I smell burnt plastic before I see the flame. The bay coughs fog across the rooftops, and my drone beacons become patient stars. On the cinder block by my greenhouse, a dented coffee tin breathes a tight orange. A stack of laminated ID cards softens at the corners like taffy. Rowan’s hands shake hard enough to clatter the metal tongs against the tin.
“Stop a second,” I say. “You’re going to blister.”
“They already did,” Rowan says, voice a thin wire. They hold up two fingers wrapped in gauze the color of bad milk. “They doxxed me, Mira. Home address, payroll stub, the diner, the cat’s name. My manager forwarded me a ‘wellness check’ form with the halo on top. It means escort.”
“It means capture,” I say. The word tastes like copper. I take the tongs and lift a card from the heat. The Curalis logo warps, the photo’s eyes puddle, the halo icon blurs into an oily ring. “You burning these won’t erase you from their system.”
“I know,” they say. Their jaw trembles; their foot keeps time against the skylight. “I’m erasing me from my door. If they flash a badge at a corner bodega, I don’t want the clerk pointing them to my mailbox.”
I set the softened card back into the tin and nudge the wick of a receipt toward it. The receipt curls and blackens; the halo watermark ghosts once before it becomes ash. Salt sticks to my lip; the fog is a wet coat I don’t have permission to take off. “You come in,” I say. “Tea. Bandages. Then we call counsel on record. The proffer protects you if you tell the truth.”
“And if I talk wrong?”
“We’ll edit for clarity, not absolution,” I say. “No cuts that hide the wound.”
My elevator whispers a headline as we clatter down the narrow stairwell—PAUSE EXTENDED; REVIEW CONTINUES—and Rowan laughs into their palm until the sound folds on itself. In my kitchen, I splash disinfectant over the sink; the citrus sharpens and makes the sugar smell from the Strand drift like a memory. Jonas rolls in from the living room, hair sticking up, hoodie unzipped, eyes doing quick inventory.
“Burn barrel,” he says, nodding toward the tin I set in my sink.
“Rooftop,” I say.
“Hi,” Rowan says, not looking up. “I clean my messes.”
“We’re not here for neat,” Jonas says. He moves a cassette deck to make space for the med kit. “We’re here for safe. Fingers?”
“Two,” Rowan says. “No mesh damage.”
“Good,” I say. “Because what I need from you is your mouth.”
Rowan snorts, coughs, then chokes on the cough, and I hand them water. “They posted my cat,” they say when they can breathe again. “The caption said ‘comfort injection.’”
“That’s violence wearing a nursery sweater,” I say. I squeeze their shoulder and pass a towel. “Finish your tea. Counsel in three. We record everything.”
Micro-hook
The Strand’s food hall bans filming at the communal tables, and everyone obeys by filming from the edges. I choose a corner booth by a vent where hot sugar floods and then disappears. The city’s fog presses its face against the glass; outside, drones blink and back away from the marina’s wind tunnel like skittish birds. Elevator screens across the street whisper—KINDNESS METRICS TRADEMARK PUBLISHED—before the doors shut and the words vanish into people’s pockets.
“We keep this quiet,” Rowan says, palms flat on the table so I can see the tremor. “But not secret.”
“Quiet is how we hear the cuts,” I say. “Secret is how they win.”
Jonas sets the recorder between us and points the mic like a nose. “You’re going to hear a beep every ten minutes,” he says. “It’s to mark the herd of time if someone splices later.”
Counsel arrives in a navy coat with a halo-stamped hospital wristband riding their cuff like a dare. “I came straight from a deposition,” they say. “You mind if I show the band to the camera?”
“I mind if you don’t tell me why it’s there,” I say.
“Client privilege overlay at the hospital,” counsel says, flashing the two rings. “Symbol of purity, instrument of capture. I keep it on to remind juries what a clean design can hide.” They slide into the booth, place their phone face down, and breathe in the sugar like it’s an oath. “I’m recording. You record. We exchange mirrors.”
Rowan nods, throat clicking. “I’m sorry,” they say to me, and the words are so small I almost miss them.
“Don’t apologize,” I say. “The machine wrote a role for you. Now you write back.”
Counsel leans forward. “This is a proffer,” they say. “You tell me truthfully what you know, we set out terms with the DA if needed. I can’t promise immunity, but I can promise protection if you keep your side clean. You speak; I thread the law around the spikes.”
“I cut the compassion overlay,” Rowan says on a single breath, like swallowing a blade. “I looped false ads. I gave her—” they tip their chin toward me—“the chair interface the night of the show.”
“Why?” counsel asks.
