The auditorium smelled of polished wood and wilted flowers, the kind that had been trucked in from some greenhouse on the city's edge, pretending at permanence. Rows of chairs, vinyl creaking under the shifting weight of families, and up on the stage, a sea of black gowns rippling like oil on water. Asher Quill stood there, diploma clutched in his hand like a verdict—cool paper, embossed gold, the ink still faintly wet from the dean's hurried flourish. It felt heavier than it should, this thing. Not the paper, but the way it anchored him, a tether to the boy he'd been five minutes ago, the one who could still pretend the world was a puzzle with edges.
"Smile, Ash," his mother said, her voice a soft command wrapped in silk. Lana Quill, all sharp cheekbones and sharper intuition, held up her phone, the flash popping like a small detonation. She was the one who noticed things—the way his shoulders hunched just a fraction when the lights hit, the way his fingers tightened around the rolled tube of his future. "It's your day. Let it be kind to you, for once."
He did smile, or tried to, the corners of his mouth lifting in that mechanical way he'd practiced in mirrors. Behind her, Leo Quill loomed, broad-shouldered and silent, his hand resting on Violet's head like he could shield her from the noise. Violet, twelve and all elbows and questions, squirmed under the touch, her eyes wide on the stage. "Does it say 'genius' on there?" she asked, craning her neck. "Or just your name? 'Cause if it's just your name, that's boring."
Leo chuckled, low and rumbling, the sound of gravel under tires. "It's got his name and a whole lot of debt waiting. Congrats, son." There was no bite in it, not really—just the old man's way of saying we're proud, but don't forget the ground under your feet. Leo had built their life from blueprints and rebar, hands callused from years of convincing steel to bend. He didn't trust paper promises.
Then Malenia was there, slipping through the crowd like smoke through fingers, her gown draped over one arm, the other reaching for him. She was heat against the chill of the air-conditioned hall, her dark hair spilling loose, catching the light in threads of copper. "Come here," she murmured, pulling him close, her lips brushing his ear. Not a kiss, not yet—just the promise of one, warm and inevitable. The camera clicked again, capturing them like that: her hand on his chest, his arm around her waist, two kids who'd said vows in a courthouse basement because why wait when the world spins this fast? Her family's money had made it easy—DataCONV's shadow stretching long enough to buy privacy, a judge who owed Adreon Blake a favor, rings that cost more than most people's cars. But it wasn't the wealth that bound them. It was the way she'd looked at him that night, in the dim glow of a dorm room lamp, and whispered, "We're not running from this. We're claiming it."
The photos blurred into a sequence: Asher with Violet, who stuck out her tongue mid-frame; with Leo, both of them stiff as if posing for a wanted poster; with Lana, her eyes holding his a beat too long, like she was memorizing the shape of his face. Then the friends—Javier, lanky and laughing, slinging an arm over Asher's shoulder, diploma dangling like a noose. "To conquests, Quill. Or at least to not flunking out." Elena, quieter, her smile a secret, pressing a folded note into his palm: Don't let them code your soul. And Marcus, the loud one, bellowing, "Group shot! Before we all scatter like confetti in a hurricane!"
They did scatter, in the days that followed. Javier to an art school in the hills, chasing pixels and dreams of virtual worlds. Elena to biology across the ocean, dissecting cells like they held the answers to why hearts break. Marcus to engineering in the desert, building machines that hummed with purpose. Asher watched their cars pull away from the curb outside his family's split-level, taillights fading into the sodium haze of streetlamps. The house felt emptier then, echoes in the halls where laughter used to stick.
Nights bled into mornings, the summer sun clawing through blinds. Asher lay on the couch in the penthouse they'd claimed downtown—Malenia's graduation gift from her parents, all glass walls and skyline views that made the city look conquerable. Adreon and Rosey Blake had handed over the keys with that polished smile of theirs, Adreon clapping Asher on the back: "Build something with her, son. DataCONV started in a garage; yours could start here." Rosey, softer, her eyes like Malenia's but etched with the wear of boardrooms: "Just keep her safe in it. The world's not kind to dreamers."
Safe. The word lodged in his throat like a splinter. He stared at the ceiling that first week, the fan blades slicing air in lazy arcs, and let the questions uncoil. Quantum? The math of impossibilities, particles dancing in superpositions—half here, half gone, like the life he might have led without her. Business? Numbers as weapons, empires forged in spreadsheets, the Blake way: control the flow, own the current. Computer Science? The veins of the world, code as breath, but what then? A job? A cage?
