We had built a firewall. Not just a digital one, though I had effectively bricked Miles Green’s career forty-two minutes ago when my script verified he had accessed the honeypot feed. We had built a legal fortress. We were a closed system.
Kit hit the final crash cymbal. The brass shimmered, the decay tailing off into the silence, perfectly managed by the noise gate Zia had programmed remotely from the desk.
The lights went black.
For a microsecond, there was absolute silence. Then, the reaction hit. The roar of the crowd was a physical pressure wave,a sudden spike to 110 decibels of pure, unadulterated approval. It didn't sound like a typical conclusion; it sounded like a frantic demand for more, a collective intake of breath.
I keyed my comms, my voice flat, contrasting the hysteria beyond the monitors. "Clear. Stage dark. Movement."
We exited. The routine was muscle memory, unplug the patch cables, shroud the rig, grab the "go-bag", but the kinetic energy was different. Usually, the walk from stage to bus is a transition from adrenaline to exhaustion, a desaturation of color. Tonight, it felt like a transition from one form of high-voltage power to another.
We hit the dressing room corridor of the venue, a classic British dungeon smelling of damp concrete, stale lager, and decades of spilled ambition. Rowan was waiting near the fire exit. She looked impeccable in a navy suit that cost more than the venue’s sound system, holding her tablet like a weapon. She was a general who had just successfully annexed a small country without firing a shot. A pencil was tucked behind her ear, the only sign of disorder.
"Green is burned," she said, her voice cutting through the post-show ring in my ears. She didn't look up from the screen as I approached. "Legal just served the network. He’s suspended pending internal investigation. NightCrawler’s IP address and the packet data from the unauthorized access attempt have been handed to Cyber Crimes."
"Efficient," I noted, pausing to adjust the strap of my gear bag. The scent of her, peppermint bark and sharp graphite, was spiked with something predatory. "Did he see the feed?"
"He saw enough to incriminate himself," Rowan said, a shark-like smile finally gracing her lips. She tapped the screen, closing a file. "And then he saw you lot threatening to sue him into the stone age. It was cinematic. I’ve never seen a networklegal team capitulate so fast. They offered a settlement before I even threatened the press release."
"Good."
"Go," she said, nodding toward the heavy steel fire door. "I’ll handle the debris."
I walked past her. The air shifted as I neared the exit. The scent of ozone and neon citrus cut through the backstage grime.
Zia was waiting by the load-out bay, bundled in an oversized hoodie that swallowed her frame, flanked by Tammy Rook. Tammy was scanning the perimeter, her scent of cedar smoke and black pepper acting as a repulsive force to anyone thinking of approaching, but she relaxed when she saw me.
Zia looked up. Her hood was up, hiding her purple and black hair, but her eyes were bright, dilated, scanning me for data. She wasn’t looking at the crowd; she was looking at the structure of us.
"Status?" she asked.
"Optimal," I said. My throat felt tight. I reached out, breaking my own hard-coded rule of public distance, and ran my thumb over her knuckles. They were cold from the night air. "Threat neutralized. Asset secured."
She didn't pull away. She squeezed my hand, her grip surprisingly strong. A current passed between us, not electric, but grounding. "Let's go home."
Home.
The variable had shifted. Home was no longer a location in London or a flat in Glasgow I barely saw. Home was a black tour bus with a filtration system I had personally modified to scrub particulates down to 0.3 microns.
We boarded. The heavy door hissed shut, the pneumatic seal activating with a satisfying thud. The airlock effect was instantaneous.
The roar of Manchester was severed. The smell of the city, all rain and diesel, was replaced by the neutral, scrubbed atmosphere of the bus, underpinned by the faint, lingering scents of us.
"Right," Alfie said, shedding his pink faux-fur coat and tossing it onto the jump seat. He was vibrating, literally shaking with residual energy. The scent of him, burnt sugar and blackberries, spiked the air, sweet and scorching. "That was... biblical. Did you feel the room? They weren't grabbing. They weren't trying to take pieces. They were listening."
"You gave them a policy briefing set to a four-four beat," Kit rumbled, moving past him toward the kitchenette. He looked expansive, his tattoos darkening in the dim cabin lights. "They didn't know whether to mosh or take notes."
"Both is good," Zia said from the doorway of the front lounge. She kicked off her boots, lining them up neatly against the wall. "Multi-tasking."
I moved to the back tech closet, checking the server rack I kept secured behind a vented panel. Everything was green. The upload of the "Manifesto" track, Zia's mix, was complete. Comments were unlocked on the band site, strictly moderated by the bot-net I’d deployed to filter for doxxing or aggression.
The sentiment analysis was 94% positive. The narrative had pivoted. We weren't a scandal. We were a movement.
I closed the server cabinet and walked back to the front lounge.
The mood had shifted. The post-show high was settling into something heavier, denser.
Zia had moved to the back of the bus and was standing in the center of the room as she stared at the whiteboard mounted on the partition wall. It was our operational schedule, the grid we lived by to ensure no one burned out and boundaries were maintained.
