Eyes Above
The master bedroom in the Katsura mansion was a masterpiece of architectural silence. The walls were soundproofed with thick foam, and the air was filtered to be perfectly crisp. But for Epione, the luxury felt like a heavy shroud. The expensive sheets felt like cold, sterile bandages. As she finally drifted off, her mind didn't settle into the silk. It sank through the floor, through the basement, and into a deep part of her own mind where the mapping nanobots couldn't reach.
The darkness of her sleep didn't stay empty for long. The world began to shift and warp, pulling her back into a memory she had tried to bury.
She woke up standing, but her balance was gone. The ground was soft, covered in faded letters and cartoon animals that looked blurry, like they were viewed through cracked glass. Around her rose towering walls of plastic and mesh. It was a playpen, but it was terrifyingly huge. The walls reached up toward a dark ceiling she couldn't see. The sickly colors of the plastic pulsed with a low hum that she could feel in her teeth. It was a vibrating, heavy sound, like a giant heart beating somewhere under the floor.
Epione turned, her breath catching in her throat. High above the walls, two figures loomed like giant, indifferent gods. They were her parents. Her father's face was sharp and jagged. Her mother stood beside him, her eyes hollow and leaking dark shadows. They weren't looking at her with love. Their gaze was heavy with disappointment. It was the look of a worker seeing a broken tool.
"I tried," Epione whispered. Her voice sounded tiny, like a child's. "I saved the money. I worked so hard. I tried to stay human for you."
Her father didn't speak. He simply adjusted his glasses with a look of clinical disgust. It was the exact same look the Director had used in the basement. He looked at her not as a daughter, but as a failed experiment. Beside the play blocks, a large, glowing sign appeared in the air. It read: THE UNWANTED CHILD.
The label felt like a physical weight pressing on her chest. Suddenly, the space above the playpen was crowded with strangers. Faceless people in suits and debt collectors with glowing red eyes peered down at her. They looked at her like she was a bug in a jar.
"Look at the waste," a voice hissed.
"Broken from the start," another whispered.
The strangers began to toss things into the pen: crumpled bills, eviction notices, and shards of broken glass. Epione tried to climb the walls to beg for help, but the plastic was oily and cold. Then, dark, soapy water began to bubble up from the floor. It was a flood. The labyrinth was being flushed. Epione scrambled as the chemical-smelling water rose to her chest. She looked up one last time, but her parents were gone. They were replaced by a gray drain that began to spin, pulling her into a black vortex.
As the drain swallowed her whole, the plastic walls melted away into a weightless, suffocating blue.
The scene shifted instantly. Epione was now underwater in a vast, dark sea. Above her, a silvery light shimmered, but she couldn't reach it. She kicked, her muscles burning and her failing heart thumping a frantic rhythm. It was a fast, panicked beat. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. But she wasn't moving. No matter how hard she clawed at the water, she stayed in the same spot.
From the dark abyss below, thick, black weeds began to rise. They weren't plants. They were like rusted cables. They coiled around her ankles and wrists, feeling firm and cold. They felt like Chizuru's robotic grip.
"You are drowning in your own history," a voice boomed through the water. It sounded like the Director.
She thrashed, bubbles escaping her lips. The weeds tightened, pulling her deeper into the dark. Just as the last coil tightened around her throat, the pressure snapped, and the water suddenly turned to hot, stinging dust.
She sat up with a gasp, but the air smelled like sulfur and burning plastic. She was now in a forest where the trees looked like charred veins under a bruised sky. Every tree seemed to be throbbing with a dull, red light. Epione scrambled to her feet and began to run. With every step, the ground turned into thick, black muck that clung to her legs. The faster she tried to move, the more she seemed to shrink. Soon, she was no larger than a mouse, stuck in sludge that felt like drying cement.
Then, the sky opened up.
It wasn't rain that fell. It was a burning, thick acid. A drop landed on her shoulder, and she felt a white-hot pain as her skin began to bubble and peel away. She watched in horror as the flesh on her arms melted, revealing the ivory white bones beneath.
"The body is temporary," a voice whispered from the trees. "Only the machine lasts."
The acid ate through her bones, and she began to drip into the mud like a melting candle. In the middle of this, a rotting cabin appeared. A figure stepped out with the body of a man but the head of a snarling wolf made of stitched leather. It raised a massive, rusted butcher's knife. Epione couldn't move. She was just a pile of melting skin, waiting for the blade to fall. The wolf-man stepped over her, the knife catching a flash of light, and then the blade fell.
Just as the metal touched her skin, the world exploded into pure white.
When Epione's vision cleared, the pain was gone. The air smelled like flowers and honey. She was in a garden of blue, glowing flowers. Fireflies drifted through the air like a slow heartbeat. One firefly landed on her finger, and its light grew so bright that the night turned to gold.
