I hit the Glassbox at a run, salt water glittering on my shoes from the creek that keeps flirting with the curb. The studio hums like an aquarium—filters, fans, the breath of machines—and the air tastes faintly of burnt sugar drifting from the factory downriver. I wipe the pane with my sleeve, slide into the chair, and lay my hands on the board the way a violinist settles a chin. Countdown banners multiply on my lock screen. I don’t look. I build the episode scaffold we planned: a check-in, a pledge, a soft open to keep the Night Choir near.
“You’re here,” I say into the mic, the red tally light winking. “I’m here. We’re going to do this carefully.” I can feel Jonah in my ear before his voice arrives—two floors down at the rack, he rides the return path like a surfer: “Levels good. Delay armed. We’ll keep five seconds in the pocket.”
I start with breath. “One in. Two out,” I say to the audience, to myself, to the mask that isn’t here yet but might be. The tidal creek smacks the curb behind the building and keeps time for people who don’t want a metronome.
The comments panel ticks up, chat populating in soft scroll: pins, choir emojis, “we got you,” and one row of cherubs that makes my jaw lock. I push forward anyway. “Tonight is for listening first,” I say. “No stings. No doxxing.” My voice comes out steady, a railing to hold.
The feed flips.
My face vanishes from the frame like a coin pulled by a practiced hand. A pre-lit stage replaces me without a glitch, color bars or mercy. Two cross-spots cut a pale X into air. Dead center swings a white cherub mask, hair curls chipped; the mouth is a perfect O that knows too much about silence.
Jonah’s shout hits my in-ear. “What the— I didn’t— he’s in the SDI path. Not the web layer. Broadcast side.”
The audience count rockets like someone kicked gravity. Twenty thousand. Thirty-two. Forty-nine. The number doesn’t climb; it sprints.
“We still have audio?” I ask, breath quiet.
“You do,” Jonah says. “He’s riding our video. Audio path is yours. For now.”
A metronome ticks from the stage monitor speakers, sharp wood on wood. The camera is so clean I can hear dust change its mind. The caption bar at the bottom auto-populates in a serif he used in the first page under the Orpheum door. Words appear one at a time, deliberate as cut glass.
YOU BREATHE ON THE BEAT.
YOU COUNT YOUR SINS LIKE MEASURES.
YOU WILL FOLLOW CUES.
My throat wants to rise. I keep it low. “Night Choir,” I tell the silence, “we’re staying calm.” I don’t narrate the flip. I don’t give away the panic. The city answers with a distant siren that never gets closer.
Jonah mutters into my ear, fingers loud on keys. “He’s got a hardware splice on the return. This isn’t a script kiddie. This is truck-level.”
The metronome’s arm swings faster. Click, click, click-click, click-click-click. Captions keep dripping like a faucet you can’t afford to fix.
THIRD ACT RESCUE AVAILABLE.
SAY PLEASE.
TAKE YOUR BOW.
My hands float over the board. I want to slap the master to black, to unplug the century. I don’t. Elena’s banner layers the top of my screen, quiet and blunt: Trace in progress. Stall. No heroics. A second later: We’ll eat the subpoena if you hold 90 seconds.
I clock my pulse to the metronome and speak like I’m in the basement again. “Okay,” I say, low. “If you’re seeing what I’m seeing, you’ve watched someone steal our lens. We are not leaving. We are not chasing. We are breathing.” I model it into the mic. I add the smell of the studio to the words, a warmth in the vowels, something human. “We keep each other safe by refusing applause for cruelty.”
The caption licks at my ankle like a cat wanting me to trip.
DON’T SCOLD THE AUDIENCE, HOST.
THEY CAME FOR CATHARSIS.
GIVE THEM A TEAR.
I let my anger rise and then cool, a fever broken by intent. “No tears for purchase tonight,” I say. “Only facts and consent.”
The mask swings in a wind I can’t hear. My gain meters dance with the metronome even though I haven’t routed that channel; he’s sending tone on a ghost bus. Jonah says, half to me, half to the rack: “He pre-baked profiles for our encoders. He’s rehearsed this.”
“Contingencies,” I say, and the word tastes like bad coin. “He’s got broadcast-grade access.”
The caption answers me as if he’s in the room.
YOU’RE LEARNING YOUR LINES.
GOOD ACTORS HIT MARKS.
MARK ONE: SAY HER NAME.
He wants Alina’s name out of my mouth like a spell he can turn. I keep my tongue behind my teeth.
I swallow and pivot. “Let’s talk about power,” I say. “Who has it when a camera is pointed. Who keeps it when we decide not to look.” My right hand hovers over the delay dump like a cliff edge. My left hand spreads, palm down, to slow myself. “We’re going to practice something together,” I tell the Night Choir. “You and me.”
“Mara—” Jonah starts, warning or question.
“Trust me,” I say, eyes on the swinging mask. “We’re going to breathe on the off-beat. Man with the metronome doesn’t get to own our timing.” I inhale on click. I exhale between clicks. “In,” I murmur. “Out.” The chat sheet floods with the word out like a tide. I taste the faint copper of fear and ride it until it floats.
Micro-hook: At the edge of the frame, a cue light blinks once—green to red—exactly like the Orpheum’s footlights when I approached the stage door. He’s echoing spaces back at me like a taunt I can’t dodge.
Elena’s next text slips in like a scalpel: Hold 60. Source hopping. He’s bouncing vents. Do not trigger him. Another: We’ll catch the hand if you keep the stage.