Malenia found him there one evening, cross-legged on the floor amid takeout boxes, his laptop open to a dozen tabs of university brochures. She sank down beside him, her thigh pressing warm against his, and didn't ask. Just waited, her fingers tracing idle patterns on his knee.
"It's all... edges," he said finally, voice rough from disuse. "Like I'm supposed to pick a lane, but the road forks every time I look."
She tilted her head, studying him the way she did code—patient, probing. "And if you don't pick? If you just... drive off the map?"
He laughed, short and hollow. "Then what? We end up like your parents? DataCONV's a machine, Mal. It eats lanes for breakfast."
Her hand stilled, fingers curling into his jeans. "My parents built that machine because they had to. You? You could break it open. See what's inside." A pause, her breath catching on the edge of something unspoken. "Or you could just... choose what scares you. The thing that keeps you up, whispering."
He turned to her then, the city lights fracturing in her eyes. "Cybersecurity," he said, testing the word like a key in a lock. It fit, jagged but sure—the hunt for cracks in fortresses, the quiet war of unseen fronts. Not quantum's ghosts, not business's thrones. Something real, vital. Protection, or the illusion of it.
She nodded, slow, her smile blooming like a secret shared. "Business for me. Same place. MultiCorp University. We face it together."
"Together," he echoed, pulling her close. The word tasted like vow and warning, her heartbeat syncing with his under the vast indifference of the skyline.
The alarm shattered the dream at 6:47 a.m., a shrill electronic wail that yanked them from sleep like a hook through flesh. Asher jolted upright, sheets tangling around his legs, the penthouse still cloaked in pre-dawn gray. Beside him, Malenia stirred, her hand fumbling for the nightstand, silencing the beast with a slap. She groaned, low and throaty, rolling toward him, her body a curve of warmth against the chill seeping through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
"First day," she murmured, her voice thick with the remnants of sleep, lips brushing his shoulder. "You ready for this?"
He stared at the ceiling, the fan blades now still, shadows pooling in the corners. The diploma hung framed on the wall across the room, gold glint mocking him in the half-light. Ready? The word felt like a lie they both wanted to believe. MultiCorp loomed beyond the glass—towers of glass and steel, a colossus of minds and machines, where futures were minted or crushed. Cybersecurity labs humming with simulated breaches, business halls echoing with deals that shaped borders. And her, in lectures on markets and mergers, learning to wield the Blake legacy like a blade.
"No," he admitted, turning to face her, his hand finding the small of her back, fingers splaying possessive. "But I'm not turning back."
She lifted her head, hair a wild halo, eyes searching his with that intensity that always undid him—part challenge, part plea. "Good. Because if you run, I drag you back. Vows, remember?" Her tone dipped, teasing but edged, the subtext a reminder of courthouse basements and stolen nights: We're in this, broken or not.
He pulled her closer, their breaths mingling in the quiet. "Vows. And regrets?"
She didn't flinch, just held his gaze, her thumb tracing the line of his jaw. "We'll collect them later. For now... coffee?"
The word broke the spell, pulling them from the bed in tandem—her slipping into a robe that whispered against her skin, him padding to the kitchen, the city waking below in a symphony of horns and distant sirens. Steam rose from the machine like ghosts, the penthouse filling with the bitter-earth scent of grounds. They moved around each other in the narrow space, shoulders brushing, silences comfortable but charged, the weight of the day pressing in like humidity before a storm.
As the sun crested the horizon, painting the skyline in bruised oranges and purples, Asher caught her reflection in the window—poised, unbreakable, the daughter of titans. And him, mug in hand, steam curling like unanswered questions. What if this is the crack? The thought flickered, unbidden, as they gathered keys and bags, stepping into the elevator that hummed downward toward the world.
The doors slid open to the lobby's marble expanse, cool and echoing, and outside, the city swallowed them whole—horns blaring, pedestrians surging like blood through veins. MultiCorp's spires waited, a promise and a precipice, the first day unfolding not with fanfare, but with the quiet dread of beginnings that might never end.
In the cab, her hand found his again, fingers lacing tight. "Whatever it breaks," she said, voice barely above the engine's growl, "we rebuild."
He squeezed back, staring out at the blur of streets, the diploma's weight a phantom in his chest. We rebuild, he thought, the words a talisman against the unknown. But in the rearview, his eyes caught hers—fierce, flickering—and he wondered, not for the first time, if some things, once cracked, let in more than light.