before, so he took a moment to take it in. To the left, as he walked up the path to the entrance, the building was glass and steely grey frames. To the right, the grey steel gave way to another building of stone and concrete, coloured a warm beige. There was a stark contrast to it, but it didn’t look garish. Instead, it simply gave him the feeling that the Professor wanted to cleanly separate business and pleasure – with the compromise of living next to his workplace. He was heading for the lab instead of the Professor’s home for now. He wasn’t sure if the man would still be up working at this time of the night, but it was open to the public all day to teach locals more about the geni, and hopefully make them amenable to becoming magisters.
He approached with swift steps, but before he could enter, a lithe and pale girl around his age appeared in front of the other side of the door. She shook her head, causing her short, silver-blonde curls to shimmy alongside the movement and knocked on the glass. Dante tilted his head in confusion.
What is she trying to get at?
Then she reached for the handle, pulled, and pushed, but the doors didn’t open.
Dante’s confusion lifted.
That’s strange. I would have thought the lab would still be open. Did they close early tonight? That’s a problem.
Dante began to turn away when the girl started frantically knocking on the glass again. He frowned and turned back. She pulled out a V2-brand aethertech phone and typed something on the screen. As she wrote, she turned the screen flat upwards, and the aethertech projected the words above the screen.
‘Help, I got locked in.’
Dante’s recurring confusion faded away, replaced by concern. He nodded and pulled out an aethertech phone of his own. He knew too much about how these operated, being from the family that owned the brand. Having a message floating above his phone took only a few seconds.
‘I’ll try to wake up the Professor. Maybe he can help.’
The girl nodded, but Dante thought he saw a brief expression of panic or fear form before she controlled herself. That filled him with some suspicion, but he stuck to his words.
He walked away from the lab and towards the residence next to it. It was quiet, and the lights were off, so he could only assume the Professor was asleep.
Dante rang the doorbell and got no response. It was a very shrill but still somewhat melodic noise. He rang again, then waited a few seconds.
He rang a third time and finally got a response; what sounded like very muffled shouting and some lights turning on, visible through the curtained windows at the front.
“Who the hell is ringing my doorbell at 11 p.m. on a Saturday?!”
The voice got louder as the Professor presumably approached the front door.
The door opened to a slightly dusky-skinned middle-aged man wearing glasses with a pissed-off expression. Having presumably just woken up, his dark hair was tousled, and there were rings underneath his brown eyes. His build was fit, and since his shirt had no sleeves, Dante thought the Professor could pose as a bodybuilder. It was bizarre to meet with an educational figure like this while he was wearing a T-shirt and joggers.
“Sorry for the disturbance, professor-” Dante began saying.
“Sorry? You woke me up at 11 p.m. on a bank holiday.” Professor Murray-Hussain snapped.
Dante winced a little. Sheesh, what a temper.
The Professor sighed and seemed to take a moment to collect himself. “What do you want, kid?”
“There is a girl trapped alone in the lab. I came here to see if I could talk to you but found the lab closed and her stuck there.”
“Huh.” The man blinked for a moment. “That sure doesn’t happen every day. You better not be lying… Give me a moment.”
He returned inside, then emerged in a thin jacket with his CARD in hand. Dante almost drooled upon seeing the device, which looked vaguely like a handheld games console. He had wanted one of his own for so long. Still, he knew any geni contained in the Professor’s CARD could tear him apart in seconds.
“Alright, let’s go,” the Professor said.
He led Dante to the lab quickly. Dante struggled a bit to keep up. The man had swift strides and didn’t look like he was trying. Dante was no slouch in the physical department, having prepared for most of the past few years to become a magister, but he was still struggling.
The girl in the lab looked slightly resigned once she saw the Professor arrive. This time, she didn’t hide her expression. Was she a thief or something to that effect? Dante had his suspicions, but he wouldn’t jump to conclusions.
