The city reacted before the sun rose.
By the time Mara returned home, her console was already flooded with notifications. Emergency bulletins. Legal briefs. Market alerts. Helix Dynamics stock plunged in real time, numbers bleeding red across financial dashboards like a slow-motion hemorrhage.
She muted them all.
Outside her window, the city hummed with a low, anxious energy. Protestors gathered in clusters, their voices distant but insistent, carrying through the concrete canyons between buildings. Digital billboards updated faster than any human could follow.
ECHO CONFIRMS CORPORATE MURDERNO MORE LIESTHE DEAD HAVE SPOKEN
Mara poured herself a glass of water and stared at it without drinking.
She had seen this before. Not at this scale, perhaps, but the pattern was familiar. The moment an Echo confirmed guilt, the public moved with startling unity. Outrage crystallized into certainty. Doubt evaporated.
Justice, streamlined.
And yet—
Mara's gaze drifted to the blank wall.
That gap.
A tenth of a second. Maybe less. Insignificant by any measurable standard. And yet it sat in her mind like a splinter beneath the skin, impossible to ignore once noticed.
She closed her eyes and replayed the moment again, internally.
The gunshot. The pain. Locke's voice.
Then nothing.
Her fingers tightened around the glass.
The system did not produce nothing.
Mara drank, the water cool and grounding.
I should report it, she told herself.
She didn't.