Chapter 4
FOUR
Alfie
The notification sound on Rowan’s tablet was usually a polite ding, the sort of noise you heard in airport lounges or expensive elevators. This time, it sounded like a guillotine blade dropping.
We were scattered around the bus lounge in Birmingham, the silence thick enough to choke on.
Kit was aggressively polishing a snare drum, the metallic shhh-shhh sound the only rhythm in the room.
Euan was staring at his laptop screen with the kind of intensity that usually preceded him rewiring a venue’s entire electrical grid.
Cal was brewing tea, because Cal operated on the belief that the apocalypse could be postponed if the Earl Grey was hot enough.
And I was vibrating. Literally vibrating. My knee bounced a rapid-fire rhythm against the table leg, adrenaline souring my scent into something closer to scorched caramel than crème br?lée.
"She’s out," Rowan said.
She didn't look up from the screen. Her voice was flat, devoid of the usual crisp authority. It was the voice of a manager who had just watched a million-pound contract evaporate, but underneath that, it was the voice of a Beta who’d lost a chess match she didn't know she was playing.
"Define 'out,'" I said, though my gut had already dropped through the floorboards and was currently dragging along the M6 motorway.
"Text message. Short. Can't do it. Cancel the contract." Rowan swiped a finger across the glass, a gesture of finality. "Then she blocked my number. And yours. And the band account."
Kit stopped polishing. The silence went from thick to vacuum-sealed.
"She’s ghosting," Euan said, typing furiously now. "Wait. She’s actively scrubbing. Her metadata on the emergency mix is gone. The server logs from the upload are wiped. She’s burying the trail."
"She’s posting, though," Cal noticed, holding up his phone. "Instagram story. Picture of a thermometer and pile of tissues. Caption just says ‘Flu season wins. Bed for a week.’"
"It’s a decoy," I snapped, standing up because sitting felt like surrendering. "She’s not sick. She’s running. She’s throwing off travel tracing so we don't follow."
The realization hit me with the force of a feedback loop screaming through a stack of Marshall amps. She was running. From us. From me.
My inner Alpha roared like a chainsaw revving in an empty room.
It demanded action. It screamed at me to grab my coat, kick open the bus door, and hunt.
To track that neon citrus-ozone scent across the country, through the rain, until I found her and pinned her down and proved…
proved what? That I was exactly the kind of terrifying, steamrolling Alpha she clearly thought I was?
I took a step toward the door. My boots hit the floor heavy, purpose locking my muscles into a predatory stride. Go. Find. Keep.
Then I saw my thumb.
The ink was black and sharp against my skin, rewritten just hours ago.
ASK > ASSUME.
I froze. My hand gripped the back of the lounge sofa hard enough to crack a nail, the chipped polish flaking off under safety-glass pressure.
I remembered the last time I’d chased. Remembered a partner crying in a hotel room because the press, the label, the sheer weight of Alfie King had crushed their boundaries into dust. I’d sworn then.
Vowed it on my voice, on my music, on every stage I stood on.
I would never again weaponize destiny against someone who hadn't signed the waiver.
I forced my breath out. Four seconds. Six. The rhythm she used.
"We don't chase," I said. The words tasted like ash and copper.
"Alfie," Kit started, standing up, his own espresso scent dark and turbulent. "She’s alone. She’s scared. If she thinks we’re rejecting her—"
"If we chase her, we prove her right," I cut him off, turning to face them. My chest heaved. I felt feral, wild, ready to tear the upholstery apart with my teeth, but I held my ground. "She set a boundary. A massive, concrete, ten-foot-high boundary made of silence and distance. If I cross that uninvited, I’m not her mate. I’m her stalker. "
"She’s deleting herself, Alf," Euan said quietly, his eyes still tracking data streams I couldn't understand. "She’s erasing the evidence that she was ever here. Like she thinks we want to scrub her out."
That hurt more than the running. The idea that she thought she was dirt to be swept away, a mistake to be redacted.
"Then we make sure she knows she’s indelible," I muttered.
I grabbed my laptop and my portable interface.
"Where are you going?" Rowan asked, her eyes sharp, assessing.
"Bunk. Need the vocal booth."
"We move in twenty minutes."
"Then don't hit any potholes."
I slammed the sliding door to the back lounge, isolating myself in the small, sound-treated space we used for demoing tracks on the road. The air in here was stale, smelling of old coffee and frustration. I set up the mic, hands shaking so hard I nearly dropped the XLR cable.
I needed to scream. I needed to howl until my throat bled.
Instead, I pulled up the session file from the recent show. The one she fixed. The one where the waveform looked like chaos ordered into beauty.
I bypassed the mix. I muted the drums, the bass, the loops. I stripped everything away until it was just silence and the ghost of the track she’d saved.
Then I hit record.
I didn't sing. Not really. I let the melody break, let it rasp and catch.
I poured all the blackberry-burnt-sugar desperation, all the I want you but I won't take you into the mic.
It was raw. Ugly. The sound of a man standing on a cliff edge, voluntarily stepping back because the person he wanted to jump with hadn't asked him to fly.
One take. No auto-tune. No polish. Just the sound of a heart breaking in real-time.
I bounced the stem. Just my vocal. Naked.
Rowan was going to kill me. The label was going to have a stroke. Gareth Blake was probably going to spontaneously combust.
Good.
I logged into the band’s official SoundCloud. Not the polished PR one, the "junkyard" account we used for demos and b-sides, the one the real fans monitored like hawks.
I uploaded the file.
Title: For the Engineer Who Ran
I stared at the description box. My cursor blinked, a rhythmic taunt. What could I say that wouldn't spook her? What could I say that would reach her through the noise, through her fear, through the miles she was putting between us?
