Chapter 1: The Precision of a Fall
The smell of cedarwood and ozone was the scent of Carson McCain's childhood. In the year 2042, New Seattle was a city of vertical glass and shimmering chrome, but inside the McCain household, the world felt grounded and ancient.
Carson's father, Arthur, was a lead engineer for Aether-Tech, a firm specializing in the micro-sensors that allowed high-end weaponry to find their mark. His mother, Elena, was a woman who saw the soul in the soil. She was a master botanist in an era where most plants were grown in sterile, nutrient-filled vats.
"Everything has a heart, Carson," Arthur would say, his hands steady as he calibrated a Tier-1 sniper component. "A machine, a plant, even a bullet. If you find the heart, you find the flow. If you find the flow, you find the power."
Six-year-old Carson watched his father's steady hands. He didn't understand "flow" yet, but he understood the precision.
That precision shattered on Carson's seventh birthday. A freak storm and a malfunctioning automated freighter sent their car through a guardrail on the I-5 Skyway. The fall felt like an eternity. Carson felt a moment of weightlessness, the gift box on his lap flying from his hands. He saw his father throw his body across the center console to shield Elena. He saw his mother reach back for him, her fingers brushing his just as the car plummeted.
The car didn't fly. It fell.
When the wreckage was finally cleared, Carson was the only thing left alive. His relatives, Uncle Silas and Aunt Martha, appeared at the hospital with open ledgers. They viewed the seven-year-old boy as a debt they refused to inherit. After liquidating the McCain estate and selling every patent his father owned to the Solaris Hegemony, Silas drove Carson to the central transit hub.
"The world is a hard place, kid. Better you learn it now," Silas said, tossing a tattered backpack onto the wet pavement before speeding away.
Inside the bag were the only things they couldn't sell: his mother's handwritten journals on ancient refinement and his father's rusted, Tier-1 multi-tool. Carson stood alone in the rain, a seven-year-old orphan in a city that didn't care if he breathed or bled.