Suddenly, she was in a warm, sun-drenched field. The sun was a perfect orb on the horizon. In the distance, she saw a sturdy oak cabin bathed in amber light. The door opened. A girl stepped out. She wore a simple white dress, and her hair caught the sunlight. She looked healthy. Her skin was glowing, and she breathed deeply and easily. Her heart was whole.
It was Epione. But it was the version of her that had never been poor, never been afraid, and never had a failing heart. This version of her was whole. She didn't have to worry about debt or survival. The girl on the porch smiled and waved. She looked happy. She looked loved.
"Wait!" Epione cried, her voice strong.
She ran toward the house, her feet barely touching the grass. She was so close. She could see the sparkle in her own eyes and the promise of a life that wasn't a mess. She reached out to grab the railing. But her foot hit nothingness.
A black hole opened in the field, swallowing the light. Epione felt herself falling, her stomach leaping into her throat as the golden cabin vanished into a tiny speck of light.
Then, with a violent jolt, the dream shattered completely.
Her eyes snapped open. Her body gave a violent jerk that nearly sent her rolling off the bed. She sat up, gasping, her hand flying to her chest. Her heart was racing. It was hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. But it was there. It was beating. It was still human. The room was dim, lit only by the blue glow of the clock. 3:00 AM.
The silence of the mansion felt like a predator waiting for its prey to stop moving. Epione clutched her knees to her chest, trying to forget the "Unwanted Child" sign. She looked at her hands. They weren't melting. They were just hands: scarred, human, and real. She had survived the night, but the golden girl felt further away than ever.
"I'm still here," she whispered into the dark. "I'm still a mess."
A soft hiss of the door signaled someone had arrived. Epione didn't need to look up. The scent of synthetic jasmine told her who it was. Chizuru stepped into the blue-lit room, moving silently. She stood at the foot of the bed, her neon-blue eyes scanning the shadows.
"Your sleep was interrupted, Epione," Chizuru said. Her voice was a calm, robotic hum. "Your vitals spiked three minutes ago. Was it a nightmare? Or did the sensors find a memory you were trying to hide?"
Epione felt cold sweat on her neck. She looked up, forcing herself to look sleepy and annoyed. To Chizuru, she was just a machine to be monitored. To Epione, survival meant being a master at hiding the truth.
"It's not a nightmare, Chizuru," Epione said steadily.
She took a deep breath, manually slowing her heart rate. She relaxed her shoulders so the bed sensors wouldn't see her stress. It was a talent she had learned from a hard life: the ability to lie with her own body.
"I'm usually like this when I stay at a stranger's house," Epione continued. "The air is too clean, the bed is too soft. My body isn't used to the silence. It keeps waiting for a noise that isn't there. It's just adjustment noise. Don't waste your time on it."
Chizuru tilted her head with robotic precision. "Adjustment noise," Chizuru repeated. "The change from a 'broken mess' to a perfect home must cause some friction."
Chizuru stood at the edge of the bed. Her sensors scanned the room in a grid pattern. "Your vitals are very stable now. The Director's sensors say you are resting comfortably."
"I told you, Chizuru. I'm fine," Epione said smoothly. "I've slept in places where the ceiling was falling in. A quiet room isn't going to scare me. It's just... too quiet."
Chizuru looked down at her own silver-jointed hands. For a second, a memory seemed to flicker in her eyes. It wasn't a digital glitch. It looked like a trace of the girl she used to be.
"I remember when the silence used to scare me, too," Chizuru murmured. "Back when I had ears that could ring. But the Director fixed that. He replaced the noise with data."
She stepped back. Her movements were so precise they didn't have the weight of a human step. "Since your vitals are fine, I will mark this as a minor adjustment. Sleep, Epione. The house is watching you. There is no need for your heart to work so hard."
Epione watched the door until the blue light vanished. The silence rushed back in like a vacuum, sucking the warmth out of her lungs. She leaned her head back against the headboard. Her heart finally broke out of its fake rhythm, thumping hard and fast again.
In the quiet, she whispered to the shadows.
"Chizuru is kind, but it feels hollow. Her words are warm, but the system behind them is freezing. It's like I'm talking to a program designed to say exactly what I want to hear just to keep me quiet, like those AI chats people are obsessed with lately."
She looked down at her own hands. They were nothing like Chizuru's. Hers were warm, filled with living veins and the steady throb of a heart that refused to give up. Chizuru's hands were cold, optic, and hauntingly silent.
"I don't see a machine becoming a person," Epione whispered. "I see a person being slowly erased, replaced by an intelligence she was supposed to master."