Chapter 15 -- Inheritance of the Sky
The door sealed behind them with a quiet hiss, shutting out the world's noise and the weight of expectation that followed the Vang name through every corridor of the Republic. The apartment was dim and stripped of pretence, a sanctuary carved from the rigid machinery of the House of the Sky's military life. Here there were no biometric monitors shadowing every movement, no sensors hidden in the walls, no listening posts disguised as household appliances. It was a rare chamber of silence, private and unobserved, where brothers could speak without fear of their words drifting into the networks that connected everything else in their lives.
Peter Vang removed his cobalt-threaded tactical vest and placed it carefully on the wall hook, the fabric still warm from the day's tension. His movements were slow and deliberate, hands steady despite the turmoil in his mind. His eyes never left his younger brother, searching for signs of the trauma that should have been there, the fragility that any normal child would carry after what had happened at the demo plaza.
Instead, he saw calculation.
He remained silent at first, allowing the weight of the quiet to press down between them. In military interrogation, silence often extracted more truth than questions. Nathan sat on the edge of his narrow cot, hands folded in his lap, posture too controlled for someone who'd been screaming in terror hours earlier.
When Peter finally spoke, his tone was low and even, carrying the authority of an older brother who'd learned to read deception in the field.
"Stop pretending, Nathan. We're home now. There's no surveillance here, no audience to perform for."
The boy straightened, and the fragile posture of a child recovering from shock dissolved like mist. What replaced it was sharp and grounded, the poise of a young blade honed too early by circumstances that demanded maturity beyond his years. His expression steadied, and his eyes grew cold with the kind of focus that belonged in strategy rooms, not children's bedrooms.
"I had to," Nathan said quietly, his voice carrying no trace of the broken sobs that had echoed through the demo plaza.
Peter felt something twist in his chest—pride and concern warring with disappointment. "Collapse on command? Perform trauma for a crowd?"
Nathan nodded once, meeting his brother's gaze without flinching. "The override wasn't in any standard access tree I'd studied. The simulation ran deeper than anything I've ever experienced, including our own military systems. There were no dampeners, no feedback buffers, no safety protocols. It bypassed every regulatory layer like they didn't exist."
He paused, choosing his words carefully. "I knew something was fundamentally wrong with what I was experiencing, and I knew people were watching, recording, making judgements about what they were seeing. Feigning trauma was the fastest way to force an emergency shutdown and extract myself from whatever observation loop I'd stumbled into."
Peter crossed the room with the measured stride of a field operative rather than a concerned brother. He crouched beside Nathan's cot, studying him with the precision of a combat medic reading an unknown wound. There were no tremors in Nathan's hands, no hesitation in his posture, no residual fear in his eyes. Only the steady alertness of someone who'd processed a complex threat and emerged with valuable intelligence.
"You're not shaken at all," Peter said quietly, the statement carrying both admiration and unease.
"No," Nathan replied, his honesty cutting through the space between them. "I'm fascinated."
His gaze sharpened, and Peter recognised the look—it was the same expression their father wore when analysing strategic intelligence that could shift the balance of power between Houses.
"That simulation wasn't artificial pain, Peter. It was embedded pain. Authentic neural patterns from someone who'd actually experienced combat trauma. My body reacted before my conscious mind could intervene. Reflex stacks triggered without cognitive override. Adrenaline flooded my system at levels that matched genuine life-or-death stress."
Nathan leaned forward, his voice dropping to the tone of a briefing officer delivering critical intelligence. "That wasn't entertainment technology. That was training technology. Military-grade psychological conditioning disguised as civilian VR."
Peter's jaw tightened as the implications began to unfold. "You're saying it exceeded our own military pods' capabilities."
"By at least a full generation, possibly two," Nathan said with the certainty of someone who'd done comprehensive analysis. "And I can make that comparison because I've tested Sky House systems before."
Peter's stare deepened, and he felt the ground shifting beneath assumptions he'd held about his younger brother. "Explain. Carefully."
Nathan's tone remained steady, unrepentant. "Last summer, during the ceremonial drills at your barracks—the ones where families were invited to watch formation displays and equipment demonstrations—I slipped away from the crowd. While everyone was outside watching the parade, I accessed one of the Deep VR training pods in the restricted section."
The colour drained from Peter's face. "Nathan..."
"I used a null profile—anonymous guest access that wouldn't trigger security logs. Ran a basic combat simulation sequence, experienced the full military-grade neural feedback, then logged out and returned to the crowd before anyone noticed I was missing. No data recorded, no systems altered, no evidence of unauthorised access."
Peter's expression hardened with the controlled fury of a professional soldier discovering a security breach within his own family. "You violated restricted military protocols. You accessed classified training systems without authorisation."
Nathan's tone remained steady, showing no remorse for his actions. "I didn't alter anything. Didn't record or transmit data. Didn't compromise any operational intelligence. I only experienced the system's capabilities."
"You're fortunate you're my brother," Peter said coldly, standing and pacing to the compact sink where he gripped the edge hard enough to whiten his knuckles. "That level of security violation would trigger an automatic tribunal review. Court martial. Possible treason charges if they suspected espionage."
