Smart watches had names too.
The one Alexander had bought for the original owner, the original owner named Light of Time. The one he bought for himself, he named Sunflower.
Liam checked the account balance on Sunflower, and found himself staring at an enormous number.
Three billion, two hundred and eighteen million silver stars.
He blinked. Could working online really bring in that much these days?
Liam ran the figures in his head and decided that yes, with a lifestyle as modest as the original owner’s, he could genuinely have saved that much. Besides taking commissions, the original owner had also opened a broadcasting room and livestreamed himself working. The audience sent him gifts, and converted into cash it came to a considerable sum. He also sketched pieces on the spur of the moment and put them up for sale on the trading floor.
Liam sighed to himself. He had thought he would be leaving empty-handed, and instead he had billions in his hands.
Liam thought it over, then moved 1.6 billion silver stars across into the main bank account on Light of Time, and scheduled every last coin in that account to transfer to Mr. Hall, setting the transfer for three days from now.
The 1.6 billion he had just moved in, together with the 1.4 billion that had been sitting in the account already, came to exactly three billion. Three billion silver stars. That ought to be enough to buy out eighteen years of affection, surely?
Three days from now he would already be on his way to Polaris, and even if the Hall family wanted to come after him it would be far too late. Besides, Elijah lied about everything, and Elijah would certainly never let the Hall family go all the way to Polaris looking for Liam. So Liam was not the least bit worried about being caught and dragged back.
Once he saw the money leave the account, Liam deleted the transaction history and the scheduled notification and went out. The living room was empty; Alexander had probably gone back up to his room. With no one left in sight to turn his stomach, Liam’s steps grew noticeably lighter.
He told the driver to take him to the largest shopping mall on the Capital planet, on the pretext of going out to shake off his boredom. Alexander, standing at the floor-to-ceiling window on the second floor, heard Liam announcing it loudly to the driver and let his lips curl a little. Still a child. He never could hold a grudge for long.
Alexander remained perfectly convinced that once this younger brother of his had shopped himself content, he would come home and smile gently at him again and call him eldest brother just as obediently as before.
Liam walked into the shopping mall, browsed a few stalls, and then went into the restroom. When he came out, his clothes and his hair had both changed, and across his face sat a homemade pair of the glasses worn by people with genetic defects, hiding very nearly half of it.
He pushed his hands into his trouser pockets, melted into the crowd, and strolled unhurriedly out of the mall. The driver, sitting waiting for him in the lobby, had no idea at all that his young master had just walked right past him.
Liam switched off the location tracking on Light of Time, set it to silent, and hailed a hovercar out of the mall. He changed his route eight times and changed his appearance eight times as well, before finally making for the spaceport.
The ship bound for Polaris was half an hour from departure; Liam had timed it exactly right. Before boarding, he made a detour to a cruise liner, quickly switched the location tracking back on, and slipped the Light of Time smart watch into a female passenger’s handbag. Only then did he return to his own ship.
Once aboard, he found his cabin, climbed into the bed and fell into a deep sleep.
From the moment he woke in that hospital until now, Liam’s mind had been strung tight without a break. He slept so soundly that he had no idea when the ship departed or how many spatial jumps it made along the way. He did not wake until the following morning, when he had finally slept his fill.
Liam rolled his shoulders, and once he had washed and dressed, he picked up the high-grade nutrient fluid the ship’s staff had prepared and drained it in one go. The mixture of smells alone nearly made him bring it back up. It really was appalling stuff. High-grade though it was, engineered to mimic the flavor of fresh food as closely as possible, to Liam it tasted every bit as vile as ever.
Fresh food in this world was simply too expensive. So expensive that even a family as wealthy as the Halls only ate it once a week, which said everything about how rare it was. Liam lay back on the bed and cracked the window open to look outside.
It was early morning. All Liam could see was a meteor stream drifting through the void and a handful of ships and small craft passing by. The view was crushingly dull, so he gave up on it and opened the Sunflower smart watch to go over the documents about the original owner’s family.
The Martinez family lived on the planet Sirius in the Polaris star system. Before Mr. Martinez died eighteen years ago, they had been comfortably off, not filthy rich in the way the Halls were, but solidly middle class. After his death, however, his Omega spouse’s health turned desperately fragile from the premature birth, and the original owner’s older brother and sister were far too young at the time to shoulder the family’s work.
So the Martinez family’s assets were carved up entirely by their relatives, leaving nothing but a not particularly fertile agricultural planet that grew a little fresh produce, just enough to scrape by on day to day.
The original owner’s Papa held on until Elijah was eight before he passed away, and the burden came down on the shoulders of the B-grade Alpha eldest brother and the Beta older sister. Hard as the two of them worked, they doted on Elijah, never letting him lift anything heavy. For Elijah’s part, always felt his brother and sister were useless, incapable of giving him the wealthy, luxurious life the Omegas on the Capital planet enjoyed.
So once he learned the truth about his birth, Elijah swept up every coin of his older brother’s life savings without a second thought and ran off to the Solaris star system to claim his relatives. To make himself look more pitiful, Elijah even went out and bought a set of cheap street clothes to wear and smeared his face to give it a sallow cast.
Mr. and Mrs. Hall suspected nothing at all. Even later, as Elijah’s appearance improved by the day, they only assumed it was because they had taken such good care of him. In reality Elijah had always looked that way. The Martinez family had never mistreated him for a moment.
The documents that followed were the evidence the original owner had gathered. This was the original set; the copy in the Light of Time smart watch had only ever been a backup. Alexander had gone to all that trouble for nothing.
Liam thought about it for a while, and in the end still did not press send.
Never mind. Sending the documents now would not solve a thing. Mr. and Mrs. Hall and Alexander had long since leaned Elijah’s way, and even if Liam could prove his innocence, it would not improve his position in the slightest.
What was more, Liam wanted a clean break from the Hall family, so he was in no hurry to send any of it out.
He would simply keep it here for now. If Elijah still felt like playing tricks, Liam would use this to teach him a lesson.