The New York winter at the beginning of 2008 was particularly biting. Through the large windows of the Midtown School of Science and Technology library, the sky displayed a lead-gray, almost industrial hue. For the majority of the students at this elite high school, the main worry oscillated between the next advanced quantum physics test and the latest hallway gossip.
For seventeen-year-old Valerius Aurelian, the concerns were of an entirely different nature. Of a nature so vast and terrifying that they detached him almost completely from the lightheartedness of his generation.
Sitting at an isolated corner table, a notebook open in front of him to keep up appearances, Valerius stared into space. Physically, he stood out among this crowd of little geniuses at Midtown Tech. While the other teenagers sported high school athlete builds or the slouched postures of tired students, Valerius possessed the stature of a veteran. Broad-shouldered, his back as straight as a blade, every single one of his movements betrayed an innate martial discipline.
But what struck the most were his features. His hair was no ordinary blonde; it possessed the pure, heavy brilliance of cast gold. His eyes, a piercing and liquid golden-yellow, completed an almost unreal, almost divine look, if they hadn't been darkened by a premature maturity and a total absence of joy of life. It was the gaze of a man who had contemplated hell, a direct consequence of the forbidden knowledge saturating his mind.
At this moment, his golden eyes focused on a translucent interface, invisible to the rest of the world, which had been floating in the center of his retina for four years now.
[ BEHAVIORAL MODEL SYSTEM: IMPERIUM ]
Cadian Soldier: 50% [Syncing...]
Space Marine : LOCKED
Custodes : LOCKED
??? : LOCKED
??? : LOCKED
??? : LOCKED
Who knew what those last three lines masked by question marks held. Perhaps Primarchs, or even worse. But for now, Valerius had to settle for his slow, endless progression.
Four years. Four years since this System had awakened within him, when he was only thirteen and had just lost his last anchors to society. Valerius was alone. No parents, no loving uncles, no caring legal guardians. Just him, some state aid skillfully managed thanks to an early emancipation, and a tiny apartment in Queens where silence was his most faithful roommate. This solitude had forged him. It had made him pragmatic, calm, cold.
If his System advanced so slowly, it wasn't because of a lack of monsters to kill or quests to complete. It was because of the Transfer.
For four years, the System had only marginally increased his physical stats. On the other hand, it flooded his brain with a continuous and massive stream of information. A living, raw, and monumental encyclopedia on the inner workings of the Imperium of Man. Valerius had had to assimilate the binary litanies of the Adeptus Mechanicus, understand the theoretical physics behind the operation of a plasma reactor or a lasgun, and learn by heart the complex geopolitics of Mars and Terra.
But the heaviest burden to carry, what had definitively extinguished his teenage lightheartedness, was the Warp. The System had transmitted fragments of data to him about the Immaterium, that corrupted ocean of souls, populated by unspeakable predators and malevolent deities. Knowing that the very existence of consciousness could engender such horrors left a taste of ash in his daily life. How could he smile, laugh, or have fun when his mind still echoed with the cry of a dying world under an Exterminatus, or the invisible threat of the Dark Gods?
A faint scent of jasmine and freshly printed paper interrupted his train of thought. Valerius didn't need to look up to know who had just sat down across from him.
"You have that look again, Val," a soft voice murmured, tinged with a hint of anxiety.
Jean Grey had just placed her books on the table. Her copper-bright red hair framed a tired face, marked by the dark circles of too few hours of sleep. At seventeen, she had shared the same classes as him at Midtown Tech since they started in 2006.
Valerius immediately noticed the change in the young girl's posture. Her shoulders relaxed, and the tension gripping her jaw vanished. He knew exactly why. Contrary to what Jean thought, Valerius wasn't blind. Thanks to the knowledge transferred by his System about the existence of Psykers, he had quickly understood Jean's true nature. To him, she was a psyker—a telepath of phenomenal but unsanctioned power, struggling to channel her gift. Everywhere she went, high school was a nightmare of mental noise for her, an unceasing flood of superficial thoughts that drilled into her skull.
Except next to him.
The System fiercely protected Valerius's mind. Around his consciousness rose an invisible wall of steel, an absolute firewall against which Jean's telepathy crashed mercilessly. When she was near him, it was dead calm. A bubble of total silence.
Valerius kept this secret to himself. He had never mentioned the word "psyker" to Jean, understanding that she wasn't a threat. As long as the Chaos Gods didn't move—if they even existed in this universe, a question that haunted him every night—Jean was just a young girl with a spiritual anomaly, trying as best she could to survive her own mind.
