By the second afternoon, during a particularly long lucid stretch, the silence in the room felt heavy. The rain had stopped, leaving the woods outside dripping and grey.
Juno was sitting up, wrapped in a duvet, sipping tea I’d made him. He looked fragile, the ethereal facade stripped away to reveal the exhausted man beneath.
"The consultancy," he said quietly, staring into his mug. "It wasn't an ambition. It was a buyout."
I looked up from my laptop. "What do you mean?"
"The contract I signed when I was twenty-two," he said. His voice was steady, stripped of the charm he usually weaponized. "It was with a boutique agency. Standard exclusivity. But the fine print? It gave them power of attorney over my medical decisions if I was deemed 'incapacitated' by my designation."
I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the drafty cabin. I knew that clause. I had deleted it from a dozen drafts in my career.
"They defined 'incapacitated' broadly," Stephen added from the corner, his voice devoid of emotion. "Anything from a heat cycle to a depressive episode."
"I spent three years inside that contract," Juno continued. "I worked eighteen-hour days. I built careers for mediocrities. And every month, I took blockers that cost more than my rent because if I missed a day, if I showed a single symptom, they legally owned my body."
He took a sip of tea.
"I didn't leave. I bought my way out. I saved every penny, I stole data, I leveraged secrets I learned in green rooms, and I slapped a check on the desk that was big enough to make them sign a release."
He looked at me. His amber eyes were clear.
"That’s what forced compliance looks like, Rowan. It doesn't look like chains. It looks like a bank transfer you can't afford. It looks like swallowing a pill that makes your hands shake so you can keep your power of attorney."
I listened, and I recognized the grammar of it. I had spent fifteen years reading the language of exploitation, finding the loopholes, the trapdoors. But hearing Juno describe the cage from the inside... it was different. It wasn't data. It was a verdict.
"TheAnchor Protocolisn't just a legal document," Juno said. "It’s the key to making sure no one else has to buy their own freedom."
I looked at the screen in front of me. The anonymous messages were still pouring in. Thousands of them. People trapped in the same invisible architecture that had almost crushed Juno.
My anger finally broke. It didn't disappear; it transmuted. It stopped being a shield for my own ego and became fuel.
TheAnchor Protocolwasn't about me. It wasn't about vindicating my competence. It was about burning down the prison.
"We need to escalate," I said.
Juno tilted his head. "Proposal?"
"The Protocol is gaining traction," I said, pointing to the screen. "But venues are hesitant. They're scared of Vance’s legal team. We need to make it safer for them to adopt it than to ignore it."
"We make it open-source," Juno said, nodding slowly. "Release the full legal framework. Not just the manifesto. The contract language."
"And we certify it," I added, my mind racing. "We create a 'Safe Harbor' certification. Any venue that adopts the Protocol gets the seal. We market the seal to the fans. We tell the audiences:If you don't see this seal, the artist you love is unsafe."
"Weaponizing the fanbase," Stephen mused, a small, dangerous smile touching his lips. "It bypasses the legal department entirely."
"But to make it stick," Juno said, sitting up straighter, the duvet falling from his shoulders, "we need to prove that the Protocol works. We need a test case. Someone high-profile who admits to using it."
"We don't have a client willing to risk it," Mateo pointed out.
"We have me," Juno said.
The room went dead silent.
"Juno," Stephen warned.
"I’m going public," Juno stated. He looked at me, then at the Alphas. "Not as the consultant. As the Omega. I’m going to release my own medical records. Seven years of suppression. The buyout contract. The data."
"You'll be destroyed," Stephen said, standing up. "The industry will eat you alive. They’ll say you’re hysterical, unstable?—"
