Chapter 147: The Suit
I wake up earlier than I wanted.
For the first time in what feels like a long time, my body is rested. There’s no armor on my body. No HUD nagging at the corner of my eye. Just sunlight through a thin curtain, the smell of an apartment that has people in it, and the small distant hum of a baby being fed in the next room.
I lie there for a minute. Letting the relaxation be a thing.
Then I get up.
Mom is on the couch nursing Lili. The morning light is coming sideways through the window and catching them both at the same angle. I walk over. Bend down. Kiss the top of her head.
Then I touch one of Lili’s cheeks with the tip of my finger.
She smiles at me.
A small thing. Nothing dramatic. A gummy, half-formed smile from a face that hasn’t decided what features it wants yet. But the ice in my chest cracks open, and I know exactly why I’d burn the world down if it ever came to it. Without thinking twice.
"Did you eat already?" I ask.
"I did. Your eggs are on the stove. Just made them and went to feed her. Eat before they go cold."
I sit at the small kitchen table. Three scrambled eggs. Salt and black pepper, nothing else.
Still warm.
I eat them slowly. Three eggs in this body feels like a meal.
After, I run my morning. Shower. Brush my teeth. The mirror reflects a kid I have to remind myself is me—skinny shoulders, the cheap haircut, the bones in his wrists. The strangest part is that ever since I returned, a white streak has appeared in my bangs. Yet, no one seems to care—as if it has always been there. But I know the truth: it wasn’t.
I open the bottom of my closet. Pull out the suit I saved from my high school graduation. Cheap fabric. The elbows are visibly weathered. But it’s clean, it’s pressed, and a thrift-store suit walks just fine into a corporate lobby if you walk in straight.
I put it on.
I check myself in the mirror. The kid in the mirror almost looks like an adult.
I walk back to the living room. Mom looks up from the couch. Her eyes go wide.
"Mom. I’m going to look for some work. Don’t go out today without an umbrella. It’s going to rain."
She blinks at me. Twice.
Then she laughs, a real laugh. Lili laughs along, as if she’s following my mother’s harmony.
"You put on a suit to tell me jokes? You must really be happy to be back home."
I smile, but I shake my head.
"It’s actually going to rain, Mom. That’s the second gift I brought you."
She stops laughing.
Her eyes drift across the room. Land on the small magnetic card sitting on top of the TV cabinet. The five thousand GNC.
"You brought back a WaterStrand?"
"I did. The money came from selling it to the government."
She brings one hand up. Wipes a tear before it can fall.
"My son, on his first dive, brings back a WaterStrand." She looks at me. The look has too many things in it for one face. "I don’t know if I should be proud or scared."
But I already know which one she is. She told me last time that it hadn’t rained in over six months. I sold the strand to District 4. The rain falls here.
There’s a side benefit she doesn’t know about.
The energy that rain carries—the residue of a WaterStrand discharging into the atmosphere—charges a Diver’s body. Skills cause less chrono-strain. If I have to use anything I learned over there here on Earth, I want it raining when I do it.
That’s part of the plan too.
I check the wall clock. 9:37 AM.
The District 4 rain cannon launches the WaterStrand capsule at ten sharp. Once that capsule hits the upper atmosphere and the strand discharges, the storm cells start forming inside the next hour. I want to be in the right room when the first drops hit.
I bend over the couch one more time. Kiss Lili on the forehead.
"Bye, Mom. I’ll be back soon."
"Den—wait. Where are you going?"
"To find a job."
"In that?"
She points to my suit.
"In that."
I leave before she can ask anything else.
On the bus, I let the plan run.
I’ve been turning this over in my head since Veric told Rhayne he’d been on Earth. It got better when he told me his father didn’t know who I was. That confirmed something I’d suspected.
Garen Azurea—Veric’s father, head of the Masters Series Corp. on Earth and Lord of the Azurea House in Thirstfall—doesn’t know me from the surface side. Doesn’t know I exist on this planet.
But he knows my father.
Not from Earth. From the deep places of Thirstfall. From whatever Alden Sands disappeared into.
I know things about the future that nobody alive currently knows. That’s the currency I’m going to use to buy his trust. If it works, I’m walking straight into the wolves’ den—because the Deepwarden runs the noble houses through threads they don’t even see anymore.
Right house. Wrong dynasty. Same building.
The bus crosses the Salt River. The landscape changes.
Poor district behind me—dust, thin trees, empty water carts, the orange filter of a sun that’s been baking the same concrete for too long. Across the bridge, the world brightens. Glass. Steel. Holographic ads. Trees that are still green because someone is paying to keep them green. The drought hasn’t reached the rich part of the capital because money can still buy water.
Rusthaven. The capital’s polished face.
I get off the bus.
Two blocks of walking. The temperature is the same, but the sidewalks are clean and the air-conditioning bleeding out of every storefront makes the heat feel like a rumor instead of a fact.
I stop in front of a tower.
It clears a hundred and twenty floors easy. The façade is wrapped in neon even at this hour, metallic accents catching the daylight and throwing it back in colors that don’t exist outside of marketing budgets.
I read the sign.
Masters Series Corp.
I let one corner of my mouth curl up.
And I walk in.