Besides, that was the only reason they had grown closer two years earlier. Amazed and intrigued by this "blank zone" on her mental radar, Jean had approached him, initially thinking he shared a condition similar to hers. After realizing he had nothing abnormal outside of this psychic tightness, she had simply stayed, finding a haven of peace in him.
"What look?" Valerius asked in a deep, composed voice, making the System interface vanish.
"The one of the guy carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders," Jean replied, crossing her hands under her chin. Her green eyes fixed on him with a particular intensity, tinged with deep affection.
These two years spent in Valerius's pocket of serenity had sprouted intimate feelings within her that she found increasingly difficult to hide. She loved his presence, his Olympian calm, and that strange maturity that reassured her. But Valerius, although he perceived that glimmer in her eyes, forbade himself from responding to it. His feelings could not be reciprocal, not out of cruelty, but out of pure lucidity.
He knew what the System had in store for him. The Cadian Soldier model was just the beginning. If he unlocked the Space Marine or the Custodes, his biology would be altered forever. He would live for thousands of years, watching all his loved ones grow old, wrinkle, and die before his eyes. Worse still, the genetic enhancement of the Imperium's warriors would render him permanently sterile, unable to start a family or have children. Getting involved with Jean would be a selfish lie. He preferred to remain her anchor, her friend, and nothing more.
"I was just thinking about the upcoming exams," he lied softly to cut short the heavy atmosphere.
Before Jean could answer, a shadow cut between them and the light from the window. A brown-haired teenager, with a closed face and a haughty bearing, had just stopped at the end of the table. Scott Summers.
Scott constantly wore sunglasses with red-tinted lenses, an eccentricity that teachers tolerated due to an alleged "medical sensitivity to light." He was part of the same group of transfers as Jean, who had recently arrived at the school and kept an extremely low profile.
Between Scott and Valerius, sparks had never flown. Scott was used to acting as a leader, a protector of his group, but faced with Valerius, his natural authority collapsed miserably. There was a silent friction between them: Scott liked to control his environment, but Valerius's rigid phlegm, his soldierly stature, and his mind completely inaccessible to Jean made the red-spectacled young man deeply suspicious.
"Jean," Scott said curtly, deliberately ignoring Valerius. "Professor McCoy is waiting for us in the lab room for the group project. We should go."
Jean sighed discreetly, the comfort bubble having just shattered into pieces. "I'm coming, Scott. Give me a minute."
Scott didn't budge an inch. His eyes, concealed behind his dark lenses, settled on Valerius. He hated the way the blonde looked at him: not with teenage animosity, but with the detachment of a superior officer evaluating a slightly too zealous young recruit.
"You should spend less time staring into space, Aurelian," Scott shot back, a hint of provocation in his voice. "We have a standard to maintain here."
Valerius held Scott's invisible gaze without blinking. His yellow eyes gleamed with a cold light under the artificial illumination of the library. "Mind your equations, Summers. I'll handle mine."
The tone was icy, devoid of any anger, which made it all the more intimidating. Scott clenched his jaw, but Jean quickly stood up to step in, packing her things in a hurry.
"Let's go," she said, casting an apologetic look at Valerius. "See you later, Val. Don't stay here too late."
"See you later, Jean," he replied softly.
He watched them walk away through the library hallways. Valerius knew they were hiding something, just like Hank McCoy, that senior genius with abnormally large hands, or young Bobby Drake who always hung out with them. They formed an enclave within Midtown Tech, a community within the community, maintaining absolute discretion at the beginning of 2008.
Silence fell over his table once more. Valerius cast one last glance out the window. On the news broadcasts looping on the plasma screen in the high school entrance, everyone was talking about Tony Stark. The eccentric billionaire, CEO of Stark Industries, was planning a business trip to Afghanistan within a month to demonstrate his new Jericho missile.
Valerius felt a strange electricity floating in the air. The stream of data in his mind was accelerating, the final puzzle pieces of the Imperium's history finally locking into his neurons. The counter for his Cadian model was slowly approaching its goal.
He knew he would finish the assimilation of his model very soon, perhaps even within a few weeks, right before the world tipped over. An icy certainty gripped his heart: the world as he knew it, this world of 2008 seemingly so peaceful, was drawing to a close. The storm was approaching, and when it broke, he would need every ounce of the Imperium's power not to be swept away.
