The nurse peeled the last sensor from his chest. Adhesive tug, faint sting. The kind of small pain dreams never bother to render. Maybe that meant he was awake. Maybe.

  “Final line,” the nurse said, already reaching down.

  Rem shut his eyes. Heat climbed his face. “Just… do it.”

  A sharp tug, burning release. He bit his lip, breath shuddering. When he opened one eye the blanket was already folded back across his lap, the nurse’s placid display unchanged.

  “All procedures complete. Engaging transport mode.”

  The bed shifted under him, narrowing at the sides, lifting at the head, folding into a chair that caught him gently. He glanced at his arm. The bruises were lighter. The punctures looked like they had never existed at all.

  “Here.” The nurse placed a small cup of red liquid in his hand. “Healing accelerant. Minor puncture protocol. Flavor acceptable.”

  “‘Healing accelerant’?” he said. The words came out thin, like he’d said them underwater.

  “Union-approved. Observed outcomes: rapid epithelial closure, reduction in superficial bruising.”

  Licorice smell. He took a sip, then the rest. Warmth spread, tingled, settled. When he looked again the skin had finished smoothing over. It was too neat, too impossible; exactly the kind of trick his mind would invent in a coma-dream to comfort him. He flexed his fingers anyway, just to feel the tendons move.

  The door slid open.

  “Rem!”

  Tomas filled the doorway like the room had been built around him. Vest snug, plates on his forearms, reinforced trousers, boots scuffed with dust. He sounded brighter, louder, more present than the nurse. Dreams did that—some figures came in high resolution, others fuzzed at the edges.

  “You made it,” Tomas said, already grinning. “On your own. I knew you would.”

  “No you didn’t,” Rem joked. He remembered what Saskia said – his brother was grinding a healer build, whatever that meant.

  “Yeah – well. You picked the worst time for a nap.” Tomas glanced at the nurse. “He’s cleared?”

  The nurse nodded. “Cleared.”

  They rolled into the corridor. The chair hummed beneath him, a steady, physical sound that pressed against the dream in his head and told it to move over.

  “What are you even wearing?” Rem asked.

  “This?” Tomas tapped a forearm plate. “We’ll get there. Start with the big thing: we’ve been visited by aliens.”

  Rem stared at him. “Aliens.”

  “Union of Worlds.” Tomas’ tone was casual, like repeating a fact from a briefing. “They’ve annexed Earth.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Wish I were.”

  A laugh tried to escape his throat and came out wrong. was exactly the sort of rot his brain would spin when he cut class to sit on the canal rail and daydream. He told himself the chair’s hum meant reality; he told himself the accelerant’s warmth meant medicine, not magic.

  “They brought a system,” he said. “If you follow it—really follow it—you can live forever.”

  “Forever.” The word stuck to his tongue. He could see it too easily: towers that never crumbled, ships idling between stars, whole libraries written by one person who just kept going. It had the clean, unreal taste of a wish.

  “This isn’t a joke,” he said softly. “Trust me.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Good. Because you’re behind.”

  “How behind?” Rem asked.

  Tomas’ smile flickered. “Six weeks.”

  Six weeks fell through him, weightless and huge—the way time slipped in dreams, whole months sliding past while you watched dust drift in a sunbeam. Six weeks gone.

  His stomach turned hollow. His father’s face rose instantly, not angry, just tired—that quiet frown that said He could almost hear the sigh, the scrape of a chair pushed back from the table.

  Heat rushed up his neck. His ears burned. The shame wasn’t clean; it was sticky, old, the same ache he’d felt every time he’d quit a job or skipped a class. Behind everyone, because he crashed a bike. Because he was him.

  Six weeks. The number pulsed in his head like a bruise.

  They reached the lift. The walls turned clear, the medical level fell away, and new floors slid past as they ascended. Through the glass, Rem’s eyes locked on something in the distance. In the center of the city, the Arch rose above everything: old stone framing a whirl of light, energy folding in on itself in slow rotation.

  That didn’t belong. For as long as he could remember, that was where the fountain stood. The fountain was gone.

  “What am I looking at?” Rem asked.

  “Home,” Tomas said. “Changed.”

  As the lift climbed, motion flickered at the edge of Rem’s vision—neighbors sparring with training swords, blades catching the light.