“Oh, it’s you, Nova,” the Professor sighed, tapping away at his CARD for a few seconds, which allowed him to open the doors. “I’m assuming you snuck in to take a CARD and a fledgling geni after I refused your request?”
The girl had the grace to look down, ashamed, a blush rising on her pale face.
In the next moment, she looked back up at him. “Please, Professor, I’m willing to do anything. I’ve wanted to become a geni magister all my life. I’ll pay you back as soon as I earn enough.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The Professor grimaced. “While I appreciate your spirit, if not your apparent criminal tendencies, and truly empathise with your situation, there are rules I must follow. I can’t bend them without putting myself under scrutiny.”
Dante looked at the girl and saw the hope slowly drain from her otherwise bright green eyes, and something inside him compelled him to speak up. “If it’s money, that’s the issue… I can sponsor you.”
Both heads snapped to him. Both expressed surprise and confusion, with one showing rising hope once more.
“You’d do that for a stranger you’ve never seen before?” the Professor asked sceptically.
Dante shrugged. “I’m not the most altruistic person in the world, but if I have the means, why wouldn’t I help? If there’s one thing I can empathise with, it’s the desire to become a geni magister.”
He turned to Nova. “That has also been my dream since I was young.”
The Professor raised an eyebrow, “If you’ve been wanting to become one, and you have the funds for a CARD, two even, why not just become one early? You don’t look that old, but you could become a magister at 16 if you have the aptitude and pass all the testing.”
Dante’s expression clouded over slightly. “I did apply two years ago and have completed all the testing required, but… let’s just say there have been some obstacles in finishing the process.”
“What’s your name?” Nova asked, then looked away, a faint blush on her cheeks. “And… thanks. This means a lot to me. I’ve always wanted to become a magister, but I don’t have the money, and my grades weren’t good enough to become sponsored by the government, a corp or the Magister Council.”
He introduced himself as “Dante” and then paused. With some reluctance, he continued, “Dante Sinclair.”
Nova’s eyes widened slightly. “Sinclair, as in the V2 Sinclair’s?”
He nodded.
The Professor whistled. “That’s some background you have, kid. I guess that explains some things.”
“How are you not famous, like Adrianne Sinclair?” Nova asked. “That’s your sister, right?”
Dante’s smile thinned. “Let’s talk about that another time.”
Nova blinked, then smiled apologetically. “Don’t feel pressured. I didn’t mean to pry into personal stuff.”
The Professor led the pair of budding magisters into the lab. Dante couldn’t help but take a good look around. The Neo-London geni Laboratory was a spacious building. In place of an entrance hall, the building seemed to have a small reception area next to a built-in shop full of various displays of CARDs and other aether technology, a small library filled with desks containing laptops and multiple shelves of books that were most likely related to aether or the geni; and finally a work or lecture space, Dante wasn’t quite sure which, as it lacked a raised area, but consisted of desks with computers placed on them, arranged in concentric circles. These were all in one massive hall, and this wasn’t even the entirety of the building. A giant wall with a large pair of doors was at the far edge. Dante could only assume they led to the part of the lab where the geni were held, studied and trained.
The Professor led the pair of young people to the aethertech shop first. “Feel free to choose your CARD here. The models all function the same. There are only aesthetic differences.”
The CARDs were sleek devices with steel casings in different colours. As much as Dante hated his family sometimes, he couldn’t help but feel impressed with how his grandfather had created an ingenious device capable of capturing creatures based on their aether and how he and his father had worked to miniaturise it over the years, putting out smaller and smaller models that were increasingly efficient. The device was a game-changer that allowed humanity to stabilise.
Dante chose a primarily black design with golden accents, which appealed to his sense of fashion and coordinated well with the colours of his regular get-ups. On the other hand, Nova picked a white and green device, mirroring the colour of her hair and eyes.
“I’ll get those linked to your magister IDs. I have Nova’s saved since I issued it, but I’ll need yours. You said you completed the tests, correct?”
