"North," I said, my voice cracking. "Just go North."
TWO
Rowan
The wallpaper in Room 204 of the King’s Cross Budget Inn didn’t just peel; it surrendered. It curled away from the damp plaster in defeated, sunburned strips, revealing the brownish rot underneath. The whole room smelled of lemon bleach, old cigarettes, and the lingering ghosts of a thousand bad decisions made by tourists and adulterers who couldn't afford better.
It was a squalid little box, but it had a deadbolt that looked reassuringly heavy, a rusted chain, and distinctively fewer windows than my ground-floor apartment. More importantly, the Wi-Fi was fast enough to watch my life implode in 4K resolution.
I sat cross-legged on the lumpy mattress, the polyester duvet bunched around my waist like a defensive embankment. My leather folio case lay open beside me like a portable triage kit. Within its color-tabbed depths lay the tools of my trade: legal pads, fountain pens, contingency plans for visas, and NDAs sharp enough to draw blood. Now, they seemed quaint. Analog relics in a digital slaughterhouse.
My laptop screen was the only light source, casting a sickly, radioactive blue pallor over my hands and the sharp angles ofmy suit. I hadn't changed. I was still wearing the tailored navy blazer and the black trousers I’d put on twelve hours ago, back when I was a respected professional and not a trending topic.
Most people cry when they lose their careers. Some drink until the world softens. I don’t do soft. I create pivot tables.
My fingers flew across the keyboard, the mechanical clacking the only sound in the room besides the erratic gurgle of the radiator. I was entering data into a new spreadsheet titledDamage_Assessment_v1.0. It was a coping mechanism, a way to shove the screaming, amorphous chaos of the last six hours into neat, grid-lined boxes where I could strangle it.
Column A:Twitter Handle.
Column B:Threat Specificity (Low/Med/Actionable).
Column C:Designation Bias (Y/N).
Column D:Likelihood of Bot Origin.
"Come on," I muttered, my voice raspy in the stale air. I rubbed my temples, catching the faint scent of my own peppermint mixed with the graphite dust of the pencil tucked behind my ear. It usually centered me. Tonight, it just smelled like stress. "Show me the pattern."
I highlighted a cluster of sixty accounts that had tweeted the exact same phrase:Who let the librarian off the leash?They had all posted within three seconds of each other. I flooded the cells with bright, accusatory red.
Bot farm.
Probably hired by Vance’s crisis management firm,Sanitize, or whatever sleek, soulless moniker they were using to launder reputations this week. That was standard. That was just business. I could respect a good smear campaign if the invoices were clean.
What terrified me wasn't the machinery. It was the organic growth. The variable I couldn't contractually bind.
I tabbed over to the live feed, risking a direct look at the radiation core. The hashtag #ThePaperMintBeta was still trending, currently sitting at number six globally. But the tone had shifted. Gone was the initial shocked amusement of watching a Beta manager verbally dissect an Alpha producer. The internet had digested the clip, metabolized it through millions of insecurity-riddled guts, and was now vomiting it back up as ideology.
@AlphaStrike88: This is what happens when you let Betas leverage legal over biology. She doesn't understand the bond. She thinks she can litigate instinct. #KnowYourPlace
@SoftKnot__2: Look at her face in the clip. So cold. She’s probably never felt a real scent in her life. Jealousy is ugly, Quill. Stick to your spreadsheets and leave the feeling to the real designations.
@VanceDefender: Doxx her. If she wants to talk about 'autonomy,' let’s see how autonomous she is without a job, a postcode, or a face.
I stopped typing. My hands hovered over the keys, trembling just enough that when I tried to type I consistently hit the wrong letters.
They had decided who I was. The narrative had calcified.
I wasn't Rowan Quill, the woman who knew how to smuggle a pop star out of a venue in a laundry cart to avoid a stalker, or the strategist who could rewrite a visa application in twenty minutes flat while sitting on a crate in a venue kitchen, or the woman that had been helping Omegas perform safely in the music industry. I was a symbol. I was the frigid, joylessbureaucrat standing in the way of the sacred, messy, biological destiny that the world worshipped.
"I’m not jealous," I whispered to the empty, peeling room. The words died against the cheap drywall. "I’m just... accurate."
I minimized the browser. I couldn't look anymore. I opened a blank Word document. The cursor blinked at me, a rhythmic, rhythmic accusation.
Statement_Draft_04.docx
I needed to apologize. Constructing a public apology was a formula, just like a settlement agreement. You acknowledge the impact, never the intent. You validate the widespread feelings without admitting legal liability. You bow just low enough to expose the nape of your neck, submissive and soft, but not low enough to get decapitated.
I typed, my fingers feeling heavy and numb,
