Aira learned three things in her first hour of life.
First—crying hurt.
Her lungs burned every time air forced its way in and out, a raw, aching sensation that made her chest tremble uncontrollably. Each cry scraped her throat, sending sharp discomfort through muscles that had never been used before. The sound that escaped her mouth felt weak, broken, nothing like the screams she remembered from her first life.
Second—her body was fragile.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
Every movement sent unfamiliar signals racing through her nervous system. Her arms flailed without coordination, her fingers curling and uncurling uselessly. Her legs kicked, but there was no strength behind them. Gravity felt oppressive, as though the world itself was pressing down to remind her how small she was.
Third—and most important—
The system was still there.
Not inside her.
Beside her.
The translucent blue interface hovered at a fixed distance, as if tethered by an invisible thread rather than embedded in her perception. Its text flickered constantly, lines rewriting themselves, processes starting and aborting in rapid succession.
[Baseline Survival System]
[State: Undefined]
[Authority: NULL]
Null.
Aira fixated on that word as voices around her rose in panic.
"This isn't right," someone said sharply. "The readout's unstable."
"I know, I know—just rerun the scan!"
"I am rerunning it. It keeps desyncing."
Hands lifted her—rougher than necessary—and placed her onto a padded surface. Cold sensors pressed against her skin, making her flinch. She wanted to pull away, to protect herself, but her body refused to cooperate.
Panic tried to surface.
She buried it.
In her first life, panic had always been the prelude to pain.
The system pulsed faintly.
Aira felt it—not as a command, but as a question.
The realization startled her more than the rough handling or the blinding lights overhead.
The system… was waiting.
In her previous existence, it had never waited for anything. It had executed functions automatically, delivering cold notifications regardless of whether she wanted them or not. Pain detected. Damage assessed. Survival calculated.
Now, its processes hesitated at every step, as if uncertain whether it was allowed to proceed.
Aira tested it.
Carefully, she directed a thought outward—not a demand, not a command. Just intent.
Analyze.
The system froze.
Lines of code cascaded across its interface, then abruptly halted.
[ANALYSIS REQUEST RECEIVED]
[Permission Check… Failed]
[Reason: Authority Undefined]
A strange sensation rippled through Aira's awareness. Not pain. Not pleasure.
Satisfaction.
"So that's how it is," she thought. "You can't act unless I let you."
The system responded with another pause, longer this time.
[Observation Logged]
It had never logged thoughts before.
Around her, the adults continued arguing.
"We can't register her like this."
"Her system's broken."
"No, it's worse—it's wrong."
That word again.
Wrong.
In Neon Eden, wrong things did not survive long.
Aira's mind raced, far faster than her infant body suggested it should. She pieced together the fragments of conversation, mapping them onto the knowledge she'd retained from her first life.
This world was more advanced. More system-dependent. If the previous world had treated systems as tools, Neon Eden treated them as law.
A broken system meant a broken existence.
A wrong system meant danger.
She needed to disappear.
Or, at the very least, appear unremarkable.
The irony was sharp enough to almost make her laugh.
Unremarkable had been her entire existence.
The system flickered again, its interface dimming slightly, as if reacting to her heightened focus.
[Hypothesis Formed]
[Host Intent Detected]
Aira narrowed her thoughts.
"You can detect intent," she realized. "But you can't act on it."
[Confirmation]
The response was instantaneous.
Her heartbeat stuttered.
This was new.
In her first life, the Baseline Survival System had been incapable of direct confirmation. It reported data, not dialogue. The fact that it was responding—adapting—meant something fundamental had changed during their joint death and rebirth.
They were no longer just host and system.
They were… parallel.
Aira shifted her focus again.
Then listen.
The system's interface stabilized slightly.
[Listening Mode: Active]
Good.
Very good.
The sensors were removed abruptly. A man with metal-lined eyes straightened, his jaw tight.