---
Two weeks had passed since their last conversation in the library, and the atmosphere in New York had lost none of its winter bite. Yet inside the cafeteria of the Midtown School of Science and Technology, the heat was suffocating. It was a cacophony of clattering plastic trays, shrill laughter, and animated discussions about the latest trendy smartphone or Tony Stark's imminent trip to Afghanistan, scheduled in about a fortnight.
In the midst of this tumult, one low table stood out due to its strange dynamic. For the first time, Valerius Aurelian was not eating lunch alone in his corner.
Jean Grey had practically dragged him here by the sleeve of his jacket. That lunchtime, the hubbub of the cafeteria was so violent that it pierced through the young telepath's defenses, giving her an excruciating migraine. In desperation, she had found her only anchor of salvation: Valerius. By forcing him to sit in the middle of her group, she had immediately relaxed, savoring the bubble of absolute silence that the steel wall of his System projected despite himself. Sitting right next to him, almost shoulder to shoulder, she could finally breathe, a slight smile on her lips, deliberately ignoring the dark looks Scott Summers shot her from the other side of the table.
Valerius, for his part, remained impassive. His pure golden-blonde hair caught the harsh light of the neon signs, and his liquid golden-yellow eyes swept the table with the detachment of a military observer. His soldier build, rigid and imposing, contrasted sharply with the teenage postures of his neighbors.
Before his retina, a flash of light had just updated his interface:
[ BEHAVIORAL MODEL SYSTEM: IMPERIUM ]
Cadian Soldier: 75% [Syncing...]
Space Marine : LOCKED
Custodes : LOCKED
??? : LOCKED
??? : LOCKED
??? : LOCKED
These past two weeks had been a true mental hell. The System had just finalized the massive transfer of data concerning the Adeptus Mechanicus, the rigid structure of the Space Marine Chapters, and the ruthless methods of the Inquisition. Valerius had assimilated the institutional paranoia of the Imperium, the holy horror of heretics, and the absolute necessity of secrecy.
All he was missing now was the final quarter of the data: the encrypted files on the Primarchs, the deepest and most terrifying secrets of the Warp, the truth about the Emperor of Mankind, the rise of the Custodes, and the bloody Conquest of Terra. He felt that this last block of information would finish consuming what little joy of life he had left.
"So... Aurelian, right?"
The voice came from Bobby Drake. The fifteen-year-old boy broke the heavy silence that had settled over the table. Bobby wore his usual mischievous smile, attempting to lighten the mood, although he was visibly intimidated by Valerius's golden eyes and icy aura. "I was wondering... Do you dye your hair with 24-karat gold or is it just to humiliate us poor mortals? Because seriously, dude, it looks like you just stepped out of a casting call to play a Norse god."
A faint chuckle escaped Kitty Pryde, sitting next to him. At fourteen, the computer prodigy observed Valerius with a scientific curiosity mixed with a hint of shyness. "Bobby, shut up a bit," she murmured, nudging her neighbor, before sneaking a quiet glance at the blonde's predatory stature.
Valerius slowly turned his head toward Bobby. His golden-yellow gaze, devoid of any teenage animation, settled on the boy. "It's natural, Drake. And the color of my hair is the least of my concerns."
The tone was so flat, so mature, that it completely cut off Bobby's urge to laugh. The young mutant squirmed in his chair, suddenly uncomfortable.
"On the contrary, Valerius's phenotypic aesthetic is quite fascinating from a biological standpoint," Hank McCoy chimed in, his voice deep and composed. The senior colossus, adjusting his glasses on his nose, observed Valerius with profound respect. Hank, with his purely scientific mind, appreciated Aurelian's maturity. "Such pigmentation, combined with a muscular density and a posture that denote military-style training... It's rare for a Midtown student. It's a pleasure to have you at our table, Valerius. Your presence seems to have a... calming effect on our group's homeostasis."
Hank had shot a meaningful glance at Jean as he said this. He knew, as the group's scientist, that Valerius was the "blocker" keeping Jean from sinking into madness because of her powers.
"He has no business at this table, Hank," Scott Summers cut in cuttingly.
The leader of the group sat with his arms crossed, his red-tinted lenses fixed on Valerius. Jealousy and suspicion could be read in every line of his face. Seeing Jean so close to this mysterious blonde, practically glued to him to seek his protection, broke his heart and awakened his worst protective instincts. "We have important topics to cover for our study projects, and civilians shouldn't interfere. Jean, you should focus on our work instead of picking up the black sheep from the hallway."