  “It feels like—” Rem started, then stopped.

  “Like a dream?” Tomas said.

  Rem swallowed. “Yeah.”

  “It doesn’t last. The first real challenge you run — nothing dreamy about it.”

  The lift eased into Level thirty-seven. The concourse was orderly and bright, but everyone moved with a tight urgency Rem didn’t recognize. The air smelled faintly of citrus and metal. He strained for the old city underneath—bikes on stone, canal water slapping brick. It was there, but quieter than it should be, like someone had turned it down.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Let’s get you home,” he said. “Then the download.”

  In the media room, Tomas flicked his wrist. The wall came alive.

  “This is what Father had us gather for you. It’s a lot.”

  “Okay,” Rem said, though his chest said otherwise.

  Images and voices poured over him. Shaky footage—crowds burning flags, chanting, early resistance. A press conference, then three more, each voice almost decipherable before dissolving into static. The quick erasure of every anti-Union front, each rebellion revoked through “provisional citizenship review.” Protocols. Endless Protocols. Then the arch in the plaza—stone folding around lightning, assembled in moments by art or craft beyond mortal men.

  He’d been out six weeks. In that time, every government that dared to defy had already knelt. Millions dead before the first Union Representative even set foot on Earth.

  Then came the mandates—the Thrive system, daily challenges, the endless performance boards. Participation wasn’t optional. Refuse, and your essence destabilized.

  “Pause,” Rem whispered.

  The feed ignored him.

  “Tomas—stop—just—” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s too much.”

  Tomas reached across and killed the stream. The room exhaled.

  “It’s real, Rem.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “I know you’ve got your own… things. Which makes this worse. But you’ve got to finish this before you meet with Father. He’s got a plan for you.”

  That word——hung like smoke.

  A pulse bloomed behind Rem’s eyes. Tomas looked away, guilt tightening his face, as though he could already hear their father saying,

  The weight returned. The tests. The talks. The reason they’d started going to Mass again—cover for his weekly visits. Family silence rebranded as dignity.

  “Of course he does,” Rem said at last. His voice was flat, the old shrug sharpened by habit.

  Tomas didn’t reply. The quiet between them sealed shut, like a wound deciding not to heal.

  Still it all felt unreal. The hum of the chair. The chemical warmth of the accelerant. The sting where the adhesive had pulled at his skin. His mind kept whispering:

  “I’m starting it again,” Tomas said.

  Rem nodded.

  When the last clip in the playlist ended and Tomas was gone, Rem lay back. The ceiling blurred to white haze. He tried calling Noah—no signal. Unusual.

  With nothing left to hold him, he meant to think. Instead, he slept.

  He woke to the mattress dipping.

  “So you saw it all,” Saskia said, tucking one leg under herself. Her hair was tied back. Her eyes looked like they always did when she had good gossip and bad news at the same time.

  “I saw it.” His voice sounded like it came from the next room.

  “It’s a lot. Father called a family meeting. I’m supposed to fetch you, so we only have a few minutes.”

  “Okay.” He pushed himself up. “I still feel like… if I close my eyes, I’m going to wake up in the hospital bed and none of you will be here.”

  Saskia’s mouth tilted. “I had that too. It goes away.”

  “Does it?”

  “If you let it.” She leaned closer. “Listen. They want you to take a safe build. Dad’s been researching. He thinks crafting or support would be good. He doesn’t think you’re lazy,” she added, then winced. “Okay, he thinks you’re lazy. But he’s scared. Everyone is.”

  “So he wants his disappointing son to pick the safest job.”

  “Or the smartest,” she said. “Anyway: builds are private. Union law. You can tell them whatever you want, then choose what you want. It’s your body in there when it gets hard.”

  He looked at her. “What would you pick for me?”

  She shrugged. “Something you love. Otherwise you’ll quit. You always quit when you get bored.”

  That landed harder than anything in the playlist. Not because it was cruel, but because it was true.

  The family room looked normal in a way that felt staged by his dreaming brain: oak, plaster, stone ledge running the circumference of the social area out towards the balcony garden, the same old view. His father sat forward, hands locked. His mother’s fingers were wrapped around a cup she wasn’t drinking. Tomas leaned against the wall, too awake for the room.

  “You’ve seen the news,” his father said. “You’re behind. Most of your peers are halfway through level two.”

