The sun was never bright in the slums where we lived.
The sky always had a hazy, bruised color, which were blocked out by the giant buildings of the city center.
It felt like the sky itself had forgotten how to be blue. Here in the slums of Aether, the air was thick.
It smelled like damp metal, burnt wires, and the sour tang of being poor.
We lived in a small confined box that passed for an apartment, thirty-seven floors up a tower that was falling apart.
Rusty walkways crossed the space outside our single, dirty window, and the rumbling of the trains was a constant hum you could feel in your teeth.
But inside our box, there was Mia.
My sister, Mia, was like a star full of energy, all packed into the body of a skinny thirteen-year-old.
While I saw the dirt and the rust, she saw a blank page.
She had covered the walls with chalk drawings of spaceships with smiley faces and weird, colourful animals.
Her favourite was a six-legged cat she called 'Sir Reginald,' who looked very proud of himself.
Her laugh was the best sound in the universe, bright and clear.
For a second, when she laughed, you could forget your stomach was empty or that a cold wind was sneaking through the window.
"Ben, look!" she said, her voice pulling me out of my thoughts.
I turned from the window. She held up a big wrench, her face was smeared with grease, and she was beaming with a smile.
"The water filter was making that weird noise again. I fixed it! I rerouted one of the pipes to bypass the rusty part. That should last us another month!"
I tried to smile back. At thirteen, she was a better mechanic than the pros who worked in our sector.
Her brain had just figured out how things worked.
She deserved to be in a bright, clean lab with the best tools, not fixing our ancient junk with scavenged parts.
The unfairness of it all was a bitter taste that was stuck in my mouth.
"That's great, Mia," I said. My voice sounded scratchy. "You're a genius."
"I know," she said, her smile getting even wider.
She put the wrench down and went to our little food heater. "Dinner's almost ready. It's the protein stuff today.
The one that tastes like chicken if you try really, really hard to imagine it."
I love her more than anything. She was the reason I got up in the morning.
She and the old, faded picture of our parents were the only things keeping me steady.
They were smiling in the photo, taken before the accident at the space station that turned them into a memory and us into orphans.
That love was like a fire inside me, keeping me warm.
But it was also heavy. It was a terrifying weight, knowing I was responsible for her. I am fourteen.
I am supposed to be the man of the house, the one who protects her. And I was failing, badly.
The proof of my failure had a name: Star Energy. In our world, your whole life depended on it.
It was a power inside everyone that decided if you'd be rich or poor, strong or weak. The rich nobles were born with high Ranks, like a 2 or a 3.
Their power shone from them. My power was Rank 1, One Star. It was the lowest possible score.
So low, it was basically zero. It meant I was going to spend my life doing the worst jobs, getting crushed by a world that had no room for someone like me.
It meant I could never give Mia the life she should have had.
School was where I was reminded of this every single day.
It was exactly like a typical high school: the rich and jocks kids at the top, and weaklings in other words meeee! at the bottom.
And the king of my personal hell was a dweeb named Draco.
He caught me near the food mart after class. His two big friends stood on either side of him, looking dumb and mean.
Draco was everything I wasn't. His dad was some kind of noble, so he was tall, good-looking, and acted like he owned the place.
His Star Energy was Rank 1, Seven Star. It wasn't amazing, but in our crappy school, it made him a king.
"Look what we have here," he said, his voice slow and slimy.
"If it isn't Anderson, the slum rat. Are you making the hallway stink with your zero-power vibe?"
I stared at the floor. My hands were balled into fists.
The number one rule was: don't react. I'd learned that lesson the hard way, with a lot of bruises.
I just had to be invisible, take it, and get home to Mia.
"I heard your sister is tutoring little kids," one of his goons said. "She should stick to fixing toilets. That's what you slum-people are good at."
I felt a hot steam of anger brewing within me. Don't, Ben. Don't. It's not worth it.
But Draco wasn't done. He stepped right up to me, so close I could see my pathetic reflection in his shiny, expensive boots.
"You know, I was thinking about your parents," he said, his voice a low whisper that everyone in the hall could hear.
