Parallel Lives

The city had a pulse.

It beat under her feet — in the magnetic rails, in the flicker of the skyglass screens, in the synthetic wind that hummed through the gaps in towering chrome buildings. It was alive. Loud. Blinding. Nothing like the sterile white of the facility. Nothing like the cold silence that had been drilled into her every day of her created existence.

Sera had no real memories of this place — not from her own life. But her body twitched with phantom familiarity. Her fingers brushed subway handles before seeing them. Her feet knew the rhythm of escalators. She didn’t know how she knew.

But her muscles remembered.

Because they weren’t hers to begin with.

She stepped off the magline shuttle into District V, the financial core. Every wall was mirrored glass. Skyscrapers like obsidian teeth scratched the sky. The people moved differently here — they wore suits that adjusted to temperature shifts, shoes that absorbed city dust before it settled. Sera’s clothes, stolen from a laundry chute back at the outskirts, clung stiff and awkward to her body.

No one looked at her twice. In this part of the city, everyone looked past you.

It worked in her favor.

She moved through crowds like mist — fluid, silent, unnoticed. Every security drone she passed made her heart stutter, but the ID chip under her skin held. For now. Her face, despite being identical to a public figure, went ignored. The world still believed Seraphina Rowe was one of a kind.

They didn’t know she had been copied. Duplicated. Weaponized.

And thrown away.

A reflective building rose at the corner of Seventh and Helix — ROWECORP TOWER. She knew the name. It was etched somewhere inside her brain, in that dark cavity where stolen memories had started to bleed. This was their legacy. The Rowe family. Tech royalty. The family that owned her fate.

She stood under the shade of a maintenance scaffold, watching people file in. Men in tailored coats. Women with implants glinting like jewelry. Journalists. Executives. Politicians. They were here for the gala.

Then, the crowd shifted.

And she saw her.

Seraphina.

Her.

No — not her. The original.

She stepped out of a sleek black vehicle that looked grown, not built. Her hair was pinned back in loose waves, a soft lilac gown fluttering like breath around her body. Her smile was a carefully rehearsed performance, but it worked — the cameras loved her. The world loved her.

And for a second, Sera froze.

It was like staring into a polished version of herself. Same bone structure. Same eyes. But there was no fight in her. No fire. Only entitlement. Ease.

Seraphina waved to the crowd, her fingers brushing a security escort’s arm like she owned him too. As she walked past the glass doors, her reflection — their shared reflection — shimmered beside hers.

Sera felt her stomach twist.

That life was supposed to be hers.

She didn’t even want it — not the money, not the mansion, not the fake friends or the flattery. But it was the principle. She had taken Sera’s face. And left her to rot.

You should’ve deleted me properly, Sera thought, watching her doppelgänger disappear inside the building.

A child tugged at his mother’s coat nearby, pointing up at the screen.

“Isn’t that the senator’s daughter?” he asked.

The woman nodded. “She’s perfect, isn’t she? A real role model.”

Sera turned away, bile rising.

She wasn’t here to watch anymore.

She was here to destroy that illusion.

But first — she needed to understand the game. The people. The lie Seraphina lived in. She needed to step into it. Learn how to breathe in it. And then —

She’d burn it from the inside out.

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