He Lies With a Smile, I Act Through Tears

Fiona has obeyed a golden system since she was five, when her adoptive sister Tabitha beat her badly enough to send her to the hospital. The system demanded she hide her brilliance, ruin her own grades, and give way to Tabitha, and she did it all, believing the family owed Tabitha a life because her father died saving their own.

When the final mission orders her SAT score not to exceed Tabitha's, Fiona obeys again, only for her older brother Joshua to switch off the interface with a black remote. The system was never real: it is an AR chip he implanted in her head at five, a game he played to make her pay the family's debt. He promises to remove it after Tabitha's Ivy League banquet, while Tabitha offers her a job as an assistant and Stefan lectures her about grace.

But Fiona has a hidden folder: a flight from Chicago to Boston and a full-ride scholarship to MIT. The chip only tracked domestic tests, never the competitions and research she did in secret. Tomorrow she plans to celebrate, and to leave them forever.