“The other girls,” Sena said, standing over her. “The ones in the dark tanks. They’re still alive.”
“Are not missing.” Hoshino gestured to a row of smaller tanks along the far wall, still dark. “They’re being converted. Their cognitive maps are too valuable to waste on ordinary lives. You see, Sena, the Academy was never a school. It was a harvest.”
It was only a second. But a second was an eternity for someone with Sena’s tactical cognition. She swept the clone’s legs, pinned her shoulders to the wet concrete, and brought her palm down on the data port at the base of the clone’s skull. sena ayanami
Sena didn’t move. “The missing girls.”
She had anticipated the scanner. She had not anticipated the voice behind it. “The other girls,” Sena said, standing over her
She burned it over the sink with a lighter she kept hidden in her boot. The missing girls had one thing in common: they had all scored in the 99th percentile on the Academy’s monthly psychometric exams. Sena checked the records—quietly, in the archives after midnight, when even the security AIs cycled into low-power mode—and found another thread. Each girl had submitted a research proposal to the Academy’s board. Each proposal had been denied. And each girl had vanished within forty-eight hours of the rejection.
Hoshino was reaching for a panel on the wall. Sena didn’t bother running. She picked up a shard of glass and threw it with the same motion she’d practiced a thousand times for darts, for knives, for anything that flew. “They’re being converted
The headmistress would not be attending morning assembly. No one would ask why.
Not even when she found the first note slipped under her pillow.