At first, it looked normal. The usual flood—paragraphs of praise, clipped denunciations, the armchair analysts already declaring themselves experts.
Then the pattern frayed.
Messages arrived too quickly. Seconds apart. Identical cadence. The same sentence structures repeating across different accounts, as if someone had fed my language through a machine and hit send.
Short declarative lines. Clinical empathy. Words I used—but flattened. Stripped of nuance. Syntax that mimicked intention without grasping meaning.
I scrolled, my pulse ticking just fast enough to notice. Not panic—recognition. The kind that hit before language caught up.
The timing was wrong. Messages stacked too cleanly, too quickly. The phrasing almost right, but missing texture—sentences shaped like mine without the weight behind them. Sympathy on schedule. Outrage on cue.
Close enough to pass at a glance. Wrong enough to itch.
Not all reactions were real. Not all listeners were listening.
Bots, maybe. Sock accounts. Coordinated amplification. It wouldn’t be the first time someone tried to launder influence through volume. Still, this felt… deliberate. Tuned. Like someone testing how closely they could mirror me without actually understanding what I’d said.
I looked up.
Flint met my gaze from across the room—his office now, not the studio. He gave a single nod. No questions. No commentary. Just confirmation that he was seeing it too, even as he fielded calls from Reardon and network execs who suddenly remembered my name now that it came with risk attached. I’d never envied his job, but today made it painfully clear why.
Brewster hadn’t moved.
He stood exactly where he’d been since the broadcast ended—still, coiled, unreadable. Not watching the praise roll in. Not tracking the numbers.
Assessing.
The way you assessed a perimeter. Or a threat vector.
Hours later—after food I barely tasted, after arguing through next steps, after the adrenaline burned down into something sharper and more dangerous—my phone buzzed again.
Just once.
And I knew, before I even looked, that this one would matter.
Unknown number.
No image. No threat. No spectacle.
Just text.
You’re not wrong.
But you’re missing some facts.
The screen felt heavier in my hand, like it carried more than words—like it carried intent. My thumb hovered over the reply field, muscle memory already assembling a response. One question. Carefully phrased. Neutral enough to pass. Sharp enough to test the line.
Just enough to confirm I wasn’t imagining it.
I could feel how easy it would be to answer. How satisfying. How much it would feel like control.
I didn’t type.
Not yet.
I felt him before I looked up.
Brewster stood across the room, utterly still, his gaze locked on me with an intensity that had nothing to do with the phone and everything to do with the choice it represented. He wasn’t watching the screen. He was watching my hand. My thumb. The moment before movement.
