Areon's hands would not stop shaking.
The sun over Genma-986 was bright enough to bleach the sky, yet three moons still showed through it, two natural, 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 bot hovered nearby, voice tuned to reassurance without intimacy.
"Dr. Pembert will see you within five minutes, Jasmine Vonn."
Five minutes became a silence tight enough to bruise.
Areon had always believed in systems. If you did the work, if you followed the rules, if you were early and careful, 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 bot 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. 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 glowing eyes. Quiet hands, no comforting script. It drew blood with a needle so fine Areon barely saw it. The sample disappeared through a port. The lab wall woke in dim, private light.
Sixty seconds.
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 inhaled deep, held it too long, then forced herself to breathe.
Pembert continued, voice flat because anything softer might break. "Untreated, it becomes terminal within months."
Months.
Areon's mind tried to shift into tactical mode. Call his father. File the necessary paperwork. He could feel the cure hovering just out of reach, the kind that would appear if he moved fast enough.
"It is curable," Pembert said before that 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. A clean word. A brutal one.
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, 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. 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 and action felt like control. "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. He did not pretend. "This is not a matter of credits," he said. "The material is controlled. A judiciary clearance is not a procurement clearance. It requires authority most people never see, and purchasing it is another matter entirely."
Jasmine looked at Areon then. For a heartbeat the 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. "Private moment before induction."
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, sleeves 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 them away.
Areon blinked hard.
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."
He whispered, "Sure." 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.
Jasmine pressed her thumb gently to the corner of his eye. "Cry if you need to," she said. "Just don't let it cloud your judgment."
He could not speak.
"One more thing," she said. He forced himself to meet her gaze.
"Say goodbye to your father for me." Her voice dropped to almost nothing. "I know we can't reach him right now. The tribunal. But when he comes back."
Areon nodded.
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 in the next room: 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, helping Jasmine change into an advanced medical gown and lie down.
"Just a nap," she said, trying to make it easy for him.
He wanted to grab her hand and refuse. Instead he stood frozen while the lid descended with slow inevitability. Mist curled inside. Jasmine's eyes fluttered once, then closed.
It felt like the quiet sealing of hope into a box.
A small light on the chamber changed color. 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. He did not 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.
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 the impact before his mind did.
"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 came back 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."
Areon sat on the hospital steps and did not move. The daylight pressed on him like something physical. People passed. Pods hummed overhead. The world continued as if nothing had changed, and he could not understand how that was possible.
He shut down. Not sleep. Shutdown.