"Too late," Stephen said, tapping his hard drive. "We have the snapshot."
But the real impact wasn't the corporations. It was the irony.
The comments were flooding in, thousands per minute, noticing exactly what we wanted them to notice.
@TourLife99: Wait. Vance tried to kill Quill for being a fake Omega, and she pulls up with a REAL secret Omega who is literally the most successful fixer in London? The math is mathing.
@BassClef: The irony is lethal. Vance accidentally validated the exact thing he was trying to demonize. Juno is a god.
@KnotTypical: Looking at the data dump. Juno charted three platinum albums while actively suppressing a heat? I can’t even do laundry. This is legendary.
We watched the narrative flip. It wasn't just a defense anymore. It was a revelation. By standing next to me, by proving that competence and designation were unrelated, Juno hadn'tjust saved himself. He had validated every person Vance tried to erase.
"They aren't talking about your 'radicalism' anymore," Juno murmured, scrolling through the feed. A soft, genuine smile touched his lips. "They're talking about the work."
"They're talking aboutyou," I said, bumping his shoulder with mine. "You're trending higher than the Protocol."
"Naturally," he preened, though his ears turned pink.
Then, the phone rang.
It wasn't the burner. It was Juno’s personal cell. The number that only the gods of the industry had.
The room went still.
Juno looked at the screen. He didn't look scared. He looked like a man who had been waiting seven years to pick up this specific call.
"Mitchell King," he said.
Stephen stiffened. "Don't answer it. It’s a trap. He wants to get you on air while the iron is hot."
"He wants a comment," Mateo rumbled. "He wants to see if you crack."
Juno picked up the phone. He looked at me. His eyes were clear, amber, and filled with a terrifying calm.
"I don't crack," Juno said.
He swiped the screen. He put it on speaker.
"Mitchell," Juno said. His voice was silk wrapped around a razor blade. "You’re calling outside of business hours. I usually charge a retainer for this."
"Juno,"King’s voice came through, tinny and breathless. For the first time, the kingmaker sounded off-balance."I... we just saw the upload. The statement. Is it true? Are you confirming the designation?"
"I'm confirming the data, Mitchell," Juno said, leaning back in his chair, crossing his legs. "The designation is just a detail.Did you read the actuarial table on page forty-two? It proves that your network’s insurance premiums are inflated by thirty percent due to designation bias. I thought a man of your fiscal conservative leaning would be outraged."
"I... wait. You're pivoting to insurance?"
"I'm pivoting to the truth," Juno said coolly. "You tried to ambush my associate on live television with a lie about her biology. I’m simply correcting the record with the truth about mine."
There was silence on the line. The sound of a man realizing he was playing chess against a grandmaster. Juno's smile turned razor sharp and we all knew that whatever Mitchell was after he wouldn't get it in the way that he wanted. Juno was a shark and, on that phone call, Mitchell was a seal.
THIRTY
Rowan
The cabin was a pressurized vessel of silence, one that broke with the synchronized chime of four separate notification alerts. Outside, the woods were drenched in a grey, relentless drizzle that blurred the tree line. Inside, the reclaimed wood table was a tangle of cables and coffee cups. We hadn't slept much. We hadn't needed to. We were running on the specific, high-octane fuel of watching a monolithic industry realize it had stepped onto a landmine.
"And there it is," Stephen murmured, adjusting his glasses as a red banner unfolded across his monitor. "Right on schedule."
