When the show wraps, I bolt. No meetings. No debriefs. I ignore Chuck’s shout of “Hey, drinks later?” like it’s a fly buzzing near my ear.
District Eight is quieter at night. Still humming, but not the kind of buzz that gets under your skin. My high-rise apartment knows me. The doors swish open as I approach, lights blooming softly.
“Welcome home, Rhea,” chirps the apartment AI. “Would you like your evening mood lighting in lavender or?—”
“Shut up.”
It dims in offended silence.
I kick off my heels and pour myself a glass of synth-wine. Something dark. Red. Bitter. I don’t sit. I stand by the window, looking out over the skyline. Neon bleeding into smog. Drones skating past with carryout and pills and pleasure packages.
Then I turn back to the compad.
I pull it out like it might bite me.
ARGUS.FALL.001.
Still there.
I tap. A loading bar crawls across the screen.
Encrypted. Alliance format. Black-band tag.
This isn’t a prank.
The first image that appears is incomplete. Blurry. A manifest of some kind—names, coordinates, dates. Then it glitches. A wave of code floods the screen.
I scroll. My fingers tremble.
A line stands out in blood-red font:
...unauthorized biometric testing on unregistered settlements...
I stare. Then scroll more. Images now. Corpses. Alien, human, hybrids. All blurred, but the captions are enough.
A child’s face. Missing eyes.
A facility tag: Helios Combine Research Node Zeta-4.
My breath catches.
Someone sent this. On purpose. Not to my inbox. Not to my station. To the show. The fluffiest, most disposable airtime in the system.
Because they knew I’d see it.
Because they wanted me to.
I close the file. Sit down. Stare at the darkened screen.
Then I open it again.
I read.
And I don’t stop.
The next morning, my compad wakes me up before the alarm.
Only—it doesn’t ring.
