The air in the orphanage's common room was thick with recycled oxygen and tension. Sister Margret, her face a mask of bureaucratic sympathy, stood before the assembled residents of Orphanage 7-Delta. In her hands glowed a Federal data-slate, its cold blue light casting harsh shadows across the faces of the young adults gathered there.
"By the grace and wisdom of the Terran Galactic Federation," she announced, her voice echoing in the sterile room, "we have received our quota for the Great Settlement Mandate. It is our duty, and our honor, to contribute to the expansion of humanity."
Kaelen stood at the back, trying to make himself small. He'd just aged out of the education system, his student loans a crushing weight on his future. The promise of loan forgiveness for Mandate volunteers was a siren's call he'd been trying to ignore.
"The selection algorithm has chosen," Sister Margret continued, her eyes scanning the room. "It has weighed many factors - economic contribution potential, family ties, and of course, the greater good of the Federation."
Her gaze landed on Kaelen, and his blood ran cold.
"Kaelen. Step forward."
The walk to the front of the room felt like a march to the gallows. He could feel the mixed emotions from the others - pity from some, relief from others. Relief that it wasn't them, that their stable jobs in the arcology's maintenance sectors, their small donations back to the orphanage that kept them in good standing, had protected them.
"Sister, please," he whispered, but the words died in his throat as she pressed the data-slate into his hands.
NOTICE OF FULFILLMENT: GREAT SETTLEMENT MANDATE
RECIPIENT: KAELEN, WARD OF STATE, ORPHANAGE 7-DELTA
STATUS: EDUCATION COMPLETE, DEBT-BURDENED, UNATTACHED
FEDERAL BENEFITS: FULL DEBT CANCELLATION, LAND GRANT ON ELYSIAN
DEPARTURE: 30 STANDARD ROTATIONS
APPEAL STATUS: NON-APPLICABLE
Non-applicable. The word burned into his soul. There would be no appeal. No second chance. He was the perfect candidate - no job to lose, no family to leave behind, and debts that made him a net drain on the Federation's economy. The math was cold, brutal, and absolute.
"The algorithm knows best, Kaelen," Sister Margret said, her hand on his shoulder. "This is an opportunity. Your debts wiped clean. A new start on a new world."
A new start as a forced laborer on a frontier world, he thought bitterly. Where the Federation's security was thin and the dangers were thick.
That night, in his tiny assigned room, the pressure behind his eyes built to a breaking point. The Dream-Sickness, his lifelong curse, came not as an enemy but as an escape. He didn't fight it. He welcomed the vertigo as his room dissolved around him.
When the chaos settled, he found himself staring through someone else's eyes. The body he inhabited was frail, trembling with hunger. He stood - or rather, the body stood - in a muddy alley between timber-framed buildings that belonged in a history archive. The smell of rot and unwashed humanity filled the air. This was not a warrior's body, not a hero's form. It was a starving beggar in what looked like a medieval fantasy slum.
Through the beggar's eyes, he saw a world of cobblestones and torchlight. Through his empty stomach, he felt the gnawing reality of true poverty. And in that moment, something shifted. A connection formed - a silvery thread of consciousness that tied him to this dying body.
He could feel the beggar's weakness, but also his will to live. And as Kaelen's consciousness merged with the starving form, he realized with dawning horror and wonder that the strength he gained here - the simple act of surviving another day in this harsh world - echoed faintly in his real body light-years away.
The return was brutal. He woke on the floor of his room, gasping, the taste of blood in his mouth from where he'd bitten his tongue during the convulsions. His body ached with a deep, soul-level exhaustion. But beneath the fatigue... something had changed. A resilience that hadn't been there before.
His eyes found the data-slate, still glowing with his sentence.
Thirty days.
Thirty days until they shipped him to a frontier that might as well be another world.
But he could already visit other worlds. He could already wear other skins.
The Federation had their algorithms, their quotas, their cold equations. But they had no category for what he was becoming. No box to check for a man who could walk between realities.
The draft was their solution. Soul-Walking was his answer.
All he needed to do was learn to wear death as a garment, and return wearing strength as a skin.