The tower locked down at 4:17 p.m.
An anonymous leak had sent the image of “Clara” and Lila to every major outlet. Reporters screamed questions through the lobby glass. Online juries formed within minutes. Half the city declared Clara guilty before police even arrived; the other half accused Meridian of staging the disappearance to distract from the Lumina Verdict.
Chairwoman Bell ordered Clara to remain in a private board suite “for her protection.”
Adrian translated that as captivity.
He did not ask permission to leave. He took Clara through a service corridor, down two flights, across the deserted wellness center, and into a maintenance room that smelled of dust and hot wires.
“You always know the illegal route,” Clara whispered.
“Emergency route.”
“You picked a lock.”
“Emergencies require optimism.”
Despite everything, she almost laughed.
Then the door above them slammed.
Footsteps entered the stairwell.
Adrian pulled Clara behind a bank of servers. They stood close enough for her to feel his breath disturb a strand of hair near her cheek. Years ago, in the aftermath of the inquiry, she had told herself his presence felt dangerous because he was ambitious. Now she understood the more inconvenient truth: Adrian Knox saw too much. Around him, every mask wanted to fall.
Two security guards passed.
When their footsteps faded, Clara exhaled.
Adrian did not move away immediately.
“You should hate me,” he said.
“I did.”
“Past tense?”
“Don’t get hopeful. I’m under stress.”
This time, he did smile, small and unwilling.
They accessed the old server stack through a maintenance terminal. Adrian traced the source of the fake footage to an internal media lab on the thirty-third floor, a place officially used for brand films and product demos. Clara remembered Lila asking about it at the gala. She had seemed nervous, holding a silver clutch too tightly.
“What was in the clutch?” Adrian asked.
Clara closed her eyes, reconstructing the night. Music. Champagne. Havel’s speech. Lila near the elevators. A little yellow charm hanging from the clutch zipper, shaped like a cartoon moon.
“A storage key,” Clara said. “Novelty design. People thought it was cute.”
Adrian’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “Lila downloaded something from the Lumina tribunal system at 10:48 p.m. Then someone wiped the activity. Not well enough.”
“What did she take?”
He opened the recovered folder.
A video loaded.
Onscreen, Director Havel sat in the tribunal rehearsal room with three panel judges. The official public verdict had not aired yet, but the judges were already reading from prepared scripts. One protested that the evidence showed Lumina misidentified women and darker-skinned subjects at dangerous rates. Havel leaned forward, smiling as if teaching a child table manners.
“The verdict is not a conclusion,” he said on the recording. “It is a product launch.”
Another file showed payment transfers to panel members. Another showed surveillance footage from the gala stairwell: Lila confronting Havel, threatening to go public. Havel reached for her arm. She pulled away and ran.
Then a final clip.
Lila in the media lab, recording herself.
“If you’re seeing this, I didn’t run away,” she said, voice shaking. “Meridian can fake faces, voices, votes. They call it ethics. It’s a machine for manufacturing permission. I gave the key to someone I thought I could trust. If she finds it, she’ll know what to do.”
The video ended.
Clara whispered, “She gave it to me?”
Adrian looked at her. “Did she?”
Clara searched her memory again. The gala. The crowd. Lila bumping into her near the coat check, apologizing too loudly, pressing something into Clara’s palm.
Clara had thought it was a drink token. She had dropped it into her purse and forgotten.
Her purse was in her office.
On the ninth floor.
Where police were now waiting to arrest her.
Adrian shut the laptop. “We get the key, release the files, and find Lila before Havel moves her.”
“If she’s still alive.”
“She recorded a dead-man warning. People who do that usually make a second plan.”
“Usually?”
“I’m trying optimism. You complained.”
Above them, Meridian’s public address system crackled.
Chairwoman Bell’s voice filled the building: “All employees, remain calm. Clara Vale is wanted for questioning in connection with the disappearance of Lila Ormond. If you see her, notify security immediately.”
A pause.
Then Bell added, colder, “Adrian Knox is aiding her.”
Clara looked at Adrian. “You can still walk away.”
He opened the maintenance door.
“I did that once,” he said. “It was the worst decision of my life.”
