I cleared a corner of the kitchen table and set the laptop where the ring light had once lived, the air still tinged with that metallic-ozone bite it leaves behind. The window faced the cliff-backed harbor; fog slid between buildings and funneled downtown like a careful thief. From the pier, a ribbon of salted caramel steam reached me and threaded through the ghost-click of phantom notifications. I opened Nessa’s folder labeled RECEIPTS/ARTIFACT—TIDE1, checked the clock—61:42:13—and let the dashboards breathe on my screen.
I wrote the header in my notes with a thick pen so I couldn’t pretend it was anything else:
AFFILIATE DASH—FREEZE-FRAME / PANIC WINDOW
Then I scrolled.
[Export: Affiliate_Conversion_LylaShop_Tide1.csv]
Columns: timestamp_utc | clicks | adds_to_cart | checkouts | conversion_rate | top_referrer
Rows (selected):
20:59:52 | 1,214 | 394 | 146 | 12.0% | reactor://ConcernedCitizen
21:00:00 | 3,803 | 1,220 | 458 | 12.0% | direct
21:00:12 | 5,912 | 2,004 | 715 | 12.1% | reactor://ConcernedCitizen
21:00:38 | 2,994 | 1,109 | 404 | 13.5% | tide_mkt_qr
21:01:05 | 1,408 | 512 | 188 | 13.3% | reactor://ConcernedCitizen
I widened my browser and let the chart draw itself: a brittle ridge of spikes climbing in lockstep with panic. The line sharpened exactly at the freeze-frame’s tenth re-share. I felt my shoulders climb toward my ears and made them drop.
“I’m in,” I typed to Nessa. “Seeing your spike marks.”
“You’re going to hate minute 21:00,” she replied. “Check the referrer swap.”
I hovered over 21:00:12 and watched the tooltip whisper back: reactor://ConcernedCitizen driving more checkouts than the brand’s own QR. The honeycomb pattern in the UI grid pressed hexes under every number, a neat little hive around a queen of profit.
Micro-note for myself: Spikes = panic, not information. I let the sentence sit, heavy and true.
I opened the first clip transcript.
[Transcript: 00:20:59.800–00:21:02.500 | Freeze-Frame Segment]
CAPTIONS: "no signal . . . hold please"
ON-SCREEN COMMENTS:
“WHERE IS SHE”
“WHAT DID HE DO”
“MODS???”
“BUY HIVE APRON TO SUPPORT”
AFFILIATE CTA (auto): “Support the search—portion to safety org.”
The transcript carried the tinny hiss of the mic I’d held at the overlook in my head; I could almost feel the foam windscreen grit between fingers. I zipped back to the dashboard and added a second panel.
[Overlay: Panic_Comments_Rate_per_Sec vs Conversion_rate]
The curves kissed at the precise seconds the word where hit twenty comments per second. I didn’t see Lyla’s face; I saw a funnel diagram dressed like concern.
“We need the reactor’s jar,” I wrote to Nessa.
“On it,” she said. “Scraped the top 500 notifications. Sending readout.”
The file landed in the folder with a sound like a polite throat-clear.
[Export: Reactor_TipJar_ConcernedCitizen_21h.csv]
Columns: timestamp_utc | tip_amount | currency | note | platform_cut | payout_processor_id
Rows (selected):
20:59:50 | 5.00 | USD | “Covering costs. Keep us posted.” | 0.50 | PX-774c-109
21:00:11 | 25.00 | USD | “TRACKING THE VAN—GO LIVE” | 2.50 | PX-774c-109
21:00:14 | 3.00 | USD | “she needs us!!” | 0.30 | PX-774c-109
21:00:38 | 100.00 | USD | “boost this. they’re failing her.” | 10.00 | PX-774c-109
21:01:06 | 10.00 | USD | “map pls” | 1.00 | PX-774c-109
The tip notes wrapped urgency in moral permission. The processor ID stayed the same across rows, neat and loyal.
I copied the merchant descriptor from a separate scrape Nessa had tucked into a subfolder.
[Snippet: Processor_Descriptors.txt]
PX-774c-109 → Descriptor: "RNR*STUDIO/MGMT"
PX-774c-109 → ACH Endpoint: "bny-west-agg-12"
PX-774c-109 → Terms: "high-risk creator services (tier 2)"
My jaw clicked once. I dug into our earlier device receipt PDF from the countdown tablet’s LLC and found the billing footer I hadn’t cared about at one a.m.: RNR*STUDIO/MGMT repeated in six-point gray as a test charge. The processor string matched down to the hyphen. Reactor and handler shared the same rails.