Jean immediately tensed up, her green eyes flashing lightning toward Scott. "Scott, shut up. Valerius is my friend. If he bothers you, you're the one who can change tables."
Next to Scott, Rogue, dressed in her usual oversized black sweatshirt and leather gloves, let out a weary sigh. She poked at a fry on her plate with a dark expression, but her brown eyes stared at Valerius with a strange glimmer of sympathy. Rogue understood isolation. She knew what it was like to be different, to not be able to touch people. Seeing this boy, so calm, so cold, who seemed to carry a secret as heavy as her own without ever complaining, awakened a form of mutual respect in her.
"Leave him alone, Scott," Rogue said in a drawl, tinged with her Southern accent. "At least he isn't screaming his inner drama to the whole world. He's quiet. It makes a change from the idiots populating this high school."
Scott clenched his jaw, but Hank's authority and Rogue's retort forced him to retreat into a hostile silence.
Valerius hadn't uttered a word during this clash. To him, this high school squabble was nothing but insignificant background noise. Thanks to the concepts of the Inquisition and Imperial dogma anchoring themselves in his mind, he analyzed the table from an entirely different angle. Scott Summers reminded him of those young Imperial Guard officers—arrogant and rigid, convinced they knew everything but destined to panic at the first Ork charge. Hank, on the other hand, had the makings of a budding Tech-Priest, a logical mind one could respect.
Suddenly, a violent jolt shot through Valerius's brain. A mental shockwave, invisible but of raw power, made him stiffen in his chair. His golden eyes widened slightly.
The System had just crossed the 76% mark. The final block of data had unlocked, and the first waves of information about the Conquest of Terra and the creation of the Custodes began to pour into his synapses. Images of warriors in gleaming gold armor, apocalyptic battles to unify an Earth ravaged by techno-barbarians, and the colossal silhouette of the Emperor climbing the Himalayan mountains flooded his consciousness.
Next to him, Jean startled slightly, not because she had read his thoughts—the wall held firm—but because she felt the sudden drop in temperature around Valerius, whose fists had clenched on the table to the point of turning his knuckles white.
"Val?... Is everything okay?" she whispered, a hand hovering over his arm, not daring to touch him but terrified by the marble mask that had just frozen on her friend's face.
Valerius took a slow breath, forcing his golden eyes to detach from the visions of millennia-old wars to return to the reality of the Midtown Tech cafeteria. The contrast was almost absurd. On one side, teenagers arguing over seating arrangements; on the other, the destiny of a galaxy forged in blood and fanaticism.
"Everything is fine, Jean," he replied in a voice lower and darker than usual. He pushed his tray away, standing up in a fluid movement that made Bobby flinch back by reflex. "I'm done. I'll leave you to your projects."
He left the table without a backward glance, leaving the group of X-Men divided and silent under Jean's worried eyes and Scott's heavy, reproachful gaze. The final assimilation had begun, and Valerius knew that when 100% was reached, the Cadian Soldier within him would be ready for the war looming in the shadows of 2008.
"Why are you acting like a total asshole to him, Scott? What did he even do to you?"
Scott Summers didn't blink. Behind his ruby-quartz lenses, his gaze remained invisible, making his expression look even harder and more stubborn. He placed his hands flat on the table and leaned toward her, lowering his voice a notch so as not to draw the attention of neighboring tables.
"I'm just thinking about us, Jean. About our safety," he shot back in a hurried tone, tinged with obvious frustration. "We're in a public high school, alright? We already spend our days trying not to get noticed. Aurelian isn't a mutant; Hank checked his medical record and vitals. He's a normal human. What happens if he catches something he shouldn't? If he realizes we're different? We know nothing about him; he lives all alone, he doesn't talk to anyone. If he panics and goes to tell everything to the principal or the police, we're all screwed, and the Professor too."
"Valerius would never do that," Jean retorted, her voice trembling with anger.
"You don't know that!" Scott cut in, a bit too loudly, before catching himself. "And besides, open your eyes for two minutes. You can pick up the thoughts of anyone in this damn building. You hear teachers, students, people in the street... but him? Nothing. Total blank. Do you think that's normal for an ordinary guy? A human brain isn't supposed to be that airtight, Jean. Even if he isn't a mutant, this guy is hiding something weird, and it makes me sick to see you let your guard down around him."
Scott paused for a moment, short of breath. He glanced at Valerius's tray, still warm, before planting his tinted lenses directly into Jean's eyes. This was where his true wound showed through, the one he clumsily tried to hide behind his grand precautionary principles.
