I brace my elbows on the parapet and let cold fog bead the hairs on my forearms. The bay coughs and swallows the drone beacons in slow gulps; a news blimp leans against the wind tunnel, thinks better of the angle, and reroutes. The city below smells like salt and hot sugar from a cart I can’t see, braided with disinfectant from the hospital wing whose windows whisper headlines between floors.
“We’re up,” Jonas says, voice tight in my earpiece. He sits cross-legged by the encoder like a surgeon near a heart he’s rewired. “Latency one-six-five on path A, one-eight-two on B. Your toggle, my macro. Copy?”
“Copy,” I say. I slide the folded linen note along the inside seam of my jacket until it scratches the skin over my ribs. I need the scratch to keep me here.
The broadcast opens with a glide shot of Studio B. I can hear the floor LEDs buzz, hear the halo overhead use electricity the way a vulture uses thermals—lazy and exact. The host smiles, tenderness powdered into every pore. Gray stands just off-stage with his hands behind his back, wearing patience the way other men wear cologne.
“Look right,” Jonas murmurs. “Cuff.”
I zoom the return and see the jeweled cuff hover near the host’s thumb. The mic inside it catches the click—a crisp, insect-bright sound—and at once the compassion overlay rises in our audio meters, a gentle hum that isn’t gentle. My teeth find the frequency and ache.
“Confirmation,” I say. “Overlay v2 live.” My stomach tightens like a fist closing around a fuse.
The host’s voice pours honey. “Tonight, we honor courage. We hold space for pain.” The audience answers with a coached hush, the kind you buy with tickets and promises. Families in the rows trade reputation score updates like weather: she’s at 78, they sealed his, my sister’s code came back clear. I watch wrists flash their two-ring halos when people clap; purity printed on plastic, capture disguised as cleanliness.
“Comfort slider rising,” Jonas says. His hand hovers over the keyboard. “Don’t make me tackle your toggle.”
“I won’t.” I plant my left index finger on the red-arm tape and keep breathing through my nose. Citrus cleaner from the studio vents rides the feed’s room tone and ignites old hospital air in my mouth.
The steadicam eases toward the soft chairs. Sera sits in navy, every hair pinned like a promise. Leo beside her wears a producer’s idea of casual—sneakers too white for his life. The halo gleams above them like a wedding ring held just out of reach.
“I see you,” I whisper before I say anything useful.
Sera looks straight into the A camera and past it, into me. She does it like we practiced at the bathroom mirror, chin down, eyes steady. The lens makes a tunnel between her face and the roof. Her necklace charm sits still over her pulse. I lock my jaw to keep from talking to the charm.
“Waveform says she’s steady,” Jonas says. “Mic’s clean.”
Gray drifts into the frame as a benign constellation—hand at his collar, sidelong nod at the host. The cuff clicks again. The compassion hum deepens, a soft blanket smoothed over everyone’s lap. The audience’s faces slacken by a degree I can measure in pixels.
“He’s riding it,” I say. “He’s massaging the crowd.”
Jonas whistles a note too thin for comfort. “The cuff latency is instantaneous to house mix. If they push injection, we’ll see it faster than we can name it.”
“Then we don’t name it,” I say. “We act.”
The host tilts his head toward Sera. “You’ve carried so much. Tonight, you don’t have to carry alone.”
Sera lets the words sit like a stone she’s evaluating. “I’m here to speak plainly,” she says. “To keep my brother whole.” Every syllable lands on the exact square we laid down in rehearsal.
The audience gives the approved murmur, compassion performing itself as public sport. I taste battery metal on the air and adjust the headphone cup so it presses the top of my ear—ritual, superstition, control.
“Jonas,” I say, low. “If they cue Monster Frame, don’t wait to think. We fire.”
“We fire,” he says. “But we’d better not false-trigger. First thirty seconds decide whether the algorithm pushes us to the top of outrage or the bottom of noise.”
The host turns to Leo. “How are you feeling in this moment?”
Leo blinks twice like a man stepping from bright into brighter. He opens his mouth and nothing comes. In my headphones, the house chime—ping, ping… ping—floats like a lifeguard’s whistle thrown down a well.
“Hold,” Jonas says. “There.”
Leo’s pupils dilate on the cut, big coins suddenly. A camera learns forward to drink the moment, and I watch his throat work around a phrase he didn’t choose.
“Overlay is maxed.” Jonas taps a finger against his knee. “Comfort’s running hot.”
“Rowan said they could prime in real time,” I say. “This is the prime.”
Gray steps closer, near enough for the halo’s flare to halo him too. He pretends not to look at the cuff, but I see a single knuckle whiten.
The host repeats, softer. “How are you feeling, Leo?”
Leo answers like he found the line in his pocket. “Grateful.” The word lands smooth, like a pebble that’s been turned by a river for months. Sera’s fingers twitch on the chair arm, a half-note from our private chord.
I lean toward the screen. “He’s riding the chime,” I whisper. “He’s entrained.”
“Don’t look at the chime,” Jonas says. “Look at Sera.”
I do. Sera shifts the charm with her thumb. One, two. Then stillness. Her eyes find the lens again, and I feel the roof tilt—not a fall, just the reminder that gravity asks for consent only once.
“She’s with you,” Jonas says, gentler.
