Chapter 5 - Of Bronze Gods and Heavy Hearts

"I'll have to put you under, " Red warned, a poisonous glint in her eyes.

"You still pissed after the stunt your boyfriend pulled?" The corners of my mouth tugged upwards.

She glared at me. "I'll have to put you under, " Her voice stiff.

"Local anesthesia will be just fine."

Her lips pressed into a white line. Her whole demeanor screamed of venomous opportunity. But she relented.

The anonymity of my influence over her and her father's expanse was enough to halt any resistance. Slipping an injection out of a zipped-up medical bag next to her, she stabbed it into my jugular vein. A jab harder than necessary.

Cords in my neck tensed up at the sudden shot. And released as it numbed everything above my collarbone. Fitting a nozzle into my ear, she hooked up the end to a nanite tank.

"Can you hear? The numbing shouldn't affect your cochlea." Her voice was muffled but enunciated enough that I could make it out well enough.

I flipped a thumb up in response.

"Alright, I'm starting with the hair." Her voice rang out, "Your melanin sequence codes for silver hair. I am mutating your melanocortin 1 receptors to a sequence of," She paused consulting a screen and dictated, "AUGCCGUAGCCU–" She went on for a long ten seconds. I suspect, to piss me off. "That is, the color black. DNA is being attuned to its complementary, for the permanent presence of this RNA's concatenation. Now, across your thirty-seven-point-three-nine trillion cells," She manipulated a toggle in the corner that changed the HoloDisplay to something that represented my body. Tapping some button, a subtle spasm went through my body as the mutagens, that is, the nanites applied the change.

She typed in the nucleotide sequence into a holographic screen glowing above my bed. Flicking a model of mRNA, it spun around as the nucleotides slotted themselves in.

My eyes seemed exceedingly uncontrollable. Too reactive. So I settled for training them right at the HoloDisplay.

I watched as the strand of mRNA spun and mutated into the desired form. Usually, ReShapings were temporary, so things were synthetically added but easily distinguished for removal. For hair, temporary ReShapings normally just rip out hair all the way through your hair vesicles. They'll spray some chemicals into your hair follicles that last for a certain period that changes all hair to a certain color. Or, if you're cheap, they'll just dye it.

For permanent ReShapings, you have to change gene sequences. For hair, they'll change your MC1R genes. For skin color, they'll change your OCA2 gene. And so on.

Etchers, like Red, cause a series of point mutations across your entire RNA and DNA so the proteins are formed to represent an image desired.

Because of my heritage, there would be some hesitance for any Training acceptance. Changing my identity was easy enough, so, to save myself the hassle of explaining my situation, I did so. It was straightforward.

They had checks that extended past forms and cards, but those were only for the upper class. They only thought commoners would attempt to rise through the hierarchy with manipulated identities. They couldn't even perceive the possibility that a noble would deign to lower themselves in status.

"Alright, next is your skin. You said darker?" She looked at her screen with the most unimpressed look I had ever seen, "It says here, 'Tanned like a bronze god.' The fuck do you mean by that? Well, I'm not even going to try to deconstruct that one. I'll increase your hue by eight percent. That's a good tan, something you'd earn from labor and days outside."

She repeated the process of mutating my gene sequence into the preferred requirements.

Slowly, as more proteins started to form, my skin color changed. From pale to tanned.

"Now, I am going to cut all your hair. It's faster than letting it slowly change into a different color. It should grow back quickly enough, with the new color. Pills for hair growth are available at the pharmacy on Andreson. That should push your hair up a centimeter within a day. Do not take more than one pill. The body will get some signal to reject the new proteins and purge them. You need to let the changes assimilate completely."

I flicked a thumb up in the affirmative.

"Next, is your eye color. It says here, 'green'. I can do green, but it doesn't specify. I'll do forty-two percent red. Thirty percent blue and twenty-eight green."

She manipulated her controls again and affected the changes. She stared down at me in disgust for half a minute before shutting down her systems and yanking the tube out of my ear.

