The sun over Genma-986 was bright enough to bleach the sky, yet three moons still showed through it, two natural and one artificial. On clear mornings in the Trinity Galaxy, the nearer moon looked close enough to touch. Pale ridges cut across its terminator like mountains carved into bone.
Areon stood at a floor-to-ceiling window in the United Worlds hospital and tried to keep his hands still. His mother sat beside him, Jasmine Vonn, eyes on the moons as if watching them could hold time in place.
The Special Department waiting lounge smelled faintly of antiseptic and warm polymer. Everything was designed to soften panic: rounded corners, warm light, sound dampening that swallowed footfalls. A hospitality ai unit hovered nearby, voice tuned to reassurance without intimacy.
"Dr. Pembert will see you within five minutes, Jasmine Vonn."
Five minutes stretched longer than it should have. The hush in the room thickened until it felt like pressure on Areon's ribs.
Areon had always believed in systems. Do the work, follow the rules, be early and careful, and the world responded in kind. That was how he had lived. That was how he had planned his future.
Jasmine sat with her spine straight and her hands folded in her lap like she was waiting for an art critic, not a diagnosis. A faint smear of blue-grey pigment clung to her thumbnail, dried from some unfinished habit, and the normalness of it hurt.
The pneumatic door sighed open. The sound was too gentle for what it meant.
"Jasmine Vonn. Areon Vonn," the hospitality unit said. "This way."
Dr. Pembert's office was not an office the way Areon understood the word. It was a controlled environment: table, chairs, a muted diagnostic wall, and behind a half-transparent partition, a compact lab bank with sealed drawers and sterile ports.
Pembert wore United Worlds active-duty uniform, not civilian scrubs. Dark fabric, precise seams, subdued insignia. Medical, but not ordinary. He did not greet them right away.
He read from a slim notebook, glass-black and offline, the kind of device used when a case was too sensitive to let into the net. No holo. No neuro-feed. A physical object in a world that did not need them.
The sight of it tightened Areon's stomach.
Pembert looked up. His eyes went to Jasmine first.
"How long?" he asked.
"Three days," Jasmine said, steady as she could make it. "Weakness. Fever that won't settle. The general ward said it was nothing. Then they redirected us here."
Pembert's mouth tightened at the word nothing. "May I take a blood sample?"
Jasmine nodded once.
A clinical ai unit approached, almost human except for its faintly glowing eyes. Quiet hands, no comforting script, and a needle so fine Areon barely saw it. The sample disappeared through a port, and the lab wall woke in dim, private light.
A timer ticked. Sixty seconds, then seventy.
Areon watched the seconds like he could solve them.
Pembert stared at the result long enough that the room seemed to tilt.
"Autoimmune genomic degradation," he said, careful. "Rare. Aggressive."
Jasmine drew in a deep breath, as if she had forgotten to breathe. For a moment her shoulders tightened, then she forced the air out slowly and took controlled breaths until her face settled again.
Pembert continued, voice flat because anything softer might break. "Untreated, it becomes terminal within months."
Areon's mind snapped toward tactics before his heart could catch up. Call his father. File the right paperwork. Trigger every emergency pathway the judiciary could touch.
"It is curable," Pembert said before hope could root. "Corrective genetic augmentation."
Areon leaned forward. "Then start it. Today."
Pembert's gaze cut to him. "Not through civilian procurement. The substrate needed is a strategic asset, restricted under United Worlds law."
Restricted was a clean word for something that felt like a blade.
Jasmine did not look at Areon. Her eyes stayed on Pembert. "How long," she asked, "before it reaches the point of no return?"
Pembert's throat moved. He restarted once, as if he hated saying it.
"Once the cascade reaches critical," he said, "you have about three months."
Areon felt his jaw lock. Three months was not a timeline. It was a sentence.
Jasmine's hands tightened in her lap, then loosened again, as if she refused to let her fear take up space.
Pembert exhaled and offered the only lever he was allowed to pull.
"Your United Worlds insurance includes suspended animation," he said. "Stasis. If we initiate today, it buys you time to obtain the cure."
Time, not treatment.
Areon heard himself bargaining, because bargaining was still action.
"We can pay," he said. "We'll sell property. We'll borrow. My father is judiciary. He can pull strings when he gets back."
The room did not flinch at the title. That scared him more than the diagnosis.
Pembert did not soften. "This is not a matter of credits," he said. "The material is controlled. Judiciary clearance is not procurement clearance. Even seeing the substrate requires authority, and acquiring it is another story entirely."
Jasmine looked at Areon then. For a heartbeat her composure cracked, just enough for him to see the fear underneath. Then it sealed again, not denial, but decision.
