Sena Ayanami -

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.

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.

She smiled. It was an unfamiliar expression on that face. She decided she liked it. sena ayanami

"Don’t trust the basement."

The shard pinned Hoshino’s sleeve to the server rack. The headmistress stopped moving. Hoshino was reaching for a panel on the wall

“The other girls,” Sena said, standing over her. “The ones in the dark tanks. They’re still alive.”

The servers screamed. Lights flickered. Unit 07 went still. It was only a second

“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.”

The Academy had a basement, technically. A sub-level labeled “Maintenance” on every map. But Sena had never seen a janitor descend those stairs. She had never seen anyone enter at all. Three nights later, dressed in dark gym clothes with her hair pinned tight, Sena picked the lock on the basement door. It took her twelve seconds. The stairs went down farther than they should have—four flights, then five, the air growing cold and metallic. At the bottom, a single reinforced door with a retinal scanner.

She had anticipated the scanner. She had not anticipated the voice behind it.