Sera's mother was named Lydia, and she held a significant position in the Council's administrative apparatus. She was responsible for resource allocation—deciding how much food, water, and supplies each district received. It was a position of real power, though one that the Council kept carefully controlled by rotating officials frequently and monitoring them closely.
Lydia had always been a model citizen. She followed the rules, maintained the hierarchy, and didn't ask uncomfortable questions. She'd raised Sera and her younger brother, Maren, to be the same way. But Sera's father had been different.
His name was Darius, and he'd been a teacher in the Middle District. He'd taught history, philosophy, critical thinking. He'd encouraged his students to question things, to think deeply about the world, to imagine alternatives. The Council had tolerated this for years, assuming that teaching people to think critically while maintaining their loyalty to the system would create better citizens.
But Darius had made a mistake. He'd begun to believe what he was teaching. He'd started to see the injustice of the hierarchy and to voice his concerns, first privately and then publicly. He'd written a petition, calling for more equitable resource distribution. Fifty people had signed it.
The Council had made an example of him. A public trial, followed by execution. They'd made it clear that advocating for change was treason, and treason was punishable by death. It had happened three years before Kael met Sera.
Sera had been fourteen. She'd watched her father hang from the gallows in the central plaza of the Middle District, with thousands of people forced to witness. The lesson had been effective. Nobody had questioned the Council seriously since.
But Sera had internalized a different lesson. She'd watched her father die for believing in something better. And she'd decided that she couldn't let that sacrifice be meaningless.
Lydia didn't know that her daughter was visiting the Lower District. She also didn't know that Sera had been secretly accessing her work data—the resource allocation records, the mortality statistics, the Council meeting minutes. Sera had taught herself to break the security protocols, something she'd learned from a friend whose parent worked in the technical division.
One night, Sera brought printouts to the tunnels. Pages and pages of data, showing exactly how resources were being distributed.
"Look at this," she said, pointing to the numbers. "The Upper District gets forty percent of all food production, despite having less than ten percent of the population. The Middle District gets forty-five percent. The Lower District gets fifteen percent."
"I already knew that," Kael said.
"But look at this," Sera continued, pointing to another document. "This is a proposal from the Council archives. It was drafted fifteen years ago, before we were born. It outlined a more equitable system. Equal distribution of resources, access to education and healthcare for all districts, mechanisms for rotating Council members to prevent power consolidation."
"What happened to it?" Kael asked.
"It was rejected," Sera said. "The current Council members voted it down. Because they realized that such a system would reduce their power and privilege."
Kael felt something crystallize in him then. Not anger exactly—he'd been angry for years. But a kind of clarity. The system wasn't broken by accident. It was broken by design. And the people maintaining it knew exactly what they were doing.
"My mother doesn't know I've accessed these files," Sera said. "But she's starting to question things. I think she's realized that the system is more corrupt than she thought. And I think she wants to do something about it, but she's afraid."
"She should be," Kael said. "Your father tried to change things, and he died."
"I know," Sera said. "And that's why she's paralyzed. She loved him, and she watched him die for his beliefs. She doesn't want that to happen to me or Maren."
"Then you need to stop," Kael said. "You need to accept the system and protect your family."
Sera looked at him with an expression he'd never seen before—something between fierce determination and profound sadness. "If I do that, then my father's death means nothing. And I won't accept that, Kael. I won't."