If I ran, Miles Green won. If I ran, the narrative became "Omega couldn't handle the pressure."
If I stayed...
"No," I said. My voice wobbled, then steadied. "No. I'm not running."
"Good," Rowan said. "Because I have a plan. But it requires you to be very, very angry."
"I'm getting there," I said, grabbing Alfie’s hand and squeezing it until my knuckles went white.
"Euan," Rowan commanded. "Engage the honey pot. The physical one."
Euan’s hands paused on the keyboard. He looked over his shoulder at me. A slow, terrifying smile touched his lips.
"The bouquet-cam," he said.
"What?" Alfie asked, blinking.
"We anticipated a physical breach attempt," Euan explained, turning back to the screen. "Miles Green likes trophies. He likes proof. He’ll want to verify Zia’s identity with more than just old data. He’ll want current leverage."
"He'll try to get a camera in the room," I realized. The horror was a cold pit in my stomach, but my producer brain was latching onto the logic. "A bug."
"A gift," Rowan corrected. "We’ve intercepted a delivery order for the Manchester venue. Addressed to 'The Engineer.' A bouquet of white lilies. Large arrangement."
"Lilies," I scoffed, offended on a sensory level. "Cliché."
"Inside the vase structure, there is a high-density transmitter," Euan continued. "We blocked the delivery at the loading dock, but we didn't refuse it. We simply... redirected it."
"Where is it?" Kit asked.
"It’s in my bunk," Cal’s voice drifted from the front of the bus.
We all turned. Cal was standing in the doorway to the back lounge, holding a tray of tea. He looked entirely unbothered by the nudity or the panic.
"I put it in a Faraday bag," Cal noted, setting the tray down on the only clear surface. "Euan taught me. Blocks the signal."
"If we unblock it," Rowan said over the phone, "and we feed it a staged conversation... we can catch Miles Green accepting the illegal recording. We trace the IP receiving the stream. We hand it to the authorities and the trade press simultaneously."
"We entrap him," Alfie breathed. "We act out a scene."
"A specific scene," I said, my mind racing. "He wants confirmation of a scandal. He wants the 'poor abused Omega' or the 'slutty band pet'."
I sat up, pulling the duvet around me like a royal robe. The panic was receding, pushed back by the cold, hard edges of a plan. I wasn't the victim here. I was the person who fixed broken signals.
"Rowan," I said. "Don't block the doxxing. Let it run."
"Explain," Rowan said sharply.
"If we scrub it, we look guilty. We look like we're hiding. Let the information sit there. Yes, my name is Zia Vale. Yes, I used to work in Seattle. Yes, I walked out on bad contracts."
I looked at the whiteboard. The schedule. The protocols.
"We pivot," I said. "We don't deny my identity. We change the context of why I hid it."
"Because credit is dangerous," Kit murmured, catching on.
"Exactly. We use the doxxing as proof ofwhythe Omega-Safe Rider is necessary. Look at what happens when a name gets out. The mob comes. The privacy invasion starts."
"Weaponize the violation," Euan nodded, typing furiously. "Turn the attack into evidence."
