“Fifty-two thousand USD a year,” Robert began, folding his hands together as if the number itself were supposed to carry weight. “That is the standard starting salary for every awakened individual.”

  I didn’t react immediately. I just let the figure sit there between us, cooling.

  “My prospective salary path,” I said after a moment, calm despite the pressure tightening in my chest, “would put me at about eighty-one thousand five hundred before commission.” I glanced briefly at my plate, then back up. “I’m not money-obsessed. And I never believed gemstones granted magical power. I just loved the art. Cut stones. Settings. Jewelry. The craft of it.”

  I met his gaze.

  “Double it,” I said simply. “Or no deal.”

  Robert scoffed. “You haven’t even heard our terms yet.”

  “Fifty-six thousand two hundred,” he continued immediately, rolling his eyes. “That’s the most we can offer for a Level One. You haven’t even developed your cyberkinesis.”

  “That doesn’t even cover a year of my current tuition,” I shot back. “Not when you account for how much my scholarships already offset.” I leaned back slightly. “Eighty thousand.”

  I paused, then added, “And let’s not pretend I don’t know what you want me for. You want me hunting Ghosts.”

  The room shifted.

  Both men turned to look at my mother at the same time, expressions darkening. She didn’t flinch. She simply shook her head once.

  “I’ve told him nothing about you,” she said evenly. “You’d know if I had. The oaths would have reacted immediately.” Her lips pressed into a thin smile. “I haven’t found a way to violate them without the chains you have on me breaking. So no. He figured it out on his own.”

  A strange thought pushed its way to the front of my mind.

  Can… can no one see the gemstone in my right hand right now?

  My lord, Sophitia answered calmly. They cannot see the gemstone. They also cannot see me.

  I blinked once, carefully keeping my expression neutral.

  Although, she added, the cat in the other room can.

  Thanks, I thought dryly. And Coco-Butter can see you?

  Most animals possess a sharpened perception of the world beyond, Sophitia replied. They sense when those tied to death walk among the living.

  Good to know.

  I dragged my attention back to the table just as Robert and my mother began talking over one another, irritation rising on both sides. The exchange was short-lived.

  Julian raised one hand.

  I hesitated, then shrugged. “If I said it came to me in a dream, would that clear it?”

  Both men shook their heads in unison.

  “No,” Robert said flatly. Then he sighed. “But I’ll accept that answer for now.” He leaned back in his chair. “The most we can legitimately offer you is fifty-six thousand. That decision isn’t ours to override.”

  He hesitated, then added, “If you want more than that, you’ll need to find a company willing to sponsor you.”

  Julian leaned forward slightly, as if remembering a clause that needed to be read aloud before anyone signed anything.

  “And to find a company willing to sponsor you,” he added, “you cannot rely on magic.” His gaze flicked briefly to my mother, then back to me. “Mana-to-aether conversion is possible. Your mother can attest to that. But it’s inefficient, unstable, and frankly frowned upon outside of emergencies.”

  My mother hummed softly in agreement but said nothing.

  “So,” Julian continued, “you’ll need to develop your cyberkinesis.”

  I took another spoonful of soup, letting the sweetness ground me before I responded. Then I raised a finger, signaling for a moment.

  “Okay,” I said once I’d swallowed. “Then start at the beginning.”

  They waited.

  Robert nodded, unhurried, as though this was a question he had been waiting for rather than reacting to. “Cyberkinesis is the use of Aether to create an effect that is, broadly speaking, personal.” He paused, brow creasing slightly. “Although saying ‘unique to you’ isn’t entirely accurate. It sounds cleaner than it really is.”

  He leaned back a fraction. “A little under half of all cyberkinetics are elementalists. Fire, ice, electricity, that sort of thing. Familiar categories, just approached from a different angle.” His gaze flicked to the table, then back to me. “This will help more than words.”

  Robert reached into his pocket and pulled out a smartphone. It looked ordinary enough until he began typing. The motions were precise, practiced. After a few seconds, the screen went completely white, no icons, no text, just a flat, luminous plane.

  Then the air above his hand distorted.

