INVALID

INVALID - Chapter 2: The 0.4%

At 17, I learned that God doesn't make mistakes. The system does. And it charges you for it.

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The Helios Qualification Exam wasn't really an exam. It was a blood draw.

The entire complex in New Sonora was built like a cathedral — white concrete arches, glass that cleaned itself, air that smelled like nothing. No dust. No bacteria. No Invalids.

I stood in line with 300 other 17-year-olds, all of us in the same grey intake gowns. The difference was obvious even without looking at our certificates. They stood straight. Their skin was clear. Their teeth were symmetrical. None of them wore glasses. They had been designed to not need them.

I had contacts in that burned. I had spent the last 8 months injecting Keratin-Bright into my eyeballs to temporarily correct my myopia. Black market stuff from Tijuana that made your eyes bleed for a week. My vision was 20/20 for exactly 48 hours. Today was hour 12.

"MICAH ROWE. GQ 43. FAITH BIRTH."

The med-tech didn't even look up. She just said it loud enough for the line behind me to hear. A few Valids turned.

I sat in the chair. The needle went in. The machine took 5ml and then, in the same 3-second sigh from 11 years ago, rendered its judgment.

On the screen in front of me, my entire future collapsed into numbers.

IQ: 131 - Acceptable

Physical Endurance: Tier 2 - Acceptable

Cardiac: Normal - Acceptable

Genetic Stability: LOW - FLAGGED

Predisposition Profile: Myopia (corrected), Anxiety 71%, Melancholic Depression 58%

Final Eligibility Score: 89.6%

Pass Threshold: 90.0%

FAIL.

By 0.4%. Four tenths of a percent. The margin of a mood disorder I didn't even have yet.

The proctor, a Valid woman with silver irises - a cosmetic splice popular that year - gave me the same smile as Eli's nurse.

"Thank you for your interest in Helios, Mr. Rowe. Your contribution to the maintenance sector will still be valued. Please exit via the west corridor. Your gown will be recycled."

I didn't move. "Rerun it."

"Excuse me?"

"My sample. Rerun it. Machines have variance. You know that."

Her smile vanished. "The sequencer has a variance of 0.01%. You failed by 0.4%. That's not variance, Mr. Rowe. That's you."

Behind me, someone snickered.

I walked out the west corridor. It was longer than the east corridor, where the ones who passed went. It dumped you directly into the dust outside the complex walls, barefoot. They kept your shoes as a processing fee.

I walked 14 miles home in the desert heat, my contacts drying out and turning my vision milky white.

Eli was waiting on the porch. He was 11 now. Small for his age, skin too pale, lips always a little blue. His heart defect - the "minor, correctable" one they had flagged - had not been minor at all. At age 8, he had his first syncopal episode on the school playground. The public clinic doctor took one look at his red-stamped certificate and prescribed "rest and low exertion."

A private cardiologist, paid for with everything my parents had saved for my college, told us the truth three months ago: Moderate VSD with progressive aortic insufficiency. Without a bio-printed patch grown from his own corrected stem cells, his heart would go into failure before he was 20.

The cost: $480,000. The facility that could do it: Helios Medical Vault. Access requirement: GQ 95 or higher.

In other words, only the people who would never need it were allowed to use it.

"Did you get in?" Eli asked. He was trying to sound casual. He knew what it meant.

I couldn't look at him. My eyes were watering from the contacts.

"No."

He nodded like he expected it. He held out a glass of water. His hand was shaking.

That night, I pulled my father's old toolbox from under the house. At the bottom, under the rusted wrenches, was what I had been collecting for two years: a centrifuge bought from a vet school, a PCR thermocycler stolen from my high school, and a notebook full of sequences.

I had told myself I was going to beat them by being better. By studying harder, running faster, scoring higher on the written tests they still let us take to pretend it was meritocratic.

That was the lie they sell Invalids to keep us polishing their floors.

You don't beat a system that can read your blood by bleeding better.

You beat it by changing the blood.

I opened the notebook to a page I had marked with Eli's hospital bracelet. On it was a name I had found on the dark Helios employee forum, a man who supposedly sold clean identities. Valid identities. Dead Valids whose families hadn't reported them to save their stipend.

The username was JEROME MORAWSKI. GQ 98. Status: Deceased, unreported. Age: 26. Perfect genome.

The price was everything I had plus ten years of indentured service.

I looked out the window at Eli asleep on the couch, his chest moving too fast, too shallow.

I sent the message.

> IS HE STILL AVAILABLE?

The reply came 6 minutes later.

> YES. BUT YOU CAN'T AFFORD HIM. NOBODY CAN.

> I HAVE A BROTHER.

> DOESN'T MATTER.

> HE'S DYING.

A long pause.

> COME TO THE CITY. ALONE. BRING YOUR SAMPLE AND HIS. IF YOU'RE LYING ABOUT YOUR GQ, I WILL CALL SECURITY AND THEY WILL TAKE YOUR KIDNEY AS PAYMENT FOR WASTING MY TIME.

I deleted the chat, destroyed the burner, and took out my contacts. My real vision came back, blurry and safe.

For the first time since I was six years old, holding my mother's hand while my brother screamed his way into a world that didn't want him, I didn't want to go to space because I wanted to be perfect.

I wanted to go to space because I wanted to steal a ship, steal the medical vault inside it, and save my brother before his imperfect heart stopped.

And if I had to become a dead man to do it, so be it.

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