A shadow flitted over Dante’s eyes, then disappeared as he nodded, “Yes, I have it on my phone. Give me one second.”
He quickly pulled it up and showed it to the Professor, who then filled out a form for both aspiring magisters. The Professor glanced at Dante a few times as he did so, then finally spoke up.
“How much trouble am I going to get into for helping you bypass your parents? I don’t want to pry into your business, but their hatred of geni and how the magister industry has evolved as opposed to the original geni hunters is quite famous. Or infamous, I should say.”
Dante looked away for a second, rubbing the back of his neck. “They might try to restrict your funding for a short while, but I don’t think they’d do anything overt. They might hate the geni and everything related to them, but they’re not stupid.”
The Professor gave Dante a deep look, hummed in thought for a second, and then continued filling out the forms. “I see… Well, what’s life without living dangerously once in a while?”
Dante couldn’t help but smile in response to that.
A short while later, he handed both of them their CARDs. “Congratulations, you’re both official magisters.”
Nova let out an exhilarated whoop. “Finally!”
She turned and hugged Dante tightly. “You have no idea how much this means to me. Thank you so much.”
Dante went still, blinking rapidly. He saw the Professor struggling to contain a grin from the corner of his eye. Rolling his eyes, Dante patted Nova on the shoulder and returned the hug with one arm.
“You’re welcome. I’m sure the Professor would have tried to squeeze you into the next batch of government-sponsored magisters even if I hadn’t shown up.”
Professor Murray-Hussain shrugged. “True enough, but it would have taken another year or more.”
Nova wiped a tear from her eye. “Thank you, both of you.”
“Alright, enough sappiness,” the Professor said, “We’re not done yet, I assume.”
“Did you want to buy one of the geni I’ve been raising here in the lab, Dante?”
“That’s right,” Dante said. “I was hoping for a Dark-aligned geni, if possible.”
The Professor quirked an eyebrow while Nova’s eyes widened slightly.
“What makes you want one of those specifically?” the Professor asked.
Dante shrugged, clearly trying to seem casual. “In some cultures, Dark geni are seen as bringers of misfortune and are perhaps not reviled but disliked more than any other type of geni. Let’s say I can empathise with the idea of being kept away from the public’s eye.”
Professor Murray-Hussain nodded thoughtfully. “Okay, I have a few geni of most of the aetheric alignments.”
Dante’s eyes lit up. “Let’s go see them.”
The Professor laughed, “Sure, no need to hurry.”
“I’d be happy to get one for you too, Nova. I’ll be frank. I’m buying these with trust fund money. It won’t last forever, but I have quite a lot of it, so buying a second geni won’t be a big issue.”
This was only mostly true. Although the money initially came from a trust fund, Dante had long since started funnelling it into multiple private accounts of his own.
Nova shook her head. “No, that’s alright, but thank you for asking. I’ve always wanted to get my first geni partner in the wild like the first geni hunters and magisters did decades ago.”
Dante couldn’t help but see the girl in a new light. “Impressive. I wish you the best of luck with that.”
“Thanks,” she grinned. “It may not be as strong early on as a lab-raised partner, but I’m sure I’ll be able to give you some competition soon.”
“We’ll see,” Dante couldn’t help but grin back.
At this point, the Professor coughed to get their attention. “Let’s get going before we get sidetracked even more. I’m assuming you want to have a look too, Nova?”
“Of course!” the girl replied.
The trio, one older and two younger, headed for the back of the laboratory. On the way, the Professor grabbed a packet of aetherites. Aetherites were small stones of crystallised aether. They occurred naturally in areas with high aether density in the form of ore, mixing with present metals such as iron or gold. These days, factories or labs could manufacture them via artificial high-aether density environments, but they remain relatively expensive for the average person. Dante could guess why the Professor had picked some up. While geni diets varied, all of them could feed on aether. Using his CARD, Professor Murray-Hussain unlocked the doors, causing a single light to turn on, illuminating an expanse of tropical forest land that seemed far more extensive than the laboratory’s building should allow for.
