My phone dings in triplets; hashtags chew through my notification bar like a swarm. #SleepingAngels jumps from trend number eight to number two in minutes, then nips at one. The mod channel scrolls: pins out, rideshares converging, don’t show up. I feel the pull in my chest anyway—the old gravity of a breaking scene. I grab the handheld mic and our PA interface while Jonah swings the Switchboard Van keys in a circle.
“We should stay away,” he says, but he’s already loading the program that ties my voice to the roof speakers.
“We’re not staging,” I say. “We’re staging an exit.”
He snorts and buckles in. Outside the studio, the creek has licked a sheet of water across the pavement again, turning the curb into a thin mirror. The air tastes like burnt sugar and bus exhaust. The studio hums behind us, a pet left alone with the lights on. I tap a message to Elena: We’re bringing the van to support your perimeter. No stream. Audio only if needed. Three dots appear, then: Hold two blocks out until I clear you.
We roll toward the Orpheum and meet the storm halfway. The Night Choir multiplies in puddles and lenses—black jackets and enamel pins, umbrellas patterned with cassette tapes, backpacks bulging with external batteries. Two teenagers trade a white cherub pin for a limited-run nightingale; their hands shake with weather and purpose. Phones raise like kelp in a tide.
“Do not get out,” I tell my own hands. They flex around the mic like they have their own contract.
I swing us to the curb a block off the marquee. Elena’s voice cracks the air before mine does. She stands at the ribbon of barricade tape, rain stitching her shoulders, a loudhailer in one hand and a palm up in the other. “No one past the tape,” she calls. “No filming toward the doors.” Officers step into positions that make geometry out of chaos. A line forms of people who want to tell her something they believe is urgent.
“This is power,” Jonah says, watching the viewer counts on his tablet bloom from dozens to thousands across five different live feeds. His tone is equal parts awe and dread. “And a trap.”
I feel the trap in the fine hairs on my arms. The pirated angle we found earlier had been pointed to catch arrivals, not truths. The Director doesn’t just set clues; he sets cameras at the thresholds. Civilians don’t see thresholds; they see invitations.
A cheer pops near the doors. I crane and catch the source: a kid in a glossy theater mask—neutral face, too smooth—climbs the lip of the ticket booth and raises a cheap megaphone. His hoodie is black; his sneakers are a blinding white that tell me he dressed for photos. The crowd swivels toward him, phones up. The mask’s mouth has no lines, nothing to read.
“Hey!” he shouts, megaphone squealing. “I confess. I took her. I brought her here. Check the balcony. Angels are sleeping.” His voice cracks on the last word. Laughter bursts, then boos, then a hiss of too far.
Elena turns; her hand flattens. “Get off the booth,” she calls. “You’re interfering.”
The kid doubles down, drunk on attention. “You want a name?” He tries to drop the pitch, trying for menace. “You like names.”
My chest clamps. I’m already thumbing the van’s PA on. Jonah plugs the mic in, nods once. “We’re not streaming,” he mutters, a reminder we both need.
I step onto the van’s running board and bring the mic to my mouth. The speakers crackle—a familiar halo of sound that makes me, stupidly, feel safe. “Night Choir,” I say, amplified, but calm. “It’s Mara. I need everyone to breathe. No one wants to contaminate a crime scene or hurt a living witness tonight.”
Heads turn, phones pivot, chat bubbles pop in the periphery of my vision. The power tastes like hot pennies and rain. I keep my shoulders low.
“Pins,” I say, because I see them trading in nervous handfuls. “Put your pins away for now. Don’t give anyone a badge to blame. If you collected screenshots, send them to the tip portal. Don’t shout theories at the doors.”
The masked kid cups his ear to his own prop megaphone. “Say that to my face, Mara!”
“Take off the mask,” I say into mine. “Then we can talk.”
“Don’t tell him your name!” a woman yells from the barricade line. She immediately records herself yelling it again.
