Kaelen POV
I break the training dummy's neck in 2.3 seconds.
"Again," Mother's voice cuts through the training room like a blade. "Faster."
I reset. Attack. Snap. 2.1 seconds.
"Again."
1.9 seconds.
"Again."
My hands move before my brain catches up—block, twist, kill. The dummy's head rolls across the floor. 1.7 seconds.
Perfect.
I turn to face Seraphine Voss, Chief Architect of the Panopticon, creator of the surveillance system that watches every human breath. Also known as: my mother. Though she hates when I call her that. Says it implies emotional attachment.
"Adequate," she says, which from her means exceptional. Her emerald eyes scan me like I'm code she's debugging. "Your final exam begins today."
My stomach drops, but I keep my face blank. Emotions are weaknesses. She taught me that when I was twelve, right after she killed my pet cat in front of me for making me "soft." I cried for three days. On the fourth day, she performed surgery on my brain while I was awake, carving out the parts that made me feel too much.
I stopped crying after that. Stopped feeling much of anything.
"I'm ready," I say, because that's what she wants to hear.
"Are you?" She circles me like a predator. "You'll be High Enforcer soon, Kaelen. The youngest in history. But first, you must prove you can do what's necessary. Can manipulate. Can destroy. Without hesitation. Without mercy."
"I can." I've been training for this my whole life. Nineteen years of combat, strategy, psychological warfare. I'm the perfect weapon.
So why are my hands suddenly sweating?
"A new student arrives at the Academy today," Mother continues. "Fringe trash. A girl who thinks her coding skills make her special." She smiles, and it's the coldest thing I've ever seen. "Your assignment is simple: befriend her. Gain her trust. Make her love you if necessary. Then extract evidence of treason and destroy her publicly."
My chest tightens. "Treason? What did she do?"
"Nothing yet. But she will." Mother pulls up a hologram—a file on the girl. "Nyxara Solene. Fringe District Seven. Brilliant programmer. Sick brother she's desperate to save. Desperate people do desperate things, Kaelen. All you have to do is push her in the right direction, then catch her when she falls."
I study the hologram. The girl looks young. Scared. Her silver hair marks her as genetically different—the kind of mutation Celestials usually eliminate at birth.
"Why not just arrest her now?"
"Because I need you to prove you can handle humans." Mother's voice goes sharp. "You're too perfect, Kaelen. Too cold. High Enforcers need to understand human weakness to exploit it. This girl will teach you." She steps closer. "Seduce her. Break her. Show me you're not still that weak little boy who cried over dead animals."
Something twists in my gut—anger, maybe, or shame. I crush it down. "How long do I have?"
"Six months. Make her fall completely. Then we'll spring the trap." Mother touches my face, almost gentle. Almost. "Fail this, and you'll never be High Enforcer. You'll be reassigned to the Culling Zones. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Mother."
"Good." She turns to leave, then pauses. "Oh, and Kaelen? Don't actually fall for her. That would be... disappointing."
The door hisses shut behind her.
I'm alone with the broken training dummy and the hologram of a girl I'm supposed to destroy.
I watch the security feed when Nyxara Solene arrives at the Academy.
She's smaller than I expected. Fragile-looking in borrowed clothes that don't fit right. She walks through the entrance hall like she's expecting someone to hit her, shoulders hunched, eyes down.
But then another student bumps into her—deliberately, I can tell—and she straightens up. Lifts her chin. Meets the bully's eyes without flinching.
There's fire in her. Hidden under all that fear.
My cybernetic eyes zoom in on her face. Storm-gray eyes. Silver hair that catches the light. She's not classically beautiful by Celestial standards—too human, too raw. But there's something about her expression, the way she refuses to look defeated even when she clearly is.
Something stirs in my chest.
No. Not possible. I don't feel things like that anymore. Mother made sure of it.
I'm about to switch feeds when Nyxara looks up—directly at the camera. Directly at me, though she doesn't know I'm watching.
For one second, our eyes meet through the screen.
And my carefully controlled heart rate spikes.
Error messages flash across my neural implants: ELEVATED PULSE. INCREASED ADRENALINE. EMOTIONAL RESPONSE DETECTED.
I shut them off quickly, before Mother's monitoring systems catch them. Before anyone realizes that the perfect weapon just malfunctioned.
This is bad. This is very bad.
I tell myself it's just surprise. First-mission nerves. Nothing more.
But I can't stop staring at the girl on the screen. Can't stop wondering what her voice sounds like. What makes her brave enough to walk into a place that hates her. What she dreams about when she's alone.
Stop it. She's a mission. A target. Nothing more.
I pull up her file again, memorizing every detail. Her parents died in a factory fire six years ago. She's been raising her younger brother Zephyr alone since she was fifteen. She applied to the Academy on a dare, never expecting to get in.
She's here to save her brother. She'd do anything for him.
That's her weakness. That's what I'll use to break her.
I should feel nothing about that. I'm designed to feel nothing.
So why do my hands shake when I close her file?
Why does some buried part of me—the part Mother couldn't quite cut out—whisper that maybe I'm about to destroy the only real thing I'll ever touch?
I push the thought away and head to the Academy. Time to begin the assignment. Time to meet Nyxara Solene and start the careful work of making her love me.
Just before I leave, my communicator buzzes. Mother's message is short: Remember, Kaelen. She's not human to you. She's a test. Pass it, or join her in the Culling Zones.
I delete the message and step into the transport.
Across the city, I know Nyxara is settling into her Academy quarters, probably terrified and excited and hopeful.
She has no idea that the boy she saw in the entrance hall—the one she's about to meet, about to trust, about to love—has already been ordered to destroy her.
And the worst part?
I'm not sure I can do it.
But I have to. Because if I fail this assignment, Mother won't just kill me.
She'll kill the girl too.
And somehow, that possibility makes my broken heart beat faster with something that feels dangerously close to fear.