"The one who controls the need controls the world. Morality is a story the powerless tell themselves." - Kane's Law
Elias Voss would hear these words many years later, spoken by a man who had built an empire upon them. A man who had turned necessity into leverage, who understood that control wasn't about force, but about dependency.
But Elias had already felt their weight long before he knew them—long before he had the words to define the battle he was destined to fight.
1989 – Rotterdam, Netherlands
The storm outside rattled the window panes, but inside the Voss apartment, everything was still. Elias stood in the doorway of his mother's home laboratory, watching as she adjusted a row of glass beakers. The blue glow of the Bunsen burner flickered across her face, casting shadows along the shelves lined with neatly labeled bottles.
She held up a small vial of clear liquid, turning it in the dim light. "This will help people," she said, more to herself than to him.
At eight years old, Elias wasn't sure how. He only knew that his mother, Dr. Helena Voss, was a chemist, and that her work mattered. She had told him once, in a rare quiet moment, that science was like a language—one that could be used to heal or to harm, depending on who held the knowledge.
His father, Adrian Voss, sat in the next room at the kitchen table, his back to them, a newspaper unfolded before him. His fingers were drumming against the wood, slow and rhythmic. Elias had seen that habit before. It meant his father was angry.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
His father's jaw tightened as he folded the paper. The headline was still visible:
PHARMACEUTICAL GIANT SECURES PATENT FOR NEW CANCER DRUG
"They're going to charge thousands for something your mother created to save lives," Adrian said, his voice quiet but sharp.
Elias frowned. "But that's not fair."
His father let out a slow breath, running a hand over his face. "No, son. It's not."
His mother remained silent. Her eyes were still on the vial in her hand, but Elias saw something in her expression—a hesitation, a quiet resignation. It was the first time he understood that knowledge could be taken, twisted into something it was never meant to be.
That night, Elias lay awake in his small bed, staring at the ceiling, his mind replaying the moment over and over. He had always thought of knowledge as something pure, something that made the world better. But now, for the first time, he wondered—What if knowledge wasn't just power? What if it was currency?
A year later, his father took him to a protest.
It was outside a gleaming glass building in the city center, where men in dark suits moved in and out, never once glancing at the crowd of protestors beyond the gates. His father was standing near the front, speaking to a reporter, his voice steady and controlled.
Elias, standing beside him, felt something shift in the air when one of the suited men paused.
The man was tall, with slicked-back hair and an expensive watch that gleamed in the pale winter light. He looked down at Elias's father with a faint smirk, adjusting the cuff of his sleeve before speaking.
"Morality doesn't pay the bills."
His father's hands curled into fists at his sides.
"Tell that to the dying," Adrian Voss replied.
For a moment, there was silence. Then the man in the suit laughed under his breath, shaking his head as he walked past. Elias watched him go, his young mind trying to grasp what had just happened.
That night, he asked his father, "Did that man win?"
His father's expression darkened. "Not today."
"But he will?"
Adrian hesitated, then placed a firm hand on Elias's shoulder. "Not if you don't let him."
Elias didn't understand what his father meant at the time. But he remembered the look in his eyes—determined, but weary. It was the first time Elias felt something stir inside him, something beyond curiosity.
A sense of injustice. A need to do something about it.
By thirteen, Elias had begun questioning everything.
He still loved chemistry, just like his mother. He spent hours in her home lab, memorizing formulas, mixing compounds with careful precision. But he also saw the world through his father's eyes. He saw how discoveries meant to heal were locked behind paywalls, how corporations treated life-saving medication like luxury goods.
He started reading late into the night—not just about science, but history. He studied the lives of men who had wielded knowledge like a weapon—Oppenheimer, Haber, men who had given humanity miracles but also devastation.
It unsettled him.
"There will always be those who exploit knowledge for control," his mother told him one evening, as he sat flipping through an old chemistry textbook. "Your job is to ensure knowledge is used for liberation."
He wanted to believe it was that simple. But a part of him—some deep, unshakable part—knew it wasn't.
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