The air in the Gamma Wing had become a library of secrets that only Vaun Meyer could read. At ten years old, his sensory envelope had expanded to the point where privacy was an obsolete concept. He didn't just hear the other students; he felt the barometric shifts caused by a door opening, the humid signature of a nervous sweat, and the distinct, rhythmic flutter of an accelerated heart rate.
With 30,200 followers, the "Pulse" was no longer a hum; it was a symphony. It provided a constant, high-pressure stream of data that felt like liquid mercury sliding through his veins. Every time his engagement numbers ticked upward, his vision sharpened, allowing him to see the individual spores of mold in the ventilation shafts and the microscopic tremors in Reggie's hands.
He was currently suspended in the center of the common room, his body perfectly horizontal, held aloft by a "pillow" of compressed nitrogen and oxygen. He was practicing a new, depraved application of his Aero-kinesis: Sub-Dermal Pressure Monitoring. By subtly shifting the air pressure around his roommates, he could detect the exact moment their blood pressure spiked or their cortisol levels began to climb.
"Aero, if you don't stop that, I'm going to puke," Reggie groaned from the sofa.
Reggie was vibrating. It was his default state now. His metabolism, fueled by the Vought-issued "Speed-Paste," was burning so hot that he radiated a constant, shimmering heat haze. He was staring at his own tablet, his eyes moving in a frantic, horizontal blur as he scrolled through his mentions.
"I'm not doing anything, Reggie," Vaun said, his voice smooth and frictionless.
"Yes, you are. You're making the air... heavy. Like I'm at the bottom of a pool. It's messing with my equilibrium," Reggie snapped. He skidded to his feet, a blue-grey blur that ended with him standing by the window. "My count is down. Two hundred unfollows since breakfast. They're saying I'm 'arrogant.' They want more 'Relatable Reggie' content. How am I supposed to be relatable at Mach 0.6?"
"You're not," Vaun said, descending to the floor with a soft hiss of escaping air. "Relatability is a lie we tell the un-Chosen to make them feel better about their own stagnation. You don't need to be relatable; you need to be indispensable."
Kevin was in the corner, staring into his aquarium. The Deep had reached a 10th-place ranking, but his mental state was a shoreline receding before a tsunami. He was whispering to a large, mottled octopus that Vought had provided for his "Environmental Empathy" training.
"The octopus says there's a storm coming," Kevin whispered, his voice sounding wet. "He says the glass in this building isn't as strong as the people think."
"The glass is reinforced titanium-polymer, Kevin," Vaun said. "The only storm coming is the Audit."
The "Internal Audit" was a mandatory quarterly evaluation designed to ensure that the Vought "Assets" were maintaining their marketability and interpersonal cohesion. It was the corporate version of a physical, but instead of checking reflexes, they checked "Liking Scores."
The auditor arrived at noon. Her name was Sarah Sloane, a Senior Brand Manager with a reputation for "Recycling" assets that didn't fit the current aesthetic trends. She didn't wear a lab coat; she wore a suit that looked like it had been carved out of a midnight-blue diamond. Behind her trailed three "Engagement Analysts" carrying holographic projectors.
"Gamma Wing. Trio Cell," Sloane said, her voice a clipped, professional staccato. She didn't look at the boys; she looked at the holographic leaderboards floating above her analysts' heads. "Aero, your numbers are exceptional. The 'Nature-Hybrid' pivot has increased our 'Green-Initiative' stock by 4.2 points. A-Train, your speed is stable, but your 'likability' is a disaster. The Deep... you're a footnote."
She turned her gaze to Vaun. Her eyes were two cold, grey cameras. "Sit. We have a problem."
They sat on the minimalist white sofas. Sloane tapped a command on her tablet, and a large screen on the wall flickered to life. It was grainy footage, captured from a hidden angle in the mess hall.
It was the footage from the "vacuum incident" where Vaun had nearly suffocated Stone for dumping Kevin's food.
