Who is Tim Spell?

The AeroTransport hums like a long, steady breath. I sit in the corner seat—shoes off, jacket folded beside me—watching the city glow beneath the clouds. The lights look harmless from up here: tiny, orderly, obedient.

Nothing like last night.

A shiver crawls up my spine.

My body still feels it—the exhaustion, the tremor in my hands, the low, steady burn under my skin. Every muscle aches in protest. I keep my expression neutral, lips set, eyes fixed on the view. The onboard sensors love to read mood signatures; I won’t give them anything to report.

“Personal console,” I say. The glass panel in front of me brightens with my access code.

HELIX DOMINION — EMPLOYEE RECORDS

The file opens with what I already know: SPELL, TIMOTHY J. (Knight Errant).

This upstart isn’t even a real noble. A non-hereditary title—a nobody in the ridiculous neo-feudal system that co-exists with megacorp extraterritorial life. But if he didn’t inherit a title, how did he earn one?

I scroll.

Indenture Term: 400 Years (250 Years Pending Reassignment)

Acquired By: Verra Lux

Title: Jr. Aetheric Analyst, Systems Integration

Current Assignment: Executive Assistant (Pending)

Psych Profile: High emotional regulation; pronounced resistance to hierarchical authority

Education: PhD — Applied Aetheric Theory and Engineering, The Aetheric Institute of Arcane Learning

I read the last line twice before it sinks in.

Knight Errant. He actually earned it.

Magic.

The word still feels half-mythical even inside Helix’s databases. Everyone knows it’s real—there are research papers, historic footage, all the formal acknowledgments—but almost no one ever sees it. Out of billions, maybe a few people ever manifest enough aetheric resonance to qualify for training, and fewer still survive the process that turns them into wizards. Those who do earn the title Knight Errant, a relic of the old interstellar charter that once bound the Great Houses together.

Corporations hate them. You can’t scale a wizard, can’t patent a soul that bends reality. The Helix Dominion has spent centuries trying to industrialize the aether—batteries, reactors, synthetic catalysts—and still the only reliable source is a human mind that refuses to be owned.

And somehow this one ended up indentured to me.

This was all some big god damn fuck up. Vera had never acquired a wizard on behalf of Helix Dominion. She checked the files and the proof was right there. It wasn’t her. Sure someone in her department, and under her authorization, but not her personally.

She scanned more of the files. He had escaped some colony world by forcing him and his family onto a Helix Dominion transport. When it arrived here on this planet, he was billed for the transportation of him and his family. It was determined that it would take him 400 years of indentured servitude to pay off his dept. 1,000 years each for his sister and mother.

Fuck! She thought, he wasn't just a wizard, he was a pissed off wizard. Pissed off because He and his stupid family racked up a bill they couldn't hope to pay off in a few lifetimes. He saw my authorization so now he thinks its because of me. He thinks its my fault he cant pay his bills! Thats what this was all about. Vera could feel her blood pressure rise. Her anger welling. It was SHE that was the victim! Yes her name was on the approval for his acquisition, but it was done by some subordinate! Not her personally!