“You’re seeing ‘RNR*’ too, right?” I messaged.
Nessa answered with a screenshot of her terminal and a single line: diff == 0.
I mouthed a curse I learned in the bakery after the health inspector dropped a thermometer into the pork buns and tutted. I wanted to scald the pipe that fed this whole thing. Instead, I moved to beat two properly.
I clicked open the reactor’s clip, the one recorded outside the Tide Market where I’d breathed sugar and heard the masked voice less than ten feet away.
[Clip Transcript: ConcernedCitizen Live | 21:00–21:02]
VOICE (filtered): “I’m right here by the harbor—fog, police lights—look, I’ll decode this for everyone. Don’t panic… actually share this so they can’t hide it.”
(tip overlay: $25 from @kneadbread: “for fuel”)
VOICE: “Mods, pin the safety fund link.”
(tip overlay: $100 from @baymom21: “you’re doing god’s work”)
VOICE: “New clue in the stitching—scan fast before they flip it.”
I pushed my chair back until my shoulder blades found the wall. The drywall held my heat and fed none back. The masked voice hadn’t even pretended not to sell while saying the word safety.
“He’s using the word ‘mods,’” I wrote to Nessa. “You or tourists?”
“Not mine,” she said. “Stream mods he picked up from the comments. I logged two bad actors; I removed one; the other changed names twice.”
“Send me your log when you can,” I said. “I need the deletions and the restores with reasons.”
“You’ll get everything,” she said. “I’m archiving faster than they can brand-wash.”
I opened her mod export. The UI clung to a honeycomb tile design that I hated for being beautiful.
[Export: LylaHiveForum_ModLog_20:50–21:10]
Columns: timestamp_local | action | moderator | post_id | reason | restore_flag | notes
20:57:03 | delete | NessaP | 88712 | brigading call (“call the ex”) | 1 | “restored for evidence only, quarantined”
21:00:09 | delete | NessaP | 88768 | doxx attempt (“address?”) | 0 | “reported, user temp-banned”
21:00:13 | delete | NessaP | 88775 | monetized panic (“buy to support rescue”) | 1 | “restored w/ red banner: Do not monetize fear”
21:00:40 | delete | NessaP | 88791 | off-platform raid link | 1 | “restored w/ throttle, linked to safety resources”
21:01:02 | delete | NessaP | 88808 | reactor hype thread (“go to overlook NOW”) | 1 | “restored into locked thread, pinned verify-safety copy”
The column restore_flag calmed me. Nessa wasn’t burying; she was preserving with warning labels. I lifted my mug, tasted caramel sweat off the cup sleeve where my fingers had rested at the pier, and set it down with a small decision: we would turn the artifact into a map people could hold without getting cut.
I stitched the three panels into one scroll and watched the minutes align:
- 21:00:11 reactor tips surge, 21:00:12 conversions spike.
- 21:00:13 Nessa flags and restores “buy to support rescue,” a red banner blaring Do not monetize fear that nobody on the reactor’s stream will ever see.
- 21:00:38 the Tide QR catches up, the same second the reactor tells viewers to “scan fast.”
- 21:01:02 she locks the raid thread; two seconds later the reactor’s jar reads “map pls.”
The pattern carried the same harmony as the foam treads on the overlook: design, then performance, then payout.
“This isn’t a search,” I said to the room. “This is a sale that wears a missing poster.”
My phone buzzed with the polite insistence of a calendar reminder I hadn’t set: PAYOUT BATCH—H-2: STAGE2/DUSK.
“Did you schedule alerts?” I asked Nessa.
“I traced their processor cron,” she answered. “Set a watch on PX-774c-109. Next batch is labeled STAGE2/DUSK. The descriptor repeats on both accounts.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and tasted salt on my glove from the overlook rail. The harbor outside answered with a gull’s laugh that sounded like a short, cruel cough.
Micro-hook for the thread I would later write: ‘When panic peaks, carts close.’ I kept the line for later; I didn’t post it. Not yet.
I took a breath and pulled up the freeze-frame transcript again, this time with the auto-generated captions corrupted into poetry.
[Freeze-Frame Auto-Captions (raw)]
“no signal hold plea—”
“stay tuned for—”
“just a second—”
“.”
“.”
