Aira learned quickly that Neon Eden did not care about children.
Not really.
The city cared about potential—measurable, quantifiable potential. Children were only valuable insofar as their systems promised future returns. Combat aptitude, cognitive acceleration, industrial optimization, neural synchronization. Every growth curve was projected before the child could even speak.
Aira's curve did not exist.
On paper, she was classified as low-tier survivability support. In practice, she was invisible.
That invisibility saved her life.
The woman assigned as her guardian—Mara—worked long hours in a maintenance sector beneath the city's mid-level platforms. She was not cruel, but exhaustion had carved sharp edges into her patience. Aira was fed, cleaned, and left alone for long stretches of time, placed in a reinforced crib beside flickering wall panels and humming machinery.
Aira did not cry when she was left alone.
Crying wasted energy.
Instead, she observed.
The first weeks passed in a haze of half-sleep and quiet awareness. Her infant body forced her into cycles she could not resist—sleep, wake, feed, ache. But her mind remained sharp beneath it all, adapting to the unfamiliar limitations of undeveloped senses.
Vision came slowly. Shapes first. Light and shadow. Then color. Neon Eden was never dark, even in the lower sectors. Light seeped through cracks in the walls, reflected off metal surfaces, pulsed faintly in rhythmic patterns that matched the city's data flow.
Sound followed. The distant thrum of machinery. Voices layered with artificial modulation. System notifications chiming softly in the background like an omnipresent heartbeat.
Through it all, the system remained.
Hovering.
Watching.
It no longer flooded her awareness with constant diagnostics. After her initial restrictions, it had learned restraint. It displayed information only when prompted—or when environmental risk crossed thresholds Aira herself had not yet defined.
She appreciated that.
"Status," she thought one day, carefully shaping the intent.
The system responded instantly.
[Host Condition Analysis]
Age: 2.3 Weeks (Reincarnation Cycle)
Physical Development: Below Average
Neural Activity: Anomalously High
Overall Risk Level: Moderate
Aira frowned internally.
"Don't flag my neural activity."
A brief pause.
[Request: Clarification]
"Normalize it in external scans. I don't want attention."
[Processing…]
[Adjustment Applied]
[External Readings: Smoothed]
She exhaled slowly.
Each successful interaction reinforced a dangerous truth: the system was no longer an authority over her. It was a tool—one that learned faster the more she used it.
But tools could become weapons.
And weapons attracted attention.
So Aira limited herself.
She spent her days lying still, eyes half-lidded, body behaving exactly as expected of a low-tier child. When Mara spoke to her, she responded with delayed coos and unfocused stares. When strangers passed through the habitation unit—inspectors, neighbors, system technicians—she was quiet and forgettable.
Inside, her mind was anything but.
She mapped her environment meticulously. The layout of the unit. The times Mara left and returned. The rhythms of the sector: when maintenance drones passed, when power fluctuations occurred, when the noise level dipped enough to think clearly.
She also mapped her body.
Every ache, every weakness, every delay between intent and movement was cataloged. She compared it instinctively to her first life, to the frail body that had been cut open and reinforced and broken repeatedly.
This body was weaker.
But it was also untainted.
No implants. No invasive augments. No scars carved into muscle and bone.
Yet.
The system noticed her attention turning inward.
[Inquiry]
[Subject: Physical Limitation Awareness]
"I need to know what I can endure," Aira replied silently. "Not what you think I should."
The system processed.
[Recommendation: Controlled Stress Exposure]
She almost laughed.
"Of course you'd say that."
[Clarification]
[Stress Exposure Parameters: Minimal]
[Objective: Data Acquisition, Not Optimization]
That was acceptable.
Aira waited until Mara left for work the next day.
The door slid shut with a soft hiss. The unit settled into its usual hum. Aira lay still for several minutes, listening, confirming she was alone.
Then she acted.
With painstaking slowness, she attempted to roll onto her side.
Her muscles screamed in protest. The movement was clumsy, uncoordinated, far beyond what her body wanted to allow. It took nearly a minute of effort just to shift her weight enough to tilt slightly.
Pain bloomed along her shoulder and neck.
The system stirred.
[Physical Strain Detected]
[Risk Level: Low]
"Don't intervene," Aira thought immediately.
[Acknowledged]
She pushed again.
This time, she succeeded—barely. Her body rolled onto its side, then tipped forward, dropping her onto the padded floor beside the crib.
The impact knocked the air from her lungs.
For a terrifying second, she couldn't breathe.
Her vision blurred.
Pain flared sharp and bright.
The system reacted instinctively.
[Damage Detected]
[Survival Probability—]
"No," Aira snapped mentally. "Stop."
The calculation froze.
She lay there gasping, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes—not from fear, but from reflex. Slowly, painfully, air returned to her lungs.
She survived.
The system waited.
"What did you learn?" she asked it.
Another pause—longer this time.
[Data Logged]
[Host Pain Tolerance: Above Expected Baseline]
[Motor Adaptation Potential: Present]
"Good," Aira thought. "Then we continue. Slowly."
Over the following weeks, she repeated the process in small, controlled increments. Rolling. Crawling. Gripping the edges of objects. Each action hurt more than it should have for a child her age, but she welcomed the discomfort.
Pain meant awareness.
Awareness meant control.
The system observed everything, refining its models. Unlike other systems, it did not attempt to optimize her movements or correct her form. It simply recorded, adapted, and updated its understanding of what Aira considered acceptable.
That distinction mattered.
By the time she was three months old, she could crawl short distances when alone. She could lift her head steadily, grip with surprising firmness, and endure levels of strain that made the system quietly revise its internal thresholds.
Externally, nothing changed.
Mara noticed nothing beyond what she attributed to coincidence.
"Guess you're tougher than you look," she muttered one evening, adjusting Aira's blanket.
Aira stared up at her, eyes unfocused, expression blank.
Inside, she was already planning months ahead.
The war announcement replayed endlessly across public channels. Countdown displays flickered in every district, reminding citizens of the approaching interworld invasion. Training programs were being expanded. Recruitment notices multiplied.
Even children were not exempt.
Aira listened carefully whenever Mara watched the broadcasts.
"They say even low-tier systems might be conscripted for logistics," Mara said once, voice tight. "Three years… gods, that's nothing."
Three years.
For most people, it was preparation time.
For Aira, it was a deadline.
She needed to grow—not fast, but correctly.
One night, as the city lights dimmed slightly during a scheduled power redistribution, Aira addressed the system again.
"You were reborn differently," she said. "Tell me how."
The system hesitated.
[Self-Analysis: Incomplete]
[Difference Identified: Autonomy Increase]
"That's vague."
[Clarification]
[Previous State: Reactive Framework]
[Current State: Adaptive Construct]
Aira absorbed that.
"You can change yourself now."
[Conditional Confirmation]
[Change Trigger: Contradiction, Failure, or Novel Input]
A chill ran through her.
"So when things go wrong," she murmured, "you grow."
[Affirmative]
They were truly alike.
Worst human. Worst system.
Both shaped by failure.
"Then we'll grow carefully," Aira decided. "We don't chase power. We chase survival."
[Directive Accepted]
Outside the unit, Neon Eden continued its relentless march toward war. Systems optimized. People trained. Factions maneuvered.
And in a forgotten lower-sector habitation unit, a child with a useless system learned how to endure pain without breaking.
The city did not notice.
Not yet.
But somewhere deep within the system's evolving framework, a new metric quietly replaced an old one.
Not survival probability.
But survival inevitability.
And that scared even the system itself.