Chapter 70 : The Cabin Where Everything Shifted
USA, in a plane – Alex's POV
The interface unfolded in front of me, clean lines of text suspended behind my eyelids like a second layer of reality. I navigated straight to the mission log, fingers tightening subtly on the armrest as I scrolled.
There it was.
The entry for MJ—marked, confirmed, completed.
Then my eyes caught on a second line.
Another mission.
Another completion flag.
May.
For a heartbeat, everything inside me stopped—thought, breath, the fragile balance of emotion I'd managed to regain. The confirmation glowed back at me with the same neutral, unbothered finality. No fanfare. No explanation.
Just truth.
The words had barely settled before a sharp prompt sliced across my vision—sudden, intrusive, unmistakably System-born.
[Secret Quest Completed.]
[Lineage Trigger.]
[Condition: Impregnate one of your consorts.]
[Reward: Genetic Control Unlocked — You may now consciously toggle fertility on or off at will.]
For a second, I simply stared at the glowing lines.
Of course it would phrase it like that.
Clinical. Detached.
As if none of this had weight—real weight—beyond its own internal parameters.
A muscle in my jaw tightened. Not anger. Not shock.
Just… acknowledgment. Cold, quiet, precise.
The System didn't care about consequences, emotions, people.
It only cared about outcomes. Chains of cause and effect stripped of anything resembling humanity.
And apparently, this was an outcome.
I accepted all mission rewards before I even processed them. Then I closed the display.
Only then did the realization hit with full force, crushing through every layer of control I'd tried to rebuild.
MJ was pregnant.
And May…
May too.
My pulse stumbled, a sudden uneven rhythm. The last two weeks replayed in a brutal cascade—her silence, the absence of messages, the way she'd pulled back without any warning. I had assumed she was giving space, sorting her emotions about… everything.
But she knew.
She must have known.
That's why she disappeared—why she didn't call, didn't text, didn't even send one of her half-teasing check-ins.
She didn't know how to face me.
How to say it.
How to exist in whatever this had suddenly become.
And I—
I couldn't even reach her. Not here. Not now. Not trapped in a metal box thirty thousand feet above the ground, surrounded by sleeping strangers and recycled air.
I sat there, staring at the dim curve of the cabin wall, emotions pressing hard enough to blur the edges of my vision. Not panic. Not clarity. Something heavier. Something that didn't fit into any category I had.
I didn't know how to react.
Not to this.
Not to May.
Not to the fact that when this plane landed, my life would no longer resemble anything I had mapped, predicted, or prepared for.
I closed my eyes, breath tight, the world narrowing to the weight of a truth I couldn't escape:
When I got home, I wouldn't just be facing MJ and Gwen.
I'd be facing May.
And everything that came with her.
The thought pressed hard—too hard—and I forced myself to stop. Sitting here, suspended above the world with no way to act, no way to fix anything… letting my mind spiral was useless.
If I couldn't do anything about May or MJ right now, then I needed to direct my focus somewhere it mattered.
Something constructive.
I reopened the interface.
The two newly claimed rewards waited in the list, faintly outlined, still unexamined. I selected the first one—MJ's.
[Advanced Acting Skill.]
A short summary unfolded beneath it:
[Advanced Acting Skill: A high-tier expressive control ability that enhances emotional modulation, body-language precision, and vocal nuance. Allows the user to seamlessly portray any emotional state, mask internal reactions, and adopt convincing personas with minimal cognitive effort.]
Concise. Practical. Easy to integrate later.
I switched to the second reward—May's.
[Self-Moral Stabilizer.]
This time the summary expanded more fully, the lines crisp and unmistakably direct:
[Self-Moral Stabilizer: Makes the user the absolute center of their own morality, fully immune to societal norms, guilt, or external moral pressure. They still understand social ethics and consequences, but these no longer influence their decisions unless their personal morality aligns with them. This allows the user to act according to their true self, free from hesitation or internal conflict imposed by "common morality."]
I stared at the description for a long moment, absorbing every word.
Then I made the only rational choice available:
I assimilated both abilities.
Advanced Acting Skill integrated first.
The effect was immediate—subtle, but unmistakable.
Like gears clicking into alignment.
Between my templates, past upgrades, and everything the System had already layered into me, this new skill didn't feel foreign. It felt like refinement. Precision tightening around every gesture, every shift of posture, every micro-expression.
Control.
Total, nuanced, instinctive control.
If I wanted to appear calm, I would be calm.
If I needed to look devastated, elated, furious—my body could deliver it flawlessly.
Even my breathing patterns adjusted smoothly, ready to match whatever façade I chose.
Acting wasn't a performance anymore.
It was a switch.
Then I triggered the second assimilation.
Self-Moral Stabilizer.
The change washed through me quietly, without fanfare or any dramatic surge.
More like… something loosening.
A knot I hadn't known I was carrying unwinding behind my sternum.
My mind lightened—clean, steady, unburdened.
Not numb. Not empty.
Just free from an invisible gravitational pull I'd never questioned until it vanished.
The background static of inherited guilt, inherited expectation, inherited frameworks—gone.
There was no external voice in the back of my mind telling me what I should feel or how I should act according to anyone else's rules.
Only my own judgment remained.
Clear.
Centered.
Unshakeable.
The weight I'd carried my whole life—quiet, constant, unspoken—simply wasn't there anymore.
I let the realization settle, diffuse through the rest of me like a slow, steady warmth. No rush. No panic. Just… equilibrium.
I closed the interface, let it dissolve back into the quiet of my mind, and leaned my head against the seat.
I didn't expect to sleep—not again—but rest was still a resource, and I needed every scrap of it. Tomorrow would be long. Complicated. Weighted in ways I hadn't even begun to map.
So I let myself settle into stillness, eyes closed, muscles loose. Not sleeping—just conserving energy, letting the minutes bleed into each other while the cabin lights shifted from dim to dawn-soft.
By the time the plane began its descent, I felt the subtle changes first: the shift in pressure, the muted clatter of passengers waking, the distant announcement rolling through the speakers. I sat up slowly, spine straightening as the world sharpened back into focus.
No haze.
No Void.
Just controlled readiness.
The cold hit me the moment the sliding doors opened.
Not a sharp shock—just a steady, needling bite that sank through the thin layers of travel and exhaustion clinging to me. Early-morning air, I told myself. New York being New York. Nothing more.
I shifted the weight of my bag on my shoulder and stepped out onto the pavement, breath slipping into the air in a pale, uneven cloud. Too visible for this hour, maybe. Too thick. But I chalked it up to fatigue, to the lingering fog after hours of Void silence and the slow return of emotions that still didn't feel like they fit quite right under my skin.
Cars rolled past in lazy intervals, their engines coughing against the chill. A few travelers huddled deeper into their coats as they moved toward taxis or buses. I should've done the same, but my mind was already elsewhere—on MJ, on May, on Gwen, on the day waiting to unfold the moment I stepped out of the airport bubble and let the city claim me again.
A long day. Complicated, even before conversations started happening.
The cold tightened around my fingers as I walked, a low, persistent sting that made the airport lights feel farther away than they should've. I rubbed my hands together once, more by habit than need, then kept moving.
One foot in front of the other. No reason to overthink anything yet.
Just the morning. Just the city.
Just a slightly-too-sharp chill threading through the air.