"You're done."

I flicked both thumbs up in thanks.

She left. Her job was done. She didn't want to wait with me.

The hour passed slowly. Waiting for the anesthesia to wear off. My fingers tapped on the rubber mattress. Finally, slowly, my eyes moved around with their usual synchronicity. Little pinpricks peppered across my face as the neurons could fire off their signals normally.

I blinked a few times before opening my mouth to ask an attendant to bring me a set of clothes.

"Pah!" The pure oxygen left a nasty taste in my mouth. Dry and stinky. I jumped off the operation table and staggered to the bathroom, legs asleep.

Rinsing my mouth out and squeezing some toothpaste out, I scrubbed my teeth vigorously with my fingers. Gargling water, I spat out and guzzled some water from the tap.

Wiping my face and neck on a towel, I changed into the garb an attendant had brought me. Plain and sturdy. Something you'd expect from a well-off commoner. After dressing, I considered my reflection.

Green eyes, black hair, and tanned skin as opposed to my previous steel-blue eyes, silver hair, and pale skin.

I looked like a peasant. Lean features though. I had the bone structure of a noble. Nothing I could do about that. Minor things with well-studied genes could be permanently changed. Bones and muscles that are too interlaced and make up the structure of the body, have ever-changing sequences. I couldn't have changed it without adverse effects. My bone structure would have to remain the same.

So, maybe, instead of a commoner, I could pass myself off as a bastard? Disgraced and forgotten, no one would look twice.

I nodded. Yes. A bastard. The most unremarkable of people. Someone with no place in any social hierarchy. Neither in the world of the middle class nor the realm of nobles. In limbo.

I nodded.

'Suitable.'

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Stepping out of the club, it was early morning. My conversation with Burney and my ReShaping with Red had taken a scant 6 hours. Gah. It felt like a couple of days. Taine's a fucking pain.

Stretching out, legs jerking forward on my toes as my back arched and my arms reached to the skies. Audible cracks and pops worked out as I stretched. Knots in muscles contracted and relaxed.

I breathed out.

A sequence of hand commands pushed my HoloDisplay up. I quickly typed in the nearest Shuttler Station. The navigation system plotted a course.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Down Rell, left on Lee, up Sinterell, a right on Royal, a right on First Street, left on Tors Avenue, and follow it up to 162nd.

That was 10 miles away, and I was not ready to walk that far. Opening up the Network, I accessed the first transport company I saw, 'Jeff Billy Bob's Cabs For Hire!'

I clicked a few buttons and swiped up, letting my location ping into their system. Hopefully, the driver would be here soon. It was sunny, but that didn't make it any less cold. Grounds, roofs, and every place exposed to the elements was covered and wreathed in snow.

My thoughts wandered. Well, they wandered in a specific direction – 'Who still used the term 'cab'? It's archaic.'

I snorted. My intellect is, obviously, exceedingly diligent.

I walked out of the alley, my location updating on the cab companies' navigation setup.

Cars and the whole automobile sector, after the Shattering, ended. We expanded to encompass space in its entirety, and our forced evolution into species with Cores to combat the Celestials made transportation for even the lowest Ascender, effortless.

However, humans are the very definition of lazy, and with our new abilities, we manufactured several vehicles. Shuttles or Space Ships were what we used to move from one planet to another if you still had some irrational fear about Transfer Formations. I was using a Shuttler because Transfer Formations were conveniences well above a peasant's salary. To maintain my ruse, it wouldn't do to botch it with something that should be inaccessible to me.

For land travel, we used several animals with Cores, or the Advanced, to move about. The Advanced were creatures who had adapted to their surroundings by developing Cores of their own. Their transformations were minimal, though. They couldn't advance the same way we could. The ability they had at birth, were the abilities they would have. Beasts that were conceived nearer to natural Spires were more powerful. They would be born with power greater than most Ascenders could achieve. Those Spires were, like always, the lucky good result of humanity's bad action's terrible result.