The caption obeys nobody but itself.
YOU OWE THEM A MIRACLE.
HOSTS ARE PRIESTS WITH ADVERTISERS.
I’LL SUPPLY THE LOAVES.
My laugh wants out; I swallow it before it can rot the air. “I don’t break bread with ghosts,” I say, voice like smooth stone. “I hand water to the living.”
Jonah reports a new bruise: “Viewer count at 82K. Our CDN’s fine, but the platform’s trending it under ‘theater art.’ Sponsors lurking in back channels.”
“They can lurk,” I say. “We won’t feed them.”
The mask tilts, then steadies itself, like someone touched the string with a gloved hand. The metronome speeds again. The caption chooses knives.
SHE WANTS ME TO BE THE VILLAIN.
VILLAINS ARE HONEST ABOUT WANT.
SAY YOUR WANT, MARA.
My jaw clicks. I keep my tongue light, my mouth easy. “I want the living safe,” I say. “I want the missing found. I want silence when silence protects.”
He writes faster now, letters stacking like a tower daring wind.
YOU WANT A GOOD ENDING.
I WANT A TRUE ONE.
YOU’LL GET YOUR RESCUE IF YOU BOW.
Elena: Thirty more. He’s coaxing. Do not accept any binary. Ask him for an act break.
I nod to nobody. “Every overture ends,” I say into the mic. “Musicians sip water. Actors re-tape marks. We’re going to take a gentle intermission—a breath.” I let my body say ease even while the mask gnashes its pretty marble teeth. “You don’t run until somebody yells places.”
The caption slaps back.
PLACES.
PLACES.
PLACES.
The metronome flips into a triplet. The wood arm’s click is a finger on my sternum. The camera’s color shifts a half-step toward blue, like the night he lit the van by remote. This is a man with rehearsed contingencies, a man who thinks an audience is a gas he can compress.
I talk to my people. “Night Choir,” I say, leaning closer so my breath sounds like advice, “you don’t have to look at something for it to exist. You don’t have to believe a mask to keep a person safe.” My palms sweat; I let the sweat be honest.
Jonah whispers: “We can sidechain pink noise under his tone, slow the heart rate. It’s a trick from panic rooms.”
“Do it,” I whisper back. He rides a slider and a soft ocean washes the clicks without muting them. The studio smells like warmed plastic and ambition.
The caption grows sticky-sweet.
GOOD, GOOD.
WE’RE MAKING MUSIC.
NEXT CUE: READ PAGE THREE.
A page number I know too well. The lake. The tape. My name bent in stage directions. “No,” I say aloud, and let the word be a wall.
“He’s baiting,” Jonah says. “He wants that line to hit the watermark. If you say it, he proves you carry his text.”
Elena: Ten. He’s trying to spike your cortisol. Keep your pitch low.
I lower everything. “You don’t own my breath,” I tell the mask. “You don’t own the names in this mouth.”
For the first time, audio rides the video; the metronome’s mic opens to a room-bound voice like velvet dragged over nails. He speaks in the second person that glued itself to me weeks ago.
“You stand where you swore you wouldn’t,” he says, and the sound design is too clean for chance. “You set rules and then bend them when the crowd claps. You owe them a curtain call. You owe her a finale.”
I let the silence open its throat. “I owe her safety,” I say, and my breath fogs the glass. “I owe the families we’ve hurt a refund I can’t print.”
“Then be obedient for once,” he whispers. “Say please.”
I don’t move. The chat explodes—don’t, don’t, don’t—and one lonely please like a dropped pin.
Micro-hook: The caption bar glitches right, a smear of gold, and for a single frame I see a shadow behind the mask that isn’t a wall—it’s a person breathing. There’s weight on that string.
Elena fires a final text: We have partial. One more minute increases odds. Stall, then hard cut on my mark.
“We’re going to try something radical,” I say to the audience. “We’re going to let silence be a sentence.”
Jonah inhales sharply. “Confirm?”
“Confirm,” I say, ice settling in my wrists. “On my count.”
I look at the mask and give it nothing. No plea. No bow. No page three. The metronome ticks past human, a rabbit heart. I slide the faders that feed the chat down to the tiniest hair above mute so people can hear their own rooms. I hold the master over the dump like a guillotine I might not drop.
The Director laughs, not loud, not showy, a sound meant for me alone. “You love a tool,” he murmurs. “Use it well. Cut to black. Prove you’re brave.”
“Brave is boring,” I say. “Brave is rest.”
“Please,” he says finally, and the word sucks heat from the room.
I don’t give him what he asked for. I give him the opposite. I lower my lids, fill my lungs with sugar-tinted air, and let everything still.
Silence lands.
I count: one, two, three, four—time itself a stagehand. I picture the creek kissing the curb in the dark, the Night Choir fingers on pins, Elena bent over a console built to eavesdrop for good, Jonah’s hand hovering near mine, ready if I shake.
The caption twitches, then writes with surgeon neatness:
THIRD ACT RESCUE SCHEDULED.
SISTER AT DUSK.
DON’T BE LATE.
My thumb trembles over the master.
Elena texts: MARK. CUT.
I hold instead of cutting, ice threading my voice as I ask the only question left that might buy the trace a breath.
“Who decides when the lights dim?” I say to the mask. “You or me?”
The metronome slams to a stop, and the screen stays on him, unblinking, waiting to see who kills whom first.