Both sides were loud. Both sides were moving fast.
But it was the third category that stopped me cold.
The anonymous messages.
They weren't coming through the public channels. They were coming through the encryptedAnchor Protocolcontact form I’d embedded at the bottom of the manifesto, the journalists' tip lines, the protected comments sections on the labor blogs.
They weren't angry. They weren't celebratory. They were precise, detailed, and devastating.
I sat at the table, scrolling, my coffee going cold next to my hand.
“Clause 14b in the standard Apex Touring rider requires chemical suppression if the tour coincides with a predicted heat,”one message read.“They called it 'insurance liability management.' I lost my cycle for two years. I’m a session cellist. I signed it because I needed the rent.”
Another one, timestamps from just minutes ago:“I’m a Beta PA. My NDA explicitly forbids me from reporting ‘biological distress’ observed in High-Value Assets. I watched an Omega collapse backstage in Leeds because her handler wouldn't let her take a break. I signed the NDA. I held the ice pack. I’m sorry.”
Every message was a confession. Every message was a brick in a wall of silence that I had just taken a sledgehammer to.
"There are so many of them," I whispered, my voice caught in my throat.
I looked up. Juno was watching the feed from his laptop. He wasn't typing. He wasn't spinning the narrative. He was just reading.
His face was a mask of porcelain stillness, the kind of stillness that screams of effort. He was reading a message from a backing vocalist who described a "health management clause" that sounded identical to the one Vance tried to force on Illyana.
That was when the air in the room changed.
It was subtle at first. The scent blockers Juno used were industrial grade, expensive chemical walls designed to turn him into a void. They didn't fail cleanly.
It started as a ghost of a smell. Something cloying. Something that cut through the sterile tang of the server room and the lingering smell of roasted coffee.
Burnt sugar. It was sweet, urgent, and laced with a frantic, scorching heat.
I frowned, glancing around the room, confused. It smelled like a bakery on fire.
Mateo, who had been running a quiet, tireless orbit of the perimeter for hours, stopped dead in his tracks near the window. His head snapped toward Juno. He didn't say a word, but the quality of his attention shifted instantly fromguardtocaretaker. His nostrils flared, taking in the data that my Beta senses were only just registering.
Mateo moved. He didn't rush, because Mateo never rushed, but he covered the distance to the kitchen in three long strides. He poured a glass of water. He walked to Juno’s station and set it down next to his hand with a deliberate, heavy thud.
Juno didn't look up. His eyes were locked on the screen, reading the musician's testimony. His knuckles were white where he gripped the edge of the desk.
"I'm fine," Juno said. His voice was flat. It wasn't a snap; it was the tone of someone who had already had the argument in his own head and lost.
Mateo said nothing. He just stood there, a massive, silent wall of cedar and rain, blocking Juno from the rest of the room, shielding him while he put himself back together.
I watched Juno reach into his pocket. His hand trembled, just a fraction of a millimeter. He pulled out a small, silver pill case, dry-swallowed a suppressant, and drank the water Mateo had brought him.
He took a deep breath. Held it.
The scent of burnt sugar faded, shoved back behind the chemical barricade.
Juno resumed typing.
I looked back at my screen, my heart hammering a strange, disjointed rhythm. I realized, with a sudden, piercing clarity, that I wasn't just reading industry gossip. I was reading a collective trauma log. And Juno... Juno knew this story. He knew it in his body.
The realization sat heavy in my gut. I wasn't just fighting for contractual fairness. I was fighting forthem. For the people in this room who had saved me.
I looked at the testimony of the session musician again.Clause 14b.
"I need the paper trail," I said, my voice gaining strength.