Hook: The blimp’s rotor wash reaches us as a faint throb, and for a second the fog lifts in sheets. Across the marina, gossip stalls flare and fold; edge-recorders glow at the food hall where you’re not supposed to film at communal tables but everyone films from the corners anyway. The city co-writes this night with the studio whether the studio invites it or not.
The host pivots to the camera bank. “We open our hearts beyond one family. We open them to a city healing together.” He doesn’t need to say Buy our cure; the logo does the speaking. Two rings bloom in the lower-third. My cracked wristband on the parapet reflects them like a tiny moon with a bite taken out.
Gray takes a half-step back and nods to the booth. His smile touches no muscle that would be required to mean it. The cuff clicks a third time.
“Spike,” Jonas says. “Watch Leo.”
Leo’s pupils widen again, then quiver. His shoulders release a fraction, the relief you get when the dentist turns off the drill. The house track sneaks a synthetic lullaby under the mic’d silence, a wash that smelled like citrus in Lab 7 and hospital hallways and good intentions that cost everything.
“We’re at six seconds to target if she calls it,” Jonas murmurs. “We can meet Monster if the board cues it.”
The host turns back to Sera, voice low. “What do you need from your sister to move forward?”
Sera doesn’t swallow. She doesn’t blink. She says, “I need her to remember.” The last syllable has a grit the overlay doesn’t sand away. She lets the word hang like damp linen—heavy, clean, ready to be wrung.
The audience hush tilts toward awe. The cuff clicks again; the hum presses on my eardrums. I press back with breath.
“Mira,” Jonas says, “your finger’s whitening the toggle.”
“Better white than gone,” I tell him, and I make myself loosen a shade.
Gray lifts a palm to the host, subtle enough to deny later. The halo lowers a fraction, theatrically, a priest granting benediction by prop. The camera glides closer to Sera’s face, and she gives me the gift: she looks right through it again, into my eye on the roof.
I talk to her with my throat closed so the mic will not print it. “I’m here.”
The host leans in. “Sera, would you be willing to forgive?”
Sera smiles with her teeth away. “I’m willing to tell the truth,” she says. Her thumb strokes the charm once. She is ready to knife the script with the words we buried in the linen note.
Gray flinches—small, but there. His cuff hand twitches. The click lands like glass.
“Overlay peaking,” Jonas says. “This is their cushion for the pivot.”
“Hold me on the slate,” I say. “If they trigger Monster Frame, we shatter the cushion with the Edit Bible page, the chair interface, the spectrogram.”
“Already framed,” he says. “Your voice will take channel one. I’ll keep house music out.”
On-screen, the house chime returns. Ping… Ping… Ping. Leo’s pupils bloom wide and dark. He licks his lips like he’s tasting an old word. Sera’s eyes flick to him, then to the lens—then to me.
“Do you hear it?” I whisper.
“Every molecule,” Jonas says.
“Then hear me,” I answer, and I lower the recorder to my collarbone so it can feel the preparation, not the speech. The wind on the roof tastes of metal filings. Down on the boardwalk, someone cracks sugar on a griddle and the smell steps into my lungs without permission.
The host opens both hands like a church door. “Let’s begin with love.”
Gray nods, and I watch a producer at a console throw a look at a second monitor—the one with the pivot names burned into its skin. I can’t read the letters, but I’ve photographed them; my memory completes what the camera can’t show.
“They’re hovering,” Jonas says. “I can feel the tag pre-load.”
“Hold,” I say, and my voice goes thin as a string. “We hold.”
The halo gleams harder. The audience hush descends into something quieter than quiet, the space money buys to make you convinceable. Elevator screens across the city whisper the broadcast into foyers and bedrooms; families negotiate in whispers of their own. Clear, Low, Seal it, Don’t embarrass us. The double-ring icon prints across digital receipts in concessions and contracts backstage, promising purity in a font designed to be trusted.
The host pivots his gaze to Camera 3, the one that will make a composite of Sera and Leo’s faces when forgiveness is declared. He speaks low enough that the compassion hum blooms around him like an obedient halo. “Tell us what you remember, Leo.”
Leo blinks. His pupils wash wide once more, and there—inside the dilation—I see the first tremor of resistance. A grit at the edge of a tide. He breathes short through his nose. The chime hits again. Ping.
Sera turns her head just enough to break the composite. She inhales, then sets her shoulders.
“Jonas,” I say.
“With you,” he answers.
I settle my left index finger on the red arm and wedge my right palm under my left wrist to kill any shake. The linen note scratches my ribs; the scratch writes the sentence I need to say when the world demands a rehearsed version of me.
On the stage, the host’s thumb hovers over the cuff. Gray’s eyes flick toward the booth. Sera’s charm gleams like a small moon over her pulse.
My breath halts between in and out and makes a home there.
The cuff clicks.
The meters bloom.
Leo’s pupils surge, huge and wet with instruction.
Sera’s mouth opens—not to forgive, but to reach for the three words we buried.
“Stand by,” Jonas says. “Stand by—”
And there, in the corner of the control-room feed, a new label prepops in the metadata strip—letters I cannot fully read but do not need to.
The first stroke of Monster enters the field of view, and I ask the night the only question that matters: do I throw the switch now and flood the city blind, or do I wait one heartbeat more for Sera’s word to land before the drug makes her forget how to say it?