The bay fog rides the morning like a rumor no one can kill. At the marina, drones blink and give up, rerouting toward clearer air while a news blimp makes a lazy pivot away from the wind tunnel. I watch it through the bus window for one stop too long and then pull the cord. The city breathes salt and disinfectant and hot sugar from a donut cart that shouldn’t be open yet. I tell myself I’m not hungry for sweetness or approval; I’m hungry for files.
The elevator in Curalis hums in perfect thirds. Screens whisper headlines between floors—DEEPFAKE INVESTIGATIONS CONTINUE—over stock footage of the very halo that washed me green twelve hours ago. A woman next to me balances a bouquet and whispers to her partner, “Her score dropped two points already.” They trade reputation rumors like weather, code words tucked under practiced tones: “Was she Clouded?” “Storm by breakfast,” he says, smiling for nobody.
The doors open on citrus. It isn’t oranges; it’s the promise of oranges used to bleach away anything human. I taste it at the back of my tongue and have to swallow twice. The lobby stretches white-on-white with art that looks like Rorschach storms. Two concentric rings—polite, pearly—repeat on every sign. Purity pretending not to be a trap.
I walk to the badge checkpoint with my wristband in my palm. The gate wings are clear glass and smug. A woman in a sea-green blazer watches me with that careful kindness clinics wear for press and plaintiffs alike.
“Good morning,” she says. “Here for follow-up?”
“Here for disclosure,” I answer. “Raw neural data from last night’s scan.”
“Data requests go through Records,” she says, tilting her head toward a hallway where every door looks like an apology. “Do you have an appointment?”
“Your elevator told me I need one,” I say, and hold up my band. “Let’s make it.”
She gestures to the reader. “Tap, please.”
I press the band to the pad. It chirps like a small bird, hopeful. The screen flashes a red X, then bleeds to a message: ACCESS RESTRICTED—SPONSOR HOLD.
“That’s not a medical term,” I say.
“It’s a policy term,” she replies. “Your segment was sponsored in part by HaloStage affiliates. There’s a hold until they complete their review.”
“Sponsors don’t own my brain,” I say, and try for an even tone that won’t land me on a watchlist. “I consented to a scan, not to captivity.”
She keeps her smile. “Your consent includes data stewardship. I can give you the portal link and the form to request extracted summaries for personal use.”
“Summaries,” I repeat, like it’s a food substitute that never nourished anyone. “I need raw. Pattern files, timestamps, the multitracks.”
“That’s not typical,” she says.
“Neither is accusing a halo of lying.” I slide the band along the edge of the scanner and feel the adhesive catch on plastic. “Let me through.”
“I can’t override a sponsor hold.” She lowers her voice a notch. “You’re Mira Vale. We saw the episode. Congratulations.”
“On what?”
“On being cleared,” she says, not bold enough to add for now.
“Then let me see what cleared me,” I say. “I can’t show anyone my innocence if you hide its math.”
The blazer woman makes a small helpless shape with her hands. “I’ll call Records.”
While she dials, I let the smell of citrus work its old trick: my spine goes rigid, and somewhere behind my navel a memory clicks like a pill bottle. Hospital sheets. A beeping line in the night. My mother’s mouth trying to say “more blanket” around a tongue that felt too big for the air. I press my thumb into my wristband until the skin whitens. Healing demands remembering, I remind myself. The market sells forgetting as cure. I’m not buying.
“Records can schedule you for next week,” the woman says. “We’re fully booked.”
“Book me now,” I say. “I’m here.”
“There’s a process.”
“There’s always a process,” I answer, and then I hear it: a voice that can make processes purr.
“Mira Vale,” Dr. Lucien Gray says, like we’re colleagues and he’s delighted by the coincidence of my existence. He steps out from a side corridor, lab coat open over a gray suit that costs more than my microphones. He radiates the warmth of a fireplace video on loop. The halo icon peeks from his ID badge like a smug patron saint.
I square up, because my body knows how to resist a stage before my mouth does. “Doctor.”
“I’m glad you came,” he says, offering his hand but letting it hover, which lets him be both courteous and blameless. “Big nights can leave residue.”
“I’m here for my raw data,” I say. “Records wants to treat truth like theater concessions.”
He chuckles as though we’re sharing wit, not knives. “Raw is seldom useful to laypeople. It’s like mistaking a city’s plumbing for the water itself.”
“I make a living listening to pipes,” I say. “I’ll take the plumbing.”
“Therapeutic reframing might serve you better.” He softens the corners of his mouth. “When a public narrative bends, it can bruise the private one. We offer guidance.”
“Guidance toward what?” I ask. “Gratitude?”
“Toward coherence,” he says, hands now folded in front of him, a man at a fireplace that isn’t lit. “This morning is noisy. Media cycles heighten pain.”
“Noise doesn’t scare me,” I say. “Hidden edits do.”
“Ah,” he says, and I hear the syllable as a gloved tap on glass. “You saw the malicious clip.”
“I heard it,” I say. “And I heard Studio B breathing under it.”
The blazer woman pretends to arrange pens. Gray keeps his eyes on mine long enough to warm the air and then glances at the checkpoint display. “We have obligations to our partners,” he says. “Briefly. While they ensure integrity.”
“They altered integrity,” I say. “My request is simple: give me my raw.”
“We will give you what serves your wellness,” he says. “Summaries, a guided session to process stress, a conversation about grief that doesn’t require a microphone.”
