"Maybe. I'd need to see everything. Talk to legal about the releases and figure out if there's any angle." A pause. "But Adrian—even if we could mount a counter-project, it takes time. Months, not days."
"I know."
"And the network cut still exists. Still airs, probably, whatever we do."
"I know that too."
"So what's the play?"
I stared out the window at the Sleeping Giant—stone and silence.
"The play is I stay at the table with the network. Push back on the worst impulses. Buy time." I swallowed. "And meanwhile, you start building something true. Something that exists alongside whatever they make. So when people see the meme version, there's another version waiting."
"That's a long game."
"It's the only game I've got."
Lenny was quiet for a moment. "Send me what you have. I'll see what's possible."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. This might not work."
"I know." I closed my eyes. "But it's something."
We hung up. I sat there holding the phone, feeling the gears start to turn on something I couldn't take back.
It wasn't enough. The right thing was still to tell Pickle—now, today, before another hour passed. The right thing was to trust him with the truth rather than manage it for him.
I did have a thread now. A direction. Something other than pure catastrophe to offer when the moment came.
That's still not honesty. That's still control with better justification.
Maybe, but it was hope, too. Thin, probably wrong—but real.
My phone buzzed.
Pickle:slept great. dreamed about hockey-playing penguins. you were the goalie. you were GOOD. very sexy. dinner = yes, pick me up at 7. wear the gray sweater, it makes your eyes do the thing
I stared at the words and read the easy trust in them. He'd already imagined our evening, picking out what he wanted me to wear, and building a small future for us.
Adrian:Sounds perfect.
Then I opened my laptop and pulled up the raw footage—the hours of material the network had ignored. This was the version that mattered.
I started organizing files, tagging clips, and building the skeleton of the documentary that should have existed all along.
Twenty-four hours. A counter-documentary. A secret I was still keeping.
Not enough. But more than nothing.
Chapter seventeen
Pickle
My hand found cold sheets.
Not the slow-cooling kind. This was been-gone-for-hours cold.
