“You’re an idiot,” I say, but it comes out like pride.
“I’m a filmmaker,” he says, as if there’s a difference.
I plug it in.
Files wash up like driftwood:stairwell_3rd_floor_03.wav.
I drop it into an empty track and press play.
Fluorescent buzz. Footsteps—two sets. A door whispering shut.
Then her voice—soft and priestly.
“Right and wrong are lighting choices.”
I stop breathing.
Blake closes his eyes like he’s heard it too often in his sleep.
In the file, a man laughs—nervous, the laugh men make when they don’t want to be cowards.
“You think the world’s going to buy that?” he says.
“They don’t have to buy it,” Shae says. “They just have to rent it long enough to stream.”
Silence. Something intimate and ugly—fabric, breath, a sound that could be a kiss or a hand over a mouth.
Then his whisper. One I’ve heard before.
Declan.
The name lives in my notes and text messages like a stain.
“Tell me what you need,” he says.
“Two minutes,” she answers.
The file ends with the stomp of a heel.
Hers.
I let the silence sit. The heaters tick. The building keeps breathing like it didn’t just tilt.
Blake looks at me, eyes flat, waiting. “So. Lighting.”
“Lighting,” I say, and my voice isn’t steady.
I drag the WAV into our Shadow cut and line it under the body-cam skip. It fits like it was composed for that missing space.
I don’t touch the broadcast sequence.
“We could be sued,” Blake says—almost respectful.
“We could be right,” I say.
He nods once, like a pilot before takeoff. “Then tell me how you want to grade it.”
I inhale and feel the shape of the story in my lungs—cathedral and carnival.
