Serena didn't wear armor today.
Just gray silk, wrapped at the collar like something from the old world—
but engineered to repel static, blood, and biometric mist.
The fabric caught the filtered sunlight just enough to look expensive, never loud.
Her hair was clean, parted exactly down the center.
Her hands painted with skin-toned nanogel—matte, neutral, unnaturally perfect.
The floor of the lobby beneath her clicked like glass when she walked.
Scented air circulated from vents lined with crushed pearl and micro-iris.
Some called it luxury.
The system called it standard.
The receptionist smiled too easily.
"Dr. Serra, the board will see you now."
That was the name they gave her this week. Serra.
Soft vowels. No sharp angles.
It helped people forget she was watching them.
The boardroom smelled like ozone and ash.
Twelve seats. Eleven occupied.
The AI node sat behind smoked glass at the head of the room, humming like something asleep with one eye open.
No one looked up as she entered.
Their focus remained still, untouched, as if she'd always been part of the room.
The seats were evenly spaced, their arrangement exact.
One at the head remained empty—untouched, unassigned.
She paused. Bowed.
Not too deep. Just enough to respect the ritual, without suggesting submission.
The table stretched in a single, polished line—black lacquered obsidian carved from one slab.
A ripple of light moved beneath its surface—pulse-sync ambient glow, timed to the room's breathing.
On the walls, thin vertical lines of calligraphic script glowed faintly.
Not decorative.
Security algorithms, rendered as verse.
She moved to her assigned place—third seat from the far end.
The chair shifted soundlessly to meet her spine.
Temperature: 37.4°C
Back angle: 112°
Pulse read: Active | Stable | Elevated
All logged.
Her implant buzzed once.
"The Board acknowledges the presence of Dr. Serra, appointed liaison under AURELION Regulation 9.3."
"Her observations will be documented under neutrality protocol."
That's what they said.
What they meant was:
No one argues. But no one trusts her either.
No one looked up.
But every eye had already seen her.
She bowed. Precisely. Took her seat.
Her implant pinged.
Objective: Extract profile logs of Project Solas.
Do not alert. Do not overwrite.
AURELION sees you.
Someone passed her a glass of water.
She didn't drink it.
The water had no minerals. The glass had no weight.
It was just ritual—another protocol disguised as generosity.
Her hands were still.
But under the table, her foot tapped once. Then again.
She didn't notice it at first—just a shift, unconscious.
A rhythm.
Off-pattern.
Not part of her calibration loop.
Her implant buzzed softly.
Movement variance detected.
She muted the alert.
Across the table, a man in a gray suit adjusted his cuff.
Nothing strange. No flagged behavior.
But the way he looked past her—like he'd already seen her—sent a brief static flick through her peripheral scan.
The chair felt too soft.
The light too evenly white.
Her hands were still, but a low pressure curled into her spine.
Something here was—
Not wrong.
Just… out of key.
The man in the gray suit finally spoke.
"We understand you're here regarding legacy system cross-data."
Serena replied evenly.
"Project Solas. I need full access to its internal logs and behavioral simulations. Especially Candidate-class records."
A few of the board members exchanged a glance.
A woman in pearl-gray leaned back.
"Project Solas has been offlined for five cycles. Any simulation activity was shut down by AURELION protocol."
"Shut down doesn't mean deleted," Serena said.
"No," the man agreed. "But it does mean restricted."
A pause.
The kind that cooled the room.
Another voice—older.
"Why would Regulatory Intelligence require access to a decommissioned behavior archive?"
"Because the behaviors aren't gone."
Silence.
"Do you have a warrant?"
"I have Regulation 9.3."
The woman tapped her finger against the table.
"That gives you the right to observe. Not to interfere."
No change in Serena's expression.
One of the younger members offered, carefully:
"If this is a compliance concern, we can prepare a summary report. With filters."
"No filters. No summaries," Serena said. "Full access."
A beat.
Then:
"Denied," the man in gray said, still smiling.
"Respectfully."
Serena's voice stayed level. Measured.
"Respect is noted."
She rose from her seat.
"Just one last thing," she added, smooth as glass.
"If Solas data resurfaces under your jurisdiction—undocumented, uncontained, and unsanctioned—"
She paused. Just long enough.
"—your refusal today will be logged as obstruction."
The smile faded from one of their faces. Only one.
She bowed again, slightly shallower this time, and turned without waiting.
The corridor outside the boardroom was silent, its lighting slightly dimmer than before—intentional, like the building itself knew not to hold its breath too long. She walked past the assistant who instinctively stepped back with just enough politeness to avoid eye contact. Her heels struck the floor in measured rhythm, yet made no sound.
The elevator was already waiting when she reached it, doors parting with a soft hiss that made no announcement. She stepped inside without hesitation, and no one followed her in.
The air outside was cooler than expected.
A soft chemical mist curled along the base of the district walls, rising from the vents of lower energy strata. Above her, the skyline blinked—falsely clean, every window lit to simulate life that no one was living at this hour.
Her car waited at the curb: unmarked, low-slung, quiet.
No lights on inside.
She stepped in. The door sealed behind her with a hush of pressurized air.
