The car ride home from the mall was a study in quiet revolution. The silence was no longer a glacier; it was a fragile, thin ice over deep, shifting waters. Sera stared out her window, her posture less rigid, her fingers occasionally tracing the place on her arm where Kaelen's sleeve had brushed against her. Iris dozed in the backseat, exhausted from sugar and arcade triumphs, a small smile on her face.
Kaelen dared not speak. She kept her eyes forward, the metrics -90% and 17% burning in her mind like benevolent stars. She had touched Sera without punishment. The world hadn't ended. The System, for all its power, had blind spots. It couldn't quantify a accidental touch, a shared laugh, the simple act of trying.
They arrived at the penthouse. Sera gently woke Iris and led her inside. Kaelen followed, giving them space. The routine felt different tonight. Less like a hostage situation and more like… coexisting.
As Iris got ready for bed, Sera lingered in the living room. She didn't look at Kaelen, but she didn't immediately retreat to her room either. She stood by the window, watching the city lights, a pensive expression on her face.
"You were… different today," Sera said finally, her voice quiet, not accusatory, but genuinely curious. "At the school. You were angry. But not at me. Not at Iris."
Kaelen's heart leapt into her throat. This was it. A direct question. A chance to… to what? Tell the truth? 'I'm not her, I'm someone else, please believe me'? She'd be met with disbelief or, worse, be seen as dangerously insane.
"Children shouldn't be targets," Kaelen said carefully, choosing a truth that belonged to both her and the original Kaelen. The original's rage had been misdirected, but it had been born from a place of being a target herself for her father's disappointment, her brother's contempt, her own recessive biology. "The strong preying on the weak is… inefficient. It creates messes." She fell back on the cold, corporate language the original would use, hoping to cloak her real feelings.
Sera turned from the window, her eyes searching Kaelen's face. The -90% held steady. She was listening. "Inefficient," she repeated, a faint, almost imperceptible hint of irony in her tone. "Is that what you call it?"
Before Kaelen could formulate a response, her personal comms device buzzed a specific, urgent tone she'd assigned to the family's head of security. A cold dread, separate from the tension with Sera, washed over her.
"I have to take this," she said, her voice tight.
Sera nodded slightly, the moment of near-connection broken, and turned back to the window.
Kaelen answered the call, walking quickly toward her study. "Report."
"Miss Blackwood," a grim voice stated. "We've intercepted a communications packet. Encrypted, high-level, but we cracked it. It's from Ironwood Security. Directed at a private terminal in Vesper Pharmaceuticals."
Kaelen's blood ran cold. Valeria. Acting already. "Content?"
"It's an offer. A proposal to audit Vesper's financials and security protocols. Pro bono. Citing 'concerns for stability' given the company's… 'close association' with Blackwood Corp."
It was a masterstroke. A public offer of help that painted Blackwood as a corrupting influence and Valeria as a white knight. If Alban Vesper, desperate and weak, accepted, it would give Ironwood a foothold right inside their rival's weakest link. And it would be a direct insult to the Blackwoods, suggesting they couldn't or wouldn't protect their own affiliates.
"The Vesper uncle?" Kaelen asked, her mind racing.
"He hasn't responded yet. But the offer is… generous. It would be difficult for him to refuse."
"Understood. Monitor it. Out." She ended the call, her mind whirring.
This was the plot accelerating. Valeria was making her move on Sera, not through personal charm alone, but by strategically undermining the very structure that held Sera captive. She was offering Sera's family a way out, and doing it in a way that publicly humiliated the Blackwoods.
Kaelen paced her study. She had to tell her father. He needed to know Ironwood was making a direct play. But telling him would mean revealing she had surveillance on Vesper communications, which was standard practice but would invite questions about why she was personally monitoring it. It would bring more of his scrutinizing, disappointed attention down on her.
And a smaller, more treacherous part of her wondered: was Valeria's offer such a bad thing? If it helped Sera and Iris, if it freed them from the gilded cage…
Warning: Hostile sentiment detected towards family interests.
A sharp, familiar pain lanced through her skull, so intense she saw stars. She stumbled, grabbing her desk for support. The System was still very much awake, and it would not tolerate that line of thought.
The pain receded, leaving a throbbing ache behind her eyes. She had to act. But like every move in this game, the right action was also the wrong one.
She left her study. Sera was gone, likely putting Iris to bed. The penthouse was quiet again, but the fragile peace from earlier was shattered, replaced by the cold reality of corporate war.
Kaelen stood in the center of the living room, caught between the woman she was supposed to be and the person she was trying to become, between a family that demanded ruthless loyalty and two people who were beginning to trust her, just a little.
Valeria's move had checkmated her before she'd even known she was playing. The Story was escalating, and the -90% approval rating felt like a precious, fragile thing about to be swept away by forces far larger than a parent-teacher conference or an arcade game. The unraveling had begun.