The commission's interim report was not meant for the public.
That was clear from its title alone—technical, restrained, almost deliberately uninteresting. It was circulated internally first, then quietly forwarded, then inevitably leaked.
Jasmine received it at 5:42 a.m.
She read it standing at her kitchen counter, the document glowing softly against the dim morning light. Coffee brewed behind her, forgotten.
The language was cautious.
But the conclusions were not.
> Multiple institutions exhibit structurally similar practices that, while framed as supportive, create coercive conditions tied to performance access.
Jasmine closed her eyes.
There it was.
Not an opinion.
Not a recommendation.
A finding.
She scrolled.
Footnotes referenced internal manuals. Training decks. Phrases Evan had spoken aloud weeks earlier now embedded in a formal review, stripped of protection and preserved in print.
This wasn't reform yet.
But it was acknowledgment with teeth.
Across the city, Evan heard about the report during homeroom—not from administrators, but from students whispering, passing phones beneath desks.
"They found it," someone said.
"Found what?" another asked.
"The pattern."
Evan didn't smile. He didn't celebrate.
He felt something else instead—a subtle release, like pressure easing in a place he hadn't realized was still braced.
Later that day, the principal addressed the school over the intercom.
Her voice was steady, practiced.
"As part of an ongoing review," she said, "some programs will be paused pending further guidance."
Paused.
Not ended. Not corrected.
But the word landed anyway.
Evan watched as teachers exchanged glances. As mentors shifted in their seats. As authority recalibrated itself in real time.
In Margaret Hale's office, the mood was colder.
She sat with the interim report open in front of her, pen unmoving in her hand. Across the table, her legal counsel spoke carefully.
"This creates exposure," he said. "Not immediate liability—but precedent."
Margaret looked up. "Can it be challenged?"
"Not easily. The methodology is sound. They relied heavily on contemporaneous records."
Records.
Always records.
She exhaled slowly. "Then we change the conversation."
"How?"
"We frame this as implementation failure," Margaret said. "Good models. Poor execution. Individual actors."
The counsel hesitated. "The report suggests design-level issues."
Margaret's gaze hardened. "Reports suggest many things."
That evening, a statement was drafted for release the following morning.
We welcome the commission's insights and are committed to refining practices to ensure alignment with our values.
Refining.
Alignment.
The same words, rearranged.
Jasmine read the draft when it reached her through an unofficial channel and shook her head.
"They're trying to cauterize a fracture," she told Mara over the phone. "Not realizing it's structural."
"Will it work?"
"Not if we don't let them narrow it," Jasmine replied.
She drafted a response—not public yet, not confrontational.
Just a clarification.
Design produces outcomes. Outcomes reveal design.
She sent it to the secure group.
Across town, Evan sat at his desk, staring at an email from the school.
Request for Informal Conversation
No subject line.
No agenda.
He didn't reply immediately.
Instead, he opened his folder and reviewed his timeline again—dates, phrases, outcomes. He added one more entry.
Interim report released. Programs paused.
Then he forwarded the email to the shared archive.
Only after that did he respond.
> Happy to meet. Please confirm whether this will be documented.
The reply took longer this time.
That mattered too.
By nightfall, the interim report had reached the public—not with a bang, but with a ripple. Journalists wrote careful pieces. Experts weighed in cautiously. Institutions issued synchronized statements.
But beneath it all, something had shifted.
The story was no longer about whether harm had occurred.
It was about how deeply it had been built in.
Jasmine closed her laptop and looked out at the city, lights flickering like a system still running, still resisting shutdown.
Evan lay on his bed, phone beside him, eyes open.
For the first time, he could see the crack clearly—not wide enough yet to break the structure, but real.
And once a crack existed, the question was no longer if the system would change.
It was who would decide how far it went.