"Areon," she said, quiet and firm, "don't waste time arguing with the only door that opens."
Pembert tapped a command into the offline notebook. Two clinical units entered, human-shaped enough to feel wrong, eyes too blank.
"Jasmine Vonn," one said. "Please come with us."
Jasmine stood without wobbling. She looked at Areon.
"Five minutes," she said. "That's all I need."
Pembert nodded. "Take your time."
A side door slid open into an antechamber: white walls, a single bench, and a thin line of light in the floor marking the threshold between now and later.
Jasmine sat, and for the first time her shoulders dropped.
Up close, Areon saw the fatigue she had been hiding. Paint under her nails. Hair pinned back fast. Eyes that held too many nights.
He sat beside her and stared at his hands because if he looked at her face too long, he would start pleading.
"You know," she said softly, like they were still at home and the kettle had just boiled, "I was going to finish the Seventieth Canvas today."
His throat tightened. "The storm one?"
"The one that refuses to behave." A tired smile, stubborn even now. "Your father said it looked like an argument between gods."
The memory rose without permission. Jasmine in her studio, sleeve rolled up, brow furrowed in concentration. The room smelling of solvent and warm tea. His father leaning in the doorway, pretending to critique like an expert, then laughing when Jasmine tried to chase him away.
Areon blinked hard, but the sting stayed.
Jasmine turned toward him fully now. Her voice dropped into something private and fierce.
"Listen," she said. "I need you to do one thing while I'm asleep."
He nodded too fast.
"Finish my last painting," she said. "Don't let it sit unfinished like a wound."
"Okay," he whispered. The word broke on the way out.
"And when I wake up," she continued, "I'm going to judge it." Her smile sharpened with stubborn warmth. "So don't you dare turn it safe."
A sound escaped him, half laugh and half grief, and he hated himself for making noise.
"I feel totally lost, Mom," he said, voice cracking. "Where did it go wrong? We took tests every six months."
Jasmine pressed her thumb gently to the corner of his eye.
"It's okay," she said. "Cry if you need to. Just don't let it cloud your judgment."
He could not speak after that.
"One more thing," she said.
He forced himself to meet her gaze.
"Say goodbye to your father for me," Jasmine whispered. "We can't reach him right now. He said he'll be hard to reach because of the tribunal. When he calls you back, tell him not to worry."
Areon nodded. He didn't trust his voice with the word okay anymore.
The door opened again. The clinical unit waited.
Jasmine stood. Her fingers lingered on Areon's wrist, warm and real, then let go.
"I love you," she said.
"I love you," he managed.
The stasis chamber was next door: a coffin of clear composite and soft internal lighting, too beautiful for what it was. Machines murmured at the edges. Three medical units worked in silence, changing Jasmine into an advanced medical gown and guiding her into the chamber.
Areon watched her lie down.
"Just a nap," she said, trying to make it easy for him.
He wanted to grab her hand and refuse the room.
Instead, he stood frozen while the lid descended with slow inevitability. Mist curled inside. Jasmine's eyes fluttered once, then closed.
It felt like a quiet sealing of hope into a box.
A small light on the chamber shifted color.
[The light turned green.]
Areon stared at that green point as if it could answer him.
Pembert stepped beside him. "She's stable," he said. "In suspended state there will be no further degradation."
Areon's hearing felt distant, like the room had moved a meter away. He nodded without knowing why.
Pembert's voice lowered. "I will keep her monitored. You will be notified before any change." He paused, then added, not as comfort but as fact. "Do not delay."
Areon did not answer. Words felt useless.
He left the hospital into bright daylight. The three moons were still there, indifferent and perfect, and he did not even look at them for long.
His iris display flashed. An incoming call, tagged with judiciary priority.
For half a heartbeat, relief surged through him, sharp enough to hurt. His father. Finally. A lifeline that could pull them out.
He accepted.
Static for half a second. Then a voice, controlled and practiced.
"Areon Vonn?"
"Yes."
"This is Deputy Marshal Keene, United Worlds Judiciary Liaison. I'm calling regarding Judge Vonn."
Areon's heartbeat slowed, as if his body sensed impact and braced.
"There was an incident during descent," Keene said. "Judge Vonn's dropship was destroyed on approach to Lazaros Station."
Lazaros. The name alone carried tribunal halls and border violence and the kind of diplomacy that returned in sealed cases. Areon's fingers tightened around nothing, his hand curling as if it needed to hold something solid.
"Is he alive?" he asked, and the last word cracked.
Silence.
Not empty silence. Weight.
"There were no survivors."