  Those were the words his father greeted him with. Not “Glad you’re alive son”, or “It’s good you’re not a vegetable son.” No. You’re behind.

  Rem’s face burned – he distracted himself with what he could feel. The cushion felt real. The fabric scratched his palm. He decided to treat all of it as real until it proved otherwise.

  “It’s not all bad,” his father sighed. “At least you have a credible reason for being behind this time.”

  A

  Rem ignored his own thoughts hoping they would go away.

  “When we went through induction, we didn’t know anything. Now we do. We understand something of the challenges now, what they entail and can help steer you so you don’t make a bad choice.”

  Saskia relayed her experience with induction: the assessment results, the system admin that helped narrow your class selections, then the class selection itself. It was all fascinating to Rem, who listened with rapt attention.

  Tomas chimed in. “Pick a role that makes you desirable for a team. You can solo early, but later grouping matters.”

  His mother nodded. “Crafting is respectable – people need gear repaired in the field. You’d be in demand.”

  “You should take a support class,” his father said, seemingly pleased to latch onto that phrase. “Maybe a crafter. They take longer to level, so when you lag behind it won’t look that bad.”

  “You think I should be a crafter?” Rem asked. He tried to make it neutral. The part of him that loved shaping things perked up. The part of him that heard the lowest of expectations communicated in that simple phrase curled into itself.

  “There are other supports,” Tomas offered. “Enchanter, buffer, healer. Those are always in demand.”

  “For what it’s worth,” Saskia said quietly, “pick something you love. This is our life now. If it doesn’t belong to you, you’ll walk away when it hurts.”

  They kept talking. Advice stacked neatly. He listened and drifted and listened again, attention snagging on odd little details: the way sunlight made a pale square on the floor, the faint smell of citrus that shouldn’t have been this strong up here, the way his father’s knuckles had gone white around his clasped hands. He cataloged those things like a test for waking—can you smell, can you see edges, can you keep a number in your head? He held six weeks there and tried not to flinch.

  His gaze moved across them one by one, as if taking stock might anchor him. Tomas leaned with easy strength, the best of both parents combined: his mother’s bright blond hair, his father’s jaw and shoulders, piercing blue eyes, all of it arranged into something enviable. Their father, graying now, still broad and stalwart, his presence filling the room even in silence. Saskia carried their mother’s wiry frame but turned it into something sharper, more alive, her dark hair a contrast to her green eyes that seemed always lit from within. And him? Rem knew what parts he’d drawn. The narrow build of his mother, the unruly brown hair of his father, only Saskia’s green eyes standing as an inheritance worth keeping.

  He collected the worst traits from all of them.

  When they finished, his father asked, “Ready?”

  “I can walk,” Rem struggled to stand.

  His father shook his head, bringing the transport chair over. “You need to stand for induction. That’ll be good enough.”

  Rem didn’t argue. The dream would either let him stand or it wouldn’t.

  The city center was busier than he remembered. The line coiled toward the Arch. Up close, the stone looked like the old city’s, weathered and familiar, and yet glyphs crawled across the blocks like insects scattering before light. When he tried to fix on them they slipped, as if the dream refused to let him read its secret.

  Inside the span, storms folded and refolded, blues and purples like ink stirred through water. The glow prickled his skin. The taste of ionized atmosphere sat on his tongue, metallic and clean.

  His father stood beside the chair, hand on the handle. “Breathe,” he said.

  “I am,” Rem said.

  “Good. When it’s your turn, stand and take measured steps, don’t stumble.” Rem saw his father look around – as if he wanted to be sure none of his colleagues or other important people saw him with his embarrassment of a son.

  “When you enter, the system will receive you,” his father said. “Just walk. The rest will happen.”

  A woman stepped through. For an instant violet fire broke around her. Then she was gone. The storm smoothed, unbroken.

  “How can I know I’m not still dreaming?” Rem asked, voice small.

  His father glanced down. “All you need to do is walk in and walk out. Surely you can handle that much.”

  Rem’s chest tightened. That was too close to what his real father would say – so not a dream. He watched others enter and disappear.

  Wonder pushed up from somewhere bright and old. Other voices pushed up too He let them be. He kept breathing.

  The line edged forward.

  And the world—dream or not—held.