“Grief doesn’t mind microphones,” I say, and my mouth goes dry in the exact way it did at my mother’s bedside when I couldn’t decide whether to hold her hand or call my sister. “Silence does.”
Gray’s smile falters for a millimeter. “Make the appointment,” he tells the blazer woman, a gracious king granting the village a well, “and offer Ms. Vale our reframing package at no cost.”
“I didn’t ask for that,” I say.
“You will,” he replies, with the soft confidence of a man who has learned to predict weather.
He’s already turning away when I hear myself say, “Why were you at the studio last night?”
He pivots back, just enough. “Studio B is our partner,” he says. “Sometimes partners attend weddings.”
“And funerals,” I say.
He inclines his head, as close to a bow as he will ever allow. “I’ll see you soon.”
He dissolves into citrus and glass and white. The blazer woman exhales so quietly I can hear it only because I trained my life to catch breaths people prefer to keep. She taps her tablet. “Next Friday at two,” she says. “Records will have your summaries. Lab 7 can accommodate a reframing intake afterward.”
“Lab 7?” I ask, letting mild curiosity be the mask for the heat feathering up my throat. “What’s its specialty?”
“Cognitive recall guidance,” she says. “It helps subjects anchor their memory to healthier narratives. It’s been very effective after televised stressors.”
“I bet it has.”
Micro-hook: I ask for the bathroom and take the hallway she points to—wide, calm, a place that teaches footsteps to behave. The citrus smell deepens the farther I go, richer and more artificial, the way a song loses its rough edges when a producer sands it for radio. The far wall holds a corkboard behind a glass panel: legal notices, emergency exits, and a sheet titled CONSENT ADDENDUM – MEDIA-AFFILIATED PARTICIPATION.
The glass catches my reflection and throws me back a woman who still has makeup in the hinge of one eyelid because she fell asleep before the wipes found her. The paper behind the glass has fine print at an insect size except for one set of lines highlighted in a yellow that remembers sunshine.
I lean in. The letters climb into meaning: Data generated under sponsor-affiliated sessions constitutes Sponsored Output. Sponsors retain stewardship, including rights to process, curate, and distribute Sponsored Output in furtherance of therapeutic products and programming. Subjects may request Summarized Output for personal use. Raw output remains proprietary.
My breath lands on the glass and hazes the word proprietary. I wipe the fog with my sleeve and keep reading. The bottom of the sheet lists example identifiers. The third bullet makes my stomach press a fist against my spine: Participant Wristband ID (WBID): followed by a string of letters and numbers I know like my own street address.
WBID: HV-VALE-1043-ALPHA.
My wristband sits under my cuff, warm from skin. I slide it up and compare. The code matches. Someone has preauthorized my body like a QR at a gate.
“No filming,” a voice says from down the hall, automatic and without heat.
“I need a photo for my records,” I say, turning to find a man with a mop and a badge that says FACILITIES in sans-serif honesty. “It’s a public notice.”
He shrugs. “No flash.”
“Would I ever,” I say, and lift my phone. The glass throws a little glare where overhead fixtures pretend to be stars. I adjust, breathe shallow so I don’t fog the pane, and take three: one wide, one tight on the highlighted lines, one on the WBID like a name carved into a picnic table no one asked to share.
The photo snaps with a meek click I set months ago to avoid the smug shutter sound. The citrus floods stronger, and for a second the corridor tilts into my mother’s hospital, sheets whispering, a nurse telling me I could “step out while we manage her comfort.” Comfort was code for surrender. I didn’t step out.
“You okay?” the facilities man asks, frowning like he worries about spills, not women.
“I’m fine,” I say, and it tastes like saline and lie. I rest my palm on the cool glass and locate my spine. “Thanks.”
I send the photos to myself, to a backup, to the drive that lives in a cloud outside the sponsors’ friendly arms. I tuck the phone away and return to the checkpoint, where the blazer woman has arranged two pamphlets: YOUR DATA, YOUR PEACE and REFRAMING AFTER MEDIA EVENTS. The paper stock is thick enough to fake sincerity.
“Here,” she says, sliding them toward me. “Take time to care for yourself.”
“Caring looks like disclosure,” I say, but I take the pamphlets, because evidence sometimes wears pastel.
The turnstile blinks its red X again, just to remind me where we are. I press my fingers to the scanner, not because it will open, but because skin remembers the texture of walls it needs to push against. The reader is smooth, blessedly indifferent. I turn, put the pamphlets under my arm, and walk out through air that smells too clean to be kind.
Outside, the fog has thickened to velvet. Drones hum then hush. A gull drops a shell that cracks like an old cassette case. At the curb, a man in gym shorts scrolls a feed that shows my face split-screen: green, red, green, red, a metronome for how fast a city can change its mind. He looks up when he catches me catching him, and he does what strangers do when they know your name but not your life—he nods like we share weather.
My phone buzzes again. An appointment ping I didn’t book: Curalis – Lab 7 Reframing Intake, Fri 2:45 p.m. Confirm? The confirm button glows a kind green that insultingly matches last night’s verdict.
I stare at the word Confirm until the fog beads on my lashes and the citrus smell refuses to let me go. I don’t touch it. I don’t reject it either. I open the photo of the addendum and pinch on Sponsored Output until it fills the screen like a wall.
If my memories can be owned by sponsors, what can I possibly use to prove I’m not their product?