She didn't issue a destination.
The vehicle didn't move.
She settled into the back seat, crossing one leg over the other, gloves still on.
The cabin was dark.
Her hands rested loosely in her lap, unmoving.
No comms. No notifications. No voice input required.
The console in the corner of her vision blinked softly:
21:07
She didn't check the directive again.
There was no need.
The file had been clear.
She simply watched the glass—reflections of upper-sector light leaking through the haze, long strands of silver and white flickering across the window like veins. The car interior held them like a mirror.
Somewhere in the city, an artificial breeze hummed through the modular towers.
Time passed.
She didn't mark it.
At 00:12, the console chimed once.
A soft, neutral tone.
Nothing urgent.
She opened the door.
The hallway on Floor 43 was carpeted in near-soundless fabric, lit by vertical strips tucked behind the walls—no direct bulbs, only the illusion of glow. The door was already unlocked.
She placed her hand on the panel anyway.
It opened at her touch.
The room was beige in the way all transient rooms were—softly lit from no discernible source, with walls padded in a way that suggested luxury but functioned only to absorb sound and discourage memory.
There was a low table between two identical chairs, and on it sat a bottle, unopened, flanked by two glasses of clear liquor. Only one of the glasses had begun to fog at the base, a ring of condensation pooling slowly against the grain of the table's surface.
She didn't speak. She hadn't come to.
The man across from her said nothing either.
He wasn't nervous—not visibly, not foolishly—but something in the quiet, practiced smoothness of his movements suggested a readiness to interpret silence as a signal.
He wore gray. A slim-cut suit with no badge, no emblem, and no tie. His appearance was almost conspicuously neutral, the kind of anonymity that passed for professionalism in places where names didn't last long.
His hair had begun to thin at the temples, not unevenly, but with a kind of quiet honesty that made him look older than his posture allowed. His hands were steady, but his wristband—tucked half under his cuff—blinked with the faint yellow of accumulated stress, or exhaustion he hadn't yet acknowledged.
He reached for the bottle, unsealed it with one clean motion, and poured without asking. It wasn't an offer. It was a process.
She watched without response. Not passive. Just still.
As he handed her the second glass, the capsule hidden in the seam of her right sleeve shifted into place. With the same grace she'd use to lift a pen, she tilted her wrist by a fraction—less than instinct—and a single drop, clear and precise, fell into the liquid and disappeared before it could be noticed.
The second glass clouded briefly, then cleared.
He raised his own. Drank first.
She didn't raise hers at all.
He spoke, eventually.
Not formally, not with intention—just words, drifting into the silence the way people spoke when they believed silence needed to be filled. He talked about clearance levels, behavioral protocols, system-level discretion. About legacy gray zones and overwritten chains of command. The kind of language people used when they wanted to appear informed without committing to certainty.
She didn't interrupt.
Didn't nod.
Her face remained unreadable—just enough attention to make it seem like she was listening, and just enough detachment to remind him it wouldn't matter.
Halfway through the second glass, his voice began to change.
Not slurred. Not broken.
Just... quieter. Like a machine running through the last of its stored commands before entering sleep mode. The rhythm of his speech softened, stilled—like a file compressing mid-transfer, the weight of the data pressing against itself.
She stood.
Not abruptly. Not with force.
Simply with the kind of ease that suggested the conversation had already ended, even if he hadn't noticed.
Crossing the room, she let her fingers trail lightly along the edge of the console panel recessed into the far wall. The surface flickered to life at her touch—low green light scanning for identification.
She placed her hand against it.
Biometric denied. Expected.
She didn't react. Just turned back toward the man.
He was watching her now, though dimly. The drug didn't blur his vision—only his conviction.
She crossed back, lifted his hand with a kind of clinical reverence, and pressed his palm to the scanner in place of her own.
The console chirped.
Access granted.
She removed a folded cloth from the inner pocket of her coat and swept the panel clean, leaving no residual print. Then leaned forward, drawing aside the collar of his shirt just enough to reach the subdermal port behind his left ear.
One touch.
A soft beep.
Memory partition cleared: last forty-five minutes.
His breathing stayed even.
His pupils didn't contract.
He was still awake, technically. Still present.
But the sequence had ended.
She took a moment longer, adjusted the edge of his coat where it had slouched unevenly, and smoothed a small thread that had come loose at the seam near his shoulder. Not out of sentiment, but for the sake of symmetry.
Then she left.
When the door sealed behind her, the room did not change.
The lights remained soft, the console light blinked once, then faded.
By the time she returned to her quarters, the confirmation was already waiting.
A single line in the corner of her vision:
PROJECT_SOLAS_CORE_ACCESS_GRANTED
No trace. No acknowledgment. No emotion.
She didn't open it.
Not yet.
She slipped off her gloves and placed them beside the basin, fingers aligned.
Then turned on the faucet and washed her hands in water that made no sound.
Cool. Scentless. Gone the moment it touched her skin.
When she was finished, she crossed the room and sat facing the mirror.
She didn't touch the console.
She didn't speak.
She just sat there—
motionless, expressionless—
until the light above the mirror dimmed,
and her reflection disappeared into the dark.