Seraphina stood, her movements fluid and deliberate as she walked to the window that overlooked the city. New Vein spread out below her like an intricate circuit board, a vast network of lights and traffic forming patterns she'd learned to read years ago. Each street was a pathway of information. Each building a node of power. Each citizen a variable in the grand equation she'd been solving since she'd taken office.
She could see the Academy from here, a distant cluster of elegant spires and glass domes on the eastern edge of the skyline.
Somewhere in those buildings, her sister was laughing at a cat.
"I want complete surveillance on Satori Nakano," she said, her voice cutting through the silence like a scalpel. "Discrete. Professional. No obvious tails. No ham-fisted attempts at intimidation. Use our best people—the ones from Insight Division who actually understand subtlety."
"Parameters?"
