The Author's Draft

Chapter 97 - 16: Number One

By morning the red lightning had faded to a distant, silent pulse on the horizon, but in Aiden’s flat the tension had merely transmuted. The carpet was pitted with old cigarette burns and the remains of takeaways from a year past, but today the living room looked almost ceremonial: the coffee table moved to the kitchen, every lightbulb unscrewed but one, a towel shoved under the door to block any mana leakage from the neighbor’s cat, which Aiden was convinced would report them to the Association if it could.

Callum stood in the dead center of the carpet, his arms loose at his sides, his face pale enough to nearly match the whiteboard Aiden had propped against the wall. If the kid was scared, he hid it better than most. Maybe that was the benefit of watching your older brother almost die several times in a row.

"Again," Aiden said, voice low. He stayed on the sofa, a meter away, cradling a mug of instant coffee that was three parts sugar and two parts resignation.

Callum breathed in slow, out slower, and raised his right hand. At the first attempt, nothing happened. At the second, the air in front of his palm rippled, then fizzled out like a bad special effect. The third try produced a visible spark—blue, ghostly, and gone before it even cast a shadow.

Aiden exhaled, his patience not infinite but longer than most. "You’re wasting too much mana on the focus," he said, gesturing with his chin as if that was helpful. "Don’t try to muscle it. It’s not about force, it’s about resonance. Like... tuning forks, but in your bloodstream."

Callum made a face. "I don’t have a single clue what that means," he said, and tried again anyway.

This time, the blue spark held, hovering in the air like a firefly. It grew, dividing and rejoining, forming first the outline of a shape—a stick figure with too many limbs—then resolving into something more complex, more determined. The sound came next: not a whir or a buzz, but a metallic click, like the cocking of a gun in an action movie.

Callum swayed, sweat beading at his brow, but the blue light grew even brighter, and with a final, shuddering pop, the air beside him fractured open.

A robot stepped out of the fissure.

It was humanoid but not human, built of interlocking plates that suggested both armor and surgical precision. Blue lines pulsed along its limbs, converging at its core—a disk at the chest that glowed with the same color as the summoning spark. Its face was featureless save for two slits that glowed a deeper, more dangerous shade.

The robot stood to its full height—taller than Aiden by a head—and immediately surveyed the room with the micro-movements of a security camera on amphetamines. It ignored Aiden, the entire flat, the leaking ceiling, and fixed its gaze on Callum. It inclined its head, a gesture of recognition, and then drew a weapon from its back: a blade made not of steel but pure, condensed blue energy.

Callum blinked at it. "Uh—are you gonna do anything?"

The robot said nothing, but dropped into a low, ready stance, blade angled between itself and Callum, protecting him from... what, exactly? Aiden, apparently.

Aiden watched, curiosity momentarily overriding any pretense of calm. "It’s got a default guard routine," he said. "I think it knows I’m your older brother, though. It hasn’t tried to kill me yet."

Callum wiped sweat from his face and gave a shaky laugh. "So this is... a swordsman?"

Aiden stood up and walked a wide circle around the robot, hands open. The robot tracked him but didn’t move from its post.

"It looks like a tactical type," Aiden said. "See the armor? That’s kinetic-dampening plating. The joints are synthetic, probably to increase speed. That blade is... not mana, it’s some kind of hard-light construction. It’s stronger than it looks. Where the hell did you get this template?"

Callum shrugged. "I didn’t pick. I just—" He hesitated, then tapped his temple. "I imagined something that could protect me. That would be good at fighting. That’s what came out."

Aiden whistled. "Imagine if you’d tried to make a puppy."

The robot made a noise at that, a tiny oscillation of gears that almost sounded like a suppressed laugh.

Aiden reached out, slowly, and tapped the blade with his index finger. It was cold to the touch, but when he pressed, the edge shimmered and drew a thin line of red on his skin.

"Jesus, that’s real," he muttered, then flexed his hand. The wound closed in seconds, a benefit of his own rank. "This is better than I thought. It’s not some knockoff fantasy familiar; this is a proper sentry. Did the examiners even see it?"

Callum shook his head. "I just felt it in my head, when the stone activated. The room wasn’t big enough to actually summon anything. But now..."

The robot shifted, as if it had received a sub-vocal command. It took a half-step back, then spun the blade in a vertical arc, completing the motion with mechanical grace. The afterimage lingered, a blue streak in the air. Callum stared at it, then at his brother, and for the first time since yesterday he looked less afraid of the world and more afraid of himself.

Aiden put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing until the tension left Callum’s muscles. "We’ll need to test how long it lasts," he said. "And what else you can do. If this is your first summon, the rest are going to be even weirder."

Callum looked at the robot, who still stood at ease but alert. "What should I call it?"

The question was almost childish, but there was an undertone to it, the weight of naming something that might someday die for you.

Aiden considered, then said: "Call it Number One for now. We’ll see if it survives the week."

The robot’s faceplate flickered, two blue bars briefly forming a "V" before returning to slits.

Aiden paced the length of the flat, thinking aloud. "If the Association clocked this, you’re going to be in the top percentile of new awakeners. Maybe even the only one with a combat-ready summon. The only downside is—"

He stopped himself, letting the sentence dangle.

Callum finished it for him: "Everyone will know about it."

Aiden nodded. "Yeah. Which means anyone wanting to kill you will also know what to expect."

He said it gently, not to scare, but the truth was they were out of time for softening the world.

Callum squared his shoulders and straightened, as if the robot’s stance was contagious. "Fine. We tell Mum at dinner, okay? I don’t want her to hear it from the neighbors."

Aiden nodded. "I’ll handle it."

He sat back on the couch, watching as the robot deactivated its blade and returned to a motionless state, hands folded behind its back, like a palace guard awaiting royal orders.

"Dismiss it," Aiden said. "Let’s see if you can recall it at will."

Callum hesitated, then closed his eyes, and the robot vanished with a soundless implosion, the blue light sucked inward until nothing remained but a faint ozone scent.

Aiden grinned. "You did it."

He didn’t say he was proud, but it was there, unspoken.

Callum grinned back. "Next time I’m summoning two."

Aiden gestured at the battered sofa. "Just don’t do it near my coffee mug. Last time a summon materialized on this carpet it took six months for the smell to come out."

They both laughed, the kind that comes from relief and from knowing you have exactly one thing left to lose.

The red lightning outside flickered again, then died. In its place, the blue afterimage of the summon hovered in both their minds, as real and as dangerous as anything waiting on the other side of the rift.