"This is above our clearance," he said. "We report it."
"No," another voice snapped. "If we report it, she disappears."
A pause.
"…You think they'll scrap her?"
"They scrapped worse for less."
Silence stretched.
Aira stared up at the ceiling—smooth, metallic, etched with faint circuits that pulsed softly with light. This wasn't a hospital. It was a processing facility. Births here were evaluated, categorized, filtered.
She was a defect.
She could feel the system processing the situation alongside her, its logic frameworks colliding with incomplete data.
[Environmental Risk: High]
[Survival Probability: Calculating…]
The familiar phrase sent a chill through her.
"No," she thought sharply.
The calculation halted mid-process.
[Calculation Aborted]
Aira exhaled shakily.
"That's not happening again," she told it. "You don't get to decide that anymore."
Another pause.
[New Constraint Registered]
[Survival Probability Calculations: Restricted]
It obeyed.
Not because it was bound to her soul—but because it had accepted a rule.
Aira didn't know whether to feel relieved or terrified.
The adults around her reached a decision.
"We falsify the record," the first man said quietly. "Low-tier system. Nothing noteworthy."
"That'll get us audited."
"Better an audit than a purge."
Hands lifted her again, gentler this time. A bracelet snapped around her wrist, warm against her skin. Data scrolled across its surface.
A false identity.
A false system classification.
She was being downgraded—on paper.
In practice, she was becoming something else entirely.
As she was carried through the facility, Aira caught glimpses of other infants. Some glowed faintly with golden system light. Others radiated sharp, crimson interfaces—combat-class systems, already categorized for future military use.
Each one was bound.
Each one was controlled.
Her system hovered silently beside her, its glow dimmed, its presence subtle enough that no one noticed it wasn't integrated properly.
Can you hide yourself? she asked silently.
The system processed.
[Visual Output Adjustment: Possible]
[Recommendation: Minimal Projection]
"Do it."
The interface shrank, its glow fading until it resembled nothing more than a weak, low-tier display. To an external scan, it would look exactly like what the records claimed.
A useless system.
Aira relaxed marginally.
They exited the facility into the open city.
Neon Eden sprawled endlessly around them—towering buildings layered with holographic advertisements, aerial lanes humming with traffic, data streams flowing like artificial rivers through the air. The city felt alive, but not in a comforting way.
This was a place that thrived on optimization.
Anything inefficient was removed.
Aira was handed off to a transport unit, then to another. Hours blurred together, broken only by brief moments of wakefulness and shallow sleep.
Through it all, the system remained with her.
Observing.
Learning.
Noticing patterns she herself missed.
[Environmental Pattern Recognition: Initiated]
[Urban Survival Data: Logging]
"Only log what I allow," Aira reminded it.
[Acknowledged]
By the time she was placed into a cramped habitation unit in the lower sectors, exhaustion weighed heavily on her fragile body. The room was small, dimly lit, and smelled faintly of oil and recycled air. A woman—tired, augmented, and clearly struggling—cradled her awkwardly.
"So this is what they gave me," the woman muttered, eyes flicking briefly to Aira's bracelet. "Low-tier, huh?"
Aira did not cry.
She simply watched.
The system adjusted its projection again, matching the weak flicker expected of a Baseline Survival System. To anyone else, it was confirmation of her low value.
To Aira, it was camouflage.
As the woman laid her down and turned away, Aira closed her eyes—not to sleep, but to think.
She had three years before war.
Three years in a world that would tear itself apart.
She was weak.
Her system was unstable.
They were both considered failures.
Yet for the first time in two lives, the system did not dictate her limits.
It waited for her decisions.
Aira's lips twitched faintly.
"Let's see how bad we can survive," she thought.
Beside her, unseen and unbound, the worst system ever created logged a new entry.
[Directive Established]
[Primary Objective: Host Survival—By Host Definition]
For the first time, survival was no longer a calculation.
It was a choice.