The Blackwood estate should have been just another mansion against Valparaíso's sunset. But something in its perfect lines made Kasper's combat protocols whisper warnings he couldn't quite hear.
His hand tightened on the hover-car's controls. Three years of elite training couldn't override fifteen years of street survival – and right now, both sets of instincts were screaming. In the slums, anything too perfect meant a trap. In combat, it meant something worse.
Sarah's fingers found his, warm and real against his artificial calm. "Your heart's racing," she murmured, her medical scanner humming against his wrist. For a moment, her smile held the same crooked warmth that had first made him trust her. Then something flickered behind her eyes. "They're going to love you."
The gardens tracked their descent with microscopic precision. Flowers adjusted their angles in perfect synchronization, like an audience following choreography. The air felt too clean, too pure – as if reality itself had been sanitized.
***
The first security field felt like silk against his combat systems. The second like a lullaby. The third felt like coming home.
His fingers twitched toward phantom weapons, old street instincts warring with military training. Both screaming the same warning: nothing good ever felt this perfect.
Their hover-car settled with impossible grace. Kasper's nanobots mapped power fluctuations that looked almost like morse code, almost like warnings, almost like memories he'd never made.
"Deep breath," Sarah whispered. Was that a tremor in her voice? "Just be yourself."
He almost laughed. Which self? The enhanced soldier? The former street rat? The man who loved her enough to ignore his instincts?
The air tasted wrong – not dangerous, but too right. Like someone had studied what clean air should be and recreated it in a lab.
***
Dr. Marcus Blackwood opened the door before they reached it, his smile calibrated to exactly sixty-two degrees. "Welcome home, princess." His accent carried notes of old money and carefully curated power.
The hug he gave Sarah lasted precisely three seconds. Kasper's combat protocols registered the doctor's fingers moving across her neural ports in what could have been a father's caress – or something else entirely.
"And you must be Kasper." Dr. Blackwood's handshake felt like déjà vu of a moment that hadn't happened yet. "Sarah's told us so much about your remarkable... adaptations."
The mansion's internal atmosphere shifted again, adjusting its temperature by exactly half a degree. Perfect climate control that felt more like programming than comfort.
***
The dining room existed in dimensions that didn't quite align. Kasper's enhanced vision caught shadows moving a fraction of a second after their light sources, security systems playing harmony with frequencies that shouldn't exist.
Helena Blackwood emerged from a doorway that somehow hadn't been there before. She moved like someone who had studied grace rather than lived it. "We've been so looking forward to meeting you." Her smile contained exactly the right number of teeth. "Sarah speaks of little else these days."
Sarah's fingers twitched against her napkin – barely noticeable except to someone who had memorized her every movement. She opened her mouth as if to speak, hesitated, then reached for her water instead. The glass trembled almost imperceptibly against her lips.
His neural link whispered fragments that felt more like memories than messages:
*"...patterns in the background radiation..."*
*"...something about the crystals..."*
*"...perfection hiding..."*
***
"The wine's from our Buenos Aires estate," Dr. Blackwood said, swirling his glass with mathematical precision. A serving automaton adjusted a fork by exactly one centimeter. "Tell me, what notes do you detect?"
The wine tasted like summer afternoons in gardens he'd never visited. Like conversations he couldn't quite recall. Like perfection studied rather than achieved.
"It reminds me of..." Sarah began, then stopped herself. Something passed between her and her father – a look so brief Kasper's enhanced senses barely caught it. "...of home," she finished, but the word carried strange weight.
***
"Your enhancement evolution fascinates me," Helena said later, her medical scanner humming frequencies that made his teeth ache with recognition. "Especially the recovery rates during your recent... incident."
The dinner proceeded like a dance where everyone knew the steps except him. Each question arrived at carefully calculated intervals. Each response noted with microscopic adjustments of expression.
His mind cataloged details that refused to form patterns:
- Sarah's childhood photos where the shadows never quite matched the light sources
- Security systems that moved too perfectly
- The way Helena's medical scans felt like old lullabies
- How Marcus's enhancement grid hummed with studied precision
- The way their smiles never quite reached their eyes
For one moment – just one – something real cracked through. Sarah laughed at a genuine memory, her head thrown back, guard down. Her father's eyes softened with what might have been actual love. The air pressure fluctuated naturally, just for a second.
Then the masks slipped back into place.
***
"You'll protect her, won't you?" Dr. Blackwood asked as they prepared to leave, his enhancement grid humming perfect frequencies. "When the time comes?"
Sarah's hand found Kasper's arm, her grip a fraction too tight. She started to speak, stopped, then simply squeezed his wrist where his combat protocols hummed strongest.
The drive home unspooled like retrieved data. Sarah slept against his shoulder, her breathing too perfectly rhythmic. The city's power grid played symphonies in binary, each fluctuation exactly as random as it needed to appear.
His systems finally identified the pattern in the background noise:
*WARNING: Recognition parameters exceeded
Source: [REDACTED] Project files
Subject: Sarah Blackwood
Status: [MEMORY NOT FOUND]*
Sarah stirred, her medical scanner tasting his vital signs. "You're thinking too loud again."
He kissed her forehead, his nanobots singing love songs in combat frequencies. In the distance, Valparaíso's lights flickered in patterns that looked almost like words, almost like warnings, almost like promises.
"Sometimes," Sarah whispered, her fingers finding his neural ports with practiced grace, "love feels exactly like fear."
The city's power grid agreed in perfect harmony. And somewhere in the dark, something waited behind all that perfection, patient and hungry.