"And the worst part... is that he doesn't care," he dropped, his voice suddenly lower, almost bitter. "You spend all your time with him, you follow him everywhere, you come looking for him from the other side of the cafeteria... and he barely looks at you. He has that cold look, as if we were ghosts. He makes no effort to include you or be nice. I don't understand how you can chase after a guy who treats you with such indifference, when..."
He didn't finish his sentence, but everyone around the table understood the final word. Scott had been in love with her since their first meeting at the Mansion, and seeing him consume himself with jealousy over Valerius's quiet immunity made the situation almost pathetic.
"You're just acting like a jealous kid, Scott," Rogue chimed in contemptuously, pushing back her chair, clearly fed up with the drama.
Jean didn't even bother to answer Scott. With tears in her eyes, as much from anger as from disappointment at such bad faith, she stood up abruptly, abandoning her tray. She turned on her heel and stormed out of the cafeteria, fully determined to catch up with Valerius in the crowded hallways of Midtown Tech.
Meanwhile, Valerius walked with a heavy but steady step toward the basement lockers, where the lunchtime hubbub gradually faded away.
Each of his steps echoed in his leather boots. In his mind, the data transfer had reached a critical phase. The 76% displayed by the System wasn't just a simple number: it was accompanied by an unprecedented sensory overload. It was no longer lines of text or technical diagrams from the Adeptus Mechanicus that he was receiving, but fragments of pure, almost physical memories.
He leaned against the row of metal lockers, closing his golden eyes to try and stem the flood.
He saw deserts of radioactive ash under a blackened sky. He heard the rumble of colossal engines, tanks the size of cathedrals crushing the armies of forgotten warlords. And above all, he felt the presence of the Emperor. A silhouette of blinding light, walking amid the Himalayan mountains, guiding the first prototypes of the Legio Custodes through the carnage of the pacification of Terra.
These end-of-the-world visions, imbued with the iron discipline of the Imperium, finished destroying what little teenage empathy he had left. How could he care about Scott Summers' jealousy fits or the inner drama of Midtown high schoolers when he knew, from an absolute source, how much existence was a bloody and ruthless struggle?
A sound of fast, breathless footsteps broke his trance.
"Val! Wait!"
Jean had just turned the corner of the hallway, her red hair slightly disheveled from running. She stopped a few meters from him, pressing a hand to her chest to catch her breath. Arriving in the zone of silence projected by Valerius's mind, the storm of thoughts from the other students drilling into her skull instantly quieted down. She let out a sigh of relief, but her face remained marked by anxiety.
"I'm sorry about Scott," she said quickly, stepping forward hesitantly. "He's an idiot. He's stressed about classes and... he's getting wrong ideas about everything. Please don't pay attention to what he says."
Valerius reopened his liquid-gold eyes. His face, perfectly symmetrical and marble-pale, betrayed no anger. Just that cold, almost inhuman maturity that so destabilized Scott.
"I don't listen to him, Jean," he replied in a calm, deep voice. "His opinions matter nothing to me."
Jean took another step, her green eyes fixed on his. She keenly felt this distance he constantly maintained between them. She was in love with him, with his strength, with the peace he brought her without even knowing it, but every time she tried to take a step toward his heart, she hit a wall even more impassable than her telepathic defenses.
She didn't know that Valerius was doing this to protect her. That he knew that one day, his own biology would make him an immortal and sterile being, a soldier of the Imperium condemned to outlive his entire generation.
"You always say that... as if nothing that happens here matters," Jean murmured, a hint of sadness in her voice. "Sometimes, I feel like you're already somewhere else."
Valerius pushed himself off the locker. The System had just stabilized the transfer at 77%. "I'm just being realistic, Jean. The world is much bigger, and much darker, than any of you imagine in the hallways of this high school."
Il adjusted the strap of his bag on his broad shoulder. "We should go. Chemistry class is about to start."
He passed by her without touching her, leaving Jean alone for a moment in the deserted hallway. She followed him with her eyes, her heart heavy, sensing full well that the invisible countdown inhabiting Valerius Aurelian was accelerating, and that the boy she loved was drifting a little further from humanity each day.
------------
Hello dear reader, as you can see I have restarted this story. I have not abandoned this story; I stopped writing due to lack of time but also because I had poorly planned my story. I was writing one chapter without thinking about what comes next and realized that I had blocked myself. So I reconsidered how to go about it, and this way we can really start this story on a good foundation.
If you have any advice or find any issues, tell me in the comments. I read all the comments you leave and take them into account.