Not fragmentation.
Structure.
Designed.
Intentional.
“And Peter Jenkins?” Aaron asks.
I isolate his profile.
Pull the threads.
Show the pathways.
“Just one of their hands.”
“A recruiter?” someone asks.
“No,” I say.
Worse.
“A filter.”
Lark hasn’t moved.
She’s staring at the screen like it just rewrote her entire life.
Then she looks at me.
And I see it.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
“They didn’t hijack my work,” she says softly.
The room stills.
Because we all feel what’s coming next.
“They commissioned it.”
The words don’t land like a theory.
They land like a memory snapping into place.
I feel something cold settle in my chest.
Because if she’s right—
This didn’t start when we found her.
It started long before that.
And we were never chasing the system.
