Fioro, Inner City

The slight vibration over her wrist is more than enough to wake Seijuro, and she quickly opens her eyes to the absolute pitch-black darkness of her room, which soon is faintly illuminated by her smartwatch’s light.

‘Good morning, Miss Aston. Are a few more minutes of respite desired?’

The System’s gentle voice is the last blow to her sleepiness, despite what the AI’s intentions might have been.

The same dream. Again.

Seijuro is fairly annoyed. For a second, she believed to be back at her family’s mansion in the countryside, where they went to spend summer sometimes. Though old, the memory, the dream, is often enough to bring to light things she would rather forget, and her apartment seems especially cold today.

“I’m up,” Seijuro answers. Though there really isn’t a need to speak out loud, she has never quite gotten over the habit. “Increase the temperature. Four degrees.”

‘Command accepted. Room temperature adjusted.’

“Time?”

‘06:01 a.m., Elysium standard time.’

A wave of Seijuro’s hand has the curtains opened to reveal the rising sun over the city’s flying machines, buildings, and the Wall separating inner from outer, paradise from mediocrity.

She rises, stretching her toned body as light bleeds over the massive one-person suite and showcases an almost obsessed level of organization. Outside the window, which occupies an entire wall, the city awakens with her; beautiful, colossal, extending almost endlessly.

Not that it had slept in the first place.

Seijuro snaps her fingers. “Should get it over with, I guess.”

Fifteen minutes later, having come out of the bathroom, she throws herself onto the bed again, making sure the window view is at her back.

“Picture,” she orders, voice dull.

The system doesn’t answer. Instead, a holographic window displaying a social media page appears in the air, projected by Seijuro’s smartwatch. The image soon changes to a reflection of Seijuro’s own face in real-time, showcasing the city view at her back and reflecting her blank expression, jet-black hair, and dark eyes displayed in high definition.

Though the selfie doesn’t hide the fact she’s still in her underwear, it doesn’t show anything inappropriate either.

Seijuro takes a moment to carefully mess up the hair she just combed. Her blank expression changes to a bright smile and the light in her eyes changes until it might as well belong to a completely different person.

“I’m ready,” she whispers, and after exactly a second, a slight click sound comes from the smartwatch, stopping the holographic image.

Seijuro’s smile is instantly gone as if it had never existed in the first place. She analyses the selfie critically; it isn’t going to fool any girl, that’s for sure. But this is a game they’ve all been playing together, anyway.

“Send,” she states, decidedly. In her experience, trying to do it again would only result in a worst and even less authentic result.

‘Miss Aston’s customary message?’

“Ready for the big day?!” Seijuro exclaims, internally disgusted by the amount of enthusiasm she was forced to produce. She could’ve typed it out normally, of course, but the practice will serve her well for what is to come. Mentally, she commands the System to add an appropriate list of emojis to her message.

Closing her smartwatch display, Seijuro gets up and heads to her closet. “Time?”

‘06:18 a.m.’

Entering her closet, which is more of a room in its own right, produces in Seijuro the closest thing to pleasure for the day.

“Anything new and hot?” she asks, curiously.

‘The princess’s outfit from last week’s national soccer finals has become quite popular,’ is the System’s instant answer, which causes Seijuro’s expression to sulk once again.

“Never mind. And don’t call me that.”

‘Understood.’

After some improvisation and quite a bit of time, Seijuro manages to put together something which looks fresh and modern, without being too much or too cliché. At this point, she is sure it doesn’t matter what she wears, people will talk about it regardless, though she still enjoys the process itself, however biased her audience may be towards the result.

Seijuro is about to give her light makeup its final touches when a loud knock on the apartment door brings her out of her thoughts. Few people have the permission necessary to walk up to her door. Fewer still would have the guts to knock on it with clear impatience, which leaves about one possible option.