The Sun had a very nasty plan of turning into a supernova. To halt that, we stripped Earth of its resources to build an artificial...container for the sun. Constantly rotating and managing it by emitting varying radiation levels and utilizing the concept of negative mass, we could, basically, leech gravity away from it and supply our controllable magnitudes to fluctuate the Sun on tractable scales.

But balance is key. Skewing that in our favor, a small sector of the entire universe, was, bluntly, idiotic. We do not have all the knowledge. Performing something that we knew had the potential for backlash was, frankly, idiotic. And doing so while knowing that the cycle of stars was essential to the concepts governing space and time, was, forthrightly, FUCKING MORONIC. And so like always – side effects.

The unfortunate side effect was the formation of a planet. A planet that bent spacetime around it and away. It was located parsecs away, but the gravitational effect that we felt, pushed Earth a millimeter off its course. It was inconceivable. Earth had built up sideways momentum for billions of years and to shift it? I shuddered to think of the energy it must have given off to perform that feat and to do so after diminishing over tens of parsecs.

This was where the Celestials were formed. Anyway, the massive energy it gave off, manipulated atoms, and created bonds, and fractures within space itself, resulting in Barrens. Unhabitable planets, even after terraforming.

But the single largest effect that shaped society's trajectory was that it turned Earth and several spatial bodies into humming pools of energy. Spires we called them. Seemingly random places completely collapsed as the energy furrowed itself down to the barycenter. They were glowing pillars of energy that shot themselves up into the sky.

They were harmless to move through, it was the creatures, the Advanced, that lived within the Spires' boundaries that made them so dangerous.

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The cab was, surprisingly, a cab. I thought it was some form of a joke, and I would get a carriage pulled by some Advanced, but getting an automobile from the PreCelestial ages? I don't even know why someone would go through the work to make one.

'Addendum: It's hardly any work. But, just...why?'

In any case, it would get me to my destination.

I stepped to the side of the cab and knocked on the window.

The driver rolled down the windows, a jovial smile appearing, "You that Rul fellow? It'll bay fifdy copperbacks t' thuh Shuttlers."

I nodded and then yanked on the handle.

I jerked it open and slid onto the ragged, ripped, grey seats. It was the year 900 AS, the slums must've had seats better than this.

I slammed the door shut, and he took off.

Soon enough, we were rattling along Tors Avenue.

The warm buildings, shining in yellow, lanterns hanging from suspended Essence, children building forts and characters in the snow, skyscrapers piercing clouds, the Guild Halls, the restaurants – serving and candlelight and under fluorescents. A dichotomy between modern, metallic, and comfortable, but one that worked, one that was refined.

The car came to a whining halt as the breaks creaked and cringed in their rusted moorings. Stepping out, I craned my head back to take in the Shuttler Station. This was one of the largest stations in the entire Cumulative.

I let out a low whistle. Long and sharp, it carried under my breath. I couldn't see the ending, the Station extended on both sides falling into trees, yet the glint of metal still appeared within the brush.

The frontal building was a sky-spearing 1200 feet tall, with panes glittering on the higher floors and long, slanted windows stretching on the lower ones.

I looked away and opened up my HoloDisplay. Typing in copperbacks and snapping the bills from my ExtensionCube, I counted out the fifty owed, handed them to the driver, thanked him, and went back to ogling at the building.

It was massive! The Palace had more breadth than height, and after living there for years, I'd become jaded with its splendor. But this was new and fascinating.

I shook my head lightly and pinched my arm. This was just the beginning. 'I'd explore everything!' I giddily thought as the positives started to crack through the negatives of leaving.

I had never been out of Alrys, the capital of the Immortal Blizzard Empire, and I was going to have so much fun!

Settling down, I patted myself down in a mime of checking to run through my list of belongings.

'Got my ExtensionCube'

'EquipmentKit is over my shoulder'

'Pants are on.'

'Shirt is on.'

'Shoes are on.'