Nathan didn't flinch from his brother's anger. "It was worth the risk. Because now I understand the baseline of authentic military immersion technology. And what I experienced today with the Yang twins' demonstration went far beyond even our most advanced combat training systems."
Peter poured a glass of water with mechanical precision, his grip tight enough to crack the rim. The weight of Nathan's revelation pressed down on him like atmospheric pressure before a storm. "Even our top-tier pods can't bypass trauma buffers completely. Not without Bear House black-layer processing cores, and those require special authorisation."
He set the glass down with controlled force. "I requested those upgrades for our training division last year. The Bear refused, claiming the neural integrity risks were too high and the latency issues remained unresolved."
Nathan leaned forward, his voice calm but edged with the certainty of someone who'd connected crucial intelligence dots. "Then either they lied about not having the technology, or they never possessed those capabilities in the first place. Which means what I experienced today operates outside Bear House jurisdiction entirely. It wasn't legal, it wasn't public, and it definitely wasn't authorised."
Peter turned sharply, his military training kicking in as he began to process Nathan's analysis as actionable intelligence rather than family drama. "You're stating that unknown actors embedded full-spectrum neural override capabilities into civilian hardware without triggering any security detection systems?"
"I'm stating," Nathan replied with the precision of an intelligence analyst delivering a threat assessment, "that whoever created this technology is decades ahead of current regulation frameworks, and they're hiding revolutionary capabilities in plain sight amongst civilian entertainment systems."
Peter moved to the secure communications drawer, his fingers hovering over the biometric lock that would connect him directly to his father's command network. The decision carried weight beyond family relationships—it would launch an official House investigation that could reshape the balance of power between the Four Pillars.
"You understand what this implies?" he asked, though he already knew Nathan had calculated the ramifications more thoroughly than most adult strategists.
"I do," Nathan said, his voice growing steadier, almost prophetic in its certainty. "This wasn't a system malfunction or accidental override. This was a deliberate demonstration. The Bamboo House governs medicine, therapy, and psychological stabilisation. If they seize control of this technology, they'll bury its combat applications under therapeutic filters until nothing remains but safe, regulated illusions."
Nathan stood, clasping his hands behind his back in unconscious mimicry of military bearing. "But what I felt wasn't created to heal, Peter. It was created to forge. To shape minds through experience, to train reflexes through authentic trauma, to condition soldiers through immersive reality. And you know that as well as I do."
Peter's eyes locked on his brother's face, seeing not the ten-year-old child who'd been crying in his arms hours earlier, but a strategic mind that had inherited the Vang family's talent for reading the deeper currents of power.
"And you believe we should claim it for Sky House."
"I believe we must," Nathan answered, his voice carrying the weight of someone who'd glimpsed the future and understood its implications. "Because if we don't act decisively, another House will. And when that happens, we won't fall dramatically in fire or thunder. We'll simply thin, like clouds unravelling in the wind. The horizon will belong to others, and the Sky will forget our name."
His tone intensified with quiet conviction. "Our danger isn't defeat in open conflict, Peter. It's silence. Not betrayal by enemies, but erasure through irrelevance. We'll drift until nothing remains but historical footnotes about what the House of the Sky used to control."
Peter inhaled slowly, his finger poised above the biometric reader that would connect him to Captain Barret Vang—their father, regional commander of the Sky House Governance Enforcement Branch, and one of the most influential voices in determining the Republic's security policies.
"This communication could start a cold war between the Houses," he said, though his voice already carried the resolution of someone who'd made his decision.
Nathan's reply was calm, final. "It already has. You simply haven't seen the storms gathering yet."
Peter pressed his thumb to the scanner. The device glowed blue, recognising his biometrics and encrypting the connection through multiple security layers before establishing contact with the regional command centre.
"Encrypted priority message," he said clearly. "Recipient: Captain Barret Vang, Regional Commander, Governance Enforcement Branch."
The device vibrated softly in acknowledgment, displaying the secure connection established indicator.
Peter's voice was calm, measured, and cold as he delivered the message that would reshape everything. "Father, I have critical intelligence regarding unauthorised military-grade technology deployment in civilian systems. Requesting immediate secure briefing. Classification: House Security Threat Level Alpha."
He paused, then added the words that would make this personal as well as political: "Nathan was exposed. He's unharmed, but what he experienced changes everything we thought we knew about technological capabilities in the Republic."
Behind him, Nathan stood with perfect military posture, hands clasped behind his back. His stance was no longer that of a boy seeking protection. It was the bearing of a soldier delivering strategic intelligence that could determine the outcome of conflicts not yet declared.
This was no longer about a demonstration gone wrong or a child's trauma. This was about control—who would possess the power to reshape human consciousness itself. It was about legacy—which House would command the horizon in a world where battlefields could be written into code, where soldiers were forged through immersive experience, and where reality itself became a weapon wielded by those with the vision to claim it.
As the encrypted signal tunnelled through the House of the Sky's secure networks, reaching command centres where decisions were made that shaped the fate of nations, a symbol lit quietly across classified terminals: a cobalt line drawn against endless black, the mark of a horizon unbroken, uncompromised, and ready to expand.