Seijuro sighs, finishing her hair and giving herself one last check on a full-body mirror. With a thought, the image in her left retina changes to a view of the corridor outside, where a handsome man, wearing a black social shirt and black pants, awaits impatiently. His foreign complexion, very similar to Seijuro’s, seems quite annoyed.

Hastily, the princess waves her hand to close the wardrobe’s door and heads toward the front one, which she opens manually, flashing the man on the other side a big smile.

Stolen novel; please report.

“You could have connected,” Seijuro points out, voice matching her smile. “How do I look?”

Her chauffeur and bodyguard makes a show of giving Seijuro a once-over. He does not smile. “Tone down the smile a notch or two.”

Seijuro does so.

“What about now?”

The man shrugs. “Almost worth the wait. Except not.”

Walking around him, Seijuro heads for the elevator at the end of the corridor with hurried steps. Relaxing her expression back to normal, she notices the man following after closing the door she left open with a wave of his hand.

“You’re such an ass.”

“It’s morning. And I have to be around you. I’d say I’m a saint for not crashing against some innocent tree on the way here.”

Seijuro rolls her eyes. “How long did you even wait for? Five minutes? You do remember you’re being paid to do this, right?”

“Twenty,” he corrected, catching up to her right as the elevator doors close behind him. “And yes, I do remember I’m a mere humble servant of the almighty Astons, barely worthy of breathing the same air as you, Milady.”

The man performs a mocking bow, which earns him a warning glance from Seijuro.

“Stop.”

He feigns terror. “P-please forgive this servant for his impertinence! I would never dream of-”

“Shut up!”

Seijuro sighs, then rolls her eyes again, though a small, honest smile does crack her lips apart. Barely.

“Time?”

’06:51 a.m., Miss Seijuro.’

“Six fifty. You do know you can set it to show on your retina, right?” the man states in an innocent voice.

“Shut it,” Seijuro answers in a plain voice, pretending not to understand the implication, and suggestion, behind the man’s phrase.

As the elevator descends, rather slowly in Seijuro’s opinion, its occupants watch the awakening city below through its glass walls.

“We don’t have enough time to stop so you can take a picture of your breakfast,” the man warns, “Or we’ll be late.”

“I already did. Take a picture, that is,” Seijuro answers, ignoring the verbal jab, “And I don’t feel well enough to eat, anyway.”

“Careful. I’m sure it was this humble servant’s imagination, but Your Highness almost sounded nervous for a second there. We can’t have people thinking you’re human.”

His voice is so serious, Seijuro finds herself laughing, unknotting some of the tension accumulated over the month since she was selected to perform the opening.

He gasps. “Was that a laugh?! A sound produced to indicate enjoyment?!”

“Dumbass.”

The elevator stops as it reaches the ground, opening its doors to reveal a mostly empty large lobby, and neither of them wastes any time in walking toward the black car parked outside, which is, in fact, the only car in the vicinity.

Seijuro mostly ignores the people they walk by as they bow in her direction, nodding to some whose gaze she happens to catch. Kuro doesn’t even pretend to care about their existence.

“I grabbed some coffee for you on the way here, though it cooled down at this point. You’re welcome.”

Seijuro pauses, glancing at him as he opens the car’s door for her. Kuro must have gotten up earlier if he had time to grab her coffee and still wait for nearly half an hour.

“What? Is there something on my face?”

Seijuro sighs. “Forget it. And I should fire you for feeding me cold coffee. Attempted poisoning, I’m sure it’ll look great on your record.”

Kuro scoffs. “‘Cold’, she says. It’s still warm enough for any reasonable person to drink it, though of course, not for I Only Drink Fresh, Boiling Coffee Aston. And it’d have been the way you like it if a certain someone hadn’t decided a fashion show was the best use of her morning.”

Kuro wouldn’t have grabbed her coffee if he didn’t already expect her to be late, and Seijuro considers pointing that out, though she discards the thought almost as fast it appeared.

Instead, she snorts and enters the car before giving him a flat look.

