Kaelen woke slowly, drifting up from a deep, profound sleep. Her body was a roadmap of pleasant aches, and the ever present knot of anxiety that had lived in her stomach for weeks was simply… gone. She turned her head on the pillow, the scent of their mingled, sated pheromones filling her senses. Sera was still asleep, a faint, contented smile on her lips. The memories of the previous night of Sera's initial, commanding seduction, of their shifting, complex dance of power and surrender washed over Kaelen, leaving a deep and unshakable sense of peace. This was real. This was theirs.
Sera stirred, her eyes fluttering open. She leaned in and pressed a slow, deep kiss to Kaelen's lips. "Morning," she whispered, her voice husky.
"Morning," Kaelen replied, her own voice soft. She was about to say more when the bedroom door was thrown open with a crash.
"IT'S TODAY! IT'S TODAY!"
A tiny, joyous cannonball in unicorn pajamas launched itself onto the bed, bouncing with an energy that defied the early hour. "I'm TEN!" Iris declared, her face beaming. "I'm double digits!"
Sera laughed, pulling her daughter into a big hug. "Happy birthday, my sweet girl! The big one oh!"
But Kaelen had frozen. The word, the number, slammed into her with the force of a physical blow.
Ten.
The warmth in the room vanished, replaced by an arctic, mind numbing dread. The sound of Sera and Iris's happy chatter faded into a dull, roaring in her ears. A passage from 'Corporate Omega,' a block of text she had pushed to the deepest recesses of her mind, erupted to the surface.
The details of the tragedy, as written in the novel, were mundane, which made them all the more horrifying. It happened on a bleak, snowy morning sometime during her tenth year. In the original story, the impoverished and broken Seraphina could no longer afford a private car, and because of this neglect born of despair, Iris had been commuting to school via public transport. She was hit by a transport truck on a slippery road, and her death was ruled a tragic accident...
This was it. Not in two weeks. Not a distant threat she could meticulously plan for. Today. The start of the danger year. She had spent weeks fighting her father, fighting for the company, and had completely lost track of the most important timeline of all.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: A major canonical time frame [Iris Vesper's Tenth Year] has begun. The original plot outcome for this period is [FATAL]. As you are operating without a script, future outcomes are unknown. No guidance can be provided.]
The System's clinical, unhelpful text was a death sentence.
"Okay, birthday girl," Sera was saying, oblivious to the terror gripping Kaelen. "Let's get you dressed. We'll have a special breakfast, and then we'll go to the park and fly that new kite we bought!"
Kaelen's mind was a whirlwind of cold, hard panic. A park. An open space. Unsecured. Unacceptable.
"I just need to make a quick call," Kaelen said, her voice strained as she forced a smile. She slipped out of bed and retreated to her office, her heart hammering against her ribs. She didn't have weeks to prepare. She had minutes.
She bypassed all of the usual Blackwood channels and made a single, encrypted call to a discreet but brutally efficient security firm she knew of from her predecessor's files.
"This is Kaelen Blackwood," she said, her voice low and commanding. "I have a level one priority situation. I need an armored vehicle and a three man tactical escort team at the base of the Blackwood Tower in one hour. Money is no object. Non negotiable."
She ended the call and began rerouting all building security feeds to her personal datapad. She was locking the fortress down.
She was so absorbed in her frantic preparations that she didn't hear Sera come in until she was standing right beside her, a cup of coffee in her hand.
"Kaelen? What are you doing?" Sera asked, her brow furrowed in confusion. "Iris is getting dressed. I thought we were leaving soon."
Kaelen took a deep breath, turning to face her. "Change of plans. We're not going to the park."
Sera's face fell. "What? Why? Kaelen, I promised her."
"I received some intelligence," Kaelen lied, her voice flat and cold the only way she could keep it from shaking. "There's a potential threat today. It's not safe to leave the building. We'll have to cancel."
"Cancel?" Sera's confusion hardened into disbelief and anger. "You're canceling her birthday trip to the park? Kaelen, we just had this conversation. You can't just lock us in here every time you feel anxious. This isn't protection, it's a cage!"
Just then, Iris appeared in the doorway, dressed in her favorite pink sweater, her face a picture of excitement. "I'm ready! Can we go now? Please?"
Kaelen looked from the joyful, expectant face of the child she would die to protect, to the hurt, angry face of the woman she loved. She was caught between a happy birthday and an apocalyptic future only she could see, and she knew, with a sickening certainty, that in her desperate attempt to save them, she was about to ruin everything.