Cradling Darren’s face in her small hands, Sara leaned forward and kissed his forehead. “Ren Valrais. I do not have a real crown or throne to give you, but I pass onto you the Valrais Legacy. Henceforth, you shall be the guardian of its secrets as was I so far, and its knowledge is yours to do with as you see fit.”
Aiden had to hold on to his arm once again, to ground himself as he alone witnessed this grand moment. An ascension, a passing down, an end to a twenty-year mission that Sara should’ve never carried. It shook Aiden just like the memory she’d showed him, and it shifted something in him yet again, solidifying his promise to Darren. To Ren. To Sara.
The world the Valrais had built had forgotten them because of Marcus, but Marcus could be taken down just like any other man.
Sara’s words echoed in the chapel, causing the space around Aiden to warp and distort, the shadows to dance and to stretch in pools of white on the gray marble floors and the sconces to drip blue fire up the stone walls as cracks appeared in the fabric of the VR. This time though, Aiden wasn’t alone as the chaotic rearrangement of her world happened; Darren was right there with him, holding Aiden’s gaze as they found themselves transported into a pristine corridor with silver walls and tinted glass windows.
Before Aiden could take a good look, the surroundings changed yet again, forming a white room around them. It looked like a lab, judging by the various equipment and monitoring tools, and a single man with gray hair and square glasses wasleaning over a workbench with a carving tool in one hand and a sequencing device in the other. He didn’t notice them when he straightened up and shuffled past them to grab another tool from a neighboring table, betraying the nature of what Sara was about to show them.
“Howe, what is this place?” Aiden asked after the scientist had returned to his task, wondering when this memory had taken place.
“The labs at the Royal Palace. That’s the head scientist and my father’s best friend,” Darren explained.
Just as he said that, another man walked in. He was tall with wide shoulders, wore a friendly smile and looked familiar in the face. Though his eyes were a lighter hue and his nose was slightly longer, his resemblance to Darren and Sara was striking, so he had to be their father.
“Peter,” the man called out to the scientist, draping an arm over his shoulders.
Peter startled, turning around. “Garret. I didn’t expect you until later.”
“I heard you finished it, and I couldn’t wait,” Garret said, squinting at whatever Peter was working on. Aiden couldn’t see from here, so he nudged Darren closer.
Peter chuckled. “As impatient as ever. How are Sara and Ren?”
Aiden shifted his attention to Darren then and observed him watch his father. There was a certain sadness in his gaze, though it was more subtle than the one he’d been unable to reel in the moment he’d had Sara in his arms.
“Excited and getting ready for their first trip to the Moon. So”—Garret let go of Peter and circled to the front of the workbench, leaning forward—“you sequenced it?”
“Mhm.” Peter grinned from ear to ear with pride for a few seconds, then schooled his expression. “Although, just like withES-1,the first evolutionary sequence, on its own, it won’t give the desired effects…” he trailed off, frowning at the workbench.
Evolutionary sequence?Of what? Aiden peered at Darren, whose knitted eyebrows betrayed just as much confusion.
Peter sighed over a shrug and continued, “This is not quite what we were aiming for, but itisstill a step forward in human evolution, Garret. And when the ES-2 is presented to a subject that’s already been treated by the first evolutionary sequence, the subject’s makeup will be altered. We need a lot more tests before I can tell you exactly how, but my team and I believe that the resultswillsurpass our projections.”
Peter paused there and looked at Garret. “This… It will change the human race. Once we can control the way it interacts with our DNA, it will advance us beyond what we imagined was possible when we started this project. We will…” He took a shaky breath. “We will jump decades ahead… maybe even more, and in the meantime, we can make so many lifestyle improvements just by rolling out one of the sequences to the public.”
Aiden’s heart hammered in his chest.Human evolution.That was the Valrais Legacy. Not money, not assets, not land or some other commodity. If what the scientist was saying was true, the Legacy was so much more, a gift from the Valrais to the entirety of humankind.Just like modern spaceflight. Because as crazy as it was and as little sense as it made, the Valrais monarchs hadn’t been after power. They had been, literally, at the top of the food chain and yet they’d not exploited that. They’d not enslaved the world as so many others would have, they’d intended to equalize the playing field for everyone and plunge humanity as a whole into an utopia Aiden couldn’t even imagine.
“Darren, this is…” he muttered, squeezing Darren’s arm. He had no idea when he’d reached out and Darren’s surprise at the contact told him it was mutual.
“When do you think we’ll be ready to start testing?” Garret asked, redirecting Aiden’s focus to himself.
“Not until I’ve exhausted all the simulations I can think of, Garret. I’ve yet to figure out what the unknown variable I see in ES-1’s results is and why it’s missing from the initial results’ set I derived from ES-2. Either way, I’ll let you know when I have something new.” Peter held up the object he’d been carving, squinted at it, and gave it to Darren’s father. It looked like a ring. “I’ve encoded the second sequence inside, just like I did the first in Sara’s ring.”
“It’s marvelous,” Garret said in awe, holding the object at eye level so he could inspect it. “I’m sure Ren will love it.”
As the two men slipped into a conversation about the carving process and the data chip inside the ring, Aiden’s heart beat even faster. He whipped his head Darren’s way and squeezed Darren’s arm again. “Howe. Do you kno—”
Aiden cut himself off as Darren pinned him with sad but determined eyes. “That’s the ring my father gave me for my fifth birthday. Sara had one that looked exactly the same.”
They needed to get these rings. They had to. Before Marcus did, even if he didn’t know what they truly were.Because if he found out, everything was truly over for Darren. For both of them.
“Do you know where the rings are?” Aiden rushed out, his head spinning and his voice shaking.
“There’s a box hidden in my room. That’s where mine is. As for Sara’s…” Regret swam in the piercing depths of Darren’s eyes. “Marcus has it, along with the rest of the valuables he took from the Royal Palace and Estates.”
Fear clenched Aiden’s stomach. Marcus already had one of the rings.One of the evolutionary sequences. “The—”
“He doesn’t know, Kesley. Or he would’ve done something with the sequence already.” Darren smiled, a flicker of hope elevating some of Aiden’s anxiety. “But…”
