Lily's office. Snapdragon Industries. Sunset.

Orange light bleeds through floor to ceiling windows. The office has been restored. New desk. New waterfall. Like the fight with Lisa never happened.

Lily stands at the window wall. Below, the city transforms. Day shift Orchids flowing out. Night shift flowing in. Perfect streams of green eyed workers. Synchronized. Productive. At peace.

She turns to her holographic display. Security footage plays on loop. Her fight with Lisa from three hours ago.

Rewind. Play. Rewind. Play.

She studies it like a chess master reviewing a game. Every move catalogued. Every mistake noted.

There. Frame 1,247. Lisa's knee coming up. Lily's weight already shifting left. She should have seen it. Should have blocked it. But she was thinking about the woman's children. About Drea's music. About Donnie's gentle way with machines.

Compassion. Her only weakness.

She touches her jaw where Lisa's kick grazed her. The bruise already fading under dermal repair nanites. But the memory remains. Someone got past her guard. Someone made her bleed.

The footage flickers. Static for half a second on camera seven. She rewinds. The static again. Exactly when Lisa reached the medical wing.

Lily pulls up more footage. The sprinkler activation. The door malfunction. The exit gate's delayed response.

Imperfections. In a perfect system.

"The board is displeased with the breach."

Sarah Chamberlain stands in the doorway. Wasn't there a second ago. Never is until she wants to be. Lab coat pristine white. Tablet in hand. Eyes that catalogue everything.

Lily doesn't turn. "We contained the situation. Lisa Morrow is from an old resistance cell. They don't understand what we're trying to build here."

"She's not the anomaly we should be worried about."

Sarah's fingers dance across her tablet. A holographic chart materializes in the air between them. A line graph. Steady for years. Then a creep upward. Small but undeniable.

The Failure rate.

"Point-seven percent five years ago," Sarah says. "One-point-three percent last year. Two-point-one percent this quarter."

Lily waves a hand. "That's within normal variance. Every medical procedure has outliers."

"The board doesn't see outliers, Aconite." Sarah enlarges the chart. Red zones appearing. "They see our success rate dropping. They see market confidence failing. They see risk to everything we've built."

Lily finally turns. Studies Sarah's face. Looking for something human. Finding only calculation.

"It's a flaw in the implantation protocol. A variable we haven't isolated yet. Give me time. I can fix this."

Sarah's smile doesn't reach her eyes. Never does.

"While you're searching for solutions, we're having incidents. Three this month. That man in the plaza last week, the one who had the episode near the elderly woman? Seventeen million views before we cleaned it up."

Lily's jaw tightens. "The public understands these are medical situations. They have sympathy."

"The board doesn't run on sympathy." Sarah closes the chart with a gesture. "My solution is cleaner. Enhanced treatment protocols. Expand our care facilities in Sector G."

"You want to institutionalize them all. Hide them from the public."

"I want to give them the care they need, Aconite." Sarah's voice stays level. Professional. "Our promise is one hundred percent success. That's not marketing. It's trust. And trust is everything. If the public for a moment believes we cannot provide them with a perfect success rate, we are finished."

The sunset light fades. The office dims. Only the city's neon glow remains.

"Fix the variance," Sarah says. "Or I implement enhanced care protocols. One week."

She's gone. Like she was never there. Only the faint scent of medical grade sanitizer marking her presence.

Lily looks back at the frozen frame. Lisa's face twisted in desperate fury. A mother fighting for children she thinks are broken.

But they're not broken. They just need help. And Lily will find a way to give it to them.

A better way than last time.