Elena strides toward the booth, not running, just cutting space into agreeable pieces with her body. She looks at me once—permission or warning, I can’t tell; I choose permission and stay on the step. Two officers angle themselves to catch the kid if he jumps.
“Night Choir,” I say, and I can feel the adrenaline solidifying into something with edges. “You know our pledge. No live locations. No vigilante actions. A prank confession delays justice. We’ve already passed everything useful to Detective Park.”
“Useful?” the kid mimics, ramping back up to keep the crowd’s eye. “You think you own useful.”
“I don’t,” I say. “That’s why I’m not asking you to talk to me. I’m asking you to step back and let evidence breathe.”
The crowd shifts from amused to irritable, the way a room does when food is late. Heat comes off them in waves; wet wool and damp leather lift through the sugar-sour of the air. A pin clinks on the pavement and skitters to a drain; someone yelps. A woman near me grips her umbrella hard enough that the ribs tremble. A man crowds forward to get the masked kid in frame and elbows a girl with rain-painted eyeliner. She shoves him back. Two splits open at once and my gut picks both.
“Jonah,” I say, low. “Play the pledge clip.”
He nods and taps. My voice—recorded on a calmer night—spills from the speakers: We honor victims and witnesses by not making scenes. We honor the Night Choir by choosing truth over spectacle.
The words climb the rain and sit on the marquee in my head. The crowd listens just long enough to decide whether they like hearing themselves be called honorable.
“Let me help,” I say into the mic. “If you came to trade pins, trade information instead. There’s a table at the corner—yellow umbrella, my producer in a denim jacket. He’ll take screenshots, timestamps, and your actual names for follow-up. If you’re under eighteen, go home. I’m not kidding.”
“I have a right to be here,” the masked kid says, wobbling on the booth edge. The megaphone trembles in his hand now. “I have a story.”
Elena steps close enough to catch his ankle with her gaze. “Then leave the stage,” she says—not into the loudhailer, just to him, and I hear it anyway. “Stories don’t start with vandalizing a crime scene.”
He falters. The mask shines water in the streetlight. Beneath it, breath fogs, quick. “I was only—”
“You were copycatting,” I say into the van PA, softer than before. “That’s not confession. That’s choreography. Put the megaphone down. Step back.”
For a heartbeat the crowd holds a coin flip in the air. A chant could catch here—take it off, say her name, open the doors—and turn the block carnivorous. I feel the riot that could live in them, warm and stupid.
The kid lowers the megaphone. Relief and disappointment ripple through the crowd like the same wind wearing two coats. He lifts the mask halfway, enough to show a damp mouth and acne constellations, and in that small human map the narrative loses its costume. He starts to cry the way teenagers cry when the shape of their body surprises them.
Elena takes the megaphone gently, sets it on the booth ledge, and hands him down by the elbow. “Go home,” she says. “You don’t want a night that becomes your Google result.”
He nods too fast. Two friends sweep him into the tide and out of the frame. A voice on my right mutters, “Weak,” and another says, “He could’ve been real.” That sentence turns me cold to the wrists.
“We’re done playing dress-up,” I say into the mic. “If you’re here, you’re responsible for whether someone gets hurt. That includes you.”
The Night Choir grumbles. Some step back. Some double down and aim phones past the tape, trying to pull focus toward the doors where the cherubs float in their dust sleep. The Theater Angels are patient; people aren’t. I count to four and make my voice weighty with gratitude because gratitude can be contagious when indignation loses oxygen.
“Thank you for stepping back,” I say, whether they have or not. “Thank you for sending your files. Thank you for letting Detective Park keep this place clean.”
Elena parses the air with quick hand gestures—move the horses, pull the tape taut, give the crowd a funnel that points away from the door. She looks older under sodium light, not by years but by the number of live feeds she has learned to outwit. I lift the mic and let her voice lean on mine.
