I ran to the bathroom. No window. Just a toilet with a heavy porcelain tank. I grabbed the ceramic lid, the only object in the room with mass, and hefted it. It was heavy, cool, and brutal.
I stormed back into the bedroom and swung the lid with every ounce of repressed fury I possessed.
CRACK.
I smashed it against the window latch. The paint cracked. The wood splintered. The glass shattered outward in a glittering spray.
Cold London air rushed in, biting my face, shocking my lungs. It smelled of rain, diesel exhaust, and wet pavement, the sweetest perfume I’d ever encountered.
I scrambled onto the sill, glass crunching under the soles of my shoes and a spared a single second to thank my past self for choosing practical footwear. I looked down. It was a ten-foot drop to a wheeled dumpster filled with wet cardboard and refuse.
I adjusted my grip on my folio case, clutching it to my chest like a shield. Old habits die hard; I wouldn't leave the paperwork behind. I looked at the phone one last time. The blue dot pulsed, a digital heartbeat demanding synchronization.
Move now.
The door handle behind me rattled. A heavy shoulder slammed against the wood.
I didn't think. I didn't calculate. I jumped.
THREE
Juno
The destruction of a woman’s life usually takes about forty-eight hours to complete. Tonight, the internet was trying to break the land speed record.
I sat in the center of the dark room, the glow of six monitors painting my hands in cool, flickering blues. The air conditioning hummed, a low-frequency drone that usually helped me think, but right now, the noise on the screens was deafening.
On monitor one, the hashtag #ThePaperMintBeta had become an infection and it was spreading. It was no longer just a collection of angry tweets; it was a full-blown narrative architecture.
On monitor two, the heat map of the geolocation tags around the King’s Cross Budget Inn was glowing angry red. A swarm.
On monitor three, a live stream from a freelance paparazzo showed a dumpster in an alleyway behind the hotel. The lid was closed, but the thermal overlay showed a heat signature inside. Huddled. Small. Vibrating.
"She jumped," I murmured, a reluctant smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. "Crazy Beta actually jumped."
I tapped a key, isolating the audio feed from the alley. It was just rain and the distant sirens of the Met Police, who would arrive twenty minutes too late to do anything but file a report on a missing person.
"She’s durable," Mateo’s voice came from the doorway behind me. I didn't verify his presence; I felt the sheer mass of him displacing the air in the room. Even standing still, Mateo radiated a heavy, kinetic potential, like a rockslide waiting for gravity.
"She’s cornered," I corrected, watching a fresh wave of bot responses hit the timeline. "And she’s being surgically dismantled."
I zoomed in on the thread structure. It was beautiful, in a grotesque way. The attack vectors weren't random. They hit her professional competence first, "She obstructed a lawful wellness check." Then they went after her biology with the classic,"Frigid Beta", and now, they were moving to the endgame of threatening her safety,"We know where she sleeps".
This wasn't a mob. This was a product.
"Sanitize?" Mateo asked, leaning against the doorframe, crossing arms the thickness of suspension cables.
"Definite fingerprints," I said. "The cadence of the bot engagement is too rhythmic for organics. Vance hired the best. He wants her erased before the morning show circuit starts."
I watched the thermal blip in the dumpster.
Rowan Quill.
I’d read her file three times in the last hour. Thirty-three. Beta. No pack. No debts. A credit score that bordered on erotic in its perfection. A woman who lived entirely in the fine print, believing that if she just followed the rules hard enough, the monsters wouldn't eat her.
She didn't understand that to the monsters, rules were just seasoning.
"Stephen is ready," Mateo grunted. "The contracts are drafted. But she’s not going to get in the car, Juno. She’s a flight risk. Her psychological profile screams 'avoidance.'"