“Because the Edit Bible told us to make a monster of a sister if the mother refused to cry on cue,” Rowan says. Their hands start to shake again. I slide the tea closer; they ignore it. “Because a memorandum marked ‘Authorized Benevolence’ said, ‘Where tears do not flow, increase comfort tones and cue Sibling Pivot: Monster Frame.’ Because I watched a halo turn red under a script and I couldn’t unsee it.”
“Say the internal directive,” I say. “Verbatim.”
Rowan looks at the recorder like it’s a confession booth and a bomb. “Directive 4.2.1,” they say, eyes unfocused, mouth careful. “‘When live outcomes threaten to deviate from desired reconciliation arc, implement Curated Recall Guidance: elevate narrative seam, inject comfort at interval delta ninety seconds, and deploy Monster Frame contingency with sibling anchor to reassign blame pathways.’”
Counsel’s pen keeps moving, steady as an IV drip. “You have dates?”
“Memorized with the shame,” Rowan says. “June 18, August 2, November 4. Addendum signed September 9 after the overseas scandal got renamed ‘pilot error.’”
Jonas makes a low noise that comes from a place I’ve only seen when he wakes from a nap he didn’t want. “I’m aligning that to metadata,” he says. “It lands.”
“Say the other one,” I press. “The one you texted me about. The line you wrote in your phone and never sent.”
Rowan closes their eyes. The hall thrums around us—orders, receipts, the scrape of a chair leg against tile like a violin practicing rage. “Directive 5.7,” they say. “‘Subjects who fail to produce narratively consonant tears may be moved to Comfort Corridor for supportive recall and pattern adjustment.’”
“Comfort Corridor equals induction chair,” counsel says.
“With a fresher coat of paint and muffins,” Rowan says. “And a trash can that smells like bleach.”
I feel the old heat crawl up my neck, the hospital memory without pictures, only the rasp of a sheet and the taste of thunder. “You’ll testify to that?” I ask. “On paper, under oath, in a room where elevator screens lie between floors?”
“If I live until the date,” Rowan says, and then the tremor climbs their forearms.
“Protection,” counsel says, voice firmer now. “We’ll file a notice with the tribunal attaching your proffer as an offer of proof. We’ll request state-level whistleblower status. I’ll call the university clinic—they have a safe residence policy for witnesses in health-tech cases. We’ll get you a pseudonym docket.”
“And the cat?” Rowan whispers, so small the recorder barely catches it.
“The clinic likes cats,” counsel says. “They keep them in faculty housing to make anxious grad students remember to eat.”
Jonas exhales. He looks at me, and the look is an old rope we’ve learned to climb together. “I’ll run the proffer against the Edit Bible scans,” he says. “We’ll publish the directive numbers with cross-references to their own assets. No adjectives—just the machine, naming itself.”
“To be believed, I have to hold still under the same light,” I say. “You too, Rowan. Counsel, we publish the audio after you file?”
“With redactions for home addresses and cat names,” counsel says. “We let the words do the work.”
Micro-hook
We step outside into fog that feels newly made. Drones try to nose down the wind tunnel and blink retreat. A news blimp reroutes with a sulky pivot. Across the street, the elevator whispers—WITNESS POLICY EXPANDED—and a teen in a quilted jacket looks up and says to his aunt, “Blue plus green today.” Reputation scores as weather; language as leash.
Rowan touches my sleeve. “I keep thinking about the word ‘benevolence,’” they say. “How it buys its absolution with font choice.”
“The market sells forgetting and throws in a halo,” I say. “We’ll make remembering contagious instead.”
Counsel’s car pulls up—boxy, anonymous, warm air hissing when the door opens. “Seatbelts,” counsel says, like a parent, like a pilot. “We go to the clinic to sign. We don’t stop.”
Jonas squeezes my hand before he peels off to guard the edit drives. “I’ll be ten minutes behind,” he says. “If my tail shows up, I’ll feed it a fake. The vent smell will shake off in two blocks.”
“Text me only from the third app,” I say.
“Already did,” he says, and then he’s a hooded shape and a shoulder checking mirrors.
The clinic’s lobby is white-on-white, citrus disinfectant turned up like a dare. A halo icon smiles from a donation plaque; a volunteer knots purple scarves on a stand as if color might be policy. Families trade scores in low voices—“She tested clean.” “He’s amber.” Someone laughs at a meme and then covers their mouth like laughter might influence a scan.
“No wristbands,” counsel tells the intake desk, crisp and kind. “My client is here under whistleblower protections. Pseudonym docket. You can call me late to dinner if you need a billable code.”
We get a back room with two chairs and a table that pretends to be wood. The recorder buzzes to life. I perch on the radiator and feel old heat crawl up through paint. Rowan laces their fingers to stop the tremor from spelling shame on the table.