"They worked in sanitation, right? On that space station that blew up.
How perfect. They died covered in the same garbage they lived in."
That did it. My control snapped. All the anger, all the shame, all the sadness I kept locked up inside just exploded.
I wasn't thinking. I just looked him right in the eye. My voice was quiet, but it was shaking with rage.
"Don't you ever talk about my parents."
A slow, ugly smirk spread across Draco's face. This is what he wanted.
He'd poked me until I finally bit back. "Oh? The little rat can squeak?"
He didn't even wait. His fist, which had a faint silver glow of Star Energy around it, slammed into my stomach.
All the air left my body. I bent over, trying to breathe, but all I could see were stars.
Another punch hit my face, and my head snapped back. I tasted blood on my lips.
Then his friends started kicking me, hitting my back. I curled up on the cold floor, trying to protect my head.
Through the ringing in my ears, I heard Draco laughing. It was a casual, mean sound that hurt even more than the kicks.
"That's a lesson for you, Anderson," he said, already sounding bored. "Learn your place."
I barely remember walking home.
Every step hurt. My cheek was beginning to puff up, and I could feel my eye starting to swell shut.
I just kept my head down and walked. When I finally made it through our apartment door, Mia gasped.
"Ben!"
She ran to my side. Her happy face was gone, replaced with a worried, angry one.
She helped me over to our lumpy old couch.
"What happened? Who did this to you?" she asked. Her voice was tight.
"Nothing," I mumbled. My lip was split. "I fell."
She didn't believe me. She never did. But she knew if she pushed, I'd just shut down.
She went to our little first-aid kit. It was mostly empty, but she pulled out a single Vita-Stim.
It was a shot that helped you heal faster, but it didn't do anything for the deep bruises or the pain.
They cost a lot of credits, money we needed for food.
Mia, no," I said as she got it ready. "We can't afford that."
"Well! I can't afford to lose my brother," she shot back.
She stuck the needle in my arm, and I felt a cold tingle as the medicine went in.
The worst of the pain started to fade into a dull, heavy ache.
Gently she cleaned the blood off my lip with a cloth.
We just sat there for a while, not saying anything. In the quiet, I felt my sadness crush me.
I had failed. I couldn't even protect myself. And if I couldn't protect myself, how could i protect her.
That night, I could barely sleep. I just lay on my thin mattress, staring at the ceiling.
Every breath was a painful reminder that my ribs were bruised. Mia was sleeping across the room, breathing softly.
I lay there felling completely and utterly hopeless. What was the point of trying? I was born with nothing.
I would live with nothing, and I was gonna die with nothing, and I would only succeed in dragging my amazing sister down with me.
The pain in my body was not so different from the pain in my heart.
No.
The thought was just a tiny spark in the dark.
I won't let her live like this. I will do whatever it takes. I will protect her.
It was a promise I made to myself, staring at my sleeping sister. I had to find a way. I just had to.
That's when something answered back.
It wasn't a voice I heard with my ears.
It was a feeling, a sudden cold spot right in my head.
And then a voice, flat and mechanical, spoke directly inside my head.
[Lifeform found. Your soul is a match.]
[Your willpower is strong. Your desperation is high.]
My eyes flew open. The room was the same. Mia was still asleep. But the voice was still there.
[Beginning system takeover. Old device detected. Replacing it now.]
I felt a weird, hot tingling in my wrist, right where the cheap government Bio-Link was.
It was a little implant that tracked you and acted as your ID. Suddenly, it felt like it was on fire. The room started to spin.
[Takeover complete. Old device has been absorbed. The Absolute Life Form System is now connecting to your soul.]
[Connection at 25%… 50%… 75%…]
My mind was flooded with information. It was a crazy storm of symbols, patterns, and things I couldn't understand.
It was like seeing the blueprint of my body. my DNA, my cells, the pathetic little flicker that was my Star Energy. It felt like I was drowning.
[Connection complete. Welcome, Host.]
[Absolute Life Form System: Activated.]
Just as suddenly as it started, it stopped. The storm in my head was gone.
As was I...