"This," Sloane said, the footage pausing on Stone's panicked, violet face. "This is not 'Blessed' behavior. This is 'Antagonist' behavior. We market you as the Vanguard of Protection, Aero. But here, you look like a predator. If this footage were to leak to the public-tier networks, your brand would be unsalvageable. You'd be Recycled before the sun set."
Vaun felt the air in the room turn brittle. He could feel Reggie's heart rate spike—a frantic, staccato rhythm against his ribs. He could feel the moisture on Kevin's skin turning cold.
"I was protecting a teammate, Ms. Sloane," Vaun said, his voice calm, projecting the "Heroic Sincerity" he had practiced for hours in front of his mirror. "Stone was disrupting the nutritional intake of a Tier-10 asset. I neutralized the threat with the minimum force required."
"Minimum force?" Sloane laughed, a sound like glass breaking. "You collapsed his lungs in a public space, Vaun. You displayed a level of depravity that we usually save for the 'Black-Ops' track. Vought doesn't want the public to know you can turn their air into a tomb. It makes them... uncomfortable."
She leaned forward, her perfume smelling of cold rain and expensive chemicals. "A rival cell—the Beta Brutes—has this footage. They're threatening to 'leak' it to the independent blogs unless we downgrade your ranking and promote Stone to the Gamma Wing."
The threat was clear. In the world of Red River, your ranking was your life. If Vaun dropped, his stipend dropped. If the stipend dropped, Elena would lose the penthouse. If Elena lost the penthouse, Emma would be "optimized"—moved to a cheaper, more clinical facility where the "Micro-Branding" would be pushed to a lethal extreme to cover the costs.
"What do you want us to do?" Vaun asked.
"I want the footage gone," Sloane said. "And I want Stone... dealt with. Not killed. Vought doesn't like losing investments. But he needs to be 'De-Saturated.' He needs to lose his powers in a way that looks like a tragic, natural accident. If he's not a Supe, the footage he holds has no value. He becomes a 'disgruntled civilian,' and we can sue him into silence."
Sloane stood up. "You have forty-eight hours to resolve this 'discrepancy.' If the footage leaks, or if Stone is still a threat, the Trio is disbanded. Reggie goes to the regional circuit. Kevin goes to the 'Sea-World' exhibitions. And you, Vaun... you go back to Baltimore."
The door hissed shut.
The silence that followed was suffocating. Reggie was pacing the room so fast he was leaving a visible trail of ionized air. "Baltimore! I'm not going back to the block! Vaun, we have to do it. We have to wipe him."
"We can't just 'wipe' someone, Reggie," Kevin said, his voice trembling. "That's... that's what the bad guys do. We're the Chosen."
"We're chosen to win, Kevin," Vaun said, his feet lifting off the floor as he ascended into the center of the room.
He felt the 30,000 fans. He felt the weight of their expectations. He realized that the fans didn't love him for being "good." They loved him for being "better." And being better meant removing anything that threatened the perfection of the image.
"Reggie, find out where Stone is training tonight," Vaun commanded. "Kevin, I need you to find the irrigation maps for the Beta Wing gym. I'm going to use the 'Nature' angle. If it looks like a plant-based accident, Sloane can't pin the kinetic signature on my air-control."
The Beta Wing gym was a brutalist structure of reinforced concrete and heavy iron weights. Unlike the Gamma Wing's high-tech sims, this was where the "Brutes" came to grind.
Stone was there, alone, trying to bench-press a five-ton iron bar to reclaim his standing after the mess hall humiliation. He was a mass of jagged granite and stubborn pride, his breathing a heavy, wheezing sound that echoed in the empty gym.
Vaun watched from the shadows of the rafters, hovering silently. He didn't want to use the air. Air was too personal. Air left a trace in the lungs—a specific barometric bruising that the Vought coroners could identify as an "Aero" signature.
He reached into the walls.
The gym was decorated with "V-Vines"—genetically modified creepers designed to absorb the excess CO2 produced by the heavy-breathing Brutes. Vaun reached into the life-cycle of a vine directly above Stone's head.
He didn't just grow it. He triggered a Cellular Overload.
