Her name, they later learned, was Tilly Quill.
She lived in the building without officially existing there.
At first Mara thought she was a lost employee’s child, the kind brought in during school strikes and forgotten among beanbags. But Tilly knew the tower’s blind spots better than facilities did. She crawled through ventilation routes, slept in a disused podcast booth, and stole pastries from executive breakfasts with the strategy of a military commander.
“Why are you following us?” Mara asked when they cornered her in the wellness demo room.
“I’m not following you,” Tilly said. “You’re walking through my house.”
Adrian crouched to her eye level. “Did you see what happened to Dr. Frost?”
Tilly’s face became carefully blank.
Mara recognized that expression. Adults used lawyers; children used silence.
Adrian softened his voice. “If you saw something, you’re in danger.”
Tilly snorted. “Everyone in this building is in danger. Some of you just have dental insurance.”
A laugh escaped Mara before she could stop it.
Tilly looked pleased, then quickly annoyed with herself. She tapped her maintenance tablet, and a security feed appeared: the rooftop garden during the gala, timestamped 10:31 p.m. Frost arguing with a figure in a white caterer’s jacket. The angle was bad. The face hidden. But the body language was violent.
“Seven minutes later?” Mara asked.
Tilly hesitated.
The screen went black.
“That part costs extra,” Tilly said.
Adrian looked at Mara. “She’s extorting us.”
“She’s surviving,” Mara said.
Tilly’s expression flickered.
Before Mara could ask her price, the demo room speakers crackled. Julian Vale’s voice filled the air, smooth as honey poured over glass.
“Employees of Solace, grief asks for unity. Rumor asks for cruelty. Today we choose unity.”
On the wall screens appeared a memorial montage of Dr. Frost, edited with tasteful piano music. Then came footage of Mara and Adrian holding hands in the boardroom.
The headline beneath it read: INTERNAL INVESTIGATION EXAMINES PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP LINKED TO ROOFTOP INCIDENT.
Mara stared, stunned.
Adrian whispered, “He’s framing the story before evidence exists.”
“No,” Mara said as her phone exploded with messages from colleagues, reporters, and her mother. “He’s framing us.”
Tilly’s tablet chimed. Her bravado vanished.
“They found my access ghost,” she said.
The room lock clicked.
Outside, security footsteps approached.
Adrian grabbed a chair and jammed it under the handle. Mara scanned the room: motivational posters, mood sensors, prototype companion drones shaped like cheerful blue spheres. Solace had spent millions making machines cute enough to trust.
Tilly shoved open a ceiling panel. “Up.”
“I’m wearing heels,” Mara said.
“Then become inspirational.”
They climbed.
Through the vents, Mara heard security break into the room below. A drone rose after them, its painted smile glowing in the dark shaft.
Adrian muttered, “That thing is adorable in a prosecutable way.”
Tilly pulled a screwdriver from her sock and struck the drone between its optical sensors. It dropped with a sad electronic chirp.
They emerged in the old broadcast studio on the thirty-second floor, a relic from when Solace had produced wellness livestreams. Dust covered the cameras. The soundboard still worked.
Adrian stared at it as if looking at a weapon.
“A live feed?” Mara asked.
“Not yet. We need proof people can’t edit away.”
Tilly watched him. “You used to make trials famous.”
“I used to make people watch what they wanted to believe,” Adrian said. “This time I’d like them to watch what’s true.”
Mara took Frost’s black drive from her pocket and plugged it into the console computer.
Files bloomed across the screen: user studies, internal emails, predictive harm models. Then one video opened by itself.
Dr. Frost appeared, pale and terrified.
“If you’re seeing this,” he said, “Julian knows the independent audit is real. The witness is not me. The witness is the system. It recorded everything.”
The door behind them unlocked from the outside.
Julian Vale stepped into the studio, alone and applauding slowly.
