I step through the doors and the world changes texture.

The lobby is the size of an indoor plaza. Polished black stone underfoot, ribbed columns rising into a ceiling that breathes a soft blue light from concealed channels. Holographic logos rotate slowly above the central reception island, each one wider than my arm span. The air is cooled to a temperature that doesn’t exist outside this building. Even the silence is engineered—muffled by absorbent panels disguised as art.

Wealth, packaged so that you forget the rest of the city is gasping outside the doors.

I walk to reception.

The woman behind the counter looks me over. From the faded cuffs of my pants up to the slightly long collar of my graduation suit, then back down to the scuffed shoes. Her face does the entire calculation in two seconds and arrives at ’not for here’.

"Can I help you... sir?"

The pause before "Sir" is doing a lot of work.

I let the disrespect slide off without breaking stride.

In my past life, by the time I knew about my father’s connection to Garen, it was already too late. This time I control the room.

"I’m a Diver. I have a meeting with Garen Azurea."

She smiles pretty wide. Genuinely amused, which is worse than fake. The sneer would have been easier to push back against than the laugh.

"Sir. This is a serious place of business. You can’t just walk in and tell me you have a meeting with the company president."

"You’re right." I let one beat pass. "But you’re only seeing one side of the coin. Yours."

Her smile loses a millimeter at the corner.

"And if I really do have a meeting with Mr. Azurea, and you’ve been treating me like this," I lean my forearm onto the counter, slowly, "he’s going to love hearing about it."

Her pupils dilate, hold a bit, and come back.

She doesn’t say anything for about five seconds. Then she extends a hand, palm up.

"ID, please."

I hand her the card.

She reads it carefully. Once. Then again, slower.

"Alden Sands... one moment, Mr. Sands."

It was never the plan to give her my own ID.

She picks up the desk phone and turns slightly away from me. Speaks into it low.

"There’s someone here saying he has an important meeting with President Azurea."

Even from this distance, I can hear the response. Not the words. Just the shape of them—loud, sharp, the voice of an executive assistant losing patience with a low-level mistake.

The receptionist nods at the wall three times. Her eyes down.

"Alden Sands..." she answers.

The voice on the other end goes quiet.

A cough. Then another. Like someone choking on their own air.

A pause long enough that I can count my own pulse twice.

Then the receptionist says "yes, sir" three times in a row again, very quickly, and hangs up.

She turns back to me. Her face has rearranged itself completely.

"You can go up. Floor 117." She points with an open hand, palm angled up. "The express elevator. To your right."

I nod once and walk away. I don’t bother to face slap someone like her.

I really had no idea my father had this much pull.

But it raises a question I’d never thought to ask before. If Alden Sands has a name that makes executive assistants choke on it, why are we still living in that crumbling third-floor apartment in District 4?

The elevator at the government clinic was built to move bodies.

This one was built to move shareholders.

I press 117. The cabin doesn’t lurch. There’s no acceleration. Just a brief, strange sensation—my brain feels like it dissolves for two seconds, like reality is being smoothed over—and the doors open.

Floor 117.

If the lobby was futuristic, this floor reaches in the opposite direction.

Old wood, dark and oiled. Walls paneled in something that looks like real oak rather than printed laminate. Original art on the walls—oil paintings, charcoal sketches, framed under glass that doesn’t reflect. The air is warmer here. Quieter.

Money this old doesn’t need to advertise.

The reception desk is small. Two people behind it. A man and a woman. Both in dark, well-cut suits.

I walk over.

"Hello. I’m Alden Sands. Here to see the president."

The man stands first. He gives me a small, rehearsed bow.

"It’s a pleasure to receive you, Mr. Sands. If you need anything, please ask."

"Thank you."

I stay quiet. Face neutral. Letting the gravity of the borrowed name do the work. I’m grateful neither of them is a Diver—they would feel the wrong energy off me immediately. My dad’s Rank B signature is heavier than a Rank D’s, and they’d know within three breaths that I’m not who I said I was.

The woman speaks into a desk intercom.

"He’s here."

A voice comes back, deeper than I expected. Calm. Heavier than the volume should make it.

"Send him in."

She nods at the door. Both of them stand, both of them give me the same small bow.

"Please. He’s expecting you."

I walk past them. As I do, I hear a whisper between them, half between teeth, almost not for each other.

"He looks so young..."

"Shut up..."

I let myself smile. Just one corner.

I open the door.

The pressure hits me before the visual does.

It isn’t only the Diver energy. There’s that—the dense, banked weight of a Rank far above mine, sitting in the air of the room like humidity. But underneath that, something heavier. It’s his psychological pressure that forces your shoulders to consider straightening before your brain has decided what posture to take.

I keep my shoulders where I put them.

The aura coming off the man on the other side of the desk isn’t what I expected.

Not at all.

He makes Rae look small. Rae was a knife pretending to be a scalpel.

This man is the table the surgery is happening on.

He’s looking right at me.

He hasn’t said anything yet.

He doesn’t need to.

The door clicks shut behind me, and I step into the room.