Chapter 50

• I did not sleep the night after the interview. Sleep felt like a thing that belonged to other people, to lives less entangled. I stayed dressed, lying flat on top of my sheets, staring at the ceiling while the shadows in my room stretched and shifted. It felt as if the dark itself was listening, like the silence had grown into something sentient, waiting for me to move or speak or give it permission to release me.
• My phone started vibrating sometime around four. Mentions. Notifications. An alert from Lena that had been tagged “not urgent,” which told me it absolutely was. I sat up slowly and opened it, heart already bracing. The article had been published. Mode Verité did not use loud fonts or exclamation points. Their headline whispered with precision.
• Integrity Is Not a Campaign: Inside the Quiet Revolution at Cross Atelier.