“It better have cream and sugar in it.”

“I love you too,” Kuro murmurs, then closes the door in her face.

Son of-

…

Kuro smirks, ignoring his princess’s faint curses. She could have made an experienced sailor blush, given the chance to, he’s sure of it.

He’d have loved to show her around his homeland if only to listen into what sort of newfound dark language a lack of modern technology might give birth to.

Is it four, five years now since they met?

Kuro shakes his head, containing a smile as he whistles and walks around the car.

***

Outer City, Gold District

The image inside the girl’s left retina rapidly changes its numbers and codes, but her hands fly across the keyboard, changing the three monitors’ images even faster, though just barely. A single drop of sweat slides down her forehead, but she has no time to clean it.

‘They’ve caught onto us. We have to cut it.’

“Shut up! I know! Fuck! Two can play this game, motherfucker…”

Sara has to contain herself from smashing her fists against the keyboards scattered over her desk. Breaking them now won’t help, no matter how much better it might make her feel.

She clenches her teeth. Her fingers speed up.

Figuratively speaking, it is a matter of timing. Escaping is never really the problem. Making sure they aren’t able to track her down is.

Now or never.

‘Now.’

Sara doesn’t hesitate. In a matter of moments, all monitors flash white, then black, their history completely wiped. Sara tries not to think about what a pain it will be to download everything again.

At least, this wasn’t her first rodeo, and she has backups for almost everything.

Hooray for small blessings.

The room, which was bursting with frenetic typing up until now, is suddenly filled with silence. And since her computers are off, so is her only source of light.

Sara bangs her head against the desk in front of her.

‘I must protest against Miss Palmer’s desire to self-harm. It will hardly accomplish anything.’

“You must shut the fuck up. I deserve the pain, anyway.”

Her AI doesn’t bother answering that.

Her AI... Sara is still getting used to the idea.

Thankfully, there is no need to write down the information she gathered. Stole. Same difference. She only had time to grab a random number before being chased out like a rabbit in a lion’s cave… Wait. Do lions even live inside caves? And what would a rabbit be doing inside one? Gods, how long has she been awake for?

‘Twenty-five hours, two minutes, and thirty-four seconds. And no, lions do not live inside caves. Nor do they hunt rabbits.’

Right.

Anyhow, Sara has always been good with numbers, and she doubts she’ll forget her prize any time soon, even if she wanted to.

“Oh man, I’ll have nightmares about this shit.”

Sara is not quite sure what would happen if she was caught. The police? Would they send her straight to an excavation site for what she has done?

Probably. Hey, at least she won’t have to find out, since this is the last time she’ll ever attempt something like this. Her last failure, if she thinks about it positively.

Sara has never been much of a positive thinker.

‘Failure is merely a necessary step for improvement.’

“Cool. I’m sure that would look great on a book somewhere. Hell, it probably does belong to a book somewhere.”

‘The Meaning of Failure, by-’

“Stop.”

Sara leans against her chair, giving her dark, messy room a once over. She’s tired, disappointed, pissed, and has the distinct feeling she’s forgetting about something.

Well, it’ll make itself known to her at the most inconvenient time possible, she’s sure of it.

Sara yawns, then faces her monitors once again, ignoring the bitter taste of defeat filling her mouth. Might as well get started on some of the basic stuff so she’ll have something fun to do later.

So, it was her last chance, and she failed. No biggie. Really, it’s fine. She is fine. Everything is fine.

Crying doesn’t really mean it was important, right?

It’s just water, anyway. Mostly. Maybe a handful of sobs. Just one or two, really. Who’s really counting?

Suddenly, two strong knocks against Sara’s door almost cause her to fall from her chair.

“Sara! You’re ready for school, right?!”

Sara blinks. She could’ve sworn the forbidden word was mentioned. Certainly, her lack of sleep must be playing mind tricks on her.

“I heard your voice so I know you’re awake! Breakfast is almost done!”

Well… Damn it.