“This is the rainforest trail,” the Professor said, “It’s one of the multiple biomes that the lab is home to, thanks to space-bending aether technology.”
As Dante and Nova looked around in awe, the Professor continued. “Most of the geni still awake are either nocturnal or don’t need much if any, sleep, so I suppose you came at the right time since these are more likely to be dark-aligned.”
“Try not to make too much noise,” the Professor said as he led them down a beaten path using his CARD as a torchlight. “We should avoid waking any geni that are still asleep.”
Dante marvelled at the environment as he walked beside Nova and the Professor. The sharp, floral smell of grass and leaves filled his nose, along with the subtle yet musky scents of rainwater and mud. Occasionally, he could hear movements in the tropical trees and see flashes of colour. He gripped the CARD in his hand tight. He had already turned it on, though he opted not to use the torchlight feature.
“Keep an eye out for anything moving,” the Professor said. “While the geni here recognise me and are mostly familiar with humans, some can be wary of strangers.”
Dante kept that information in mind as they walked. It didn’t take long until the group reached a clearing within the otherwise densely forested area. Before they could enter it, the Professor signalled for the two teens to halt, put a finger to his lips and turned off his flashlight. The surroundings became pitch black. Dante couldn’t even see his own hands. He almost jumped at the sound of rustling in the trees nearby. A feeling of anticipation ran through him like a current.
Was this it?
Bright golden eyes appeared in the darkness, mirroring Dante’s aurean pupils. The Professor scattered some of the aetherites on the ground, then turned on his CARD’s flashlight again. He gave Dante the rest of the package and pushed him forward without a word. Dante’s eyes constricted, then focused again on the geni’s reflective eyes. The being had shrunken back into the darkness at the sudden presence of light, but the scent of concentrated aether kept it from fleeing or attacking. Dante lowered himself to crouch over the ground, appearing not disarming and soft but rather friendly, like an equal.
The pair of eyes in the dark narrowed before the, most likely bestial, geni seemed to make up its mind. It raced towards the scattered aetherites and began to snack on them, revealing itself. The geni was fox-like in its physiology, but its awakening had caused some apparent mutations. For one, it was sizeable already, closer to that of a small dog than an ordinary fox. Its fur was almost pitch-black at its torso, lightening slightly from its neck to dark blue. Most striking, however, were its facial features. Golden spots marked it in clusters, like constellations in the sky. Its sheer beauty took Dante’s breath away.
“Hello there,” he said, his voice rumbling lowly. As he spoke, he grabbed a small handful of aetherites and placed them in front of him.
The fox geni looked at Dante piercingly, as if it could peer into his soul. It growled lowly but then started to approach. It looked at Dante again and then began eating the aetherites he had placed on the floor. Dante smiled. When the geni finished, it sat on its hind legs and looked at Dante, waiting.
“Smart,” Dante said approvingly. “You’re right. I’m here with an offer. You see, I want two things. I want to explore this savage world and, one day, stand at its top. Both people and geni will stand in my way, so I’m looking for partners who also want to reach the apex. I promise I’ll try my absolute best to make you one of the strongest beings on this planet. In return, please stand by me.”
The geni looked directly into Dante’s eyes, and Dante looked back fearlessly. He slowly broke into a crooked smile. “Also, I promise there will be even tastier foods than raw aether for you in the future.”
The fox closed its eyes, seemingly in thought. Dante shook as foreign images, thoughts, and feelings suddenly appeared in his mind. He felt anticipation, the desire to be free, prowl the wilds, hunt, survive, and grow... and a little trust. The fox was extending an olive branch, hoping Dante wouldn’t betray it.
“Great!” Dante said, unable to suppress a heartfelt smile. “I won’t let you down.”
He pressed a few buttons on his CARD’s touchscreen, which lit up in ethereal colours as the device began pulling in aether from the surroundings.
“Try not to resist,” Dante said softly.