I wasn't an empath like Juno. I wasn't a wall like Mateo. I was a manager. I solved problems by finding the error in the system.
"I need to find the specific contract architecture that made all of this legal," I muttered, opening a new tab. My fingers hovered over the keys. "They told me exactly where to look. The companies. The dates."
I pulled up the corporate registry for the production company mentioned in the cellist’s message. I started cross-referencing the board members with Vance’s known associates.
"I know where the bodies are buried," I whispered, the cursor blinking like a heartbeat. "Because I know who sold the shovels."
I looked up and found Juno watching me again. The mask was back in place, cool and ethereal, but his eyes were blazing with something fierce and specific. It wasn't just approval. It was recognition.
He watched me pivot from receiving the pain to hunting the source of it, and for a second, the look on his face made me feel ten feet tall.
By late afternoon, the light outside had turned to the slate-grey of a London dusk, rain streaking the glass in long, weeping lines. We had been at war for eight hours.
Stephen was pacing, fielding legal queries from three journalists simultaneously on encrypted lines, his voice a smooth, lethal instrument of clarification. Mateo had doubled the sensor grid on the roof, his paranoia vibrating at a frequency that made the air feel thin.
I was buried in spreadsheets, building a map of complicity that spanned a decade.
"Hold," Juno said.
It wasn't a shout. It was a single, clipped word that cut through the ambient noise of the room like a knife.
I looked up. Juno was staring at his secondary monitor. The reflection of the screen turned his eyes into pools of electric blue light.
"Intelligence intercept," Juno said carefully. "Unusual network activity. Traced to a media production company calledMeridian Creative."
Stephen paused mid-sentence, putting aTimesreporter on hold. "Meridian? They're small. Boutique."
"Not anymore," Juno murmured, tapping a key. "They've been dormant for six months. They just surged. Massive data uplink. But it’s not broadcast traffic."
He expanded the window. I couldn't read the code, but I could read the tension in his shoulders.
"The packet profile is wrong," Juno analyzed, his voice tight. "It’s not text. It’s not standard video. It requires high-level processing power. Biometric data inputs. Voice samples. Facial mapping algorithms."
I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the air conditioning. "What does that mean?"
"Stephen," Juno said, ignoring me for a second. "Run Meridian Creative against Vance's vendor list. The deep list. The slush fund."
Stephen was already typing. "Running... They aren't on primary. Checking secondary... nothing on the official payroll." He paused. His grey eyes narrowed behind his lenses. "Found them. Hidden under 'Administrative Consulting.' Used twice in the last four years."
"When?" Juno asked.
"Both times immediately preceding a major industry scandal that ended up reflecting well on Vance," Stephen said grimly. "They bill for 'Media Asset Production.'"
Juno sat back. He took a screenshot of the intercept code and filed it into a secure folder.
"What kind of asset?" I asked, pushing my chair back. The dread was a physical weight in my stomach.
"The kind you build," Juno said, turning to look at me. "Not the kind you film."
He was looking at me, but he was seeing something else. He was seeing the machinery of a smear campaign being assembled in real-time.
"He’s building a counter-narrative," Juno said to the room. He kept his voice neutral, locked down, but I could smell the faint edge of ozone coming off Mateo as the bodyguard moved closer to the table. "Vance is cornered. He can't fight the manifesto with logic, so he's going to fight it with fiction."
"Deepfakes?" Stephen asked, the word landing heavy and ugly on the table.
"Maybe," Juno said. "Audio splices. Generated video. There’s not enough data yet to know what he’s building or who it’s aimed at. But he’s moving."
Juno stood up. He looked lethal. The playful, ethereal rebel was gone; the master manipulator was in the chair.