I typed, deleted, typed again.
"To the anonymous engineer who fixed the Showbox meltdown — your lungs saved my voice. We want to learn, not take. You’re credited, fox-tail and all."
I hit Publish.
Then I threw the laptop onto the sofa, sank to the floor, and put my head in my hands. The scent of burnt sugar filled the small room, thick and cloying.
"You didn't verify the upload with legal," Rowan said from the doorway. She hadn't knocked.
I didn't look up. "Fire me."
"Can't. You're the face." Her heels clicked on the floorboards as she stepped in. She sat on the edge of the sofa, looking at the laptop screen. "You credited the fox-tail. That's identifying."
"It's distinguishing," I corrected, looking up finally. "It proves we saw her. Not just an Omega. Not just a fix-it girl. Her. The artist."
Rowan’s expression was unreadable. She scrolled through the comments that were already starting to populate the feed. The numbers were ticking up. Ten plays. Five hundred. Two thousand.
"The internet is waking up," she noted dryly.
I pulled my phone out. Twitter, or X, or whatever hellsite it was today, was already catching fire.
@RiotGrrrl99: Did anyone see what Riot Theory just dropped?? "For the Engineer Who Ran"??? HELLO?
@BassSlut4Cal: Alfie sounds wrecked. Like, properly wrecked. Who is she? Who fixed the Showbox??
@Omegamon: Wait, "fox-tail"? There was a rumour about a fox avatar producer on the stream... is this Z? Did Z fix their rig?
And then, inevitably, the war started.
@AlphaKingStan: OMG listen to the lyrics. "I won't chase / I won't take." He's scent-matched. He has to be. #BlackberryBond
@TechNerd88: Stop shipping real people you freaks. Look at the liner notes. "We want to learn, not take." That's the story. She ran because the industry eats Omegas. He's saying she's safe. #FoxTailProducer
@GossipHound: Bet they already hooked up and she bailed. Drama.
@PunkQueen: Shut up. Alfie Riot literally just dropped a consent anthem disguised as a ballad. Credit her. Respect her. #FoxTailRespect
"It's a mess," I said, watching the hashtags battle for supremacy in the trending tab. #BlackberryBond was climbing fast, fueled by the romantics who wanted a fairy tale. But #FoxTailProducer was right behind it, fueled by the tech nerds and the punks who understood what I was actually saying.
"It's a conversation," Rowan corrected. She tapped a tweet from a major music blog asking who the mystery engineer was. "You've weaponized the speculation. Instead of 'Alfie's sad,' it's 'Who is this genius who saved the show?'"
"I don't want them to find her," I said, panic flaring again. "If they doxx her—"
"They won't," Euan said, appearing behind Rowan. He looked grim but satisfied. "I'm monitoring traffic. Anyone trying to dig into real IDs gets redirected to a dead-end server I set up ten minutes ago. They can speculate all they want. They won't find a name."
Kit squeezed into the small room, looming large. "Cal's doing something clever."
"Oh god," I groaned. "More tea?"
"No. Look." Kit turned his phone around.
Cal had posted to the official Riot Theory Instagram. Not a glossy promo shot. Just a grainy, moody Polaroid of a backstage door.
Taped to the door was a piece of gaffer tape with sharpie writing: SAFETY CHECK ZONE. QUIET PLEASE.
@RiotCal: Backstage isn't for afterparties tonight. It's for boundaries. Respect the quiet zones. Also, the new track is strictly for listening, not for hunting. Anyone requesting personal info on our collaborators gets blocked. Cheers. #BoundariesArePunk
I stared at the screen. Cal, the quiet one. Cal, who usually only posted pictures of bass strings and biscuits. He’d taken my raw, emotional vomit and turned it into policy.
"He's steering the ship," Kit murmured, a hint of admiration in his voice. "Look at the comments on Cal's post."
@Fan1: Safe zones backstage? Finally.
@TourRat: Love this. Shipping is fun but real people need space. Good on you lads.
@RiotTheoryFan: Okay so we respect the engineer's privacy. Copy that.
"Copy that," I whispered, the phrase tasting sweet for the first time in hours.
Rowan finally stood up. She smoothed her skirt, her face settling into that lethal, professional mask she wore to negotiate aggressive hostile takeovers. But there was a glint in her eye. A terrifying, approving glint.
"Congratulations, Alfred," she said, using my legal name which usually meant I was in deep shit. This time, it sounded different. "You’ve managed to turn a potential PR crisis into an ethical branding pivot."
"I didn't do it for the brand," I snapped, defensive reflex kicking in. "I did it for her."
She paused at the door, glancing back at me huddled on the floor in my vintage tee and despair. "I know. That's why it worked. You've made consent sound romantic."
She arched a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. "Though I will be drafting a clause for the next contract that forbids unauthorized uploads of emotional misery without managerial review."
"It's not misery," I said, standing up and brushing the dust off my jeans. The vibrating in my blood had stopped, replaced by a low, steady thrum. I hadn't chased. I hadn't hunted. I had sent up a flare that said I am here, and I am safe. "It's policy."
"It's punk," Rowan conceded, a tiny smile cracking her facade.
I looked at my thumb again. The sharpie text stared back. ASK > ASSUME.
I grabbed the marker from my pocket and retraced the letters, making them darker, deeper.
"Boundaries are punk," I agreed.
The bus engine rumbled to life beneath us. We were moving. Away from Seattle. Away from where she was hiding. But out there, in the digital ether, my voice was finding hers, carrying a message that no contract could contain.
We want to learn, not take.
Ball's in your court, fox.
I closed the laptop. The upload was done. The signal was out. Now came the hardest part of the rock and roll lifestyle.
Waiting.