“State your name for the record,” counsel says.
“Rowan Pike,” they say. Their voice steadies on the last word, like a boat catching a dock.
“Do you understand this is voluntary?” counsel asks.
“Yes,” Rowan says.
“Do you want to proceed?”
“Yes,” Rowan says, and then they look at me, and I nod, and their shoulders drop half an inch, which is what courage looks like when it fits in a fluorescent room.
“Please describe the internal orders you referenced,” counsel says.
Rowan breathes, tastes the citrus, and speaks. “The Edit Bible is the public myth,” they say. “The real script sat in pinned memos: ‘Curated Recall Guidance,’ ‘Comfort Corridor,’ ‘Sibling Pivot: Monster Frame.’ Directive 3.0: ‘Reframe resistance as healing delay.’ Directive 4.2.1: the seam and the injection cadence. Directive 5.7: move noncompliant subjects to the Corridor for ‘pattern adjustment.’ Directive 6.3: ‘Pre-clear family anchors through off-site coaching.’”
“Read the language,” I say. “Let it damn itself.”
Rowan opens the notebook they had shoved under their shirt. The pages are smudged with ash and tea. They read, careful enough to taste every word. “‘Where tears do not flow, increase comfort tones. Where narratives diverge from desired arc, introduce ambient asset blend B—citrus-cleansed, warm-sugar top note—to promote concordance. Avoid words trauma, implant, or drug. Substitute comfort, seam, and guided recall.’”
Counsel folds their hands like prayer but writes the way floodlights operate. “You can testify to who approved these?”
“Dr. Gray or his deputy Initialed G/L on every one,” Rowan says. “Sometimes a halo stamp sat in the corner like a smiley face.”
“I’ll stipulate the signatures after discovery,” counsel says. “For now, this is sworn recollection. We attach logs, we attach your oath, we request the order for protective housing.”
“And I keep my cat,” Rowan says, so serious the room has to say yes.
“We’ll pick up the cat tonight,” I say. “I’ll bring a carrier and the scratchy blanket. He can hate me on the drive and forgive me at the first dish of fish.”
Rowan laughs without sound and then lets the sound be real. Their hands finally settle on the table. “I did harm,” they say. “I routed comfort into people who didn’t consent to being steered. I built the program that made your halo slide red.”
“You broke it, too,” I say. “You gave me the chair language. You looped ads and forced daylight in.”
“Now you give the words,” counsel says. “And the words give you back to yourself.”
Micro-hook
The forms take forever, which is how safety feels when it’s built by paper. By the time we slide back into the evening, the fog has sharpened from milk to glass. Jonas texts a single emoji—two concentric rings with a slash through them—and a location dot. He’s already mirrored the proffer across three continents, which means I can breathe enough to taste the air.
We walk Rowan to the faculty housing door. A woman with a braid and a keycard opens to us and says, “No filming past the fern.” I nod and carry the coffee tin like a relic. The cat materializes from a carrier another witness hands off in the hall and complains in a beautiful, vulgar tenor. Rowan kneels and lets him butt his head into their chest, raw nose and all.
“I’ll be outside in ten,” I tell Rowan. “Jonas and I will set shifts until the protective order signs.”
“You don’t have to,” they say.
“I already am,” I say.
The braid-woman holds up a sheet. The halo icon appears at the bottom of the housing agreement. I grip the pen too hard and feel the paper’s fibers give. “You ever get tired of staring at this logo?” I ask her.
“Every day,” she says, and then she adds, softly, “But it keeps the grants moving until we don’t need them.”
We step out to the quiet part of campus where the hot sugar smell can’t bully the air. My phone vibrates with a new text from an unknown number: “Clinic entrance camera down at 21:10. You’re welcome.” No link. No signature. Just a time stamp that matches our arrival plus four minutes.
I pass the phone to Jonas. He frowns and tips it back. “Friend?” he asks.
“Or Gray,” I say. “He loves a back door.”
Rowan texts a heart from inside, then a photo of the cat asleep on the scratchy blanket like a king who doesn’t sign treaties. Relief moves through me like warm tea, but it leaves a cold ring behind.
I aim the mic at the fog and press record. “Witness testimony beat the edit,” I say, counting the new shape of my breath. “We have directives in a human voice, not just a machine’s. We have a roof, a door, a cat, a plan.”
The elevator across the street whispers—TRIBUNAL HEARING SET—and the doors close on the words before I can take a picture. I pocket the recorder and the text, and I ask the only question that keeps the relief from turning to sleep: “Who just traced our lifeline, and what are they planning to splice in next?”