'Future is in front. Let's go.'

I settled my features and let go of my wide-eyed look of wonder. These views were commonplace for commoners. Nobles are pampered enough to stay home and complain about the outside. We commoners work with the elements.

'We commoners.'

I smiled.

Free from the shackles of status and supposed superlative reputation, I took my first step forward. Not back home. Not back to a family that ignores. Away from a life that has done nothing but serve as a cage, as a jail that requires the sternest of wills to break. I walked forward alone. I walked forward for me.

It was a good first step. A solid one.

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Stepping into the air-conditioned reception corridor, I walked towards a woman wearing an ironed blue uniform.

Smiling at her, a woman who nearly matched my height, I looked at her name tag, pinned above her breast.

"Hello Minerva," I greeted, "How are you?"

"Well, thank you. And you?" She answered with her own practiced smile.

"I'm doing fine, thank you. Do you have any available seats heading to Rhid?"

She hummed, her fingers flickering over prompts, "We have one to Borey and we can get you a jump to Rhid once there. That's the only one available today. The ships will be back around next month if that isn't suitable."

Like all middle-class existences, I repeated the lines she must have heard before any confirmation, "Cost?"

"4 silverbacks."

I followed the script with a grimace and the surefire hesitation. And 'relented'. My acting skills were poor, but it was so expected, that she didn't question them.

I fished into my pockets, already having called up the required funds in all sorts of bills. 3 silverbacks and 100 copperbacks.

Clumsily spilling the money on the counter as if I had never used so much before, Minerva's smile turned brighter as if she was overcompensating from letting out a frown.

I nearly chuckled. This was fun!

"Do you have the paper too?"

"Of course. One for the Herald and two for the Board."

I slipped out a copperback, "The Herald please."

She slid me a rolled-up paper, one hand still filling out the various forms required for my travel.

"Identification here says you've had a run-in with the Guards, Mister Rale. You have had two minor infractions. But the past six years have been clean, so I can authorize you for travel. Now, will we be expecting any trouble from you?"

"No ma'am."

"Good."

She sent me a set of travel documents. I thanked her and went on past the front desk.

As I walked toward the intent detectors, I smiled.

People who go incognito always forget that the best identity is one grounded. Real.

You need to make sure that you have a past. If you suddenly pop up out of nowhere, it isn't plausible to a more intense scrutinization. So you don't make yourself a model citizen with acts of sweeping children into your own sponsored philanthropic donation orphanages, no, you put a couple of misdemeanors or infractions onto your record so people are naturally slightly uncomfortable around you. But never go too much into placing a criminal record on your identity. Everything must be limited to fines in penance, overboard and they'll just kick you out. You won't get anything done.

When I made my identity I included two counts of unregistered Advanced breeding. Their Ascendance barely cut into the Pitch 1 so I was let off the hook, missing a couple hundred silverbacks worth of sales.

The average citizen. I smiled.

A lot of that smiling thing has been going on lately.

Stepping through the intent detectors, the program measured no fluctuation or inclination through my brainwaves, no roiling or malicious intent through my Core, and my heart rate and blood pressure remained constant showing that I had no inhibitor shielding me from scans.

A stoic guard waved me through. His beard was awesome.

Walking into the room I saw the most heart-rending image I'd ever seen. Family. Friends. Someone there.

Everyone was with someone. Gaggles and crowds. Giggles and guffaws. Kids running around together, families taking out food and absent-mindedly bobbing babes up and down, couples brushing hands over each others', friends jostling and crowding over something interesting.

So much love.

It made the air heady and my heart heavy.

Nothing extracts flavor more than the lack of it. Sweet, sweet, faery fruit. Alluring and ephemeral, tempting and goading, ever missing.

I took a deep breath. There was nothing behind me. Only forward for me. Maybe I could find something similar somewhere down the line?

I took another step forward. A step towards the Raging Flame Empire. A hesitating one that took a balance to reach the ground. But it was, nonetheless, a solid one.