  Something assembled itself there. Not summoned, not conjured in the magical sense. As if invisible layers were snapping together. The result was a gun, though clearly not one from any modern armory. Its lines were too clean, its geometry too deliberate, the surface marked with faint, shifting patterns that reminded me uncomfortably of code rendered solid.

  Julian gestured toward it. “Robert here is using a cyberkinetic ability called Synthesis. It allows him to create an object from Aether, data, imagination, and most importantly, skill.”

  He smiled faintly. “Robert understands how a weapon like that would work. How it should work. The principles behind its firing mechanism, its power source, its tolerances. He isn’t just imagining a gun. He’s constructing a system.”

  Robert handed the weapon to Julian without ceremony.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The moment it left Robert’s grasp, the gun began to unravel. Its surface pixelated, edges fragmenting into jagged blocks of corrupted data that struggled to maintain cohesion. A second later, it collapsed inward, tearing itself apart and spilling into nothingness, leaving behind a brief afterimage before vanishing entirely.

  Julian spread his now-empty hand. “See? I can’t use it. I don’t understand how it works. Not really. So his Synthesis isn’t compatible with me.”

  “So… magia is more like programming,” I said slowly, rolling the concept around in my head like a stone being tested for flaws. “Still using digital terminology. You write instructions. You define variables. You push from point A to point B and get a predictable effect. Whereas cyberkinesis is more like uploading an idea into the cloud and letting some…cosmic AI generate the output. Is that about right?”

  Julian’s eyebrows lifted, impressed despite himself. Robert let out a quiet huff that might have been a laugh.

  “That’s,” Julian said carefully, “an uncomfortably accurate analogy.”

  My mother leaned back in her chair, folding her hands together as she watched me. There was that look again. The one that said she was proud, concerned, and already three steps ahead of everyone else in the room.

  “Yes,” Mom said. “That’s the difference in spirit, at least. Magia is ritualized intent. It’s structured. Codified. It obeys grammar, syntax, and conservation laws that predate this world. Cyberkinesis is interpretive. You don’t tell Aether what to do. You convince it.”

  “That sounds way more dangerous,” I muttered.

  “It is,” Robert said immediately. “Which is why we regulate it.”

  “And why,” Mom added gently, “you don’t experiment alone.”

  I exhaled through my nose, glancing down at my soup. The steam curled upward, twisting in lazy spirals that, for half a second, I could swear were responding to my attention. I blinked and they went back to being steam.

  “So cyberkinesis is personal,” I said. “Magia is universal.”

  “That’s another good way of putting it,” Julian replied. “Magia works because the universe agrees it should. Cyberkinesis works because you insist it must.”

  “And Aether listens,” Robert said. “Most of the time.”

  I looked back up at them. “Then what decides what kind of cyberkinesis someone gets?”

  “Affinity,” Mom said before either man could answer. “Personality. Cognitive habits. Trauma, sometimes. It develops the same way muscles do. Stress, repetition, and failure.”

  “That’s comforting,” I said flatly.

  She smiled at me, soft and unapologetic. “You grew up polishing gemstones for fun, Morgan. You have the patience of a saint and the obsession of a madman. You were always going to end up with something detail-oriented.”

  Robert nodded. “Precision-based cyberkinetics tend to manifest construct, synthesis, or modulation abilities. Your detail-orientated brain suggests modeling or translation.”

  “Translation?” I echoed.

  Julian leaned forward. “Some cyberkinetics don’t create effects directly. They translate between systems. Mana to Aether. Thought to data. Sensory input to executable patterns.”

  My stomach dropped a little. “You’re saying I might be a bridge.”

  Mom reached across the table and squeezed my wrist, careful to avoid the opal embedded in my hand. Her touch was warm. Solid. Real.

  “You already are,” she said quietly. “You just didn’t know it yet.”

  I swallowed.

  “So if I want to develop this,” I said, forcing my voice steady, “I need to…what. Meditate on Wi-Fi routers? Sleep next to a server rack?”

  Robert snorted. “Please don’t.”

  Julian shook his head. “Exposure helps, but intention matters more. Cyberkinesis responds to systems you understand intuitively. Code. Networks. Feedback loops. You don’t need to be a programmer. You need to think like one.”

