Shiori Taira woke in her father's house to the scent of ozone and bleach, a silence as polished as the marble floor beneath her feet. The suite—she refused to call it a bedroom—stood at the pinnacle of the Taira family compound, a glass-and-steel fortress sheathed in a perpetual blue-white glow. There were no windows that opened, only a kinetic wall of panels that darkened or cleared at the whim of a neural gesture. Shiori kept them transparent, always, as if watching the city sprawl beneath her might remind her that she lived in something other than a vault.
The ceiling broadcasted the morning's first headlines in gentle, floating script. "Port Incident: No Civilian Casualties," the banner read, the words shifting hue with the sunrise. Below it, a holo-anchor smiled with symmetrical teeth and delivered a summary of the "minor security event" at Dock 7-G. The screen muted itself the instant Shiori's eyes flicked upward—house etiquette, an algorithmic courtesy perfected by the Taira for generations. But she'd heard enough.
Shiori peeled herself from the clinical white of her bed, bare feet whispering against the heated marble. She padded to the vanity, where her school uniform had been laid out on a carbon-fiber frame: the skirt was navy with platinum piping, the blouse starched enough to serve as armor. Her reflection in the mirror was that of a ghost in a luxury brand—skin pale as rice paper, black dye hair still damp from its nightly conditioner regimen, eyes dark with a green undertow. The color was a Taira trademark, or so the genealogical marketing suggested.
She looked at her hands, at the way they hovered and trembled before the synth-wood surface. Her knuckles were small, delicate, but the nails were sharp, uncut. Shiori never bothered to trim them; it was a quiet rebellion, a reminder that she was not yet finished mutating into her father's vision of the perfect successor.
A soft knock. The door slid open on its own, allowing a servant to glide in—a Feran, badger-variant, head bowed and ears pinned flat. He didn't meet her gaze, only approached and set a tray of breakfast on the table. Porridge, miso, a perfect arc of nori folded over steamed rice. All piping hot, all portioned with the precision of an algorithm that knew her caloric needs down to the microjoule.
"Good morning, Shiori-sama," the servant intoned, voice filtered through a linguistic softener. "Your father wishes to remind you of the councilor's visit at ten. Also, the school shuttle will arrive in thirty-seven minutes. Your medicine—"
"I know where it is," she said, too sharply. The servant blinked, ears twitching, and withdrew without another word. The door shut, vacuum-sealed.
Shiori sat. She traced a finger along the rim of the miso bowl, then pushed it aside. Her appetite was never present at this hour, not when the first thing she tasted in the morning was the afterimage of whatever her father had done the night before.
The news feed ran muted footage of the port, hovering drones and hazmat crews sluicing the concrete with anti-magic foam. Shiori watched the looping segment three times, looking for details—anything that hadn't been sanitized. She caught a flash of blue, then nothing. The rest was a carefully orchestrated ballet of workers in white, agents in black, and the city's usual indifference in the background.
She swiped the holo off with a flick of her wrist. It spiraled into the ether with the same finality as a bug down a drain.
The house itself was alive with protocol, every corridor mapped and optimized for efficiency and security. Shiori moved through it with the ease of someone who knew every hiding place and blind spot. She stepped over the sunken living room (unused), past the koi pond (genetically engineered, never hungry), and into the central foyer where a column of sapphire glass ran from basement to roof. Behind it, a pair of security drones hovered, eyeing her in silent anticipation.
They parted at her approach, their sensors recognizing the family's second heir, and resumed their rounds. Shiori almost smiled. Even the machines in this house showed her more deference than her father.
At the exit, she paused. The morning had laid a film of fog over the city, muting the angles of the skyline and making even the floating billboards seem tentative. The Taira compound overlooked the rest of Nueva Arcadia, a raised thumb on the city's pulse, designed for oversight as much as for intimidation.
She inhaled, then caught a whiff of her father's cologne—ancient, bitter, and still warm in the air. She turned and saw him at the end of the corridor, already dressed for the day in a suit cut from some nanoweave so dark it seemed to eat light. His eyes, the same dark-green as hers, regarded her with all the affection of a machine calibrating a new part.
"Early," he noted, voice like sanded glass.
"You told me to prepare for the councilor."
"Did you finish your report on the parliamentary simulation?" His mouth didn't move; only the left eyebrow twitched. A tell, if she'd cared to look.
Shiori nodded, spine straightening. "I sent it to your inbox. Annotated and translated."
He walked toward her, not so much approaching as moving in a perfectly straight line. "There's a board meeting today," he said. "After school, come directly home."
She could have asked why. Could have argued, or even hinted at her schedule. But she saw the unspoken in his posture: the day's plan had already been carved into the compound's logic. Shiori was a variable, not a person. "Of course, Father."
He paused, not quite close enough to touch her. "Good. Make sure to—" But whatever he wanted her to do, it didn't matter; his hand flicked to his earpiece, and a data stream cut the sentence in half. He turned, already moving away, already gone.
The door to the garage slid open in anticipation. Her transport—a silver AV (aerial vehicle), emblazoned with the Taira crest—waited at the curb, its interior cooled to her exact comfort settings. The seat recognized her and adjusted before she even sat down. Shiori swiped her thumb over the panel, igniting the console and a new set of headlines.
"Student Honors: Taira Heiress Accepts Science Prize," one read, and Shiori almost barked a laugh.
Another: "Feran Curfew Lifted in Lockwood," followed by a debate banner, already loading her father's pre-approved talking points.
She ignored them all, slouched into the seat, and watched the city slide past as the pod descended the drive.
In the distance, the port's security cordon pulsed with blue-white lights. Shiori watched the flashes, remembering the newsfeed, and wondered how many deaths it had taken to keep that incident off the real headlines. She felt the beginnings of a headache, a pressure behind her left eye. She pressed her palm to her temple, breathed, and forced herself to count the trees lining the road.
Twenty-seven. Each genetically identical, pruned into submission.
She knew exactly how that felt.
The AV cut through the city's arteries, bypassing the slow traffic with privileged contempt. Shiori reached into her bag and pulled out her notebook—not the official Taira one, but the battered spiral she'd bought from a street stall in Sombra. She flipped to a blank page and, in tiny, perfect strokes, wrote:
"There are twenty-seven cherry trees between the house and the station. Each one is dying, no matter how much they prune. I wish I could watch them rot."
She tore the page out, crumpled it, and shoved it into the recycling port.
When the AV reached the school gate, Shiori hesitated before stepping out. She could already see the other students gathering, uniforms crisp, hair perfect, eyes cold and carnivorous behind the veneer of respectability. The Taira name was a shield, but also a target.
She tightened her jaw, smoothed her skirt, and stepped into the daylight.
The school's entrance scanned her, registered her ID, and flashed a "WELCOME, TAIRA SHIORI-SAMA" in a font designed to humble lesser families. The other students parted around her, eyes tracking her every move, mouths poised to parrot the day's talking points.
Shiori ignored them all. She kept walking, every step echoing off the stone in a rhythm that was almost, almost human.
The last thing she saw before the doors shut behind her was a new headline, flickering briefly on a public holopanel:
"Mercenaries Activity Suspected in Port Attack."
Shiori allowed herself the faintest smile, the first real one of the day.
Then she entered St. Gregory's Academy, and let the alabaster cage close around her, one more time.