“This block is closed,” she announces into her loudhailer. “You can help by leaving. If you interfere, you make the case harder to solve.”
“Mara, the numbers,” Jonah says, tapping the tablet. The pirated stream we traced earlier rocketed to 3.2k viewers, chat filthy with instructions. Get closer. Angle left. Open the door. The Director’s puzzle doesn’t just solve; it recruits. He’s teaching civilians to contaminate.
I switch the PA to its widest cone. “Everyone filming for clout,” I say, picking my words like glass out of a foot, “be the person who didn’t make a parent identify a body because you needed a thumbnail. Put the phone down. Walk away.”
A hush opens, thin and stubborn. Rain prints ellipses on the tape. A girl near the corner actually drops her phone to her side and stares at the cherubs like they might blink. A man lowers his gimbal and swears under his breath, the private oath of someone just told the camera won’t love him back.
Micro-hook: I think we’ve bent the crowd—then a new feed slices the block from a balcony across the street, higher, smarter.
I catch the angle onscreen: the van, the tape, the doors, all framed tight and clean. A white text overlay crawls across the bottom like a stage direction: Exit, pursued by conscience. The account name is garbage again, the font too tasteful. The Director writes with a particular, infuriating modesty.
“He’s moved the lens,” Jonah says. He doesn’t take his eyes off the tablet. “We can’t stop him from filming from private property.”
“We can make it boring,” I say. “We can make him late.”
I bring the mic down to my chest, let breath fog the grille, then lift it. “Night Choir, last ask,” I say. “If you love this show—prove it by refusing to be cast tonight. Go home. Let us work. I will update you only with verified facts.”
A chorus of boos and bravos mixes; it sounds like surf tearing itself. But the edges of the crowd start to shred. People peel away in twos and threes, muttering, hugging quick, promising each other they’ll keep the thread warm online. A pin trader slips me a look that says traitor and drops a cherub into a puddle, face down.
Elena meets my eyes across the tape. She doesn’t smile. She does nod—once, precise. An officer whispers in her ear; she gestures toward the stage door recessed in the shadowed side alley. I catch the angle by instinct. The alley is a throat; tonight it swallows water and plastic wrappers. The door sits low, paint flayed, bolt double-locked.
A flash catches at the threshold.
“Jonah,” I say, barely into the mic now. “Do you see that?”
He leans, traces my gaze with a fingertip on the glass. “Something wedged under,” he says. “Corner of something. Plastic.”
“Not tonight,” Elena calls, as if she read my neck tendons tightening toward motion. She steps into the alley mouth, plants a palm. “You’re not crossing. I’ll clear it later.”
“Agreed,” I say fast, because the agreement tastes like control I can actually own. I clip the mic to my collar and climb down from the van’s step to speak to her without the room hearing. “Could be the Director’s next page.”
“Could be trash,” she says. “Either way, it’s not your hand that finds it.”
“I know,” I say, and I mean it. Responsible restraint sits itchy on my skin; it sits there anyway.
I step back onto the running board and kill the PA. The block exhales. The residual heat of a mob drains into the wet street. Pins go back into pockets, faces blur into umbrellas, feeds pivot to exit interviews and theories I refuse to dignify with a glance.
“We did what we came to do,” Jonah says softly. He looks wrung out; rain beads in his beard, tiny prisms. “We redirected.”
“We also taught him a new angle,” I say. “He’ll plan for the PA next time.”
“Then we’ll plan for his plan,” he says.
I watch the alley where the glint sits, stubborn and patient under the door. The cherubs above the stage keep their cracked eyelids down. The creek around the corner swallows a plastic cup and gives it back a foot away. My phone buzzes with a fresh DM—no avatar, no greeting. You conducted well, it reads. Ready for your solo?
I slide the phone face down on the console and look at the alley again. The glint doesn’t move.
“What’s under that door?” I ask no one and everyone, and let the question hang there where the Night Choir can’t answer it for me.