The periods were beat marks for the funnel. I aligned them with the affiliate timestamps and saw the choreography I can’t unsee once it enters my bones.
“We cut the rails,” I typed.
“We can’t yet,” Nessa replied. “Sloane needs probable cause beyond vibes and graphs. But if you prepare a clean artifact, I can push to the forum with context on verify, don’t buy, and we’ll document while their batch runs. Then we move the logs to the DFU.”
“So we hold the knife above the cord and wait for the judge to nod.”
“We keep it sharp,” she said. “And we keep witnesses.”
The masked reactor went live again, and a caption preview slid across my monitor like a bad omen.
[Reactor Caption Preview]
“New clue at the overlook. Mods saving receipts. We are the search.”
“He’s co-opting your language,” I said.
“Then I’ll take his,” she answered. “I’ll tag his jar RNR rail in our internal notes so nobody forgets what he’s riding.”
I enlarged the processor snippet and added one more line from an earlier contract footer we’d scraped in Chapter 5’s waiting room:
Billing Support: RNR*STUDIO/MGMT (help@rnrstudio.help)
Sister Accounts: CCN-Creator (mask streaming), LYH-Hub (fulfillment)
The twin rails didn’t bother hiding; they just counted on nobody looking long enough between tears and tips.
I layered a final panel:
[Join Plot: Reactor_jar_total vs Affiliate_gross vs Processor_batch_sums]
20:59–21:02 totals:
Jar_total: \(1,248
`Affiliate_gross`: \)73,980
Processor_batch_flag: SET (deferred payout → 18:00 local)
The bold flag sat there like a dare. I dragged a sticky note out of the drawer and wrote 18:00—cut or catch? I pressed the note to the laptop’s hinge where the honeycomb of the keyboard leaked heat into paper.
“I’m going to restore three threads with context labels,” Nessa messaged. “If the crowd asks why I’m platforming misinformation, I’ll point to the red banners and the archive mirrors. I won’t leave a vacuum for the reactor to fill.”
“Do it,” I said. “I’ll draft the artifact with captions that can hold in court and in a feed.”
“Remember the setting,” she added quietly. “Tell them where we live when you post. The harbor. The fog. The neon. Make it specific so they can smell the cost.”
I looked out at Larkspur Bay and watched the fog muscle through alleys until the evening lights turned the mist into soft neon bruises across glass. Pop-up posters along the row rotated their QR murals to this week’s colorway; pavement turned stage on schedule. The city kept its compact: don’t make a scene—unless it’s profitable.
I clicked into the artifact draft and wrote in my own voice with no apologies:
Artifact: Clip, Comment, Convert (compiled by me with Nessa’s logs)
Where: cliff-backed harbor, morning gauze to neon night
What: freeze-frame clip → panic comments → conversion spikes → reactor tips → shared processor descriptor
How to read: look at minutes, not myths; watch for the moment care becomes checkout.
I embedded the three panels in order and set the captions:
- “This line spike is not hope; it is sales.”
- “This tip stream is not mutual aid; it is income riding RNR* rails.”
- “This deletion is not censorship; it is triage, restored with warnings.”
I breathed in caramel steam and hot plastic and wrote the single sentence that had to sit at the top like a warning label: When panic pays, panic repeats.
“Send me the final once you’ve stitched it,” Nessa said. “I’ll mirror to the mod archive and flag the processor to DFU.”
“I’ll give Sloane the descriptor tie,” I said. “She’ll know what to do with it when the warrant ripens.”
I saved the artifact and watched the filename settle into the folder: ARTIFACT_09_clip_comment_convert.pdf. The ghost-click of a notification fired again—another scheduled task I hadn’t asked for.
[System Notice]
PX-774c-109: Batch Name "STAGE2/DUSK" pending 17:58–18:05.
I stood and let the room’s air reach the back of my throat like a warning. The honeycomb tile of the backsplash caught the neon and threw it back in soft hexes. I pressed my palms to the cool counter, felt the grid under my skin, and messaged Nessa one more time.
“When it hits,” I said, “we either cut the cord or catch them on camera doing it.”
“Then we better be there at 18:00,” she wrote. “Bring your clean voice. I’ll bring the logs.”
The bay rumbled, the fog brightened with night, and the processor’s clock kept marching toward a payout named after twilight. I left the artifact open on the screen and asked the harbor a question I didn’t want answered by a graph: which hurts less—starving a narrative or showing it eat?