INVALID

INVALID - Chapter 3: Jerome

The City wasn't a city. It was a filter.

New Sonora City rose out of the desert in concentric rings. Outer Ring for Invalids and service drones. Middle Ring for Mid-Valids, the GQ 85-94s who did the actual work. Inner Ring, behind a second wall of glass and biometric scanners, for the 95+.

I had never been past the Outer Ring. My GQ 43 chip buzzed red at every checkpoint. Every tram door that wouldn't open for me, every water fountain that required a 90+ to use. The city was designed to remind you every 20 feet that you were a mistake that someone had graciously allowed to live.

The address Jerome had sent was in the Outer Ring, ironically. A gene-hacking clinic called EUGENE'S, above a noodle shop that smelled like real pork, which meant it was synthetic.

I climbed the stairs. The door was open.

Inside, a man sat in a wheelchair facing the window. He didn't turn around.

"You must be Micah," he said. His voice was perfect. Of course it was. Accentless, modulated, calm. The kind of voice they engineered for news anchors.

"You're Jerome Morawski?"

"Was. Technically still am, according to my genome. Legally, I'm a ghost. My parents collect my Universal Basic Dividend every month and tell everyone I'm on a meditation retreat in orbit. It's cheaper than a funeral for a Valid."

He wheeled around.

He was beautiful. It was offensive how beautiful. Symmetrical face, clear grey eyes, no scars, hair that fell perfectly. And from the waist down, nothing. Atrophied legs in expensive pants. A thin scar on his neck where his spine implant should have been.

"What happened?" I asked.

"I jumped," he said, like he was talking about the weather. "From the Inner Ring balcony. 32 stories. They designed my bones to be unbreakable. They forgot to design my will to live to match."

He rolled closer. He looked at me, really looked. At my glasses, at my cheap, sun-faded shirt, at the desperate way I was clutching a cooler with two blood vials.

"You're uglier than your photos," he said. "Good. The contacts would have given you away."

"You've seen me?"

"I sequenced you before you got here. Dust sample off your shoes from the Helios exam yesterday. You tracked it all over my stairwell. Very careless for a man who wants to be me."

He pulled up a holo. My entire genome, rotating. Red flags blinking.

"Myopia, anxiety, depression, 78-year lifespan if you're lucky. And this..." He zoomed in. "You have a deletion on chromosome 7 that makes you resistant to emotional conditioning. That's why you never fit in. You're literally built to be dissatisfied. How... poetic."

He pulled up the second vial.

"Eli Rowe. GQ 41. VSD, aortic insufficiency, projected cardiac failure at age 19.4 years. He's 11 now. So you have eight years. Less, actually, given the progression."

My hands clenched. "You said you could help."

"I can. I can give you my blood, my urine, my skin flakes, my retinal scan, my gait pattern. I have 400ml of medically clean plasma in my fridge that will pass any Helios intake. For 12 hours at a time, you will be me. You will be Jerome Morawski, GQ 98, destined for the Titan Project."

"Titan?"

"The mission. The first interstellar colony ship. They're launching in 11 months. It's the only place with a Mark VII bio-printer that can print Eli's heart patch without authorization from the Genetic Council. The one in Helios Medical Vault reports every use. The one on Titan doesn't. It's considered expendable."

He leaned forward.

"So here's my price. It's not money. I don't want money."

"What do you want?"

"I want you to take me with you."

I stared. "You're paralyzed."

"I am paralyzed from the waist down on this planet. In zero-G, nobody needs legs. I have a PhD in exobotany. I was supposed to be on that ship before I... opted out. My ticket is still valid, genetically. But I can't pass the physical. You can. You're strong enough. You carried your brother for 11 years, your DNA says so."

He extended a perfect, useless hand.

"You become me long enough to get us both onto Titan. Once we're on board, you steal the bio-printer, print your brother's cure, and you send it back on the supply drone that returns before the interstellar jump. I get to leave this perfect prison. Eli lives. Everybody wins."

"And if we get caught?"

"Then they will recycle us. Both of us. They don't jail Invalids who impersonate Valids. They compost us. Protein for the next generation of perfect babies. Very sustainable."

The cooler with Eli's blood was sweating in my hands.

This was no longer about me wanting to go to space. This was a heist. A heist where I had to steal a perfect man's life, steal a starship, and steal my brother's future.

"What do you say, Micah Rowe? Do you want to be Valid?"

I thought of Eli on the porch, his blue lips.

I took his hand.

His skin was cold.

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