Aera moved through the lower wards of the Bastion, her footsteps soft against the reinforced flooring. The scent of rusted metal and antiseptic lingered, but beneath that… there was something human.
Laughter.
It was faint — a child giggling in one of the makeshift play rooms, echoing between the sterile walls like a fragile miracle.
She followed the sound and found them: a cluster of children sitting around a young woman painting a mural on one of the walls — a field of flowers blooming under a sky that wasn't gray.
It was simple. Bright. Beautiful.
And completely unsanctioned.
"Ma'am," one of the stationed guards began, approaching her with a furrowed brow. "Unauthorized modification of interior walls. Protocol states—"
"It's fine," Aera cut in, her voice calm but firm. "Let them finish."
The guard hesitated. "But—"
"You want peace, don't you?"
He didn't answer — just stood there for a moment longer, then gave a small nod and walked away.
Aera crouched beside the children.
One of them, a girl with smudged cheeks and a missing tooth, looked up at her.
"Is it okay?" the girl asked, holding out a brush.
Aera smiled. "It's more than okay. It's needed."
Later, she stood in front of Kael again.
This time, she didn't wait to be spoken to.
"I want to start an art program. Therapy sessions. Music halls, even if they're small. Something to let these people feel alive again."
Kael didn't look up from the shifting display of code and coordinates in front of him.
"Their basic needs are met. Shelter, food, safety. Additional engagement protocols are non-essential under current threat levels."
"Not everything essential can be quantified."
Kael's fingers paused. His voice was calm — almost curious.
"Define essential."
Aera walked closer. "You see the world through that," she said, motioning to the neural weave of floating data — a glowing lattice that mapped everything from movement patterns to emotional probability.
"I call it the Neural Net HUD," Kael said, standing and allowing one of the panels to expand. It was a mesmerizing web of colored data strands that pulsed with real-time input — biometric signals, behavioral predictions, emotional risk levels.
Every person was a node. Every action, a pattern. Every decision, a function of probability.
"You see this and think you understand people," Aera said softly. "But you don't feel them."
"That's irrelevant."
"It's everything."
Kael studied her. "The Neural Net has a 94.2% predictive accuracy. That makes it more reliable than emotional assumption."
"And yet it can't tell you what I'm going to say next."
He tilted his head. "Statistically—"
"I think you're wrong."
Kael blinked.
"People don't just want to survive, Kael. They want to live." She turned from him, stepping back toward the exit. "And I'm going to give them that — with or without your algorithm's approval."
She left him there, alone with the hum of circuitry and numbers.
Kael stared at the Neural Net for a long moment, watching Aera's profile move through the grid — an unpredictable node.
A contradiction.
A variable that refused to be simplified.
"…Interesting," he murmured.
And for the first time, the system recorded a flicker of uncertainty.