He used his Nature affinity to force the plant to produce a massive amount of a specific, paralytic alkaloid—a natural defense mechanism he had studied in his "Biological Warfare" module. He didn't drop the vine; he dropped the pollen.
A fine, nearly invisible dust drifted down from the ceiling, settling on Stone's sweaty skin.
As Stone reached the apex of his lift, the alkaloid hit his nervous system. It didn't stop his heart; it simply blocked the acetylcholine receptors in his muscles for a fraction of a second.
It was enough.
The five-ton bar slipped. Stone's rocky arms buckled, and the massive iron weight crashed onto his chest. There was a sound like a mountain cracking—the sound of granite being crushed under its own weight.
Stone didn't die. But the damage was catastrophic. The pressure of the bar didn't just break his ribs; it shattered the "Core-Gland" near his sternum—the biological organ that Vought believed was responsible for a Brute's durability.
Vaun descended from the rafters, landing softly beside the gasping, broken boy. He looked down at Stone, his violet-green eyes glowing with a cold, clinical detachment.
"You should have eaten your slurry, Stone," Vaun whispered.
He reached out and, using his Aero-kinesis, he created a tiny, localized vacuum inside Stone's locker across the room. The locker door blew outward from the internal pressure, and Stone's tablet—the one containing the footage—flew into Vaun's hand.
Vaun didn't delete the footage. He encrypted it to his own private server. Information was currency, and he might need Stone's depravity one day.
Then, he used his Nature power to "clean" the scene. He commanded the V-Vines to retract, absorbing the paralytic pollen back into their own systems. Within seconds, the gym looked exactly as it had before—save for the broken boy beneath the iron bar.
The next morning, the "Audit" concluded.
Sarah Sloane stood in the Gamma Wing lounge, looking at a report of Stone's "Tragic Training Accident."
"A regrettable loss for the Beta Wing," she said, her voice entirely devoid of regret. "Stone has been moved to the 'Permanent Care' facility. His powers are gone. He is no longer an asset. And as such, any 'leaks' associated with him will be treated as the delusional ramblings of a broken child."
She looked at Vaun. A flicker of something that might have been respect, or perhaps fear, crossed her face. "You're a fast learner, Vaun. You've secured the Trio's ranking. And your engagement is up another three points. People love 'Tragedy' in the news cycle."
[FOLLOWER COUNT: 30,200 $\rightarrow$ 33,500]
Vaun felt the surge. It was a dark, heavy heat. He felt the power of the thirty-three thousand people who now "loved" him even more because he had survived a scandal they didn't even know existed.
That night, he made his call to Elena.
"Vaun! The Audit went perfectly!" she beamed from the New York penthouse. "The analysts say you're 'Untouchable.' And look at Emma! She's so excited for your success!"
She turned the camera.
Emma was nine now, but she was sitting inside a small, glass terrarium filled with exotic, miniature ferns. She was the size of a cricket. She was wearing a dress made of real spider-silk, her skin so pale she looked like a ghost trapped in amber. She was staring at a single drop of dew on a leaf, her tiny hands pressed against the glass.
"She reached a new 'Micro-Goal' today, Vaun," Elena whispered, her eyes glowing with the light of her tablet. "She can disappear for ten minutes at a time now. The fans think she's traveling to a 'Spirit Realm.' We've already signed a deal for a 'Vanishing' documentary."
Vaun looked at his sister. He felt the 33,000 fans in his blood. He felt the power to move mountains and silence kings. But as he watched Emma press her tiny, translucent forehead against the glass of her cage, he realized that he was just a different kind of prisoner.
"I'm coming for you, Em," he whispered.
"What was that, darling?" Elena asked, turning the camera back to herself.
"I said I'm ready for the next chapter, Mother," Vaun said, his eyes turning a deep, abyssal violet. "Tell the fans to keep watching. I'm going to give them a show they'll never forget."
As he hung up, Vaun sat in the dark of the common room. He reached out and felt the air. It was cold. It was silent. It was his.
He wasn't a hero. He wasn't a "Vanguard." He was Aero. And he was finally learning how to breathe in a world that wanted to choke him.