  I glanced at my computer upstairs. At the half-idle clicker game. At the physics videos queued up in my browser.

  “And if I mess up?” I asked.

  Both Robert and Julian shook their heads in near-perfect unison. For a brief, absurd moment, it reminded me of two NPCs running the same dialogue tree. Then Robert raised one hand, palm out, and the humor evaporated.

  “For now,” he said, voice firm but not unkind, “you need to understand some laws.”

  That word landed heavier than I expected. Laws. Not guidelines. Not suggestions. Laws.

  “First,” Robert continued, ticking a finger upward, “discussion of magic, cyberkinesis, Aether, mana, or any adjacent metaphysical concept is barred to those who are not already aware of it.”

  “So,” I said slowly, “no late-night trauma dumping to my classmates.”

  “Correct,” Julian said. “No pillow talk either.”

  My mother shot him a look sharp enough to cut glass. Julian cleared his throat and continued anyway.

  “Second. Use of your abilities in public spaces is highly frowned upon. Cameras, sensors, data aggregation. Aether is everywhere. When you act, it echoes.”

  “Third,” Robert said, unfazed, “avoid using your abilities at all if you can help it.”

  I stared at him. “That seems…counterintuitive.”

  “It’s survival,” Mom said quietly. “Power advertises itself whether you mean it to or not.”

  Robert nodded. “Every use leaves a signature. Patterns get noticed. Attention compounds.”

  I shifted in my chair, suddenly very aware of the faint, restless buzzing sensation at the back of my skull. The firefly feeling. The Aether, always moving.

  “Fourth,” Robert went on, “we will be leaving a phone number. You may call it whenever you wish to sell assets.”

  I blinked. “Assets?”

  Mom sighed, rubbing her temples. “Gems, artifacts, mana-reactive materials, relics that ‘fell off a truck’ from other worlds. Don’t play dumb.”

  Julian added, “We pay well. We also make problems disappear.”

  That sentence had edges.

  “Fifth,” Robert said, holding up another finger, “we are aware that you are wearing a Sphere.”

  My hand drifted, unthinking, toward the chain at my neck. The weight of it suddenly felt magnified, like gravity had singled it out for personal attention.

  “We assume,” he continued, “that you have already agreed to allow individuals from Aeterna to challenge it.”

  I swallowed. “That wasn’t exactly optional.”

  “Very few important things are,” Julian said mildly. “We would like the same allowance.”

  Mom leaned forward. “Within reason.”

  “Of course,” Robert said. “Challenges will be regulated. Structured. Non-lethal.”

  I didn’t miss the pause before that last word.

  “It will help your Status,” Julian added. “Visibility among the right circles. Credibility.”

  Status. Another capital-letter word.

  “And sixth,” Robert said, lowering his hand, voice dropping half an octave, “and this rule is the biggest one.”

  The air in the room seemed to tighten.

  “Stay. Out. Of. Roseland.”

  He didn’t rush it. Each word landed like a warning flare.

  “Seriously,” Julian said, no humor left in his tone. “Chicago is already bad news. And no, you’re not technically in it. But Roseland is…adjacent.”

  “Adjacent how?” I asked.

  “Metaphysically porous,” Robert replied. “Historically cursed. Structurally unstable across multiple layers of reality.”

  Mom exhaled sharply. “It’s a convergence zone. Old grief. Old blood. Old bargains that never properly ended.”

  “And ghosts,” Julian added. “A lot of them.”

  I felt the opal in my hand pulse, once, faintly, like it was listening.

  “And people like you,” Robert finished, “tend to make things worse just by existing there.”

  Silence settled over the table.

  I looked from Robert, to Julian, to my mother. She met my gaze steadily, concern etched deep beneath her calm.

  “So,” I said finally, voice dry, “don’t talk about it, don’t use it, don’t sell without calling you, don’t get challenged recklessly, and don’t go to Roseland.”

  “That’s the short version,” Julian said.

  “And if I break one of those?” I asked.

  Mom answered before either of them could.

  “Then,” she said softly, “we stop pretending this is about your safety and start talking about containment.”

  Something cold slid down my spine.

  I nodded once. Slowly.

  “Got it,” I said. “No pressure, then.”